gjones

The drummer in my band is about 54/55 and last weekend he had 5 gigs. He usually manages 2 to 3 per weekend. He's a great drummer (solid as a rock) so is in great demand. So stop yer moanin' yer not dead yet

Get a jazz bass and fit a John East J retro pre amp. Just slot it in and attach your pickups via the screw terminals (15 minute job - no soldering) and away you go. You'll never need another bass, because you'll be able to get any sound you want.

I get stir crazy if I don't gig. Feb and March were slow and I ended up chewing the furniture. April looks much busier. Maybe I need to get a life.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1490612381' post='3266359'] That's the sort of statement made by someone who has yet to learn the difference between musicianship and music, and why for everyone except self-involved musicians the latter is far more important. [/quote] Very wise words.

I gig with a 1x15 Barefaced Compact and a GK MB500. The rig is incredibly loud. If I had two compacts and I could use the full 500w from my amp, I'm sure it would take the roof off any venue I played. The Barefaced compact is a very efficient design and the GK MB500 is a very loud amp for it's wattage (not all manufacturers watts are the same I've been told). It is the loudest combination of amp and cab I have ever owned (I've owned, Ashdown, TC Electronic,, Fender, Hartke etc). If you want to drown out your drummer, and make your guitarists wish their amps went up to 11, you could do worse. Oh and the cab and head are insanely light as well.

Well the reason why wives/girlfriends/boyfriends/partners go to every gig, is not because they are huge fans of their other half's band, it's because they don't trust them to be away from them and having fun, in the 'dens of iniquity', that are most music venues. My sister never went to any of my brother-in-law's gigs (she was never a big fan of music) until he ended up having an affair with a regular punter. After that 'incident' she became his bands biggest fan (she didn't let him out of her sight for about 5 years after that).

A friend of mine has a Hartke 120 watt combo which is a great little amp, quite loud, and has a tilt back option. I also recommend one of the new Fender 100 watt Rumbles. Loud, cheap and insanely light. I've used one a few times and was very impressed at how well it could keep up with a drummer.

Luckily my hands don't get sweaty when gigging, which means I don't have to change my strings very often, or scrape muck off my fretboard. But my brother-in-law has toxic, acid dripping off his fingers. I let him play my bass for 5 mins and when I got it back the strings felt like they've been covered with a mix of treacle and sand.......disgusting!

I played in a band, for a couple of years, with a drummer (yes a drummer!) who didn't have a car. Luckily I am a nice guy and transported him and his gear, in my car. If you're playing within a city, it's doable. If the gigs are far and wide you need an understanding bandmate. And remember to offer to pay for half the petrol.

Hmmmm.....Ashdown can be weird, as far a loudness is concerned. My old Ashdown ABM 500, through my ABM 15, was quieter than my Ashdown EB 150 combo. My Ashdown MiBass 550, through my Barefaced Compact ,is significantly quieter than my GK MB500, through the same cab.

First get competent musicians. There's no point in bringing in an inexperience singer/drummer/guitarist, if you want to gig ASAP. Make sure they have commitment to the project and it's goals (It's no fun trying to herd cats). Decide on set list. If the musicians are competent it will take less than a month's committed, rehearsals to get them ready for the first gig. Hey presto you have a good, gigging, band.

I hate to say it but I'll bet that the house sound engineer, in any venue you play, will smile and nod and mute the feed from your mic at the first opportunity. Live sound engineers REALLY like to DI bass. I know it's a pain but they really, really do.

Ooops.... how did that happen?

Mini tour of England (um two gigs) for my band The Dana Dixon Band. The Nottingham Royal Concert Hall on Mon 6th of March and The Blues Kitchen in Camden on Tues 7th March. If you'd like to hear a mess of Blues & Rock n Roll, from the UK's finest Female harmonica player, come along. http://www.bluesinbritain.org/listen-dana-dixon-good-rockin-mama/

My Carlsboro Stingray, 150 watt, 1x15 combo, farted like a hippopotamus if you didn't keep the bass way down. It was a pile of sh*t. I can't remember if I sold it or just gave it away?

[quote name='Dave Vader' timestamp='1488380500' post='3248441'] Opposite, I learned it because a mediocre band I was playing with insisted on doing it. Then they changed their mind after running through it twice as the phrasing on the vocals was too difficult. See also the bastards that only did Babooshka three times before the guitarist ditched it. [/quote] Ooooh that would piss me off....

[quote name='Funky Dunky' timestamp='1487979335' post='3244879'] This is, deceptively, THEEEE hardest bass line of all time. I can play things WAAAY harder, but the correct execution of Rhythm Stick eludes me 90 times out of 100. Without a word of a lie, I spent three months learning and polishing this. I practiced it every day. And I eventually got it. And I went "Right. Done. Learned." And I stepped away from it and moved on to the next tune. Then I tried to play it again and haven't pulled it off since. And the thing is, from reading others' posts on Basschat over the last few years, and from conversations with other bassists - some of them I would describe as special - the phenomenon I described is by no means limited to me. This bassline continues to stump bassists WAY better than me. My question, therefore, is what kind of VOODOO resides in the fingers of Norman Watt-Roy? Don't even mention Paul Turner's flawless version with Shuffler, which is noticeably faster than the original. [/quote] I learned it just to challenge myself. I've never played it live with any band I play with.

I live in Edinburgh and ended up selling my Stratocaster, which I'd put on Gumtree, to somebody 470 miles away, down in Hove. I thought they were mad (but took their money anyway ). Personally I'd never buy something from gumtree unless it was face to face and in cold, hard, cash.

A lot of music I hear on the radio has no identifiable musical instrument playing on it. In many cases the instrumental part of the track is just a pad of mush. The creator of the track, is not trying to emulate any known acoustic or electric instruments. In many cases there is hardly any human element in the track at all. Even the vocals have been sampled and autotuned and bear very little resemblance to what originally came out of a human mouth. The stuff I reserve my contempt for is the low end, mass market tosh, pumped out by soulless corporations. But I do concede there is some very beautiful electronic music too. On the whole though, I do like to hear human beings playing instruments, not sequencers.

3 of my friends started a band. The guy who was to play bass decided it wasn't cool enough, so bought a guitar and sold his bass to me. I took his place in the band and the rest is history.

A band I was in for 3 years has had over 20 members in the 7 years they were together. No wonder I left.

[quote name='Geek99' timestamp='1487798563' post='3243103'] Badger metal never really took off then ... [/quote] Well actually... [url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t_agPRqgBs"]http[/url][url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t_agPRqgBs"]://www.youtube....h?v=-t_agPRqgBs[/url]

[quote name='Monkey Steve' timestamp='1487782528' post='3242861'] Some old band mates of mine who's other bands were at a far more extreme metal end of things compared to what we were doing once sent me into fits of giggles quite seriously discussing whether an assortment of bands belonged in a book (for which one of them had been interviewed) about UK death metal, because apparently there are people who are very serious about whether a band is black metal, death metal, blackened death metal, or any number of sub genres. There is genuinely "shoegaze black metal" [/quote] Just put a random word in front of 'Metal' and there'll be a band that plays it..

If you want clean and LOUD I can recommend a Gallien Krueger MB500. It's the loudest amp head I've ever played through (and I've owned a lot of amps). You can get a secondhand one for £350 on Basschat.