TimR

Or play a load of covers of the following act in your own style? Which reminds me of a gig where I naively gave the supporting DJ our setlist so that he knew when we were coming to our break. He then played most of our second set while we were on our break. The drummer was going to go and beat him up. We just went back on and played the set as planned. No one even noticed and more danced while we were playing than when the DJ was on. 🤷‍♂️

Bruce Dickinsen did a similar thing at Hammersmith on the Seventh Son tour. The audience was full of teenage kids and their dads waiting to hear "Can I Play with Madness". The atmosphere wasn't great all night. At the end of one song Bruce stopped and said something like, "What are you all doing here, no one knows any of our songs apart from those two guys up on the balcony who've been headbanging and singing along all night." Pointing to my friend an me. Then he launched into some more chat about mainstream pop. Was a great night and no social media back then. To be honest I don't blame Royal Blood, they're in front of the wrong audience at a massive gig. What do you do when the audience are visibly disinterested and you're never going to win them over?

It took me a few reads before I worked out what you were saying. You meant the volume wouldn't need to be turned up so much. I would have the same setup just put the cabs on end. So the control panel would be raised slightly further off the ground. The back of the combo (hanging off the back edge of the lower square extension cab)) won't have any weight. The MarkBass combo has that shape so it can be tilted back as a floor monitor.

I use an old soft toothbrush with String Glide which is supposed to treat fretboards as well as strings.

At rehearsals I only need one 2x10" on end. Two 2x10" is far too loud. Even at gigs I don't often need to be louder than 4 on my 500w amp to keep up with a very loud drummer. So it reduces the amount of gear taken to rehearsals.

Up to 1885 the age of consent in England was 12 and 14 for girls and boys. My grandad was working down the mines aged 14. You don't need to look too far back in English history. That would certainly still have been in living memory for some peole when many of us were born.

I don't see that would be an issue for any reason other than trying to read knobs sideways. 😆

@lonestar @MrDaveTheBass Always stack 2x10"s vertically. Makes a hell of a difference to your sound. Regardless of make. I've been doing this for at least 10 years now. Stops combing effects and dead spots as you walk from side to side, and because the top 10" is next to your ears you can hear it properly. Plus the addition of the cab and coupling effects means the volume increases out of proportion to what the calculated power drop of the amp, due to increased impedance, implies. I bought some rubber feet from B&Q and put them on the side of my cabs.

Depends greatly on what I'm playing and how hard I'm having to concentrate. Most of what we play I have solidly learned which means I can relax a bit and have some fun, but there are a few tunes with odd changes and tunes where I don't trust the band to play what they're supposed to. It also depends on what the audience are doing. If they're enjoying themselves that makes me smile and relax, we are doing our job well. If they're just staring at us, I find it unnerving and start wondering what we are doing wrong.

Actually there's a guy down the pub who could do a whole 3 hours of conspiracy theories without stopping for breath...

I have my own 2k PA. And a selection of sounds including White Noise, Babies Crying and Car Alarms.

You are quite right. I should cut the guy some slack. I have no idea of whatever horrific tragedy has led him to his little one bed flat with idyllic views over the countryside in a quiet village. However, Oasis? It must have been horrific. And just shut the window!

Sounds very complicated. Does each pickup need a separate tone control and then a 3 band EQ on the lot? Presumably you also need an overall volume as well. That's 10 knobs in total!

I guess the point is; would you have suggested someone completely new to mountain biking spent £2k on a new bike? With a Fender, there's a liklihood that if you kept it long enough it might appreciate. But new basses and Amps generally lose money as soon as they leave the shop. There's plenty of intermediate level gear that would keep most beginners going for a while. And certainly with basses you'd be better off with a beginner model until you work out the nuances and learn what you like. But I guess there's enough people here who seem to change basses every few weeks. 😆

Would you swap for a heavier model?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001m118/bbc-london-late-news-16052023 She was on local BBC news last night. Item starts at 3:15.

Cornell was my number 2 choice with LaLD 3rd. Might be a generational thing regarding people voting on Bond themes from when they were teenagers. NDiB was the first Bond I saw at the cinema. Its a great song, but can't vote for them all.

David Arnold scored 5 bond films starting with Tommorow Never Dies. His reworking of OHMSS with the Propellerheads is awesome. The morse code spells out OHMSS.

Matey boy has his music on again. I think it's probably more that it's that dreary winey Oasis. How many times can you listen to one album? Please make it stop, it's awful. I'm off to band practice...

I think you're right. Reasonable would be to party to 11pm or midnight then turn the noise down, but I think most people would ignore it for one night. You'd probably get one person complaining if they had to be up in the morning. This kind of thing really depends on past history, generally people who hold house parties tend to be repeat offenders.

I can't belive anyone would consider a group practice in a 1st floor flat, acceptable. I suspect she'd already pushed the limit by playing a piano several hours a day.

I think all the gear and no idea is about people who start a hobby and go out and buy all the gear without having any idea what they're buying or why they're buying it. Similar to the fishing story above: I once took a guy up Snowdon who arrived with brand new tent, sleeping bag, stove, etc etc. I told him we didn't need any of it today, it was an easy walk up the mountain to see how he coped. Not very well with all the gear and no experience at all. The next day we went completely 'off piste'. We sat down for lunch and he began to unpack and assemble all his cooking gear, rations and shelter. I sat on a rock, ate my cold pasty and crisps, and was thinking we should really get a move on when he emerged from his shelter and asked if I had any matches. So in terms of bass playing, this is the equivalent of taking tons of brand new gear to a gig, spending ages setting up, moving kit around to look good, and then realising you don't have a lead. Learn the basics first before deciding what gear to waste money on, and what gear to spend wisely on, otherwise you are buying blind and spending on equipment you may not need or may not suit your requirements. Which then reminds be of a gig I did where the guitarist set up 6 guitars on a stand and then complained there was no room. So I told him to put the guitars in the wings. To which he replied "The audience won't see them there."

We auditioned a singer once. Good singer, nailed all the songs in all the original keys. And then proceeded to tell us about all the fights he'd been in at gigs. 🙄

The correct answer when being asked "Can you play a bass solo", in an audition is: "I can, but no one wants to hear bass solos." Actually, it's the correct answer at all times...

My point is that the people who think there is an appropriate time to drive fast are missing the point. Everyone else has to make allowances for them. Same with appropriate flashy bass. Everyone else has to be making allowances. That's great if you're on a track day, everyone present has agreed that they might die and is prepared that there will be fast cars. And it's great of you're in a band where instrumentalists are prepared for flashy bass antics and happy to step back. But if everyone in the band is overplaying - then you have a car crash of epic proportions and the whole band dies.