Bassfinger

Supertramp are my 12 year old daughters favourite band. The lass has taste.

1 hour ago, fiatcoupe432 said:

Wow that is actually good but totally understand that it's not the easiest thing to do nowadays. I live in South Devon so loads of weddings around this side and I guess I could get couple of gig playing few hotels .

 

I'm 55 and we did a gig in a huge marquee a few weeks back and the combination of lugging gear miles from car to venue and back, and playing in awful heat left me feeling nacked for days. 

Even if I could get 6 gigs a week that laid on like that all year round it would probably kill me.

Full fat coke, no ice. 

I like the grog but as I get older even moderate amounts give me awful headaches so I'm off it for good. It's really annoying, because our regular rehearsal venue is a bar at a football club and we get free booze in exchange for a free gig from us ince a year. They open the bar, lock us in and come back three hours later, by which time our rhythm guitarist is so blasted he has to leave his car there. Meanwhile I might sup a can or two of coke, or perhaps Schwepes lemonade.

5 hours ago, 12stringbassist said:

I think he is an incredible musician, but Pete Townshend is a guitarist who occasionally picks up a bass.
There's a vast difference between that and a bassist.

Some of my favourite bass playing is from a musician who only picked up a bass to finish the album because their bassist had been taken ill.

Ueah, we do pub gigs a lot cheaper but we treat those as practice rather than gigs. If it weren't for that we wouldn't do the pubs at all.

Yeah, personally I'd want 10 or 12 large a month minimum if I were doing it for a living, and with share dividends and bonuses it still wouldn't get that close to what I was earning as European Director of Equipment for a very large petrochemical concern. Throw in my own private consultancy as well and it would be even further apart.

Fortunately I'm in the position that I play because I want to, and even if I were 3 decades younger I doubt I'd even consider trying to earn a living at playing, much less a decent living where you've gone well beyond being hand-to-mouth. Even if I did I'd be wanting to coin enough to pay roadies, driver etc, and being realistic that would never happen for me, so I take a few shekels from out wealthy equestrian customer base and that keeps me in Ernie Balls finest.

9 hours ago, spencer.b said:

Wow thats 60-120k a year , you must be doing alright mate, I play bass for a living and get by and my mates with very high profile pop gigs don't get near the upper ranges of that , only really west end and film session guys or successful artists that make that kind of money in my experience 

Ah, that what we get paid but we typically do 2 or three a month.

As stated, while we do pretty well for those gigs we do play I doubt there's the work out there to give us enough paid employment to make it viable as an occupation. Individual nights are OK, but it just doesn't scale up sufficiently.

To earn close to what I was in my proper job prior to retiring a couple of years ago I'd have to play 6 gigs a week at 400 a go right through the year and there just isn't the demand.  Even if there was I reckon being my own roadie six days a week would have a pretty short shelf life - two or three times a month is tiresome enough.

We go about 2 grand a gig for the 5 of us, so 400 snifters apiece. 

When we do gig we can get the top cash, but getting enough gigs to live on might be tricky, certainly round these parts.

You'd need 2 or 3 a week minimum at those rates to earn enough coin to live on, and 5 or 6 to be comfortable and I can't see there's enough demand for it.

Swarfega and a wire brush for me.

If that Jazz plays as sweetly as my Sire PB then I'd say the Jazz.

What about us pipe smokers?

35 minutes ago, Franticsmurf said:

So... does what you ate just before you rest your bass against the big, fat tone sucking belly actually affect the tone through some kind of resonance thing? 

Which is the best tone cake?

2 hours ago, Maude said:

The funniest part of all this tone this tone that nonsense affecting the resonance of an guitar is that you then go and rest it against a big, fat, tone sucking belly. 

I didn't realise you'd met me!

Where do you chaps and chapesses stand on the tone strap-nut debate?

I've seen more scientific method in a Laurence Fox rant.

Not for bass, which I can play by feel alone in the dark, but I do for mandolin and irish bouzouki, at which I'm still a newby.

On an unrelated note has anyone seen that new band, Border Force and the Stolen Instruments?

Depends on the level you're at. We do typically two, occasionally three, big paying gigs a month (two grand a time between the five of us) and we have no website.  Between times we do the pubs at 500 a go, but we regard that as paid rehearsal rather than gigs. 

Word of mouth and social media presence alone seem to keep us busy enough now were known on the local circuit, although if we raised our sights higher a website might well be beneficial.

Usually Learn to Fly for reasons I am unsure of.

Four musical gods descended from Valhalla to bestow this upon my mortal ears.

Ever since I was a teenager I've been listening to this, often several times a day, and each time I hear some new nuance, a different musical quirk.  Its a manifestation of genius, and it has completely enthralled me from the moment I first heard it.

The one I used prior to that did.

Wheatus.

Oh Lord, I'd hate to choose because I love them both.

However, I think never the twain should meet and PJs should be burned for heresy.

I discovered last week that GAK don't even open the boxes to eyeball the instrument before dispatching them to the customer with parts missing...

12 hours ago, musicbassman said:

Spotted on Facebook.

 

That's my ad!