silverfoxnik

[quote name='mr_russ' post='176040' date='Apr 14 2008, 08:53 AM']I've got a couple of dep gigs this weekend with an excellent function band- 'The Coverup' Friday 18th- Casablanca, Brighton, from about 12am - 2.30am Saturday 19th- Oceana Deep Club, Brighton - It'll be late again Be great if anyone can come down R[/quote] I've emailed the Burning Organ mob Russ and I'll let you know who's coming along..

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='177024' date='Apr 15 2008, 01:37 PM']sort of like folk music without beards and knitted jumpers.[/quote] Makes me think of that Vic & Bob sketch...

[quote name='jonthebass' post='176462' date='Apr 14 2008, 05:30 PM']Nice one SF! It's makes it look completely different. Rock and indeed Roll!!![/quote] Agreed!! That does indeed look like the mutts.... So, are you stingrayfan, G&Lfan or PBassfan now

[quote name='Terra' post='176369' date='Apr 14 2008, 04:07 PM']Hello I'm doing a piece of coursework on the music industry, and for some research I thought I'd see what you guys thought. A good mix of pro and amatur musicians, all with some knowledge of the music world. So, what do you think is in the future for the music industry? What will happen to record companies with falling slaes thanks to illegal download? What will happen to live music with so many bands around? Will we all go underground, DIY, or sell our souls for fame? Please write as much or as little as you want/can be assed, every opinion helps! Thanks![/quote] Being flippant, I'd say 'what future?', as I don't think there is a future for the music INDUSTRY (to quote Rich).. In my view, the entertainment media/industry (including portals like BBC, AOL, Yahoo, myspace, youtube etc, etc) will be the channels through which consumers access music and most probably, it will be available free. The already established name acts and some of the other as yet to be discovered creators of original MUSIC who somehow capture an audience's attention, will earn income from their creativity through gigs, touring, sponsorship and merchandise.. I think all the other creators of original work will be the 'amateurs' doing it for love with little or no financial gain.. Cantdosleepy made the point that "It is now essentially possible to make professional-sounding records in your own home with only a powerful computer and $1000 of equipment" which is true enough. But the last thing I care about as a music fan is 'professional-sounding records'.. What I've always been interested in is artists that have something unique about them and their music.. And that has got very little to do with professionalism and more to do with talent! But as life gets ever faster, it will be impossible to check out the huge numbers of artists making their music available to us for free,. So, as before, it will still fall to a select few 'opinion-formers' in the media or underground media to help us filter out all the dross.. It'll basically empower the old Payola system and the [i]'it's not what you know but WHO you know'[/i] systems even further. For example, if the Futureheads had never been signed to 679 and hadn't had zillions of record company dollars spent on marketing them, how would anyone know now to check out their new self-released material? As Bilbo said, [i]"I think the music industry in the future will be different; not better or worse, just different!"[/i] In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if things got worse..

[quote name='WalMan' post='175948' date='Apr 13 2008, 10:55 PM']Friday had its moments [attachment=7660:Chickie.jpg][/quote] I see what you mean!

[quote name='WishICouldWalk' post='175857' date='Apr 13 2008, 08:50 PM']No other gigs in the pipeline. Drop me a line nearer the Horatio's gig and I'll try to get down and say hello.[/quote] Ok - will do!

[quote name='OldGit' post='175827' date='Apr 13 2008, 08:06 PM']Ha ha I understand .. just pawns in a local feud [/quote] Mmm..? I hadn't thought of that with this venue, but it definitely happens with others we play at..

[quote name='WishICouldWalk' post='175564' date='Apr 13 2008, 11:11 AM']Well, you know me Nik - I won't let a woman come between me and a nice bass! BTW, if you happen to be in Brighton on Friday 9th May, I'll be playing at the Providence. When's your next Brighton gig?[/quote] Good man! I'd really like to get to your gig and hear the new set-up, but we're at The Elms in Worthing that night, sorry.. Our next Brighton gig is at Horatio's on The Pier on May 25th which is a Sunday.. When's your next gig?

[quote name='bassninja' post='175809' date='Apr 13 2008, 07:42 PM']I feel your pain brother, at least there wasn't a dB meter (or was there.....????) [/quote] Cheers. No dB meter visible on the wall - just the sneaky hearing aids in the punters heads! Old Git; we were recommended to the venue by another venue where we've had some very good gigs.. So we were hopeful of better things Just one of those things I suppose..

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='175579' date='Apr 13 2008, 11:36 AM']Sounds depressing. Sounds like it was all going on bar the meat raffle. We won't do those social clubs. Lead singer used to do the circuit in a previous life and he shudders at the thought of them. We got offered good money to play one recently and I went in and had a look around out of curiousity. It was grim. Like Phoenix Nights, without the comedy. Or it goes (usually while you're in the middle of playing something): "Do you know 500 Miles..?" "No we don't, sorry..." "You must know it. It goes: 'I could walk....'" "Yeah I know the song but we don't know the chords (ie p*ss off, I'm busy) They then try to sing you more of the song, to remind you how it goes. Fortunately we're now playing more gigs where people know what we play (punk, ska, new wave, indie covers) so those questions happen less. Last night though we got asked for Wham....[/quote] It was depressing.. And devoid of any of the humour Phoenix Nights has to offer! Your summing up of the pointless 'debate' between audience member and band is spot on! Luckily, this is not the normal sort of gig we do, so the scars should heal by next weekend

[quote name='stingrayfan' post='175556' date='Apr 13 2008, 10:39 AM']40th birthday party in a hotel. All went off really well, played three or four encores, everyone leaping around. Room big though and I struggled all night getting a good tone. Too boomy/too thin/too boomy etc. It was one of those set-ups where you sound really "clacky" on stage and really "woofy" off stage. It goes like that sometimes. Great gig though and we handed out loads of cards afterwards so may get a gig or two off the back of it.[/quote] I had that problem last week Matt - very frustrating! Glad to hear it was a good gig though. Which is more than I can say for ours last night at the Labour Club in Brighton.. Grim place with a Karaoke bar upstairs, intervals in the evening for Bingo, the Raffle and Play Your Cards Right, lots of brylcream and blue rinses on view;I'm sure you know the kind of place. We were constantly being asked by the audience to turn down so, instead of going all the way up to No.11, the volume ended up on -11! Requests for 'New York, New York' all evening from an old dear who looked like the twin-sister of the nasty gran in Catherine Tate's show. She kept saying to our singer: "Come on, fu*king play it, play it! I asked yous nicely first time, just fu*king play it! blink: So in the end, we dug very deep into our seriously unrehearsed 1950s reptoire so the audience could have a little dance.... All in all, very scary! Music may be the food of love but gigging in places like that is like a sh*t sandwich!

[quote name='WishICouldWalk' post='175217' date='Apr 12 2008, 03:27 PM']I started thinking about the hassle of a girlfriend and all of a sudden I became gripped by the need for a 70s jazz.[/quote] Like your priorities!!

[quote name='birdy' post='175131' date='Apr 12 2008, 12:56 PM']You guys just aren't trying hard enough :-) Steve[/quote] Well said Steve! We can't have lightweights around here - this is no place for the Bass equivalents of CND supporters.. It's Basschat + GAS or nothing, ok.. Isaac? Nick? Just want to get this straight... OK!

[quote name='wateroftyne' post='174584' date='Apr 11 2008, 02:52 PM']It's not raining here for once, so I thought I'd get the Quadruplets and camera out... I must admit, I still get warm and fuzzy when I look at them. Sad, innit?[/quote] Totally brilliant and like David, yes, I'm jealous! Do they and the Mesa all go up to No.11 (he said, resorting to childish banter to cover up extreme envy..)?

[quote name='matty589' post='174501' date='Apr 11 2008, 01:10 PM']The poster about Warwicks is spot-on, which is why I am glad most circuits have a pull-passive, I prefer both of mine bypassing the circuitry. Actually a high-quality full-range passive pickup in a balanced-sounding bass is best to my ears - If you have a good even hi-fi amp you can eq to suit and the eq from a good recording setup will be far more transparent than any onboard eq. In all the basses I have played and owned the active circuit seems to add headroom at the expense of purity and variety of sound. I think it is also worth mentioning that you can get a lot more of variety of tone with your hands! I recently read a Jonas Hellborg interview in Bass Player where he was talking about his signature bass and amp. He said that onboard eq never works because it runs on 9 or 18v batteries - nowhere near powerful enough to provide the headroom and frequency response of a good mains-powered eq. New strings, changed more often, also reduce the need to play with eq so much as well. One of my favourite players is Anthony Jackson, and his bass has one full-range passive pickup wired directly to the output jack. Nothing wrong with his tone! I just have to convince someone to build something similar for less than £10K [/quote] +1 I still think this all comes down to taste and style and that neither option is superior to the other. IMHO, some of the best records ever made with some of the best bass playing and bass sounds ever committed to tape will have been made with passive basses. But as I say, that's only in my opinion. On the other hand, some people really like Flea's tone or Mark King's tone for example, but neither does anything for me. When I'm gigging, I prefer to get the changes of tone I need from the way I strike the strings with my hands, rather than through using lots of e.q, either on-board the bass or in the amp. It works for me but I doubt it would for others.. And besides, when I DI into the band's PA, they always muck my sound up anyway

[quote name='MacDaddy' post='174181' date='Apr 10 2008, 10:06 PM']+1 is it possible with a collection like that to still have GAS?[/quote] Good point! Very nice collection of basses and IMHO, the P Bass and the Ray are true 'classics'...

[quote name='Astronomer' post='173730' date='Apr 10 2008, 10:23 AM']Money - Pink Floyd Sunshine Of My Love (think that's what it's called - dunno who did it) Super Freak - Rick James Sommat by Chic - can't remember what it's called I'm sure there's more.... [/quote] Super Freak is a brilliant song and a great bassline....

[quote name='Astronomer' post='173724' date='Apr 10 2008, 10:17 AM'][i]“I used to try all different kinds of bass playing, but you’re good at one thing. You find your level and settle into that and you’re happy with that. I used to try and learn slap bass, just to be a more all-round player. You drive yourself nuts, but eventually you stick to what you’re good at.”[/i] - Geezer Butler I've "played" bass on and off since I was 16, and it's always been a source of enjoyment and frustration in equal measure. Enjoyment because it can sound really awesome, and frustration because there's so much I can't do. I've never been happy or satisfied with my playing because I always think there's something more; I've always got to push for that something extra which remains elusively just beyond my grasp. Non-satisfaction with one's own abilities is a truly terrible thing. It leads to endless self-doubt, an overwhelming sense of worthlessness, and a constant questioning of "Why can't I do what [[i]insert hero's name here[/i]] can do?" This is something I've struggled with in all aspects of life, be it bass playing, motorcycling, astronomy/astrophysics, mathematics, photography, etc., and it has either caused or been a major contributory factor to several lengthy bouts of serious depression. Suffice to say I'm lucky to still be here. Then I read the above quote from Geezer Butler in Bass Guitar Magazine, Rock Special, Issue 34, and it was like a light went on. Why try to be like someone else? Why set goals which are never going to be achievable? Why set oneself up for failure and disappointment at every opportunity? In the context of bass guitar, yes I'm always trying to learn, and I hope that I can continue to learn something every day. But I no longer try to play like someone else. Now I try to play like me. All of a sudden - and I mean that I noticed a big difference in just a couple of days! - my playing is steadier, notes come easier, fills are more relaxed and "obvious", and I can lock it down like a... erm... locked down thing. On top of all that, my confidence is growing; slowly, but it's definitely there. I've never ever played with other musicians, but I can see in the next few months perhaps getting in touch with some local folks and making some noise. Just to see what it feels like. And all because of Geezer Butler. If it's good enough for him, one of the icons of my musical history, then sure as hell it's good enough for me! [/quote] Very honest post.. must have taken a bit of courage to do that! Not sure who said it but isn't the famous quotation: "know thyself" which pretty much sums it up and ties in with what you're saying...

[quote name='ahpook' post='173565' date='Apr 10 2008, 12:53 AM']our gig went amazingly well. our first gig...and we lost count of the number of people who came up to us after and told us how much they enjoyed it. got paid, got another gig off the back of it [b][size=4]and someone told me i was an amazing bass player[/size][/b] [/quote] That's priceless, that last bit! A good night then...

Here's a few more.. Fever - Peggy lee You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - Righteous Brothers Let's get It On - Marvin Gaye Good Times - Chic Billie Jean - Michael Jackson Go Wild In The Country - Bow Wow Wow Relax - Frankie Goes To Hollywood You're The One That I Want - from Grease Can't think of any more modern ones because I'm too much of an old g*t