casapete

Looks like a standard Mexican Jazz going for slightly less than normal s/h price to me. Maybe the seller maxed his credit card over Xmas and needs a quick sale?

Thanks Dave. Most of our gigs are quite the opposite really, I’m not great at ‘formal’ ( until I see the money of course!) Done lots of them though, and they’ve been my ‘day job’ for a long time. The duo has plenty of regular gigs lined up for 2025, so if you’re ever down this way then give me a shout. Also playing with the blues band too, so my diary is so far looking healthy. 😀

Played at The Palm Court Hotel in Scarborough last night for a NYE dinner dance. Despite horrendous weather warnings we made it there okay, the 50 mile journey affected mainly by high winds. Got set up in the hotel lounge whilst the guests were dining - took my usual Rumble 100 combo to use with a Squier SS Jag bass which has been given to me on permanent loan by a friend. Sounded fine and easy to play for the three long sets we did, starting around 8pm through to 12.30am. We were well looked after by the hotel manager - we took our partners and they were given lots of bubbly and stuff, and we had a few drinks too although as I was driving I stuck to water and coffee. 🙁 Playing wise it went okay. Had a keyboard player with us ( old mate Steve ) as well as singer guitarist Doug who is well known in the Scarborough area. Songs requested and played were the usual dance standards ( Sinatra etc) right through to slightly more recent stuff. I got a request to sing ‘Dead Flowers’ by the Stones - slightly unusual choice for a NYE do - so duly obliged , along with some other 60’s and 70’s stuff and of course ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight. Got packed very quickly and then had a dreadful journey home - roads were virtually rivers in places, with biblical amounts of rainfall. My trusty Skoda didn’t miss a beat though, so back around 2.30am, absolutely knackered! Not the best of gigs I’ve done recently, (made worse by wearing dinner suit and bow tie which I despise!) but a lovely venue and being well paid made up for it. Mrs CP had great fun too, and after the terrible few years she’s endured health wise it felt like we were celebrating the start of better times. Here’s hoping. 😃 A very Happy New Year to all BC people, may 2025 be a great one for you.

You don’t specify what sort of small gig set up you need it for ( venue / music / drummer? etc ) but I recommend Fender Rumble V3 combos. I have two - a 100 for duo / quiet-ish gigs and also a 500 for anything else. Both are great sounding plus very lightweight & portable, and can be found s/h for around £200 and £350 respectively. If you don’t need the 500’s power, the 100 has virtually no background noise for home practice too.

Sounds like a plan. Don’t forget ( assuming you’re using rubber/ plastic strings like Aquila ) to allow for plenty of ‘settling in’ - they take ages before they stabilise IME.

Sold Jono a Squier bass after seeing his wanted advert on here. The whole transaction was a pleasure, even though we had to juggle around with the delivery options. All in all a great guy to deal with, highly recommended.

Seeing Paul McCartney in Manchester a couple of weeks ago. In over 50 years of going to gigs, this was up there with the best of them. An amazing evening of wonderful songs, played brilliantly by a superb band with fantastic stage production. Still buzzing from it.

Good advice. My amp tech taught me the same thing, maybe 30 years ago. In my last band, if I wasn’t quick at getting back to the stage after the final song the theatre stage crew would have ( very helpfully )started packing stuff down. They always coiled the cables correctly but secured them with tape which sometimes made them sticky. A few years ago I bought a pack of 10 D’Addario cable ties which I still use - they are brilliant and keep them tidy with no mess.

Thanks Daryl, hope you make your gig and back safely. For me here it’s looking like high winds and torrential rain with the potential for snow too. My route is also back country roads with some steep hills, so snow / ice is the worst scenario. Only around 50 miles each way but will be setting off in good time.

Having seen the forecast just now for our region, I’m a bit concerned our journey up to Scarborough on NYE may end up a bit ‘difficult’ - fingers crossed.

Me too, never done a bash before!

In the blues band I play in then I’m easily replaceable. In fact when I joined I did say to them that my acoustic duo needs to be my first priority, and in the event of dates clashing would they mind me putting a dep in. They were happy with this, and I have a couple of friends who have each depped once with them in the past 6 months so all good. Should I decide to leave then either of them would be a good replacement for me. With the duo then I’m not so easily replaced. We’ve been doing it for nearly 30 years, and although my playing is nothing special, it’s the singing aspect that makes me more difficult to cover - mainly harmonies with the occasional lead vocal. I doubt my guitarist mate would continue without me for this reason, despite him regularly working with some of the best bassists in the region. Singing confident BV’s has been my main USP for most of my pro career, often getting me gigs over far better players along with being a ‘band’ player and the ability to get along with people. ( My replacement in my last band was a far better player AND singer than me though, so I know I’m not unique! )

A nice hotel in Scarborough, same venue I did with our duo on Christmas Eve. NYE we will be supplemented by a keyboard player and some programmed percussion, to enable us do a wider variety of stuff to cater for all the resident’s likes. Hopefully we will be finished soon after midnight so not too late home - weather report looking good. 🤞

Also the clip on tuner helps with my balance….😆

We played at The Palm Court Hotel in Scarborough last night - Milestone duo. It’s a lovely hotel with great staff, and load in is very easy. We set up in the lounge whilst the customers were having their dinner in the restaurant, which made things easy. Used two JBL powered PA speakers which run on batteries! Sounded good too, although I took my Rumble 100 combo so I could monitor my Ibanez acoustic/ electric without overpowering the system and it worked fine. Did our requests thing, and had plenty of the usual tunes asked for, along with some rock stuff - did ‘Stairway…’ ‘Layla’ and ‘Dakota’!! Despite being a more mature audience, they wanted a wide range of songs, including the inevitable ‘Driving home for Christmas’. All in all an easy and relaxed evening. Played 3x40 min sets, and done by 10.30pm. We took our ladies with us, and they got free bubbly, whilst I availed myself of the excellent ‘Neck Oil’ IPA on draught as my buddy was driving. Some nice comments from the punters ( including cricket umpire Dickie Bird ), so hopefully will get the gig next year. Home by midnight which was fine by me as still fighting the tail end of manflu. We’re back there for NYE which is my next gig, so a week to rest up Seasons greetings to everyone on here, and all the best for 2025. Pete. ( Clip on tuner / music stand haters look away now….😆 )

Merry Christmas and all the best for 2025 to everyone connected with this wonderful place. Long may it continue.

Bit of an institution now in the USA, Darlene sings this every year on chat shows, recently on Jimmy Fallon. She is 83 now, and this is still one of my favourite Christmas songs of all time, especially this year with Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul as well.

Played our final gig for this year at the Sun Inn in Beverley yesterday. Arrived a tad late to find the pub absolutely rammed, with the landlord having to be on the door to restrict capacity - one out one in etc. We got the PA set up as quickly as possible, quick line check and a feed into the house system for the rear of the venue and then got cracking around 5.30pm, playing as many of the dozens of requests that we could. ( Although we’re normally an ‘acoustic duo’ I took my trusty Precision Lyte for this gig, knowing the volumes we needed to play at would probably have me battling feedback with my acoustic basses. Turned out I was right ). Plenty of Xmas stuff as you’d imagine, including ‘Fairy Tale of NY’ which involved some of the ladies in the audience doing Kirsty McColl’s parts, thank goodness! We’d also arranged for a few friends to get up and sing a song with us, something we rarely do. First up was a local guy who sang the Ray Stevens version of ‘Misty’, then a friend who was celebrating his 70th who did ‘Mess of Blues’. During the 2nd set we had a mate do a great version of ‘Sympathy for the devil’ - he's recently left his band and sounded amazing - and then the landlord Paul sang ‘Wild Horses’ brilliantly and to deafening applause. Finally had another friend do Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ ( in the original key too!), and we were done. Although a few hours of mayhem, I still managed to enjoy the gig atmosphere despite having a bad case of man flu. Had lost my voice by the end though, and feel pretty crap today. Just hope I’m gig fit for tomorrow and NYE, playing at a hotel in Scarborough.

Another happy Rumble 500 user here. Mine more than holds it’s own with a 3 piece loud blues rock band playing pubs and the odd festival. There are currently a couple of them s/h for sale on FB Marketplace which are priced well at £325 and £350, in York and Wakefield respectively. A lot of bang for the buck, so they say. 😁

Just back from a gig for a small company’s Christmas party in Beverley. Our acoustic duo played for them at a summer party last year, but this time we played as an electric three piece, adding a drummer. The gig was in an upstairs function room of a large pub, so it meant dragging all the gear up two flights of narrow stairs which was a pain, but plenty of space to set up with only 50 guests. Set up by 7pm so we went for a walk up the road to our regular venue The Sun Inn where some friends were playing and had a chat and a drink there. Our duo is playing there tomorrow afternoon, and it seemed to have a completely different feel to it on a Saturday night with lots of people milling around - maybe just the Xmas thing. Back to our venue and there was a Ska band setting up in the main room downstairs, but we didn’t catch them as we had to do our first set. It went well, got a few up dancing with some well chosen tunes. Second set went even better, with most of the guests on the dance floor. I was just winging it, my mate on guitar shouting out the songs, some of which we managed to join together to keep them dancing. Dep drummer was great, not too loud and good tempos. Company boss seemed very pleased with us, so may hopefully get the gig next year! Used a replica P-bass into my Rumble 500 combo. No pics of the gig, just one as we finished soundchecking.

Same with me. 50 years of being in bands, some 15 of which were spent putting up with tw@ts because it was my living and I needed to play. Fortunately the last 15 years has been completely the opposite, and I was lucky to be in a great band earning money with great like minded people. Since semi retiring I now play with my best mate in a duo, and an old mate in a blues trio so it’s just a pleasure going to play local gigs for me.

Difficult to nail it down to 5 of each, but today it would be - Bass - James Jamerson Duck Dunn Paul McCartney Bill Wyman Bob Babbit Guitar - Chuck Berry Keith Richard Eric Clapton George Harrison BB King

These are the Ibanez AGB 200, part of their Artcore series. Your pic shows the distressed tobacco burst finish, but they’ve also done them in violin sunburst, a dark cherry/ brown, white, greyburst, natural, and also still currently available in matt black! They are easily confused with the AFB200 from the same series, which has a deeper body and a wooden bridge. Again, still available in any colour so long as it’s black!

I’ve always liked Sheryl right from that album onwards. I think her Glastonbury appearance in 2019 made me realise how much I still do. Her band are up there as one of the best IMO, especially guitarists Peter Stroud and Audley Freed. - both amazing players.