tvickey

My band 'Shreds.' played ALOFT at 'The Haworth' in Hull last night... this was part of the Hull Punk Festival that is taking place this weekend. The venue room and stage were quite nice, but the drums were situated up on risers to the far left. We were informed ahead of time that amps and cabs would be supplied as part of the backline. I didn't know exactly what gear this would be, so I brought my usual Mesa Strategy 888 and ultimately plugged that into the Mark Bass 4x10" cab on stage (sounded good to me!). Our guitarist usually uses a JCM800, but decided to go with the backline amp which was a combo and seemed to have a single 12" speaker (if even that?). The cabs were mic-ed up and fed back to us as part of the monitor mix. However, the 'monitors' there were smaller than my home stereo speakers... and with the small on-stage guitar amp that was part of the backline I really could not hear guitar at all. While playing we asked the sound guy to turn up guitar in the monitors... he seemed to acknowledge this, but the volume never went up. I had to watch our guitarist and rely on some visual cues. When we finished, our guitarist muttered to me, "Well, it's definitely not a Marshall". We seemed to play well despite the impairment, and even sold two t-shirts and gained a number of additional followers on Facebook. All in all, it was a fun show.

My band 'Shreds.' has our first show of 2024 is in Hull, UK on Saturday January 20th. Get your tickets in advance here: https://www.seetickets.com/tour/hull-punk-festival Act fast, because I heard that there are only 30 tickets still available for purchase online!

The bass looks brand new, so that's great! Good deal!

I'm curious about your comment Ian, what makes you say this? I'm especially interested in your opinion because you have so many other Rics!

Just curious which shop you picked this up from? There seemed to be a few of these walnut Rics that hit the UK last year... and then they quickly seemed to vanish / get sold!

I would sign up, but I'm afraid that this could adversely affect my GAS.

I agree that the 2023 Rics are amazing... Rickenbacker made some excellent improvements and I'm really enjoying my 4003.

My band has a group Facebook messenger chat, and one day out of the blue our drummer just sent a message "Sorry, I can't be in the band anymore." My first reply was, "Are you okay mate?" My second thought was about the gig that we were due to play in two days time. My third thought was oh #&%$ we'll never find a drummer as good a fit as him. He then sent a follow up message, writing "I'm now playing with these guys." and included a some other band's pr photo with a guy who looks exactly like him in the shot. My fourth thought was WTF?!? Why would he leave us out of the blue for some other band? I even announced to my wife that our drummer has decided to leave! Turns out our drummer played an evil joke on the rest of us. That group photo just had some doppelganger stranger who happens to look JUST like him in that band image. Long beard, piercings, etc. Thankfully he's still with us... but I remain shaken and paranoid. I am really happy with all of my current bandmates, and I do appreciate that we might all be incredibly privileged / lucky. But, I guess it could happen, one day, with any of us... someone could just decide to move on (or up!).

On Saturday, December 16th, my band 'Shreds.' head to Bolton to play our 14th and final show of 2023!

It was our 13th gig as a band, so we knew that something just had to go wrong! We played the Akēdo Gaming Bar in Lincoln last night (it's our second time there this year), which is a great little venue but with one of the smallest stages that I've ever seen. The guitarist and I live relatively close, so we loaded up one car with gear and started out relatively early to give ourselves plenty of setup time (lots of snow, ice and fog on the road!). Just as soon as we set off there is a text message from our vocalist: He's just been in an accident. Fortunately our singer is physically okay, but his car is not. Guitarist and I quickly divert to head north one additional hour and pick up the vocalist. We arrive at the venue about 30 minutes before we're due to start playing; the organizer is relaxed and doesn't mind a late start. Phew. We played really well last night, maybe the best yet. As I've mentioned on Basschat a few times, we always record our sets live. This significantly added to the stress of a late arrival (with mic setup, etc.), but it all worked out in the end. There was a small boy, maybe 6 years old or so, in the audience (with some pretty serious hearing protection, of course). He really seemed to enjoy the show, dancing around as we played our set. He and his mom are friends with our drummer and came up to the stage area afterwards. We gave the boy a few souvenirs (setlist, drumstick, plectrum). Our singer crowd-surfed at the very end of our set, and fortunately survived. No one broke any bones, this time!

I just move my home bass rehearsal by an hour or two.

Octopus uses a 15 day running average for your power consumption during the relevant hours, and so far there have been about two weeks between "saving sessions". The previous savings session could impact the calculation, but maybe just at the ~5-7% level.

The recent energy crisis hit CERN / Large Hadron Collider as well. They stopped the annual run early to save money.

Oh that's interesting. We have solar panels but no battery. What kind of battery system do you have, if you don't mind my asking?

There was another Octopus "saving session" last night for 1.5 hours... just waiting for the tally to see how our household did.

What they pay you is relative to your average use during that hour. So even if I had 26 imaginary flats, if my deviation from the 'average' use is still the same then there wouldn't be an advantage.

I do already have solar panels installed... and I have had many 'solar powered' bass sessions. I thought about getting a Tesla Powerwall, but if you do the math it's not really worthwhile.

No... I leave some of the 'vampire' stuff on... I just don't use lights, oven, bass amp.

You really made me smile... I just watched that recently (but obviously NOT during the saving session!).

Good point! Yes, I do occasionally grab my bass and noodle around unplugged (usually when there is an idea in my head that I want to try out quickly).

I'm effectively being paid to NOT play my bass. No, I'm not so terrible at bass playing that folks are paying me to put my instrument down (put perhaps that day is not too far off!). We have Octopus as an energy supplier and have been joining their winter "saving sessions" where we're paid to NOT use electricity (e.g., between the hours of 17:30 and 18:30 on a given day, announced in advance). So, when I would normally come home from work, fire up the amp and start jamming away... I just keep everything turned off. So far I've been paid a whopping £1.09.

Update on the crowd surfer: Broken left hip, and he'll have surgery this morning. Poor guy, we're sending him a free 'Shreds.' t-shirt.

My band 'Shreds.' played in Boston, UK at The Carpenter's Arms ("The Carps") on Saturday. It was a great show with a number of excellent bands and one solo act, but had one unfortunate incident. An audience member was crowd-surfing and fell, landing on his hip (not during our set). He was screaming in pain and yelling for someone to take him to the hospital. The bar staff called for an ambulance straight away, but it was taking too long to arrive and ultimately one of the other musicians drove him to the hospital. Fractured hip apparently, with a few days in hospital. Otherwise it really was a great show. We played well, although the sound guy was all but absent. While this seems really bad, the lack of his attention actually made our show easier since we always record our set live using our mics, preamps and a laptop. He was visibly drunk by the time we arrived, and at some point handed me a broken SM-58 to use but when I turned it over to plug in the XLR cable I found a vacant cavity missing any pins! Our show recording turned out great. Perhaps the best yet. I gigged the Rickenbacker, and used Ric-o-Sound... I sent the bridge pick-up through some distortion and into my bass amp during the show, and sent the neck pick-up directly to our recording gear (it was a small venue, so only vocals were going through the PA). Once back at home, I re-amped the clean neck pick-up and mixed it in with the recording of the amplified bridge. This turned out really well! At the end of the year, we're going to take our 2023 gig recordings and make a live album.