BigRedX

Just remembered that while the first gig described here went really well, getting back for me was a complete nightmare. I don't recall the exact circumstances, but instead of travelling back with the rest of the band and gear, I went with our sound engineer who had borrowed a friend's "people carrier" so that some of our Nottingham fans could see us play in London. On the way back we needed to fill up with petrol, and I told him, I'd pay and to fill the tank and we'd sort out the money with the owner once we got back home. Just as we took our exit off the M1 the vehicle started to make strange noises and we coasted to a halt just by the Ratcliffe Power Station. We'd run out of fuel. I was seething as I had been completely prepared to shell out for a full tank, but our sound engineer thought he was trying to do me favour and miscalculated how much we actually need to get all the way back. There was nothing we could do but leave the vehicle and our fans and head off towards Clifton about 6 miles away where the nearest petrol station was. This was at about 4.00 in the morning, so we were extremely lucky to get picked up by the only other car on the road within 5 minutes of setting off, and they not only took us to the petrol station where we were able to purchase a fuel can and fill it up, but brought us back to our vehicle as well! Just as well really, because If we'd ended up walking all the way, I think I would have probably left him there to get back to the vehicle on his own and got a bus into Nottingham, as the early ones would have been running by that time.

Another one, but not of my band's making... In the mid 90s my dance/rock band was starting to get a bit of interest both from (non pay to play) London promotors and indie record labels. We had just done one gig at a new venue in Camden where we had saved the night from being a write-off mostly because our excellent sound engineer had managed to get a decent mix for all the bands on the bill despite the terrible PA system that had been hired in (it was mostly ancient HH gear and would have been seriously out of date 15 years previously). The promotor was most impressed and wanted to give us a better gig at a different venue. This coincided with Jive Records wanting to see us play. The subsequent gig was at a more impressive venue with a proper PA system and in-house engineers. We were down as headliners (and in this instance it was supposed to be headlining and just "playing last"). Great sound check and the venue was filling up with a good sized audience, and everything was going well until the band immediately before us hit the stage. "We're ****" they announced (TBH I can't remember what they were called) "and this afternoon we just signed with **** (very minor indie label) records, so flip you all!" and then proceeded to play a "set" that consisted of 30 minutes of massively loud atonal noise and feedback. Within 5 minutes they had all but emptied the venue. Afterwards we went on hoping that maybe people would drift back in now that there was a band playing some proper tunes, but as far at the audience were concerned the evening was over and they had probably gone to somewhere less offensively noisy or home. I think we played to a couple of friends of the singer who lived in London and hadn't seen us before. The A&R person from Jive never showed up, or if they did, had left with everyone else before we played. By the time we'd finished playing the other band had also disappeared, and it's probably just as well that they had otherwise there might have been a serious incident. On the way back to Nottingham, our normally very reliable roadie/driver nearly fell asleep at the wheel on the M1 and caught us just in time before we drifted into the path of a large lorry. It took several cups of black coffee at the next services before he felt up to continuing our journey. We got back to Nottingham with just enough time to unload the van before those who had work that day had to leave to be there on time.

The song in the OP sounds like someone found four random stems on their computer and stuck them into the DAW to see what they were.

It was essentially his band, and he owned not only the drum machine but also the synth that was most key to our sound (neither of which we could afford to replace should he leave).

A gig that features both a train wreck and drunken "mates". In the 80s there was a very attractive set of gigs at Nottingham University Halls and bars which were on the main campus a long way from the city centre and therefore had a decent sized captive audience. Not only did originals bands get handsomely paid, but you also got the opportunity to support well-known indie bands and up and coming chart acts. My friend's band who were well-established on the circuit did loads of these and got to support The Belle Stars the week they hit chart success for the first time and consequently played to a massive audience. At the beginning of 1984 we had finally convinced the committee responsible for booking the bands to consider our synth-pop group and we got a "try-out" gig at one of the smaller halls. It wasn't the gig we had hope for as there was no "proper" band headlining so it was going to be just us and the disco. Then we discovered that none of the university PA systems were available as there were several other gigs going on that weekend on campus. So we were asked to organise our own and we would be reimbursed as part of our fee. We duly contacted one of the local PA hire companies we had used before and booked a rig. Soundcheck was late afternoon, and we turned up to find the PA setting up but only a small rig rather than the full one we were expecting, and which we really needed as we had no drum kit or backline and the PA was responsible for the whole band sound. The PA engineer assured us that it would be fine and this was a new more compact design he was trying out. We were rather dismayed to find we were being treated a guinea pigs for what was for us an important gig, but there was nothing we could do about it now. The soundcheck went pretty well all things considered, although it was difficult to gauge the volume in an empty room. Having several hours to kill before we were due to play it was decided to go and get some food. However just as we were about to leave a couple of friends of one of the band showed up and he decided to stay with them rather than going with the rest of us. When we returned about an hour before we were supposed to play we discovered that they had got completely pïssed on cheap student beer. Our efforts to sober our band member up were completely futile, and so we went on as we were. To say it was a disaster would have been an understatement. Our drunk member could barely stand straight and spent the whole gig playing random notes on his synth and then wildely celebrating each time he thought he had one right. Halfway through our set he needed to go for a pïss which he announced to the audience (what little was left) and was most upset on his return to find that we had started the next song without him. There exists a single photo of the gig where the rest of us are all heads down concentrating on what we are doing (a probably hoping the earth would open up and swallow us) while he's leaping wildly into the air arms and legs akimbo. To make matters worse his friends spent the whole gig shouting for us to play our cover of "Summer Wine" (the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood song) which we had only intended to play as an encore. They were getting quite aggressive about it and were at least as responsible as our poor performance for driving the audience away. In the end we relented and included it in the set in the hope that they would be happy and shut up. However they just wanted us to play it again! Finally when we thought it was all over and we could pack up and go home and forget about it, one of them fell over into the PA damaging one of the speakers. We got paid, but the promised money for the PA hire never materialised and the PA company wanted compensation for the damaged speaker, so I think we actually lost money on the gig. Also we found ourselves barred from playing at the University again.

Some "looks" in chronological order...

Depends entirely on the look of the band.

About a year after I quit my Dad Rock covers band I get a panicked phone call from one of the guitarists telling me that my replacement had injured himself and would be unable to play their next gig in a couple of weeks time and could I help them out? "No problem" I say, "so long as there's nothing new for me to learn". "No, it's all stuff you've played before" says the guitarist. "Great" I say "send me the set list so I can go over the songs and make sure I'm up to speed". A couple of days before the gig the set list arrives, and while they were all songs I had done before with the band there were loads that I hadn't played for years, and less than half of the songs were ones from my last gig with them. It turns out that not only was their bass player injured, but the vocalist had some problem with her voice and they had drafted in a previous singer (who had left just after I originally joined), who didn't have the vocal range to do most of the songs from the last time I played with them. I was not a happy bunny, especially as they could have sent this set list over at least a week earlier. Because I don't normally play covers, I tend not to remember songs that I don't play on a regular basis, so while knew I'd played all the songs before with the band, there were a significant number that I had not the slightest recollection of how the bass line went. I told them that anything that I couldn't re-learn in time would be busked as root notes only. In the end I think that they were happy that I actually showed up and played, and luckily most of the songs came back to me after a couple of run-throughs at home and I only had to wing it on one or two. However I won't do that again.

New day, new train wreck... This is from my second band (it's now 1982) although the gig involved the same "headlining" band as the last story. We had just added not one but two synth players to the line up and had sorted out a whole load of gigs to show off the new and improved band and sound. The first and second of these were "out of town" in Derby and as the other band had recently played there supporting Altered Images at the Assembly Rooms we asked them to headline in the hope that they would bring in an audience. By the time we set up and sound checked there were still hardly any paying customers in the pub, but we were running out of time so my band went on. Half-way through the first song I broke a string on my bass. This being the early days of gigging and having almost no disposable cash I had neither a spare instrument nor even a spare string. TBH I had up to this point never considered that this might happen. Luckily the bass player from the headlining band let me use his bass. Unfortunately it was a cheap violin bass copy (maybe a Grant IIRC) strung with either flats or very dead round wound strings and on an exceedingly long and non-adjustable strap. He played with the bass somewhere around his knees while in those days, I favoured mine at chest height. Tying a large knot in the strap got it to a sensible (for me) height, but overall this bass was completely alien in feel and sound to me and I could barely play it. Then for no discernible reason one of the synths kept going out of tune by about a semi-tone. We had to stop and restart several songs while he attempted to retune (this was way before the advent of affordable electronic tuners and all the instruments had to be tuned by ear). Then the other synth and one of the drum synths our percussionist used simply both working a few songs from the end of the set. We shambled on to the end, but it was a lack-lustre performance and the few people who had paid to get in looked very unimpressed. Altogether a very depressing experience and one that very nearly ended the band. We had another gig in two days time also in Derby and no time for a rehearsal to try and work out what was wrong with the synths. I said to leave all the gear at mine and I'd see if I could fix it. It turned out that the synth going out of tune was due to it not being happy with voltage one of the drum machine triggers was producing. No logical reason for it to behave like that and no idea why we hadn't spotted it before in the practice room, but at least the problem was 100% replicable, and I was able to come up with a work around using the other trigger, which was fine and reprogramming the drums for a couple of songs. I think that overall our biggest problem was that we were trying to do stuff with budget musical equipment that would still have been challenging even pro-quality equipment. In retrospect I'm amazed that much of what we did worked at all from a technological PoV! Perhaps because of the train-wreck nature of that first gig the second one (in a nightclub over a supermarket in Derby city centre) went down brilliantly, with a packed room and people dancing to our quirky low-budget New Order sound pretty much from the first song. We even got an encore!

What I meant was that I always want the bass to sound awesome in the context of the song/band that I am in. That means the bass sound changes depending on the style of music I am playing and what the other instruments are doing. Maybe it's because I see myself as a composer first, and arranger second, a producer third, a performer fourth, and a "musician" a very distant fifth. Also over the 45+ years I have been playing, I've played lots of different style of music (and not always been the bass player either).

My tone changes depending on the band I'm in. Unless you always play the same kind of music it's arrogant to assume you can use a "one size fits all" attitude to your bass sound.

I forgot... It should also include one additional control which supposedly allows the pedal to sound both like the original version and any other variations on that design that existed during the production runs. In reality this control either only has one useful position (the others all producing a horrible unmusical racket) or the variations are so subtle that no-one can really hear any difference between them.

Snow appears to be much less of a problem these days than it was in the 80s and 90s. I've done two in the last 10 years in conditions much worse than the one described above - and much further afield - but both were well attended and we had no problem getting to and from the gig (although we did have to clear almost 6 inches of snow off the band van at the one in Liverpool before we could drive home).

And following on from my first story... One of the bands on the bill at that gig were "impressed" enough with our performance (or more likely wanted a band that didn't need to use their kit) and offered us a support at their next gig in Leicester. They didn't have room for us in their van, but we were told that they would pay our train fare out of the door money as the venue was one they had played before and there was good crowd. On the evening of the gig as we arrived at the train station in Nottingham it started to snow. By the time we arrived in Leicester it was falling steadily and settling. Most of the buses had already stopped running and notices were going up in the station about train delays and cancellations. It took us about 30 minutes to walk to the pub venue with our gear getting colder and wetter all the time. We arrived just in time to set up, soundcheck, grab a drink and then it was time for our set. The only other people in the pub were the other band, the PA guys (this was in the days when few venues had in-house PA systems and if you didn't have your own you'd hire one in for the gig), the landlord, and 2 bar staff. Half way through our set one paying punter came in bought a half and then sat as far away from the "stage" as possible. By the time we'd finished, the snow was still falling and was now pretty deep. We decided that if we wanted any chance of getting back to Nottingham that night we had better leave now while there was a chance that the trains were still running. At this point the other band told us that they had organised with the PA guys to take us back to Nottingham with the PA so that we could stay for their set. It's just as well that they did, as the one paying punter left after their first song song and the landlord let the staff go early, so the main band played to us, the PA guys and the landlord. Despite all this the band got asked back for another gig, and which my next "proper" band supported them at. That went much better.

BTW for me the tuner is perfectly fine (and has got even better after the last firmware update) to the point where I have sold my Peterson Strobo Rack because there wasn't any point in having it. I use it with both 5-string (BEADG) and 6-string (EADGCE) basses.

These are all things that I will happily put up with simply because I know when I hit the relevant footswitch I will get EXACTLY THE RIGHT SOUND for that particular part of the song EVERY SINGLE TIME. Prior to getting my first programmable multi-effects unit (a Roland GP8) my effects set-up filled a 14U rack case, and almost every sound was a compromise so I didn't have to fiddle with about 50 different controls between songs. Also in the early 80s I used a semi-modular synthesiser live. Changing sounds between songs at gigs could be interesting, especially if the lighting engineer decided to dim the stage. In order not to have to take patch charts on stage with me I had to memorise the settings of 30 knobs and switches as well as the positions of 6-7 patch leads for each of 8-10 songs. In order not to bore our audience with massive gaps between songs while we set up the synths, each song had an atmospheric 20-30 second intro where only the backing tape played. Of course that meant there was no possibility to try out the sound before you were actually playing. One wrongly positioned patch lead could result in either silence or an out of tune screech instead of the sound your were hoping for. For me, affordable, programmable synths couldn't come quick enough. That's why I'll live with all the apparent compromises of the Helix (although TBH for me there are none I discovered since I started using it).

One of my bands recently gig a couple of "acoustic" gigs with more laid-back arrangements of the songs. We were all going to sit down to play these until both the singer and myself discovered that we simply couldn't play properly when seated, and I certainly didn't have enough time to not only learn slightly different bass lines for all the songs but also how to play them in a sitting position. Because I never play in front of an audience sitting down, I never practice that way either. Even at home when I'm writing. I think the last time I played in public sitting down was some time in the late 70s when my band provided some improvised musical backing for school drama performance with me on my home-made electric balalaika.

The 0.01µF cap is filtering off quite a bit of the top end before you start turning down the tone control. It will also add a slight resonant hump at the cut-off frequency. Of course the whole circuit should be balanced against the impedance of the 60s Gibson pickup, so if the "mudbucker" in the Epiphone isn't the same design, that circuit won't have the same effect.

Several - here's the first from 1981. I'd been in Nottingham a year and had made lots of friends in the local originals band scene, but was getting a bit frustrated that I wasn't in a gigging band. At the time my band was recording only and most of the other members had gone their separate ways to go to university. We'd made our last lot of recordings on a reel-to-reel recorder bouncing from channel to channel to build up the performance for each song. I hatched a plot with the percussionist that the two us would perform these songs live using the version of the recording without the vocals, me playing guitar and singing (I'm a terrible singer) and him playing bongos and drum synth over the top. Out of necessity, the set order would be the order in which we had originally recorded the songs onto the tape. We turned up to our first gig, a multi-band affair at the Ad-lib Club (later to become The Garage), unannounced and blagged our way onto the bill. As we were on first, there were no free channels on the PA for our backing so it had to go through one of the other band's guitar amps. The performance was interesting to say the least. Our already lo-fi backing was turned into an unrecognisable sludge by the amp, which was virtually impossible to play in time to. We started each song where we thought was right place and hoped that we'd end at roughly the same time as the recorded backing. Whether we were in time with the recording as we played, who knows? Amazingly this shambolic performance got us a rave review in a local fanzine who compared us very favourably to Throbbing Gristle (not that we had any intention of sounding even remotely like them), as well as requests from another band to do some supports - more of which later...

How to make a "boutique" pedal. 1. Find a design from the 60s or 70s and copy it. Make sure that your version uses at least one germanium transistor even if the original pedal didn't have any. 2. Make sure that one of the controls and one socket is in a completely ridiculous place. Say they need to be there in order to improve signal cross-talk from the original design. 3. Give the pedal a name that only a 13 year old boy will find amusing - ideally some kind of knob joke. 4. Give all the controls unintuitive descriptions like "spatter" or "fragrance" and write them on in a barely legible scrawl. Do not put any other markings on the controls, and if you're not using chicken head knobs then have ones without any position markers on them. 5. Pedals with three or fewer controls on them should be in huge chunky metal cases, with the controls positioned at random and in an order not consistent with the signal flow. Pedals with lots of controls should be in a case so tiny that it is virtually impossible to adjust one without inadvertently moving at least one other (also see point 2). 6. Get a five year old to do the graphics. Ideally every pedal should have a different "graphical design" even though the electronics inside are identical. 7. Charge at least £200 for it even though the parts and labour cost to make them is a fraction of that.

In what way? IIRC all the fancy wiring options were on the EB3 variants. After all there's not a lot you can change with one pickup, volume and tone controls.

in which case you over-paid by about £25.00

But it's all those original idiosyncrasies that made the Who (up to Moon's death) musically interesting. The fact that none of the instruments (apart from the vocals) are playing their traditional roles. Without that they are just another average rock band. It's more than obvious from the dullness of Townshend's solo stuff - same song writer, far less interesting music.

If I did it would be something a bit more innovative and interesting than a Fender Precision.

OK recommend me something with Pino on that you think I will like.