gafbass02

I recorded this song sometime in the late 90s using the defretter on a zoom 506 of all things. I was shooting for a fretless sound just using my jazz bass favouring the bridge a tad and rolling back the tone. It is what is is.

Bit of Locked out of heaven from the Jubilee weekend. I’m glad it caught a bit of cheeky interplay with the drummer at the start of the second verse and my synth sound in the chorus, but Whoever recorded it seems to have been at subwoofer height so it’s a bit ‘wuffly’ 😆

I just found a video I thought might be handy here. I think our drummer filmed himself with his phone or something, but it’s happened to have caught a pretty good impression of what it’s like from an on stage perspective using a single Headrush 112, you can even see the cab for context. Yes it’s Mr Brightside at a lively festival, but just ignore that 😂🫣😴 Thought it might be handy for those wondering. Was certainly easier than lugging a full rig through the crowd. Headphones will get you pretty close to what I hear And here’s the FOH perspective.

New additions to my acoustic board. The Mel9 is amazing, I’m blown away by how nice it sounds under chords if used subtly. Didn’t like it on bass at all sadly. The other change is the Donner power supply which is very light, came with loads of cables and looks kinda cool too.

Standard function job. Birthday party, slow burner, but we got there eventually, I was tired from a solo acoustic gig the previous night and didn’t play my best. We had three hour long sets and the manager was a bit fussy over volume, which was annoying in a room with the acoustics of a giant toilet. The necks on both my basses moved during the very hot evening. Afterwards we discovered that the radiators were on!!! My basses had been sat next to them and the inevitable happened. IMG_0533.MOV

Sorry. Only just spotted this. Yep. As mentioned.

I did it long ago with no issues. They shared a battery.

Me too

There was about a third again I couldn’t fit in shot. It was a lovely evening I consider myself Very lucky to get to do this

We closed a Local festival in Cheltenham last night. Fun gig, great crowd, nice onstage sound, all good

In a sense

I played the Miss England show in my 20s. That was a good day

Pretty cool last night. In that weird sort of way that can happen at wedding gigs. We were at the Cheltenham ladies college in a lovely hall. Nice enough, went down well, trialled some new songs and ended up not playing that much due to some interesting traditional dancing thing that went on for ages! Still, paid well and looks like we’ve plenty more gigs coming out of it Local festival later. IMG_6611.MOV

My gigging board is in a Pedaltrain novo 32. The Zoom does all FoH sounds, the small preamp is just for when I use a passive bass to make sure levels don’t change from my actives too much. The sonicake and eq are to match my IEM feed to the foh. So any minor adjustments I make on the bass EQ to tailor what I’m hearing aren’t too disparate to the foh and match up pretty well. They also double up for if I’m running my headrush monitors instead of IEMs, giving me a bit of a ‘front end’ as it were. (I sometimes use two FRFR112 connected via the ABY switch) The wireless system is a cheapo job relegated to cable failure emrgency duty. you might’ve spotted the bespoke cable that splits off for my signal and IEM signal to the Rolls monitor amp. I didn’t like the wireless so had this made up. It’s ace! The others are my solo acoustic guitar gigs board, my going to rehearsals and home practice bass zoom programmed identically to my main one. And finally a zoom G7 I use for electric guitar gigs.

Last night’s gig was awesome! Once a year my band that split up in 2018 does a one-off as demand is still so high! (We can’t reform permanently because of various reasons) I play guitar and sing and did all the arrangements etc (and provide all the gear bar drums). We do bespoke rocked up versions of pop classics from the 80s to today. Everything from the spice girls to Bonnie Tyler gets the treatment. Plus some 90s faves that are more straight ‘rock covers’ like Therapy? Green Day and Placebo. Venue was packed out everyone singing and dancing and having fun. Lots of lovely comments from people, some of whom had travelled to see us. It’s was a lovely warm and friendly evening Tonight I’m back on bass at Cheltenham ladies college for a private do and then a local festival tomorrow

Yes. I switched to guitar for years which gave me a fresh perspective and was a nice change. Then in 2019 I took a full year out of music apart from one or two acoustic gigs. I sold off almost everything. It was liberating and a brilliant year. All the time and energy that went into bands and guitars went into rc cars, something I’d wanted to do since I was a kid. When I came back to bass it was from a much better place. Now I’m back playing bass for gigs every week and guitar now and then. I own no rc cars and am enjoying what I do again.

I don’t know why, but I feel like that’s a Johnny Brook