bassace

Is George Martin still building basses, or has he gone back to DBs?

I like my jazz. But my head likes to get out into the country at regular intervals, and breathe. So it’s Vaughn Williams (anything by) over here and Copeland’s Appalachian Spring over there.

Was due to do this yesterday but it was called off after common sense prevailed. So it might be rescheduled for a few weeks time, otherwise who knows.

‘What sort of stuff do you play, mate.’’ ’Jazz from 1940 to 1980’. (sniff) ‘ Oh, covers then’.

Well, it was, Jack. On the same bill as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee.

Like this? Ignore the player, the pic was taken 60 years ago. Oh all right. Have a bloody good laugh if you want to!

Do you mean Esther?

On 22 September 1989 a bomb exploded at The Royal Marines School of Music at Deal Barracks. 11 died and 21 were seriously injured, the bombers were never caught. I remember BBC did a news item of one of the military funerals and I heard a brief snatch of a trumpet player playing Monk’s Round Midnight. That was a goose bump moment and I thought ‘I’ll have some of that’. Played live, of course. Fee in the pot.

Same time sig? Don’t think so.

One of his cheeses, Blue Monday, is as good as you’ll get.

Had a phone call this morning for a trio gig within the next two weeks for a Hospice fund raiser in a ‘large garden’. Piano player will be Vince Hill’s MD and John Mayall’s first drummer (Crawling up a Hill). You can’t get more eclectic than that.

I’m in no hurry.

Guitarist and bassist have certainly got great chops but somehow it doesn’t go together as a good performance. Bass is quite intrusive behind the guitar.

We were doing a gig once with a nice girl singer. The woman who booked us asked if she could borrow the mic. To use in the next door room. We told her it was set up in this room ‘But it’s a radio mic’ she said triumphantly. But the amp/speakers are in this room, we explained patiently.

I’ve just found this guy playing over Herbie Hancock’s reading of Stella By Starlight. Good eh?

Probably late in the day, and thus unhelpful, but have you considered a 5/8 (rare) or a half size bass?

The man needs a haircut. Surely he can afford one.

WoT

Fair nuff. But he still plays a few DS tunes on tour. So not completely perhaps.

I wonder why MK didn’t go to the RnR Hall of Fame induction. Was there frisson between him and Alan Clark?

Oh, I thought you used it for gigs and stood your pint on the rubber bit. 😬

Oh, that’s very much the exception, as you would imagine. Although the boss had done quite a bit of TV etc he hadn’t quite made the big time in the jazz world - does anyone? But he still had the odd delusion of grandeur and wasn’t backward in coming forward. I remember doing a Dutch jazz festival with a different band where we slept on the floor of a pub, all seven of us with four inches space between each sleeping bag. A year later I went over with the aforementioned and stayed in the best hotel in the city, one en-suite room to each. All the foreign tours were like that. It was a great ride.

A few things are coming back to me. ‘This is a small room so you’ll have to keep the tempo down’. We did a very upmarket gig as a seven piece Dixieland band in about 2003. We had to park in the town car park and transfer all the gear to a shuttle bus which went up the hill to this house. There was a ‘performers’ village’ in the grounds where all sorts were holed up. People walking around on stilts, fancy dress, etc. And a bossy woman with a clipboard. Things were getting all behind timetable, bossy woman getting more and more frazzled and we were missing our slot. So there was a bit of a discussion between the boss and bossy woman. Boss comes back, ‘ The bad news is we go on later and finish half hour after contract finish time. The good news is we each get a hundred quid extra.