casapete

Agreed - I was always drawn to rhythm guitar more than endless soloing. My main influences in this respect have been Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Motown, Pete Townshend, Steve Cropper etc. Even these days the art of great rhythm playing seems to often go unnoticed.

Guitars for me - never been a great player but always loved them. Vintage stuff would be my downfall if I had unlimited finances - have a 59 Les Paul Junior which I’ve owned for 30 odd years. Also got a nice 57 Strat reissue, a Baja Tele and a cherry 335 Fat Neck. Like old amps too, although recently sold my late 60’s Marshall 18 watt combo when someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse - damn you Covid.

Only thing I can think of is a case I had, made by Protection Racket. It was for an electro acoustic bass I owned at the time, a Fender Kingman, and was massive! Maybe worth a look.

I always play sitting down for my acoustic duo gigs, just seems right somehow. I also play seated on hotel dinner dance stuff like I did over Christmas / NYE. Older crowd, long sets and music for formal dancing so apart from being less tiring it also looks quieter! For all the other gigs I stand, do find it hard to play uptempo / loud stuff when seated. When I broke my shoulder and played keyboard bass for a few months I still played standing up, just seemed right somehow.

I’m sure they did, and rearranged the gig too IIRC. We always got well looked after by them, hotels, drink and food etc. Reminds me of another Aberdeen gig too. Large oil company do at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. We arrived early and got set up, then most of the band availed themselves of the hospitality until we were due to go on after the official business, which included a film presentation. We got the nod it was time to go on, and started off the set with ‘Relight my fire’, to very little response. Picked up a few dancers towards the end of the set, but it was only when we came off stage that someone mentioned that a few minutes before we started playing there had been a filmed tribute to a recent oil rig fire tragedy in the North Sea. Amazingly they didn’t hold it against us and realised it was just a very unfortunate choice of song, and we did work for them again.

I’ve read good things about these for a while, although I believe they’re now discontinued? Did you get yours new for £250 in some sort of close out deal?

You’re right with the snow thing, rarely a problem these last few years. In the early 2000’s the 8 piece function band I was in used to get a fair few gigs up in the Aberdeen area ( we were from Yorkshire). These were corporate gigs, usually for oil companies and paid very well, making the journey worthwhile for us. On one occasion snow was potentially a problem so we contacted the booker who confirmed the gig was still on and then set off on the 8 hour journey, me driving our LWB Transit with the keys player and all our gear in and the rest of the band in a hired MPV. There was a hold up with the MPV being picked up, but I still left early just in case of weather problems. It started snowing quite a lot the further north we got, and once past Dundee on the A90 it was coming down very heavily. About 10 miles from Aberdeen, the phone rang and the keys player answered it - the gig was cancelled as Aberdeen airport had shut and the punters were mainly flying in, so I just turned round and drove home, a round trip of roughly 900 miles! ( The band MPV hadn’t got so far as us, so they got off more lightly ).

A friend of mine used to do her sound, and always had nothing but good things to say about her and the band. Hope you enjoy the gig!

It was, and made worse by diversions and closures on the M1 and M18. 🤬

Played at The Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne Minster on Friday night. It's a great venue, one of our favourites. A full house too. It's a long journey from Yorkshire for us and we usually do it alongside other venues in the south west, but due to blo*dy Covid and reorganizing dates constantly, we had to do this as a stand-alone. Still, worth the hassle. 😊

Really enjoyed this, thanks for posting.

Great stuff, love Freddie King. Even now still often overlooked, and a major influence on many players. I’m well jealous if you’re doing gigs playing stuff like this! Thanks for posting.

That's right, although Ray was on lead vocals for some of the band's earlier stuff but sang mainly back up on the later well known songs.

I think as mentioned above that it does depend on the demographic of the band’s audience. My band appeals to an older age group, and we still sell a few CDs and DVDs. Whereas none of our three kids ( all in their 30’s) have any sort of disc drive in their houses.

I think many people still refer to her as this even now. When I worked in record retail many years ago, nearly everyone thought Ray Sawyer was actually Dr.Hook rather than the band’s name.

There’s loads of bands like this - Van Halen, Santana, Elvin Bishop Group, Dave Clark Five, Fleetwood Mac, Kool and the Gang, Alan Parsons Project, Spencer Davis Group etc etc. Not sure it’s held many of them back really.

We played there recently, and after lugging all our stuff upstairs to the stage, I uncovered the SVT rig behind a curtain - nobody had told me they had in house stuff we could use. 🤬

There’s a tribute to Ronnie Spector on BBC4 tonight (Friday) at 9pm.

Dupuytren's contracture in my fretting hand. Only stage 1 at the moment, so hoping it doesn't progress too fast to become a problem.

Ronnie with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.

2 mins and 42 secs of heaven. RIP Ronnie.

GK for me with my Gen 1 Compact. Either 800RB or MB800, both sound fine but the RB has the edge.

Great band - think I was first aware of them after seeing them on Later with Jools. Went to see them in Manchester soon after and was very impressed.

Great song with one of the longest intros ever, and then starts on a chorus - genius! Don't remember the 2 bass players though?!! (apologies for double post)

Personally I prefer the blue, but that red also looks good in a louder way, especially with the pearl plate.