uk_lefty

This is our initial list: Bruce Springsteen: Dancing in the Dark Bonnie Tyler: Holding out for a Hero Whitney Houston: I wanna dance with somebody The Police: Message in a Bottle U2: With or without you Flock of Seagulls: I ran so far away Billy Idol: Rebel yell Hall and Oates: Man Eater Glen Frey: the Heat is On Huey Lewis: the Power of Love Some songs might get swapped out for others... E.g. Dancing in the Dark may get swapped for Born to Run to get more sax involved.

Is anybody out there using a Headrush MX5 for bass? I got hold of one a few months back and it's a great tool for home use, especially as I can put guitar through it too. I have been using a Boss ME-90B for quite some time and I enjoy it's simplicity, but sometimes wish I had presets and some more options. In the past I had an HX Stomp and found I was spending too much time on my PC editing sounds as opposed to making music. The MX5 is great because the touch screen and intuitive menus just make it so easy to use. Creating new rigs and tweaking rigs is easy, far easier than on anything I've used before. The sound quality is great at home but I am probably going to try at a gig tomorrow. While there are few options on here for specific effects and amps it feels sufficient to me. And being able to blend in guitar amps and effects, do parallel processing and stack effects in crazy ways, it makes it really flexible. I'm so impressed I'm thinking to keep hold of this and maybe even upgrade to one of the bigger Headrush units in future. However, I've been down this road with every shiny new toy and it ends up on the marketplace within a year or two. I'd be keen to hear any tips and tricks from any other MX5 users.

Fair point

Yes! I had the V7 and the old V9. Excellent, excellent basses. I preferred the V7 with the maple board over the V9 with ebony. The V7 was really good for having a 'controlled' sound when your dynamics change... I mean, if you pop the string you got a good sound that didn't give a massive volume spike. Such good basses, I'd take another one any time.

Certainly!!! We will have a broad set list but it's not going to go crazy, so no obscure b-sides for the beard-strokers, it's all got to be big hits that people will sing along to, no off-kilter genres like acid house... No disrespect to acid house of course, but it's quite niche compared to Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. As for the image, the first question I got back from the guitarist when I messaged him about the band was "can we dress like Miami Vice?" The answer was a massive YES! I asked the sax/ keys guy if he would be up for dressing the part too and his response was "I can go to 80s theme nights wearing my ordinary clothes, I just roll the sleeves of my blazer up" said in a knowing tone that inferred he is very much 80s style in his ordinary clothes.

So I thought it would be interesting (decide for yourself how interesting!) to document the setup of a new band... Read on if you want to, or don't if you don't. I've always wanted to have an 80s covers band. Ideally I would be the lead singer and bassist, alas my vocal chops just aren't there. I tried once in the past to set up a band using people found on joinmyband and other sources and it wasn't a great experience but a valuable one. Earlier this year my main band, a 2000s covers band, had a hiatus and the drummer and I cooked up a scheme to do something as a side project. This is one of the big lessons I learned a few years back: work with at least one person you already know! Well, that makes bass and drums... I contacted a guitarist I was in a band with four or five years back, I love his style and attitude and we have remained friends loosely keeping in touch, he was excited to join in. In the middle of August we met up with a handful of songs to bash through. I found it a real struggle to sing and play, my voice was knackered at the end of it, but we agreed we had something that worked and if we had a singer and ideally a keys or sax player we could really have something worth progressing. I got too excited and advertised for a singer much earlier than I had wanted to. I got a handful of responses: a guy aged 28 who sings modern metal, a classic rock vocalist in a covers band id heard of, a female singer who recently left an indie band, and a lady who only wants to do backing vox as she doesn't want to fully commit. I have not yet met the singers, we want to get the songs tight first. But we have rejected two of them already! Now, the lost of songs we are working on is a handful of "male" songs and two "female" songs. The classic rock singer contacted me to say words to the effect: "you do realise that Holding Out for a Hero is written for a girl??? You know it's about a Man???" That told me all I needed to know about this person. Didn't say "hey I might tweak the words" which I'm happy with, just basically came across a bit old fashioned and hinted he could be difficult to work with. Luckily, the recordings of heard of his vocals weren't great so I was comfortable saying we had better fit singers already. Also, he didn't notice, or at least raise, that "I wanna dance with somebody" is also a female perspective song. I have no issue if a man or woman wants to change the gender perspective of a song, or keep it. But we had not at this point said we want a male singer, or we want a female singer. We just wanted a good singer and to do good songs, so we have a mix. Anyways, onwards and upwards. In the meantime we wanted to get the songs tight but also I kept hearing sax in a lot of the great songs of the decade so I advertised for a sax player. I got a great response from a guy local to where we rehearse who plays sax and keys. I sent him the long-list of possible songs and five mins later got a reply of "f me that's my childhood!" And I just knew he would do for us. This week we met up again and invited our sax and keys player. We also had a friend come along to sing so I could concentrate on bass and arrangements. Magic happened. We did two or three runs through of each song, had a ten minute break for a chat. We instantly bonded with our new multi-instrumentalist: a decent person, a proper musician, and he LOVES the genre. There are still details to work out such as better transition to solos, proper endings of all these fade out songs, but we were really solid and the keys and or sax just really added something. It felt special. We will meet again in a few weeks' time, now with a handful more songs that really prominently feature the sax. Our best candidate for singer isn't available until mid October so hopefully we can be really tight by then and ready for him. I'm getting quite excited about this side project! Playing with a drummer and guitarist I know really helps, and striking gold with a chap who plays sax and keys is just sheer good fortune. More to come soon....

My local rehearsal spot has some kind of TC amp in there. I hate it. It's underpowered and it either goes "booooom" with indistinct bass or it disappears. I wouldn't buy one, but I am aware there is brand heritage that is sadly not being lived up to.

It's a nice looking bass, far nicer than that weird Ric-a-like thing they brought out. I just couldn't read all that dross though, just give us a table of the specs like body woods etc. and leave us to it.

Venue: Played at the George III in Hoddesdon for their annual music festival on Saturday night. Heard some really good bands over on their second stage, then took to the main stage ourselves before the headline act. Gear: Played my Stingray through my Boss ME-80B and there was a Fender Rumble 500 provided. I put the Rumble on the "bright" setting with the EQ all centred hoping that would give me the most transparent sound, then used the amp Sims on my Boss unit. I occasionally used some fuzz or distortion but the rig absolutely sang. I was really pleased with the sound considering it was plug n play and I haven't used a Rumble before, also amp SIMs on pedals can often clash with Amps... Set: We jumped straight in with "I bet you look good on the dancefloor" and kept the feel of each song being a 'finisher' throughout. It's a great place to play because you've got a clientele who love their live music and will sing and dance along to everything. No gig photos available yet but I did manage this snap...

I need to be able to get on with people I'm in a band with. We need to be able to have sensible discussions and some give and take on all sorts of things like song arrangements, gig bookings, and which hotels to stay in, etc. I can get on with people who have different mainstream political views, that's what democracy is all about I think, but prejudices just switch me off. Incidentally for a new project I'm starting up with my drummer and an old band mate we had an email this morning from a singer we wanted to audition. He seemed to be against singing a great song because it was originally for a female vocal and about a man, lots of unnecessary punctuation. Just made him seem very insecure, I haven't bothered responding because I don't think it's worth telling a grown man he need not worry himself, or he can change the words. The tone of the message just screamed that he's not someone I want to spend my time with, let alone have to have discussions with that may involve persuasion and compromise on each side.

My band is very different but we spoke to a promoter we know about how we get more specialist music venue gigs. He gave us lots of advice but the main thing was good social media. You need to have a good social media presence with photos, videos from gigs, regular engagement so you keep onto your followers. Our guitarist knows this stuff well and does a good job of it, though I'm sure there are people out there far more proactive. Studio recordings aren't as good as a decent live recording because a live recording shows what the venue actually gets... We paid about £600 to have someone video us live at a big gig, make a pro video for us, and laid over audio from a gig we recorded off the desk. It looks fancy and it shows our singer working a big crowd and the audio is unmistakably not the original. Then there's the slog of contacting all the venues to get absolutely no reply at all. If anyone knows how to break through that wall I'm all ears too!