TimR

84 onwards was a pretty harrowing time. Reflected in a lot of songs of the time. 

I don't remember anything like the violence of the miner strikes or Brixon and Toxteth riots. I don't know what was going on in the states as we didn't have 24/7 International news back then. But certainly AIDS was a serious concern for everyone and not really something that at the time was considered 'profound' to be talking or singing about. 

8 hours ago, Mediocre Polymath said:

I think Mr Johnson was encouraged to find a new career about a year later. I believe his last term of teaching was the one where the lid of the piano finally broke, though the actual final straw was when he gave a kid a concussion by repeatedly slamming his head in a door.

That's the problem nowadays. Kids have no respect for authority. In the old days hardly a day would go by without some kid in the class visiting casualty after getting their scales wrong.

I only have one friend who goes out and watches bands. He does this religiously sometimes three times a week. 

Everyone else seems more interested in talking about which box-set they're currently watching. This isn't because they're short of a bob or two, it's because live music just isn't on their radar.

Lots of them will go to local festivals, and from the looks of their social media, its a massive social event, photos and selfies of each other, no mention or photos of the bands.

I've been to see 4 bands in the last 6 weeks. One I paid a lot to see at the Camden Underworld. By the time I'd bought food beforehand and 2 pints inside the venue, including the ticket, but excluding travel, I'd spent £100. 

A local band I've seen before, was £9 on the door at a local venue and again £7.40 a pint. So that's close on £50 for me and my son on a week night. 

Another local band at a pub, free to get in and £3.20 a pint (I asked if they'd made a mistake?)

We have a local gig (covers) in 2 weeks time on a Saturday night. We have a facebook event and I've started inviting people, hopefully I may get 10 people down. Will see. 

The originals band I'm in bought 4 people to the first gig. The singers wife, the drumers wife and his parents. None of my friends turned up. When we played the local festival, there were loads of friends, who all thought we were excellent, so maybe they'll turn out to our next gig...

The other thing to remember is that when your friends turn up you have to be really appreciative of them being there. Spend time talking to everyone both before and after the show. Make them feel valued. 

If you make all your posts public, every comment and like that your freinds make, gets seen by their friends.

So don't knock it, every comment gets more engagement and spreads the word. 

Originals bands never get much attention from freinds unless you are creating a buzz and a FOMO. So think how you can get more comments and how you can make the event more about a big social meet up not to be missed than yet another gig by your band where you play the same 10 songs again.

Every originals band starts this way, it's very unusual for a band to get people to follow on the strength of their music alone. 

It's not a phasing issue is it?

Maybe caused by speaker position?

Does it happen at all gigs? 

1 hour ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

The Boss BD-2 Blues Driver works great for bass, and have a surprisingly wide range, from just on the edge of breakup, to a really grindy sort of high gain overdrive, and everything in between.

 

Thanks. A basic play at home I think gets to what I want but will take a bit of fiddling. I was hoping even with it on I should get a clean tone that drives into breakup earlier with the option to just tweak the gain up to have always on for songs that require it. 

Always clean. But if needed I've dug in to overdrive the amp.

Recently bought a Boss Blues Driver, but haven't had time to set it up or use at a gig yet. Just wanted something to kick in some drive rather than destroy my fingers. It may not be the best option. 

4 minutes ago, Bassfinger said:

No. 

 

My Ma had made me have private tuition and I was already quite a skilled piano player and moderately decent guitarist buy the time we did music lessons ar school. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the lessons and showing off my knowledge.

This.

I was already grade 2 standard piano by the time I went to senior school. Music lessons were just repeating what I already knew. 

Then I did up to grade 3 violin during school time as separate lessons, probably missed geography or something to do them. 

At 11 I joined one of the premier matching bands in the UK. I had a degree level music teacher teaching me Xylophone and a (famous in the industry) trumpet player leading the band. Both taught me a huge amount about dynamics (internal and external) , note length and playing in a ensemble. I stayed with them until I was 30.

Picked up bass at 16 as I'd given up on violin. Played with my dad at various jazz, am dram, and function gigs. The jazz what reading charts so knowledge of chords and fingerboard expanded exponentially. Now struggle to remember anything past the 7th fret. 😉

Put together a thrash metal band at age 17 and haven't looked back since. 

I do remember we had to record a piece created from household objects for a music project. I spent a bit of time recording on the right track of a stereo tape, bouncing it to mono and doing a multi track recording using pots and pans and a hoover. "Quite disappointed, Think you could have done better than that." was the report from the teacher.

1 hour ago, peteb said:

 

The fact is that, these days, the encore is part of the show (whether you like it or not). Especially at the bigger gigs, where punters pay to see you, not doing an encore (assuming that there is any sort of audience reaction) makes you look unprofessional, or even worse, like a diva! 

 

For the tribute gigs, we always play one three song encore and that's it! In fact, more often than not, it ends up being a two song encore because the singer has had enough and wants to protect his voice. In a pub band, we will play until the punters stop calling for more, or (more often) the barstaff want us to finish so they don't get in trouble with their neighbours / because of their music licence curfew / they want to finish up and go home! 

 

Tribute acts are going to be different and I'd be surprised if people have come to see you specifically that they'll not ask for me.

If you know there's a curfew at a pub then probably so do the locals. Usually the bar manager will be indicating when to stop. We play to the curfew, if there's calls for more after that, yes, it's up to the bar manager to say yes or no. So that's the get out.

I just find it's a bit cliché, same with introducing the band members and giving them a little solo. Some bands carry it off, others, it just looks odd. 

You have to judge at each gig rather than setting out - this is what we do.

The audience has to earn an encore. 

Tell them it's the last song and then stop. Bass comes off and is put onto stand, if there's no immediate shouting for more. Then the amp goes off. 

I've seen a few bands hovering around expecting to be asked to play more. It's not a good look.

1 hour ago, Gasman said:

Got home at 1:45am totally wired, cup of tea and Marmite on toast, sat with cat on lap in lounge watching DVD of 'Apocalypse Now' until 3:30am with subtitles so as not wake Mrs G ; fell asleep then was woken again at 5:30 when said cat wanted his first breakfast and litter box clearing out - life can be so exciting, rock'n'roll all the way! 

As I got further through this paragraph; I thought this sounds exactly like my rock'n'roll lifestyle. Except I do peanut butter. Although depending on the gig I have stopped to pick up a shish kebab, the local town fish bar is a mad place to be at 2am when you're sober.

When I got the the last sentence I actually laughed out loud. 

I think if you're playing pop and funk, the front line need to be moving and grooving, most 2 set gigs I've done tend to get going halfway through the first set. The punters need some encouragement and if you don't have something visually entertaining just the music won't get people up and dancing. 

So as long as the front person is not just a guitarist singing with a fixed mic, you should be OK.

Our guitarist doesn't move around much, so it's left up to the singer and I to move around the stage. 

6 minutes ago, chris_b said:

You can talk without being able to write. Likewise you don't need to understand the rules of grammar in order to express yourself. But, know the rules and you'll be expressing yourself in more interesting ways. What you write and say is always enhanced by the extent of your vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar.

Indeed. "Me is wenting to the shops." Works in practice on a level, but you did originally learn the correct grammar, you just don't remember learning it or recognise it as using correct grammar.  

1 hour ago, SumOne said:

You can apply Laws of Motion & Gravity and  conservation of Energy and the Theory of General Relativity and use data and evidence to explain how the Dog walks, but generally speaking - in scientific terms, you wouldn't say the Dog understands the theory of what it's doing - it doesn't comprehend how it works, just that it works.

Theory of Gravity is an excellent analogy with the dog and probably humans. Most of us know and understand the basic theory, all objects with mass, attract each other, and the attraction changes with distance and causes acceleration. 

No one is doing calculations in their head when they jump in the air, kids know why an apple falls downwards, we didn't previously to the 16th century. But we all know the rudimentary theory and whether we are consciously using it or not, we are still using it on some level.

Where the snobbery comes in is when someone says they have a degree in music and understand 18th century composers and that is music theory. 

Well I have a degree in engineering and understand a bit more about gravity due to additional learning, but we all agree it's not required to understand theories to a level higher than we need to, other than for interest. 

If you're writing your own music and you want to convey it to other musicians to play, you're going to need certain level, and in my experience, if someone isn't following normal theory when writing and expects musicians to follow, it can result with a lot of confusion. Things that sound 'off' because in theory they sound off, won't be easy to play. 

55 minutes ago, SumOne said:

I know this gets into silly semantic stuff, but for sake of Internet argument:

 

A Dog can walk, but it doesn't know what muscles, joints nerves etc are used or the physics of gravity, acceleration, momentum etc. Could we say the Dog knows the theory of walking because it knows how to do it?  I can play 'Creep' and understand it sounds right, but couldn't explain the theory like the video on the first page. Can I claim to understand the music theory though? 

Yes.

Theory is just a model. The dog knows from it's experience and the model of the world it has whether it can jump across a stream. 

It's not until he puts the theory to the test and jumps that he knows it's right.

The only issue is there's a lot of snobbery (and inverted snobbery) around musical theory which puts people in separate camps and disuaudes a lot of people from looking at 'complicated' theory.

If you know the names of the strings - you know some theory and if you know what an octave is and the fret board, you know some more. If you know a song has 4 beats in a bar and some notes are 1 beat long and other 2 or 4 or half's and quarters you know more.  And I'd say that's the bare minimum to be able to play bass. 

10 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

There's no way I have theory thundering through my head while I'm playing. In short, I know where my hands need to go on the fretboard to play a note I know will work.

That's exactly what theory is.

Just because it's not written down doesn't make it not tberoy. You know what it's going to sound like, and you know what notes to play to make it sound right.

Wow. Booking a table 2 years ahead is kind of pushing it a bit. 😂

1 minute ago, Bassfinger said:

If factual social media posts are what  choose, that's my business. 

Read the second paragraph you quoted.

What's wrong with you guys tonight? 

11 minutes ago, Nicko said:

Your original reply to @TheGreeksuggested that the OP should avoid posting a bad review. I'm glad you have now changed your mind and agree that he is perfectly within his rights to name and shame them.

 

No. My original comment wasn't to the OP. It was to the Greek, who wanted to flood social media.

If they're good musicians they won't be expecting you to be perfect on a jam night with no rehearsal and they'll support and help you.

If they do expect that and you get no support then they're not good musicians and don't be intimidated by that kind of behaviour, they're the imposters. 

I've never heard the Sex Pistols version of Kumbaya.

2 hours ago, Nicko said:

The "libel" must damage the person or businesses reputation.

That's what I said didn't I? 

If the OP wants to write something that's true, that's fine. If someone else wants to repeat something that they have no evidence other than the OP's version of events then how do they know it's true or flase.

Hence, I'd be very wary of repeating things you heard or read. 

Especially as the Internet magnifies untruths very quickly and damages businesses and reputations. 

11 minutes ago, EssexBuccaneer said:

And you’d probably have failed in your efforts. It’s notoriously hard to win a case like that.

Maybe, but it's still Libel. 

11 minutes ago, Bassfinger said:

The breach of contract described doesn't sound remotely shaky.

If it happened to you and you have evidence. Then complain and use the proper channels.

If it happened to 'someone you know', you are just joining the social media inevitable pile on and 'cancel' that may or may not be deserved.

It's happened to me with an event I organised. One person out of 450 wrote on a different page about their perceived slight negative experience, and a bunch of Karen's jumped on and basically tore the event to shreds, even though the original poster protested that it was only a comment. Social media at its worst. An event that has been running for nearly 30 years in the same format with full explanation of what the event entails. 

If it had taken down my business and I'd lost income (it's not a business) I would have probably sued those involved. The resultant pile on was completely unwarranted from the original comment, as often happens on social media.