asingardenof

Off to Horbury WMC for a 40th party attended by around 150 people apparently, although you wouldn't know it from the lack of audience involvement. Hey ho. The evening started auspiciously as I managed to find a parking spot literally three feet from the door! After I'd recovered from the shock we set up pretty quickly, said hello to the birthday girl and her husband, soundchecked, then sat around doing nothing for an hour and a half. Went with the by now tried and tested Siredowsky - ABM - Two10S combination, which sounded pretty good on a larger stage. At halftime I was approached by a local guitar tech who preferred his business card, so I'll have to look into that as I don't have a go to one in these parts yet. Managed to grab a bowl of curry, made by our guitarist's ex apparently, before heading back on stage. We all played really well, and our newer songs are sounding really good, apart from our drummist truncating Two Tribes again! We had a couple of half-hearted dancers for a couple of songs but that was about it, but star of the night was the 9(ish)-year-old girl who was dancing and cartwheeling on the dancefloor for the entire second set, which have me a bit of a boost. Before we started our singist approached us all and asked if we'd fancy giving London Calling a bash. Hell yes, I would!

It's a very fun song to play, I wish I could persuade our lot to try it but I suspect it's a bit outside our usual wheelhouse.

I think it was in Bassist magazine. I remember her saying she preferred it as she didn't have to think about different chord varieties ie major/minor.

Victory for function over form, I feel

Any changes we make are usually as a result of a lack of talent for a band member, or where the intro goes on a bit and just leaves us standing around, but sometimes just for fun: Two Tribes - an extra bar inserted after the second verse (as the song goes chorus-verse-chorus-verse), increasing the quiet bit from three to four bars, because everyone (apart from me) loses count of where we are. I sometimes worry about the ability of some of my bandmates to count, especially our drummist, because we hardly ever seem to end this song in the right place as well Somewhere In My Heart - horn intro binned Club Foot and Are Friends Electric - long, atmospheric intros shortened Dakota - outro extended to make it end a bit more enthusiastically

"Super awesome" and "wicked" are like nails on a blackboard for me.

Exactly, especially in a down-at-heel former mining town.

Off to the Hartshead Moor WMC on Saturday for a 60th birthday bash. We'd done one of those last year and it was essentially a paid rehearsal with nobody up and dancing really until we were near the end of our second set, and when we saw the size of the party we weren't confident, but this lot were a lot livelier, with dancers up in varying amounts from the middle of our first set, and we went down well. It turned out the organiser, the birthday boy's niece, had seen us before, so knew what to expect, and we pretty much nailed everything right up to the drummist ending our last song Two Tribes two bars too early. Fortunately we were all well aware he can never remember when it ends every time so managed to style it out, although it sounded a touch anticlimactic. Went with the Siredowsky and trusty ABM into the Two10S, which was probably overkill given the volume dial didn't get above 9 o'clock, which was also good because apparently the club often gets complaints when bands are too loud so we played quieter than we thought we would, but with the bonus that said drummist comments that he could actually hear all of us for once! 😂 We politely rebuffed the birthday boy's husband's entreaties to let him buy us drinks, but I gratefully accepted the offer to snag a couple of muffins from the buffet on the way out. Home by 10 and actually got to hang out with the missus for a bit, which was nice. (We've played smaller stages but this was the first time our singist had experienced a bass guitar to the head so was grumbling a bit)

I've tried getting in there as I live in Cas, but their rates were a bit crap for our five-piece (£200 + a bucket handed round is what they suggested to me). It's a shame as I'd love to have a gig only five minutes down the road.

Indeed. It's like we get it, Jaco did you a solid and gave you the template for a fretless Jazz, but that doesn't mean that every fretless Jazz has to replicate that in some form! I mean, they even managed an unlined fretless Precision in the Tony Franklin signature (which for obvious reasons will always be named the Imprecision in my head).

Playing a 60th birthday bash tomorrow evening. Hoping I haven't forgotten how to play over Christmas...

I don't think Fender have produced quite enough minimally different variations of the Precision and Jazz basses yet, so I think they need to get on that

I've had this in my arsenal for years (the original Talk Talk one though, which is a half step higher than the No Doubt version) - such a fun bassline to play!

Finally buy myself that five-stringer I've been promising myself for years. Ideally a G&L L-2500 Tribute if I can find any outside Japan, otherwise we'll see what's out there when I have funds. Still bemoaning the loss of the Zoot Funkmeister I tried a couple of months ago though.

I would have the G&L, but the problem is there aren't many for sale in the UK so finding one will be tricky compared to the eleventy million Sire basses there are out there.