Leaderboard

Yesterday afternoon, was a little bit more of a standard acoustic gig for my duo Deadlight Dance at the local pub. After a mere 33 years, my old Sixth Form Goth band who first played live on 22nd December 1989, reunited minus the singer, for a five song finale. This meant in one case, travelling over from Atlanta, GA in the USA. The original band have largely tried to stay in touch and the seed was planted when I started working with the guitarist as a duo over lockdown. The original singer is AWOL (last seen in Thailand) but this didn’t stop the rest of us getting together. I was amazed at how good we sounded. We’d rehearsed a fair bit. Sadly this was back in 1990 (& not since!) and we did well getting the show, so the rehearsals were just a step too far. The whole performance had a nice nostalgic gentle humour and almost half of the audience were old faces from Sixth Form. Definitely as close to a bucket list gig as I’ve had in a long while. Just from a bass point of view, my father in law dug out and lent me an original 1985 Boss Dimension - C chorus pedal so my bass had just that little bit more authenticity to the bass tone (I flit between a few instruments with this band). Oh and my friend who is mates with Cure bassist Simon Gallup, messaged him about the show and apparently he's keen to come and see us soon. I've had worse days!

My 1962 Jbass:

I am now the owner of this killer ‘63 👌 I know shocker, I bought another P bass 😂

Saturday night we 'headlined' the Beetroot, Beer and Blues Festival, held at the Wheatsheaf, Tattingstone - a lovely country village pub a few miles east of Ipswich. There were bands all through from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening. Food and drink free top bands, camping available for those who wished. It had been raining the night before but Saturday was just very windy - the small tent we played in was blowing aorund, as was everything else. Still, it calmed down a lot by the time we were on - 8pm-10pm. I saw all of the band before us - Joel Fisk and the Breakdown. Great set from them, really good band. Some lovely slide guitar on show. We decided to use our own pa - 2 x RCF EVOX 8 - which doesn't take us long to set up and it means we can sit it at the back and dispense with monitors. Rain clouds gathered during our set which, because of the wind, would have meant finishing but - luckily - it held off all night. I reckon there were probably 120 or so people there, many of whom migrated indoors once the sun set and it got a bit chilly. So it did seem a bit lonely outside, playing to the 50 or so die-hards who stayed outside to listen and dance. Still, we played well, were well received and got fed, watered and paid. A12 was shut, went home along the back roads but still only just over an hour, so all good. Here are a couple of vids someone took on an iPad, now uploaded to our Facebook page. Shows how clearly the pa, which was still coasting, comes across even outside. Bass sounds fab, by some measure my best and favourite at the moment- a 70s Eros EB=3 short scale. Unusually one of our regulars who came to see us made a point of mentioning it. Sweet Home Chicago - we usualy play through the last bit, don't do the stop https://fb.watch/lQQPuW29P8/ Jesus Just Left Chicago. https://fb.watch/lQRKWoPpzJ/ Two of the less challenging bass lines

Two gigs for me this weekend, both a good distance from home. Friday saw us at a new venue, The Forum in Bath. Dreadful journey due to issues on the M5 and torrential rain so we ventured off the motorway and ended up on many A roads across the Cotswolds. Then our PA van broke down en route due to a faulty brake caliper, with our engineer fixing it on the hard shoulder after our lighting tech sourced a replacement from the nearest garage. Everyone arrived late at the venue, meaning a mad dash to get set up and sound checked. Anyway, a great old theatre with good staff and around 800 punters so we were hopeful it would be okay. It turned out to be a belting gig, audience with us right from the off and excellent sound both onstage and FOH. Absolutely knackered afterwards though, and we didn’t even have a few drinks afterwards when we got to our hotel. Not too bad a drive to Cardiff next day for a gig at The New Theatre, another venue new to the band. Right in central Cardiff, with very limited loading space which meant only one van at a time could be accommodated so had to take it in turns with our 4 vehicles. No parking facilities either, necessitating a lengthy walk to find anywhere that would take LWB vehicles. Lovely stage crew very helpful though, and plenty of places to choose from to eat before the show. We had another healthy turnout of around 850 people. The gig started fine, but some annoying drunk people in the first few rows were causing problems for many others all through our first set, nearly resulting in a fight at one point. The staff were on it though, and after many warnings ejected 5 people in the interval! Rest of the gig went really well, so another venue to hopefully return to next year. Long drive back to East Yorkshire afterwards, home around 3.30am and totally wiped out all day Sunday! (pic below shows me dragging our PA guy Rik onstage for a bow, after his epic efforts in fixing his truck roadside!)

The opposite effect here. Some decades ago, I was playing (drums...) at a wedding 'do' at a small local restaurant, as a duo with my buddy on accordion and organ. The landlord had warned us that he had a strict 2am curfew to respect, so we had to be finished by then (these weddings can go on till dawn, otherwise..!). We agreed, and played our usual repertoire of slows, waltzes, musette, some light rock, until we got the nod that it was time to wrap up. The ambience was hot; all were mightily enjoying their evening, but when it's time, it's time. We launched into two numbers, guaranteed to clear the dance floor and shoo everyone out: an accordion/drums rendering of 'Saucerful of Secrets', followed by 'In the Court of the Crimson King'. It was glorious, for us, playing, but the surprise was total, as (maybe aided by the liquid refreshments of the event...) the reception was rapturous..! Applauded as heroes, we passed the curfew and played on for over an hour more... That's not the end of it, though; I now come to the 'requests' part... Two years later, we are booked again for another wedding at this same restaurant (we'd not played there since...). Immediately upon arrival, the patron's eyes lit up and we were greeted like rock stars, with the 'request' (rather more an injunction..!) that we play the same numbers at the end. We obliged, of course, and another wedding 'do' ended in a vacarme of cymbals and accordion, to the delight of all. Happy daze..!

I once got asked by a chap a gig 'What note are you playing?" He was quite obviously well on a chemical journey to some other, very ecstatic plane (it was a sort of space rock/techno band, so not unusual for our gigs). "G! ", I shouted back to him. He danced off, arms in the air, gurning a huge smile, shouting "I f$$king love G !"

there’s a new sheriff in town!!

That's the way it should happen if the drummer is a true mate. If our drummer or a dep strays I'll make a few motions and try and que them back in. I was out gigging before all my band members were born. Which means I have a bit of a different reference to the whole " being in a band" thing. And I get it, I know the way I see things tends to be a bit dated, out of step and old fashion. I guess I'm no longer considered part of Young America. Lol At the end of the day, I'm a hired gun and have learned to keep my mouth shut. Probably why I'm still in the band after 15 years. If you blow up the image and have good eyesight you can read it. It's about my high school band in 1971. I really can't expect my bandmates to have any kind of reference to 1971. Blue

Decent one yesterday evening. Back on Canvey Island (again) for charity gig in aid of the awesome Indee Rose Trust. Held at Concord Rangers FC, there was a memorial football match on in the afternoon for a local legend, followed by evening entertainment, raffle and auction all to raise funds for the charity. We arrived during half-time and it was chaos! I really didn’t expect such a huge turnout of people. We also thought we were going to be in the main function room of the club house, which is a decent size and carpeted, but that had been booked for a 50th party (and nobody told the organisers of this event) so we ended up on the other, smaller daytime bar. This was fine, but was constantly busy all the time throughout load-in and setup. So we were getting under peoples feet and our own. We also had to manage the sound on out own as our soundman has just had eye surgery and wasn’t fit to work last night. We also had a message a couple of days before from Jenny, one of our singers that she had laryngitis! But was still hoping to sing - besides, she was the one who got us the gig as the event was being organised by her friend’s family. Anyway, we had a great sound dialled in from the gig, just a slight tweak to the sub level and the IEM mix and we was good to go. The crowd was on it from the start, likely due to spending the afternoon drinking! Jenny’s voice held up here and there. Our other singer, Liam helped her out as much as he could, jumping in with parts he wouldn’t normally sing, as did I by covering some of her harmonies, and there was a couple of setlist adjustment on the fly. The place was buzzing, and heaving and we played well. Pretty much the whole room singing along and loads of dancers. A particular highlight was Tina Turner’s “(Simply) The Best”. We’d been asked to learn it as it was the favourite song of the chap whose memorial charity event this was for. And we’d never played it as a full band until the gig. Jenny’s voice just about held out for this one, and everyone else had done their homework and it sounded great - we was all grinning at each other during the song. I reckon this one will be a keeper. It was also an early start, around 6pm and we was home by 10.30… which was nice. However, our singer Liam overdid it, by singing more that he usually would, plus being roped into comparing the raffle and auction - the latter took nearly an hour! This would have been fine usually, except we had a rehearsal today as we have a wedding gig in a couple of weeks and it was the only available time we had to get a rehearsal in, so I had to provide a few guide vocals today, as well as trying to remember how to play several songs we haven’t played in ages! Lastly, this is the second gig we’ve have the IEMs properly sorted out and sounding great, and didn’t need the backline FRFR speakers. So we’re planning on leaving them at home for the next gig and going properly ampless.

Thanks to recommendations from @Osiris I have finally found a compressor that really compliments the Alix. The Effectrode PC-2A runs hot hence the big gap between the two, you can see the vents on the side of the unit. The Alix and the PC-2A are a marriage made in heaven, @Jabba_the_gut basses into this little board and out to a QSC K12.2 is the perfect set up for the kind of music we make ('acoustic' duo)...

I don't always post in this thread, but last night was a little notable as well as being a great gig. The reason it was notable is that on Friday morning I woke up in a hotel in the Malaga after a couple of weeks driving around Spain. We checked out at midday, then had to wander around the city centre in pretty intense heat for four hours, before retrieving the hire car and driving to the airport for our late (and slightly delayed) flight. We got to bed just before two in the morning. About fourteen hours later, I had to load the car and drive ninety minutes in the rain for a Led Zep tribute gig at the Waterloo Bar in Blackpool. It turned out to be a good night at a great venue with a decent sized and enthusiastic audience. We haven't played a gig for a few weeks and it was the only the singer's second show with the band, but it sounded really good playing to a great crowd. I hadn't picked up a bass in anger for a couple of weeks (apart from my mate's not so great little Hofner bass in Spain), so it took a toll on the old fingers, but all in all a top gig. A decent payday as well, which was nice coming back from holiday...

This weekend saw two outings for Rascallion, the first a short set at a local outdoor charity festival on Saturday, then a normal two-setter (again outdoors, in a semi-covered beer garden) at a local pub. All week, gloomy prognostications had been going around regarding the weather on Saturday, but after consulting the village pine cone, Anderby Rocks 2023 was declared a goer despite strong winds and occasional heavy showers. Having opened the festival last year, this year we were on fifth out of nine bands, with a 4:00pm slot. To cut a long story slightly shorter, the band before us overran by a good few minutes (I wasn't there when they went on, but presume they'd been delayed by previous bands themselves as they didn't get the hook at their scheduled finish time), so we were under a degree of pressure to just get on with it when it was our turn. To add to the fun, unlike all the other bands on the day whose 30 minute changeover slots featured a DJ (or in one case, a cheerleading demonstration) to keep the crowd entertained, ours featured a solo acoustic spot by another local musician. Originally the plan was he'd set up in front of the covered stage, but as it started lashing down just at that moment and he's a mate of ours, we agreed he could use the stage and we'd just work round him setting up (and also throw in the odd BVs / heckle here and there). In the chaos, we only managed a basic line check, and the sound guys never did get the monitor sound tweaked to our satisfaction - as a result we were all a bit tentative throughout, and felt we didn't really do ourselves justice, but several people complimented us afterwards on how good it sounded out front, and we had a few folks up and dancing for the second half of our set, so guess it can't have been as bad as we all thought. By dropping a couple of numbers we ended up doing just 35 minutes instead of the planned 45 to help the organiser (another mate of ours) to get things slightly back on schedule. It was great to see that when the rain arrived just before our set, a number of folks did leave, but the majority just put up their brollies or zipped up their waterproofs, and stuck it out until the sun reappeared. So, on to Sunday. The last time we played here was on a busy Easter Saturday, but today was a quiet Sunday on which the pub weren't doing food, there were several other events on in the area, and the weather forecast was again decidedly iffy (though not as bad as Saturday had been). We were scheduled to start at 2pm, but as of 1:55pm the audience consisted of two partners plus one dog, and two blokes sitting inside the pub. Fortunately, a number of folks arrived just after 2pm, so we eventually kicked off about 10 minutes late. As predicted by the pub, there was a further influx of folks at about 3pm for the Meat Raffle, so for the second set, whenever the sun came out the audience sitting in the covered area was swelled by a number of people coming out of the pub to watch, but who then disappeared back inside when it started raining again. The temperature also fluctuated significantly whenever the weather changed which led to rather more retuning being necessary than normal, and nice warm fingers turning into frozen ones, but we got through with only a few minor off-piste moments / brain freezes, and once again everybody was very complimentary afterwards. We're back at the same venue again late August Bank Holiday, so are hoping for a larger, more stable audience then! Next on the calendar is a short performance at the care home where Mr Lead Guitar's mother resides, followed the next day by a trip to an army barracks where they apparently want us to provide music from 4pm to 8pm for a Families Day thing, so we're aiming to do 45 minutes on / 15 minutes off each hour. Should be interesting to say the least, and we're going to have to add a few new numbers to our repertoire if we're not going to run out of material! We've also not rehearsed much recently due to people being away (me included), and it showed this weekend - definitely need to put that right over the next three weeks. Pic from Saturday, probably during "Have You Ever Seen The Rain"... 🫢

An audience member once asked if I wanted to go horizontal jogging with his missus whilst he watched; does that count?

Yeah that was pretty cool. I bet it was one our parents that called in the story and made sure our names were spelled correctly. Winning that contest means more to me now than it did back in 1971. I think the prize was $400.00. Good money for 1971 and a bunch of 17 year olds. They mentioned " Red Bread" an awesome power trio. They could cover Led Zeppelin like nobody's business. They had my friend Chuck Burgi on drums. He's been Billy Joel's drummer for the past 25 years. He replaced Liberty Devito. Blue

Love Me Tendulkar - Elvis

"Play something you know!"

I couldn't resist the Andertons exclusive black fender vintera 70s hardtail stratocaster with custom shop '69 pickups so I placed an order over the weekend and it was delivered today. This is now easily my best sounding guitar - perfect with my GTX100 amp. It feels instantly familiar as the neck profile is very similar to my '72 reissue MIJ tele thinline. I wonder why a wiggle stick was included in the case candy though; I'll probably put that on ebay. I've already received a (genuine fender) black pickguard to go on it and I'm expecting a set of pickup covers, knobs & switch tip in black within a day or two.

This isn’t quite correct or settled but getting there. I do need to fit a Sadowsky Pre/DI on the end as well not sure if I like the new Diamond more than the old one

this was made from ply offcuts from a building site. i'm cheap 😁

Stats and more pics: http://cellarguitars.com/index.php/cellar-v/ This is it for me. Long scale flying V fiver, emg active humbucker to volume, no tone control. No fingerboard, the frets go straight into the neck through laminates. Brass Warwick nut, bridge and frets.

got the sy-200 hooked up to midi again, so that when I run it in parallel I can blend it with the drive or fuzz (Bongripper and black emperor/tyrannochorus) sounds really nice thru the rack setup aswell

Cracking gig at The Crown in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Scratch 7-piece band, with 2 guitars drums and bass and 3 vocalists. Place was bouncing and we ran out of songs. Post gig grinning pic, I'm the one in the cap. Sound guy is in the red shirt

Quite bodyshaming that.

We were once approached by a lovely lady who asked if we did requests. We asked her what she wanted and she said "oh, anything" and then walked off

i got asked to play any Irish song, so we played Hit me with your rhythm stick, the guy said that's not an Irish song ,so i changed the words to ..Hit me with your shovel Mick ,they loved it😂

So.... Just finished tuning the cab to 60hz using a frequency generator app and some rice.... With the 75mm blue aran port at "supplied" length we were tuned to about 57hz. A quick snippy snip with the tin snips (superb for trimming plastic ports) and the rice stopped dancing on the cone at 60hz. How does it sound? Sweet! Let's be realistic here. You're not going to tear faces off at the dog & duck with a single 8" cab, but for it's teeny tiny size it puts out a good chunk of thunk. I could definitely see two of these doing a pub gig with a tame drummer. Surprising amount of top end given there isn't a tweeter in sight. My old bass is well overdue a string change and it still chimed quite pleasantly. I will just repeat THIS IS NOT PHILS DESIGN! I was an impatient s*d and wanted to crack on. Am I pleased? Yep. I will definitely carry on and finish this little beast off cosmetically. There's some 9mm ply in the garage too 😉 Radio silence from me for a little while now as I don't want to tread on Phil's toes when his design gets uploaded. I feel as though I've posted too much already, but I had his blessing and wanted to get the old juices going out there in bass chat land... If you're contemplating building one then go for it! It's good fun, pretty cheap and very rewarding 👍

Oh aye I’ve a couple! Great basses If yours plays well and you like it leave it alone. If you want to sell it, sell it as is. Putting it back to stock will cost more than you think.

If you like the sound of it then keep the pickup and enjoy it. However I would try and “tidy up” the jack socket, get a new pickguard cut with a normally mounted Jack and something closer to the original shape.

I thought this when I played a 4 string only. It seems obvious; if you're going to upend your playing as you learn a new instrument why not go straight to 6? But each added string brings compromises, and I think the 5 is the sweet spot for most players who want to move beyond a 4. You get the benefit of being able to play across the board, and the useful extra low notes. I feel the upper C is unnecessary unless you frequently play high register solos or chords. The market has spoken too; 5s are much easier to find, new and used, than 6s. So no, far from being pointless, for many of us the 5 string is the ideal bass.

Probably from the neighbours. 🤣

This was a two gig / two rig weekend. For the festival on Saturday, I took the Trace AH200 head plus BLX-110 cab as I knew space would be tight, and also wanted something I could shift easily in a hurry. For Sunday's beer garden gig, it was back to the good old MAG300 combo - much as I love the Five Fifteen minirig I've been using recently, it seemed a little bit lost the last time I used it outdoors, so I'm probably going to keep it for our small indoor / village hall gigs, and use the MAG for everything else going forward.

Thank you all for your thoughts on this. Unfortuantely for me opinion seems to be split down the middle! (I haven't counted them). I think what I'll probably do is do a couple more rehearsals with them and see how I am feeling after that. It's not that I don't like Metal, as much as I've never really paid it much attention, so I might get to like it. It is certainly good to have something to work towards again

As opposed to the Don-key

A rather long time ago, I used to do pick-up gigs on the Irish pub scene in London, and getting people up to sing their favourite song was a very common thing. I always remember this little exchange - Irish lady: Do you know '57 Chevrolet? Me: Yes, what key do you usually sing it in? Irish lady: Oh, quite fast............

Favourite in the 12:30 Gold Cup Trial Handicap from Kempton Park, going good to soft.

Having looked at the manual for the Meris MIDI I/O it looks as though you can do what you want with a 5-pin DIN to TRS jack. However this is only possible because Meris have chosen to ignore the MIDI conventions designed to protect your MIDI equipment and prevent ground loops and hum on the audio side. Using a single three conductor cable for both MIDI in and MIDI out means that you dispense with both screening isolation, and opt-isloation of the data signal. IMO you use at your own risk.

It's more like the USSR than modern Russia. It has that distinctive bleak, austere landscape of 1970s communism. The sort of depression that leads to the creation of Black Sabbath

Congratulations to a paper that had the attention to detail to spell Daryl and Darrell correctly AND get them the right way round!

I was in a Creedence Clearwater Revival tribute that was once asked if we knew any covers!?

The reply "We don't play that song, but the next one has some of the same notes in it" is often acceptable to a punter making an unsolicited request.

This one isn't pointless.