Nail Soup

Three popular bassists did form a band in which they all played bass. Bassists are Andy Rourke, Gary "Mani" Mounfield, and Peter Hook. The band is called Freebase (see what they did there?) From wikipedia: Peter Hook stated that all of the songs have three basses; "Mani does the low part, Andy Rourke in the middle and I do the high bit"

I'd have to say the same as you. My tastes are not mega-obscure... it's stuff that gets regular plays on 6 Music. But they are typically at venues with capacity of couple of hundred. But just go on my own in general. Mrs Soup is OK to come to some gigs that fall outside of my core tastes.... e.g .folk festival or a covers band of AC/DC and the like.

80% of Andy Rourke is no bad thing!

Or unite with the Andy Powell version of the band?

For a lot of people - yes they are.

Should not have went to S***S*v*rs 🙂

Lightening Bolt's "Fantasy Empire" album. A bass/drum/vocals duo.

I'm no ZZ top fan, but this made me smile. Love the way the only two strings he plays are the furthest apart ones. I like to think that Dusty Hill would find this funny too.

I've not used one as a musician... but I've experienced it as a punter and can concur with the "use it sparingly" comments. I think 'sparingly' can be achieved either by not using it all the time, or by not having it too prominent in the mix.

I'd say it's a good idea to learn guitar even if you stick with bass as your primary instrument. It's good for learning to understand chords and harmonisation. It's good for songwriting (unless you want to write bass-driven songs of course) It's good for singalongs and similar situations.

This article is not such good news as you may think. It is about very low frequencies, rather than audible bass if I read it correctly. So more justification to sound engineers who make the bass a low frequency mush rather than being able to hear the notes.

Nearly forgot to post it here .... I made a banjo-driven entry into the BassChat composition challenge for October... ended up in joint first place 🙂 Here's a link, it's about the 4th entry down :

I think I chose the pic more recently than @xgsjx..... so if you have a pic @xgsjx then go for it.

I saw them recently and they were fantastic. I believe they have Terry Edwards joining them on sax for the next run of shows… so should be worth seeing.

Did they only do stuff that the original line-up released? Any on-stage references to any falling-outs etc? And how was it in general?

I got the album recently - Sniffany and the Nits... pretty angry stuff, although the anger is directed at personal as well as social issues.

JJ Burnel led me to bass, but I probably went tone wise more for Steve Hanley of The Fall.

A theory. The electric guitar was an adapted version of an old instrument (the guitar, now known as an acoustic guitar) so has more tradition etc stuck with it. The electric bass was a new instrument, a break from tradition. So bass is more liable to innovation.

Would you say the same thing about bass players? A lot of great bass players could not play in an orchestra pit. Some not even in another genre or band. Then we'd need two different terms - maybe bassist and bass player. and to decide which way round.

Math rock gets serious - like it’s been a barrel of laughs up to now?😉

I've always used the terms the opposite way round to that in the OP. What they have in common is making sounds with the vocal apparatus (Mouth, voicebox etc) ina musical context. It's not necessary for either to be a front-person or star. A singer does their stuff in a way where stuff like pitching etc in of prime importance. A vocalist is where pitching is not important, such as rapping, death-metal and various other forms. Singers are a subset of vocalists. For example, Mark E Smith of The Fall is a vocalist as he doesn't really sing.

I'll miss out the stuff that applies to all band members such as transport and not being a tw*t. 1) being able to play quietly when we have a small PA and loud when we have a big PA/room (taking about no drum mikes of course).. but still maintain the dynamics. 2) Remembering and being able to 'lead' the song... i.e. set the tempo, know when all the sections are so they can play the cue-ing fills and so on. 3) This one goes partly against what some people say, so I've broken it down a bit 3a) Don't have a 'show off' mindset. 3b) Don't have a 'serve the song' mindset either please. 3c) Have an 'enhance the song' mindset.

On the other hand, I've had the opposite problem with a couple of drummers. Good enough drummers, but too worried about 'not showing off' and 'serving the song' that they end up not adding some interesting elements and sticking to straight four etc. Made the song sound boring and ploddy. When they actually did express themselves it sounded great.

Wasn’t Tony Butler a session player when not in Big Country? In which case he could have large body of work … albeit anonymous .