wulf

Did you see the section they had on their website asking for suggestions of where to go on their tour? Inspired by a suggestion I saw on the web, I voted for Baghdad, Iraq, although I suspect that didn't get picked... Wulf

Nice clean score - that will be a great asset to the book. Wulf

Sounds great. How about a sample score for part of one of the tunes - or pehaps a couple of snippets illustrating an easier passage and a tricky one? Wulf

How did your 1 July gigs go? Mine was great fun, although the sax player got held up in traffic and missed the first hour of the performance entirely! I'm told by the friends I took that someone did light up inside at one point but I must have been concentrating too hard on the music as I didn't notice. I certainly didn't come out reeking of stale smoke, so I am very happy with the new regime. Wulf

If you're looking for cheap (well, free actually...), you can come and see me walkin' with the [url="http://www.myspace.com/theadrianastorquintet"]The Adrian Astor Quintet[/url] (mentioned on the [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2283"]1 July gigs thread[/url]). It's at [url="http://www.concellarbar.co.uk/"]The Constitution[/url] in their cellar bar. Wulf

[quote name='Sibob' post='24333' date='Jun 28 2007, 11:08 AM']No gigs on the 1st, but I've got 2 on the 30th (see listing in below post :-D)[/quote] From your avatar, it looks like your bass is pretty smokin' anyway, so you'll need to get that fixed Wulf

I know feelings on the 1 July ban of smoking in enclosed public places in England are divided on this board. Personally I am looking forward to it and hope that, as experiences from other parts of the UK suggest, it will simply mean the end of forced passive smoking and coming home smelling like an ash-tray rather than the collapse of the live music scene. Who is going to be out there, testing the waters on 1 July? I'm gigging with [url="http://www.myspace.com/theadrianastorquintet"]The Adrian Astor Quintet[/url] at The Constitution in Camden (jazz). What about others? Wulf

[quote name='The Funk' post='18381' date='Jun 15 2007, 04:25 PM']You're not going to get any new fans from myspace. What it is good for is basically acting as a one page press kit. That's handy when it comes to booking gigs and even finding members.[/quote] Yes - I think it does work well as advertising. One of my bands recently got a gig because the person organising it asked if we had a MySpace page and the person booking it was able to say yes. She quickly came back with a booking, having looked at the page and heard the tunes. Of course, she could have done that from the website but I guess that MySpace does offer a fairly standardised interface for getting quick access to tunes (assuming a broadband connection and that the site is behaving on that day!). I was wondering if any bands were starting to use Facebook and plug in components to make it fulfill the same function, and how that was working out. Wulf

After resisting MySpace for the longest time, because the ugly, convoluted code of the site was an anaethema to my design aesthetics (I'm a webmaster by trade) I finally gave in and supplemented my handcrafted sites with MySpace pages for [url="http://www.myspace.com/basswulf"]myself[/url] and my bands ([url="http://www.myspace.com/elusiveteeth"]The Elusive Teeth[/url] and [url="http://www.myspace.com/theadrianastorquintet"]The Adrian Astor Quintet[/url]). However, just recently, I've noticed a lot of people I know flocking to Facebook, which seems to have a cleaner design and allow a lot more options of including clever little widgets that integrate with other sites. For those of you that get involved with promoting your band on the web, what are you doing? Trying to juggle all the options or just sticking with one and seeking to make it excel? What have been the sites you've tried and what have been the pros and cons? Wulf

What is parking like round your way? It can be anything from difficult to impossible round London, which gives a big plus to rehearsal venues that can supply functional equipment. However, unless you are looking at one of the functions of the venue to be demoing gear for sale, cheap, solid and reliable is probably better than splashing out on really expensive gear. Perhaps test the waters by having a small amount of fancier gear available at an increased hire charge? Also, don't forget to have some spares. Even well looked after gear can go wrong and being locked up with a room full of monkeys night after night is likely to increase the rate of failure! I've turned up to a rehearsal room and found various bits of equipment to be dead; if the studio hadn't been able to swap it round, that could have blown a rehearsal night (and unhappy punters aren't likely to come back if they can find somewhere else). Final thought - how about also providing some storage space. When I used to rehearse up in Central London, we hired a PA along with bass and guitar amps; the drummer used to keep his kit in a locker at the studio, where he used it with several bands and could also easily pick it up for gigs round the area. It might look like a waste of space but, suitably positioned, could help with soundproofing and may also attract back regular customers and the kind of people who are interested in playing through their own gear and treating other people's stuff with respect. Wulf

I sometimes use my Bass Pod XT; very often I'll just practise acoustically (sometimes on my six string but normally on my electro-acoustic). For my purposes, the electro-acoustic (Tanglewood Odyssey) was a fantastic investment because of its value as a practise tool. Wulf

[quote name='bassjamm' post='16071' date='Jun 12 2007, 10:00 AM']Hi mate, Shame i can't get to this one, sounds like it'll be cool...if you needed a dep though, i may well be interested. Let me know.[/quote] PM sent. Wulf

Recently (on a jazz gig): ... and one of my favourites (mid-solo): Should anyone be vaguely interested, there are plenty more on my [url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wulf/tags/wulf"]Flickr[/url] account. Wulf

I'll be jazzing things up with [url="http://www.myspace.com/theadrianastorquintet"]The Adrian Astor Quintet[/url] this Thursday evening at The Crown, Richmond Road, Twickenham. Free entry, with music starting at 8:30pm. It would be great to have some bassists in the crowd (especially anyone interested in some depping opportunitues). Wulf ps. sample tunes should be up on the band's new MySpace site in the next day or two