Leaderboard

The phrase "tax-deductible" springs to mind. It would be much more impressive if he had started the gig with a broken guitar, amp and pedalboard and then fixed them onstage during the show.

I recently watched a documentary called Laurel Canyon. This womans music popped up.. Fabulous.

Not content with the usual out of tune piano, some wonderful people have installed a pipe organ at London Bridge Station. I played it earlier, sadly very briefly, but it's always been a lifelong dream of mine to play one, so I'm very happy to tick that one off the list. Overjoyed, in fact. When those low bass pedals hit... 😳 My keyboard repertoire is rather limited, but if anybody heard House With No Door by Van Der Graaf Generator blasting out from the depths of London Bridge today - that was me. Here's my eldest about to have a go but getting too embarrassed.

I mentioned this vid in a previous post. Fascinating doc about California in the 60's/70s and the music/musicians that wrote/recorded music at that time. I enjoyed it. Thought others may.

are you new here?

Something I gleaned recently is that while Yes were creating Close To The Edge, Steve Howe was very much in the thrall of John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. That influence had never really occurred to me despite having heard that album hundreds of times, but now it makes perfect sense. It's also a reminder of the astonishing brilliance of John McLaughlin as a guitarist. By the time they wrote Sound Chaser the band were absorbing some of the influence of Return To Forever and Weather Report. To me this is an interesting perspective because Yes get categorised by a lot of folks as coming from a predominantly European symphonic tradition in terms of their musical influences. This is not true, and Steve Howe in particular has always been a lexicon of guitar styles from a variety of genres and eras. The rest of the band were as hip as anyone at the time, too. Yes had plenty (maybe a few too many) of twiddly bits, that is undeniable, but even the twiddly bits were quite diverse.

Cuh... last show of the tour. If he had a gig the following night, I might have been impressed. Lightweight.

It's finally here!! My BB414 has arrived. I must say that I am very surprised about the quality. It hadn't been played for some years (according to the seller) so I did a setup, some lemon oil, new string, intonation... Now it's perfect. It's a little bit heavy, but it plays like a dream. And it sounds really really good. I will probably change the bridge and the tuners (one of them is bent a little bit, even though still works) and I will add a pickguard.

Just got some more WB pr0n from Leszek... 😍😍

Pah, that's nothing! I lived in an Ampeg 8 x 10 cab for two years before I could afford an 18" bass bin.

For all the Giblin (and Joan ) fans out there in in case you haven't seen it.

Point 1: Not at all - the abstinence thing came up quite naturally in conversation a while back (probably about cost of living). No puppy dog eyes were deployed! Point 2:

And so to the back carve. This is basically what I will be scooping out: Normal thing with my builds: "most (sensible) builders do this sort of thing completely differently..." What most builders would do is hog out the bulk with a router - effectively cutting stepped contour lines - and then finish off with chisels, scrapers, etc. But I use one of these: It's a Veritas Pullshave. I think that it is designed to scoop out the seats for wooden chairs - but it's ideal for this kind of thing. Slow and hard work - but slow means plenty of time to think about the thicknesses and curves as you are going along, and putting my back into more hard work is what my GP and MrsAndyjr1515 generally urge, albeit for quite different reasons I'll do the carve over a couple of days - I'm actually designing some aspects of the build as I go along and it also means not pushing my luck with the arthritis. I start with lengthways removal, as above and then move onto cross-grain or angled to help form the shape evenly. The base of the pullshave is a compound curve and so I can create a curved carve in either direction: Today's workout has got me maybe a third to half the way there:

oops

I can still remember the day I bought Shadows and Light and brought it home and played it. I had heard Weather Report and some of Jaco's solo stuff, but this made much more sense to me. Within the context of Joni Mitchell's songs I could really appreciate Jaco's genius for the first time. To this day, Jaco's work with Joni is a benchmark I judge other bass players by.

...and The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Court & Spark.

Destroying your gear looked stupid in the 70s and it looks stupid now.

If ever I fancied a T-Bird :

You’re in but you’re wife can no longer take part. I’m sure she is devastated 🤣

Here's a long-scale version I cobbled together. It has more dive than a submarine!

I see an opening for a James May tour here

Small update, but added the nicer plastic knobs from the xx-02/xx-94 models to my 55-01 a while ago. A bit lighter compared to the metal barrel knobs, and makes the bass look a 'little more Lakland' in my opinion haha. Flanked by my custom US 44-PJ (as I'm now calling it). Si

I. Love. Joni. The greatest of them all.

Moog Taurus 3 pre-Mike McCready: Moog Taurus 3 post-Mike McCready:

plonker comes to mind.

One of my favourite albums of all time is Shadows and Light. It also made me a life long fan of Pat Methingy and Lyle Mays (the latter now sadly RIP)

I’ve just retired from 42 years on the railway. Mostly on the footplate driving but with a spell of 11 years in management in the middle. In the early days I was so frustrated as the shifts prevented me joining bands. What I learned was that the best way round it was to form my own band and organise the gigs around my shifts. It was a bit of a juggling act but the desire was there so I made it happen. In the last third of my career things became easier as I was involved in a lot of training. We had a local agreement that allowed us to take overtime worked on training as time off in lieu and that saw me through to retirement. Happy daze! To anyone who’s got a young family and lots of financial commitments and struggling with doing what you love I’ll say always put your family and your livelihood first. have a great day everyone, colin

I think you’re in the clear. Mainly just so we still have someone still standing in this 😀 PS love the bass

Apologies if I've remembered this incorrectly, but I think this was around the time of the Vapour Trails Tour.... I was an avid reader of the Rush website after it's launch and I found, in the murky corners of the site, a list of songs that formed Neil's House Music i.e. the tunes that were played over the PA whilst the house filled on that tour. I've put the songs in a playlist and I hope the link works for you all....https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/neils-house-music/pl.u-Zmbl32GS0ZDPM0 It's a fine collection of tunes IMHO. NOTE: The two String Ensemble tunes (2112 Overture & The Temples of Syrinx) don't appear to be available on iTunes for some reason. I guess you probably know what they sound like though!

My (now) wife still teases me about the fact that the first meal that I ‘cooked’ for her was served on a bass cab, with cabs for chairs too

very happy with my Laney Digbeth £125 new, XLR out with FET and TUBE options https://www.gak.co.uk/en/laney-db-pre-digbeth-bass-preamp-pedal?gclid=Cj0KCQjwuaiXBhCCARIsAKZLt3lnghnTNl-6y6CHmY-iXXYm-0CYKg3b6g_9LZIHsOfw-ger-2lVessaAhhFEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Ampeg, oh get you Mr La di da. Back in my day it would have been 2 families living in a carlsboro combo and thought yourself bloody lucky! (Said in a Yorkshire accent) 😂

I've mentioned this before in the forum, but this seems an appropriate place to repeat it. When Bruce had his salmon pink P bass stolen, he asked Barry Moorhouse of The Bass Centre to source him another vintage P, which he did. However, BT never gelled with it and sold it back to Barry. I bought that bass (a white, '63 P that was road worn within an inch of its life; sounded great though) and had it for a number of years.

When I was really hard up, my Trace Elliot 1x15 functioned as both my gigging cabinet and as my principal living room coffee table.

I think it's mainly the Wakeman guiding hand on song arrangements that gave the impression of symphonic influence. I was heavily influenced by Yes, the Yes Album was like a bolt from the blue for me when it was released. Close to the Edge is my all time favorite piece of music, to date.

Well well, look what the cat dragged in. Very much still in the honeymoon phase, but this thing is absolutely immense! It replaced my Lakland 55-60 Vintage J, which played great but I didn't get on with the Jazz bass thing. I just need to accept that bridge humbuckers and active electronics is where I live.

Now playing: Rites of Dawn by Wobbler if you like 70s Yes you'll like this. https://wobbler.bandcamp.com/

Love the DVD, feels like the last moment of an era 👍

Always good to see the godlike Mr G.

Deleted post as images won't show 😞 Shame as I wrote a bloody long post with a bit about each of these.

In the 1980's I played in a band which consisted of 50% shift workers from the BBC. There were two shifts - shift 1 and shift 2. We all worked on shift 2, and that was the name of the band.

Couple of days ago it was Kate Bush night at the BBC. I couldn't believe what I heard and saw..I had forgotten how amazing she was. I remember her appearing on Belgian tv when "Wuthering Heights" came out (I was 16). No one had ever heard or seen anything like her. Del Palmer had some cool basses too in the footage ..I saw an Alembic and a five string Status.

Twilight Capers - Be Bop Deluxe