casapete

Glad Coda has been praised. My band play Stevenage every year ( we are there tomorrow night )and I always visit the shop when we are there. Great staff, massive stocks of quality gear and competitive pricing too. A real tardis like place, with a nice bakery round the corner as well! I remember playing a Fano a few years ago and wishing I had the funds for it, of course they’ve shot up in price since. Certainly one of the best shops in the UK.

I liked them too. If anyone is looking for an older Peavey combo, the best ones have the BW speaker option, usually identified by the BW logo at the bottom of the speaker grille.

Merchant City Music in Glasgow are one of the main stockists Dave, nice and near for you. Dangerous!

We played at the 'Fields of Gold' festival last night, in Ashton under Lyne on the outskirts of Manchester. Small 3 day festival that was originally a 2 day event but they bolted on the Sunday too. Was a bit disappointed that the regular MC Bez of Happy Mondays wasn't doing it this year, as would have loved to meet him. Not a great turn out, maybe due to the lousy weather forecast which turned out to be wrong. A very balmy evening with the rain holding off until we were nearly home. There were some great bands on, including 'Stax of Soul', a brilliant 9 piece soul band featuring our very own @thunderthumbs on bass duties. They have a 4 piece horn section - two trumpets, tenor and baritone saxes and sounding so good. Lovely guys too. After a lot of confusion regarding arrival and set up times, we went on (for the first time in the band's history) without a proper soundcheck, just a line check to make sure everything was on. Very nerve racking for the first few songs, but the sound techs did a great job. All in all an enjoyable do, and a nice change from our usual theatre stuff.

Here's mine from last night's festival gig. 96 Precision Lyte into a Sansamp (for DI purposes only!), then GK1001RB into a GK Neo410 cab. Gigs like this make me realise why I use a set up with headroom - ran it quite loud last night and really enjoyed the onstage sound. (Just realised that's our violinist's knee behind my cab!)

Beat me to it! I’ve also got a Rumble 100v3 and it’s a wonderful combo. Bought mine s/h too, and I've used it on small / medium gigs with both electric and electro acoustic basses. Sounds great, and unbelievably lightweight, with a good XLR DI. Not too big for home use either.

On the last Genesis tour Mike Rutherford used an ordinary ( Affinity model?) Squier Strat. I’ve used a Longhorn for years too. Quite popular basses in the 60’s and 70’’s - I think John Entwistle used one on ‘My Generation’, famously breaking strings during the recording.

Agreed - used one of these a few times and they’re certainly fit for purpose. There’s currently a KB300 for sale on FB Marketplace for £50.

Bless you Mick, my bad! Thanks.

Three gigs for me this week. Tuesday was the acoustic duo's monthly gig at a local pub. Very humid night but we got some great requests, most of which we managed, although had to admit to not doing 'Rosanna' by Toto! Thursday was at Mansfield Palace Theatre, a great venue and sold out too. Our first band gig back after a summer break so we were all a bit worried but actually went okay. Some monitoring issues fortunately didn't manage to spoil it for us, and happy faces all around. I got a bit of an ache in my left hand, but think it's because I've not played 2 x1 hour sets for a while. Then last night we were at one of my favourite venues, Buxton Opera House. Played here many times and always loved it. Again, had some monitoring issues with the in ears ( not for me as still use a wedge - caveman etc.) but our great crew managed to get it sorted. Also some issues with the guitar and bass emitting a HF noise, which was eventually tracked down to the air con! Once turned off it was problem solved. Unfortunately for the capacity crowd it made for a rather sweaty evening, but went down a storm so all seemed fine. The venue staff are a pleasure to work with here, and we'll hopefully be back again in 2023. Tomorrow (Sunday) we are playing the Fields of Gold Festival at Ashton-Under-Lyne, Manchester. Hoping the weather is kind to us, as it's a long day - setting off at 8am. Plenty of bands on so should be a nice change for us.

This version of 'The only way is up', which is currently featured on ads for the Co Op. Interesting take on the Yazz version, which I believe was a cover itself too.

That looks like a no brainer! Should do the job just fine, will be interested to hear your thoughts.

Here's my rig! Duo gig in a village pub marquee. Could have managed without the Rumble 100 combo but I like to have it there just in case it starts to get a bit lairy volume wise...😅

Old heavy amps aren’t popular these days so there are plenty to be had. Have you checked Gumtree? Don’t know where you are situated, but there are a few Peavey combos on there at the moment. Facebook Marketplace also has lots of stuff that fits the bill. Not far from me someone is selling a Peavey Mk1V 210 watt head for £80, great amp! You can often get Peavey 1x15 BW cabs for around £60 too, which would be a killer rig for the money.

Played in a lovely Yorkshire wolds village not far from Bridlington last night. The acoustic duo gig was in a small open sided marquee in the grounds of a pub, with the audience sitting both inside and outside. Lots of people with dogs and kids running around, usually a pain but this time not a problem for some reason. Two 60 min sets starting at 6.30pm, loads of requests which we managed to play, and finished around 9pm. It had started off sunny and warm, but by the end it was getting chilly and our hands were a bit numb - feels like summer is suddenly on it’s way out now. Home by 10.30pm so an early one for me. Will spend an hour today sorting out my cables case as the pack down in the dark was a bit rushed, and no doubt everything covered in grass etc!

An evening of Aretha Franklin stuff tonight on BBC4, starting at 8pm with a special from the Proms with special guests.

Must admit, after playing it on every gig with my band for 11 years it does start to get a bit meh. Then again, I see the reaction from the audience and how much they love it and it helps me no end.

I've taken two breaks from gigging in 45+ years - first time for a year when my wife was expecting our daughter, and then later the Covid years. By the time my daughter was born I was actually missing it a lot, and then a few months later got offered a place in a resident nightclub band which I loved. The Covid 'break' was much different - an enforced hiatus which made me both sad and a bit angry at the same time. Now we're back doing it again I still love gigging but realise I'll probably be contemplating how it's going to work out as possible retirement looms. Can't see me ever giving it up completely though, at least not while I'm able to manage it. Edit - just realised after reading the post above that I did have a few weeks off after breaking my shoulder. Started gigging ASAP afterwards though, playing keyboard bass as I couldn't manage my Stingray for a while!

Played at a birthday party on Monday with my country band The Fork Handles. Lovely pub on the outskirts of Sheffield owned by an old friend of the band. It was one of those gigs where the guy booking us loves what we do, but the rest of the audience were in danger of not 'getting it', so we tried to keep it as commercial as we could. First set went okay, but by the second set the audience (and some of the band..) were more suitably refreshed so plenty of dancing going on. We played stuff they knew, like 'S.H.Alabama', 'Copperhead Road' and finished the night with the Stones song 'Dead Flowers'. Must admit, as I wasn't driving (rare for me) I did enjoy a few pints of Beavertown Neck Oil which was on draught, and very nice it was too. Due to this I forgot to organize any pics, so just took a shot of my Dano Longhorn with GKMB800 / Barefaced Compact. Haven't used it for a while, so it took the first couple of songs to get used to the short scale but soon got into it.

I have a JBL EON 10 powered cab which is great for a monitor. Small and sounds fine. From my experience the stand mounted models like the Behringer are okay but don’t sound overly pretty. Mate of mine has an Alto powered cab which also is great for a small floor wedge, and not expensive either.

I think whatever you choose to do, any movement needs to look natural and reasonably spontaneous. I don’t move around much, but when playing on larger stages there is the need to use the space a bit, even it only involves walking around a bit. This can often be difficult as I sing a lot of BV’s, so inevitably have to be on the mic a lot ( and don’t fancy a headset mic thank you.) Most important for me is looking like you are enjoying yourselves and want to be there, whilst making eye contact with the audience a lot too. Hate to see players staring at the floor or the neck of their guitar all the time with scant regard given to the audience. My old function band were often (rightly) accused of being static. Someone in the band knew a dance tutor so we arranged a meeting in my local village hall to see if she could help us with our , err....presentation skills. Needless to say she couldn’t get us to loosen up enough to change things much, and we realised the best thing to help on gigs was a few beers before playing, although often at the cost of musical perfection.😆

The times we’ve walked past that bandstand and wondered if it ever gets used! Looks a great place to play Mick.

Johnny Walker just playing this by Ry Cooder on his Radio 2 show - wonderful.

Mate of mine gave me this at a gig last night - copy of our advert in the Daily Mirror on Friday. Has all our gigs on for rest of this year.

Played at a party yesterday, depping with some old friends. It was in the garden of a cottage in a small village in Holderness, and is an annual event where everyone knows each other and really enjoy themelves . A lovely do with great punters and ace food and drink too! Used my bitsa Jazz bass, with a GKMB800 into my old 'Loud Inc' 4x10 cab, which still sounds as strong as ever. Glad I didn't sell it on when I got my BF Compact, as occasionally it's great to have a change. The band play 'Dad rock' stuff which always goes down well with the gigs they get. The drummer is John 'Cambo' Cambridge, who played in David Bowie's early band 'The Hype' and then on the 'Space Oddity' era stuff. John actually introduced Bowie to Mick Ronson following playing with Mick in top local band 'The Rats'. He's a top bloke, great company and a wonderful drummer so it's always a pleasure (and an honour) to get to play with him, even though I've known him for over 40 years. ( John has recently written a book about his early days with Bowie and Ronson - for anyone interested it's called 'Bowie, Cambo and all the Hype' , is available in paperback and a fascinating read.)