meterman

39 minutes ago, rushbo said:

If any of you subscribe to Desmond Doom on YouTube (and you really should), you'll be familiar with this fantastic item of clothing: 

Fantastic!

I’ve done it in originals bands, for a couple of different reasons.

One, when you’ve been on tour for nearly 3 months and you’ve run out of clean clothes to wear, raiding the band merch doesn’t seem like too bad an idea eventually. Especially when the record company has produced 1000’s of them and you’re stuck behind a drum kit and nobody’s going to see you anyway. Getting your laundry done when you’re away for months is almost impossible. So, yeah... Guilty!
 

Two, when the T-shirt design is a really good one and you’re playing in a great band on a huge stage and being paid daft money to be there, then why not? Again... Guilty!

Similarly, I did a gig for Levi’s once and got a load of free gear from them, which I’ve worn onstage at various places. Nobody’s bothered.

I’ll admit that although I take my work reasonably seriously I wouldn’t claim to possess an ounce of cool, so in my case I’d doubt anyone seeing me in a band shirt would give a toss. I’m a middle aged white guy so nobody really cares what I wear. I’m at that age where I might as well be invisible now anyway 😂 But also it wouldn’t bother me if I’d gone to see a band and one of them had a T-shirt with the band’s name on it. It’s not exactly Joy Division oven gloves or Sisters Of Mercy tea towels level is it?

7 minutes ago, JoeEvans said:

If you can polish it out, the actual scar will be pretty much invisible. I'd actually try T-Cut, for a leftfield option that might not work (but might).

^ This might do the job. Apply some T-cut to the scratch and buff it until you see some improvement. If it doesn’t work and the scratch is still really bugging you, maybe get a spot refinish? 

I sold a black / black / maple 1977 Jazz bass in 2012 for £1495. It looked really beaten up, had a lot of dings in the finish, a replacement Leo Quan bridge and it weighed a ton. But it sounded divine.

An old bandmate sold a ‘78 sunburst + maple Jazz in 2018 for £2000. Again, that one was a bit scruffy and weighed a ton but it was all original and sounded and played brilliant. That one sold on the same day he offered it for sale. 
 

I guess it comes down to what the individual buyer is prepared to pay for the bass, if it’s the right one for them?

On 18/08/2023 at 02:33, Dad3353 said:

 

Top choice 👍 Valium jazz at its finest!

I love Julie London’s records but have a very soft spot for her final album before she returned to acting. “Yummy Yummy Yummy” from 1968 is stuffed full of pop hits of the day but she absolutely makes each one her own. As with Bobbie Gentry, I wish she’d continued her recording career. 

When I still lived in the UK I was gigging loads more than I do now and the run up to Christmas would often be really busy. And very well paid.💰 I think my final three gigs in the UK were all in the week before Christmas 2019. And I always had extra DJ work on in Decembers. Never seemed to have any problem getting work. Pre- Br**** there’d often be residency bookings in Switzerland or Germany or France where promoters wanted UK acts. Not sure how easy it is to get those gigs now though.
 

But now I’m living in rural French nowheresville and I barely gig at all, I just do as many records as I can during the year, or remote session work, and keep some money stashed away to tide me over, just in case. It helps that I have no debts and tend to live fairly frugally, but it works for me.

Buying and flipping instruments can be a good side hustle but that can also be as time consuming as doing a regular day job. I recently scored around €2000 worth of vintage drums and percussion gear for €80 so when I get a spare couple of days I’ll be goggle-eyed in front of the computer listing stuff on Reverb. But it’ll be worth it. And there’s always bargains on Gumtree or at carboot sales or still on ebay if you know what to look for. 
 

Otherwise round winter I’d teach if I had any idea what I was doing in the first place. A number of musicians I know do temp work in winter, and if I had any transferable skills I would too if I needed to. There’s always something going, even if it’s not playing. Tech-ing, driving, doing sound if that’s a skill you have? Band photography if you’ve got the skills and contacts? There’s always something 👍
 

Nice score! 👍
 

A black JMJ is the only bass on my wants list. I had a black late 70’s Mustang for a while but that wasn’t a patch on the JMJ’s I’ve played. If I can find a used one near me I’ll probably have to go for it.

19 hours ago, bassist_lewis said:

Has anyone noticed that a lot of music gear related sites have orange logos? Wunjo's: orange. 

What do people reckon?

Or maybe its just coincidence.

The owner of that place is a Protestant Glaswegian, so not a lot of coincidence there. Half his shop was also painted $h1t brown although the significance of that isn’t immediately obvious to me. Not sure I really want to know, tbh 😂

23 minutes ago, la bam said:

Just my opinion - and I'm not one to say don't follow your dreams - but I think vocational rather than academical is the way to go for music. I'm an average player compared to most highly educated players and those taught at college and uni, but I've got by due to hard work, luck and networking. Being involved in bands then meeting other bands, sound crew, lighting guys, venue owners etc. Learning promotion and putting events on. Being known as a reliable player people can rely on. Learning people skills and how to be likeable. 

 

Only my opinion, but I believe there's more chance of a career by diversifying and actually being out there, rather than studying music academically at college - especially with the fees nowadays. 

 

True, some make it and get in orchestras, touring parties etc, but proportionally how many don't? 

 

I can see how learning Bach inside out makes you a more rounded musician, but I don't see how it would make you more money. 

 

Make yourself an asset - learn your instrument well. Get out and play. Learn another. Learn sound engineering. Own some lighting. Learn how to promote. In short, make it difficult for people to get rid of you once you've got your foot in the door. 

 

Add to that, be prepared for late nights, humping gear around, dealing with people and pretty much anything but the playing side of things. 

 

This ^ says it better than I ever could. Networking might well be the #1 skill that makes all the difference to a potential music career. I’m not especially good at networking (cheers, Aspergers!) but a few times crossing paths with better connected folk than me has undoubtedly saved me from having to visit the jobcentre plenty times over the years.

Your daughter might envision a particular career path but flexibility and diversion might be what helps and sustains her long term. Two examples:

One of my musician mates is a talented self-taught all rounder, he’d always got by, playing in bands, DJ-ing, doing production and remix work whenever possible, also putting on club nights, basically ducking and diving but doing okay. Then his girlfriend got pregnant and he enrolled on a music recording technology course and got serious. Now he’s a senior lecturer Monday to Friday in a music college and still doing all the other stuff as and when he can. He earns a decent wage, has a nice house and a viable career that he can evolve with over time. He’s sorted.

Another musician mate was basically a child prodigy and studied at the Royal College of Music. He had a 20 year career playing in successful bands (as in daytime Radio 1 successful, multiple Glastonbury appearances, major label albums, tours with Oasis, Paul Weller, etc) and did pretty well financially because 20 years ago it was still easy to make money from records and tv and film syncs. But when his band wound down he moved to the US and got heavily into production and mixing, and is represented by Universal. He’s super sorted now but it’s taken him 25 years of hustle and graft and some luck to get to where he is. 
 

But times have definitely changed and I reckon now more than ever, unless you’re a genius cellist or composer or producer and get discovered early on, and have a single track to go down, diversity is the key to a music career. Be prepared to change tack if needs be. But lucky breaks and good connections are still part of it.

I’ve scraped a career over 30-odd years by doing my own records and working as a session player and a sideman, but also by taking function band gigs when necessary or playing in covers bands or DJ-ing in crappy clubs for cash just to pay the mortgage. Single minded determination over talent has seen me through. If I hadn’t been prepared to be flexible I’d probably still be living at my Dad’s house recording demos on a 4-track, bitter as heck about not getting anywhere. But I’m mortgage free now and can pick and choose my projects so I’ve done okay. Not gold plated swimming pool and private jet level okay, but alright. 
 

It might be a good idea to try and find out what how / what / where your daughter envisions herself being in 5, 10, 20-plus years from now and if she’s prepared to have fallbacks in case of lean times? Above all, I wish her the best of luck. And maximum respect to you for supporting her dream 👍

I like old Ibanez and new Ibanez. I know these particular old basses are not too sought after but I’d still have one of each of them, especially the natural Telecaster bass...

Phwoar 👍

I’ve had original guitar versions on vintage Telecasters and I own the ‘not correct’ versions on modern Telecasters, I actually prefer the modern versions, they’re a bit more versatile.

But for bass, I’ve played original Telecaster basses with wide range HB’s in which are fairly mudbucker-y and I’ve also played a handmade parts-bass with a Curtis Novak wide range humbucker and that sounded excellent, absolutely monstrously ballsy. I briefly wondered about getting one for my Mustang, but then I saw the price... oy vey!!! 😮😂

2 hours ago, G-Lo said:

All quite a shame but... surely a private individual selling a pedal just posts it? Sure I have the hassle this end, do you guys have more to deal with posting as a private individual?

Yeah, in France it’s not straightforward at all if you’re sending anything to a country that requires you to fill out customs forms or anything requiring tracking.

I recently sent some old master tapes to a company in the UK that specializes in transferring analog to digital. They had to be sent by recorded delivery and because they were going to the UK and it was basically a business transaction I had to fill in customs forms. The process took about 40 minutes. Five-part forms requiring signatures, email addresses, phone numbers, full contact details, all had to be typed in on an ATM style touchscreen machine that prints the shipping stickers and tracking receipts that then need to be verified and applied to the parcel by a staff member before it can be posted. Imagine spending 40 minutes in the Post Office on every parcel you need to send... it’s a hassle doing it once, I wouldn’t want to do it regularly, I don’t think I could afford the Nurofen.
 

My Reverb shipping destinations now are EU countries only and it’s much easier just to deal with couriers. I know France is particularly notorious for bureaucracy and form-filling but it’s always been like that here. Some countries are even worse. The UK is so much easier by comparison. But from France, posting stuff anywhere outside the EU is a pain in the derrière.

I started out on the working men’s club / social club circuit in late 1983, early ‘84 around Durham and Teesside and it was still a bit like that video. Bingo. Pie ‘n’ pea suppers. Meat raffles. Backing the strippers. Supporting Roy Chubby Brown and all that. I hated the music (chart covers and standards, sometimes C&W) plus I was underage, so I only really did the gigs so I could drink beer on a school night.

Eventually got blacklisted / barred from a lot of the mining town venues after a particularly grim two-set gig at some utter hole in Cleveland, maybe 1987 or 88. The first set we got barely any response from the punters. Slow handclaps, grumbling, etc. We weren’t very good but we usually got away with it, but this time even for us it was a tough crowd.
 

So in the pie supper interval we nipped out to a late opening newsagents / mini supermarket and bought a couple of põrñø mags (possibly Razzle) and made paper planes out of them. During our second set a few punters were already p***ed and had actually started dancing to us so we chucked the pôrñø paper planes into the audience to try and liven things up. There was a brief exciting moment when a couple of women saw stuff being thrown into the audience and they picked up a plane, and then their faces dropped when they saw what the planes were made of and the audience scarpered after that. We got rushed out of the venue, didn’t finish the gig and didn’t get paid. Looking back, we were lucky not to have had our heads kicked in as well. Never played a working men’s club again, anywhere after that. Silver linings and all that 😂

Oh, and our band was absolutely, diabolically terrible. I’m surprised we got any gigs in the first place, we were that bad. There can’t have been any worse bands than us on that circuit at the time.

(By the way, I don’t condone the pòrñø planes behaviour, I only ever did it that one time and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It was a flipping stupid idea. If anyone reading this is thinking “that sounds like a laugh, let’s do it at a gig” - don’t!)

Bass - lead - amp for me, with just a clip on tuner. Easy!

Sometimes I’ve recorded with a fuzz pedal but that’s pretty rare for me. 

I used to buy and sell on eBay and Gumtree all the time when I still lived in the UK. I’d buy from Europe, Japan, USA etc usually with no problem. There was the occasional customs charge but nothing I wouldn’t have expected.

When I sold my Hofner violin bass it was post-Brexit, I’d already moved to France, and I had zero takers from the UK. No enquiries, nothing. Same with a vintage Fender Telecaster. Both sold on Reverb to EU buyers so I’m guessing that the possible customs and handling charges put UK buyers off?

I’ve bought mics and small bits of recording gear from the UK in the last couple of years without any outlandish charges on delivery, but not any Wal-sized purchases. But, if there was something I really wanted and could only get from the UK I’d probably do it anyway and pay the customs and handling on it. GAS isn’t a big thing with me though, so it would have to be an essential bit of kit.

1 hour ago, Dazed said:

So I have the short scale now, it’s I’m utterly filthy so I’m currently giving it a good scrub and fumigating it. 
 

Its fitted with small tuners, so that’s going to cause me problems with flats i guess?

Might do, but you might also be surprised too. On my mini P, I had to drill into the split shafts slightly to get the La Bellas in but they’ve been in for a decade now. On my Hofner violin bass I had very little choice of strings as the tuner holes were ridiculously tiny, it was hard to find anything other than special Hofner (or Hofner sized) flats that would fit it. 
 

I’ve only used flats in 30+ years of playing and Chromes and La Bellas are my favourites. The tension feels just right to me and I do a lot of bending notes. Chromes wear in brilliantly. Fender flats are good, but I’d rather have Chromes. The money’s irrelevant, it’s how they feel that makes the difference to me. 
 

Edit: I always have foam at the bridge and often roll off the treble. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but that’s how I like my sound. You might hate that!

8 minutes ago, cetera said:

 

Nice!! I LOVE Young Gun Silver Fox! Had no idea they'd done this....

 

As an aside, their live bassist Dave is now the new Pretenders bassist..... 😎

Yeah, Dave is a monster guitarist / singer / bassist. Very talented guy. I think he might have depped in the Pretenders before getting the gig proper.

The YGSF live band is (or was) the same touring band as Shawn Lee’s solo touring band, where instead of having Andy Platts on lead vocals and keys, I’d play keys, guitar, percussion, flute etc instead and Shawn would sing lead. And before Dave joined we had Ernie McKone who is also a monster player. Great gigs to be on. 

The Hyde Park gig featured a YGSF set, and a few other acts, then a load of us grouped together as The Soho Radio All-Stars and did a long closing set with guest vocalists. Hamish Stuart, Terri Walker, Afrika Baby Bam from the Jungle Brothers who was excellent, the Cuban Brothers got up too, and there were others but I can’t remember who now.

We’d headlined a tiny little festival gig in Dorset with Hamish and Terri Walker previously so we were all familiar with his set. Was still nervous playing with him though. Again, drums plus two percussionists. The percussion charts were really intricate, punters probably just think it’s all tambourine but there’s loads going on to replicate the original recordings.

Extra drums / percussion seemed to be a thing for Hamish. I played live with him a couple of times and both times he had drums and two percussionists, of which I was one.
 

Both times, three quarters of Young Gun Silver Fox formed the basis of his backing band and I was on percussion duties. The bassist used no pedals at all!

Best time was playing all the AWB hits plus a bunch of other hits that Hamish had either written or played on. Doing “Pick Up The Pieces” and “I’m Every Woman” and “What You Gonna Do For Me”’ on the main stage closing a summer festival at Hyde Park was a real trip for me, I loved the AWB singles as a kid so it was ace to play them with the guy who wrote them on a big gig. It’s not super hi-res but I’m the skinhead third left in the pic:

and in silhouette at the same gig:

July 2017 I think it was?

3 hours ago, ezbass said:

3 hours ago, meterman said:

I’m just a simpleton 😂

Not at all, just not your bag. If you don’t like Yes or Zep, you’re never going to like Rush. I do like Yes and Zep (although not all of it, not by a long chalk) so I was already predisposed to Rush I guess.

No, I really am - I had to repeat two years at school so it’s official!

Don’t know if it’s weird to love Hendrix but find Cream boring? Or love pre-“Animals” Pink Floyd but not so much Gong? Or like Captain Beefheart but not Zappa, at all? 
 

They’re all phenomenally talented musicians in Yes, Led Zep, Rush, Cream, Zappa, etc, and I have tried to get into them but none of it works for me at all. I kinda wish it did because it might have widened my gigging possibilities over the years. But I can’t get into it. I do love seeing pictures of Neil Peart’s drums for some reason though..?

8 minutes ago, ezbass said:

I felt that way for ages, but Planet Rock drip fed them to me and I started to like them more and more (always liked Spirit of Radio) until I started buying their albums. Already being a bit of a progger helped

That’s where my problem is, there’s not a lot of rock that I like, and the rock music I do enjoy tends to be the fairly caveman kind of stuff. Stooges, not Yes for instance. I have tried with LZ and Rush, I’ve bought their albums but then quickly offloaded them. Not LZ or Rush’s problem at all, I’m just a simpleton 😂

I have a cut down set of the Jamerson La Bellas on my 25” scale precision copy. I cut them down at the tuners end and just hoped they wouldn’t unravel on the tuner posts. The E string slightly unravelled during the fitting but it’s been stable for about 10 years.

There’s no way I would have cut down £50 strings if I hadn’t have found them in the pocket of a gigbag I’d bought second hand. But they work 👍

1 hour ago, Paolo85 said:

I wonder if people who don't like his voice also don't like Led Zeppelin's rock'n roll, DP's Child In Time and so on or it's just the Geddy Lee variant

Robert Plant’s voice is the main thing getting in the way of me liking Led Zep. Same way that Janis Joplin’s voice is the thing that gets in the way of me liking Janis Joplin. People screeching does my head in.
 

Geddy’s voice is one of two things getting in the way of me liking Rush, the other being their music. Super talented musicians but really not my cup of tea. Add in Geddy’s voice and it’s an instant earplugs situation for me. I have tried with Rush but... nope, no way.

18 minutes ago, Jono Bolton said:

A Gary Jarman Sig has just turned up on eBay, but you'll never guess the asking price.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186013435791?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=W2i0Yn-fRum&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=UbetCfLcTBW&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Thank you, I’m not up on The Cribs music and couldn’t remember the bassist’s name 👍