BigRedX

If you prefer the 4-string then go for it. Personally I've never got on with down-tuning strings. They always feel too floppy (I'm the person who has a guitar with an extra heavy bottom string permanently set up just for drop D tuning). And I don't think I could go back, I'd been playing 4-string bass for less than ten years before I got my first 5-string and that is almost 35 years ago now. But I'm not you so do what you think is best.

It very much depends on what you play. I play 5-string in one band where I go all the way down to low B on a couple of songs and makes a handful of others easier to play. In the other band I play Bass VI (6-string tuned an octave down from the guitar) where I alternate bass and melody parts with the synth player. For me the extra strings very much earn their keep at the moment. On the other hand I've played in several bands where I could have done everything on a 2-string bass tuned E and A. I actually took my 1-string fretless bass to a rehearsal for the Dad Rock covers band once and found that the fact it was fretless was a bigger stumbling block to playing the bass lines than the fact it only had a single string. If you are comfortable playing the 5-string why change?

For all of these types of instruments, Cheesy Guitars is an invaluable source of information. Here's the page for the Kermona "Gibson" Bass.

I used to try a keep everything, posters, flyers, stage passes, reviews etc. but every time I moved or had a bit of clear out some of it would get inadvertently lost or chucked. I have managed to keep copies of all the physical releases for all my bands over the past 45 years. That's 13 compact cassettes, two 7" singles, one album on 12" vinyl, and 17 CDs. The best archive I have is for my 80s synth pop/rock band where we kept a scrap book, although it's at least one third record company rejection letters. Some of them are quite amusing like the cassette cover sent to ZTT returned with a "message" from FGTH scrawled on to it and an apologetic note from the label! Also we recorded nearly all our gigs, plus we had a friend who was a professional photographer who would shoot a roll of film (remember actual film?) each time we played. It still have a box full of contact sheets and negatives that I need to digitise. Unfortunately the best gig we played - on the main stage at Rock City - where he shot a whole roll of colour transparency film has disappeared. Even digital media has its disadvantages. I never bothered keeping physical copies of any of the posters and flyers I produced in the 90s because I had the original Quark XPress files for them. Of course I haven't used XPress for over 15 years now and can no longer access any of these. On the other hand thanks to Facebook and other social media I have almost 100GB saved of photos, radio broadcasts and on-line reviews for The Terrortones.

I did this in the mid 90s. Our singer quit the band the week before we were due to send the master tapes and artwork off to have our debut single pressed, as the band all had jobs with a decent amount of disposable income we decided we'd advertise for a replacement in NME and Melody Maker with a one-column display ad. Now if you think that there's some weirdos on JMB, that's nothing compared with the ones hoping for fame and fortune in a band that was obviously ambitious enough to advertise in the weekly "inkys"! I wish I'd kept all the letters/photos/tapes that we received as some of them were absolutely hilarious. On the other hand we did nearly end up with the daughter of a very famous rock musician as our singer (unfortunately despite the fact that she was great, she wasn't impressed with our music as she had been with the ad to want to join). In the end our replacement singer came from an ad placed in the local record shop...

Saturday with Hurtsfall at the Victoria Biker's Pub in Coalville. Second day of a two day Goth festival. Things were a bit chaotic when we arrived, two bands had dropped out - one cancelling with Covid, the other simply hadn't turned up and hadn't been in touch to say they were going to be late. For a moment it looked as though we were going to bumped to the less impressive looking outdoor stage, but in the end we played inside. After seeing the opening band have a really weedy sound that was all live instruments and almost no audible backing, I told the sound engineer that out backing should be treated like a real drummer and not a rhythm box and they didn't disappoint! Plenty of people dancing from the off and we made a load of new fans and sold CDs and T-shirts. Enjoyed all the bands especially Glass House Museum, She Made Me Do It with ex-Rachel Stamp guitarist Will Crewdson, and finally the mighty Auger. The night ended with a complete power failure on stage - sound and lights - during Auger's final song. Luckily it was "Oxygen" which most of us knew so we did a band and audience A cappella (with drums) version to the end. Obligatory photo of the gig: Next gig is in two week's time at the O2 Academy in Sheffield as part of the HRH Goth weekend.

I sound very much the same from a tone PoV whether I use pick or fingers, but that might be because I've pretty much worn my fingerprints off my right hand from 30 years of playing and when I use a pick it's a heavy but flexible nylon Herco Flex75. What is different though is the feel especially on eighth note passages where using fingers will make the bass line swing far more than if I play with a pick which is different again depending on whether it's all down strokes, all up strokes or alternating up and down strokes. So for me the difference between pick and fingers is mostly how I want the timing feel rather than the sound.

You know this site counts as social media don't you?

I never take my phone to gigs where I'm in the audience. I'd be worried that it would get lost/stolen/broken and therefore it just gets in the way of me having a good time. For gigs where I'm playing it spends most of it's time in my bag in the dressing room buried under a pile of equipment cases. I keep meaning to take some photos of the stage setup for the more impressive gigs but most of the time I'm too caught up in the moment of the gig to remember.

One band I'm in tend to be very selective about what they post while the other is putting stuff up on Facebook almost every day. Some of it isn't as "professional" as I would like (that's the graphic designer in me coming out) but as a result of all this posting my "newer" band are getting lots of great gigs and increased interest in our current single, so it must be working. My personal Facebook page is a mixture of publicity for my bands' gigs and recordings, mixed in with random stuff my girlfriend tags me in. I rarely post anything personal, and if I do it is almost all music orientated. As a result (mostly after I'd posted up a pretty professional looking music video for one of my bands) I have had a few people from my past ask me if I'm now a full time musician! It was a little disappointing to have to tell them otherwise.

As others have said the more prep work you can do yourself, the more "cost effective" it will be. If you're hoping to give someone a body with the existing finish still on (I assume it's just the body otherwise it's going to get very expensive) and get it back with a new colour then you are looking at something that will be fairly time consuming and therefore costly. Removing the old finish especially a poly one is hard work and you'll be charged accordingly.

Excellent stuff! I see from Bandcamp there's going to be a limited edition CD. Do you have a release date yet?

It's rather good isn't it?

Hurtsfall are playing Saturday 16th September at the Gothic Gathering at The Victoria Biker's Pub in Coalville. The stage times have changed slightly since the final line-up was announced. The new Saturday schedule is: DJ - 1:30 ish 11.00 finish - AUGER - 9:55 -10:35 - SHE MADE ME DO IT 9:10 -9:55 - CHAOS BLEAK 8:20 9.05 - THE GLASS HOUSE MUSEUM 8:00 - 8:20 stage break 7:20 - 8:00 - HURTSFALL 6:30 - 7:15 - SIOUXIE SUICIDE 5:50 - 6:25 - MARYS HIDDEN LIGHT 5:00 - 5:45 - WEST WICKHAMS 4:00 - 5:00 a very Gothic Burlesque party DJ 3:00 - 4:00

Just a quick reminder that Hurtsfall are playing tomorrow at the Gothic Gathering at The Victoria Biker's Pub in Coalville. The stage times have changed slightly since the final line-up was announced. The new Saturday schedule is: DJ - 1:30 ish 11.00 finish - AUGER - 9:55 -10:35 - SHE MADE ME DO IT 9:10 -9:55 - CHAOS BLEAK 8:20 9.05 - THE GLASS HOUSE MUSEUM 8:00 - 8:20 stage break 7:20 - 8:00 - HURTSFALL 6:30 - 7:15 - SIOUXIE SUICIDE 5:50 - 6:25 - MARYS HIDDEN LIGHT 5:00 - 5:45 - WEST WICKHAMS 4:00 - 5:00 a very Gothic Burlesque party DJ 3:00 - 4:00

It is. Although you might be able to get away with making the live room of a venue a huge Faraday cage.

I also suppose it depends on what sorts of gigs you go to. It's almost 10 years since I was last at an all-seated gig and IMO the requirement to sit seriously killed the "vibe" and it would take a VERY special band to convince me to go to another seated gig any time soon. I suppose I'm lucky in that the majority of bands I want to see right now are on the same gigging circuit as the two bands I play in, and it will only be a matter of time before we're on the same bill and I'll get to see them for free. And other than the previously mentioned seated gig and can't remember last time I paid more than £15 to see a band, and most of the time it's a lot less.

This. Absolutely this! All of it.

Maybe if you've had a couple of million selling albums, then you can afford to try lay down the law about how your audience should behave... I realise perfectly well that at the majority of gigs I play, my band are probably not the one most people have come primarily to see, and therefore it is unrealistic for me to expect them to shut up and attentively watch/dance (as appropriate for the music I'm playing). I'll settle for them not leaving while we are on and hopefully by the end of our set we'll have made some new fans. Also at the sorts of gigs I do anyone with their phone out is just as likely to be taking photos and/or video which will be posted on social media, hopefully with a few kind words about how much they enjoyed the band, as they are to be scrolling through Facebook. Many of the live shots I post in the "How was your gig last night?" thread are courtesy of someone in our audience who happened to think the band worth worth photographing and then posting and tagging. I'm not complaining.

To me that seems like a lot of bands. In the 50 years I have been playing I've been in about 20 and that includes a few who never made it out of the rehearsal room. Plus a musical project that existed for less than 2 weeks during which time we wrote and recorded two instrumental dance tracks that we put out on a limited edition 10" white label single. The others all played at least a handful of gigs and well over half have recorded and released music for public consumption. Some of those releases were even organised and paid for by people who were not in the band. I suppose it helps that most bands I've been in were either instigated by me, or I have been responsible for composing at least half of the musical output. Also I have enough "front" to be able to get up on stage or in the recording studio playing guitar and synthesiser even though I'm not particularly good at it. I'm pretty ordinary bass player too. Like yourself I can't get into playing songs I wouldn't normally listen to for pleasure, but that doesn't seem to have ever been a problem when it came to finding bands or musicians to play with. I've been in bands with people who were my friends before we started playing in a band together and bands with "randoms" who I have met through ads in music shops, record stores and on the internet, and maybe I've been lucky but maybe also I've been sufficiently selective when it comes to choosing people to make music with. For me the least satisfying music project I have done was the dad rock covers band. It should have been great - the music I grew up with and one of the guitarists was a very good friend of mine which is how I came to know about them and had seen them play several times before I joined. Maybe I had too high expectations, or maybe it was unfortunate that my stint with the band coincided with also being in The Terrortones who were more artistically satisfying, more fun, did more gigs and made more money for seemingly a lot less effort. Maybe I've just been lucky. I'd like to think that mostly I've made my own luck.

Maybe you've just been in the wrong bands? For me over the last 20 years the band I've been in that has had the poorest audience reaction was the dad rock covers band, who should in theory have had the audience eating out of our hands. In practice for the most part all the originals bands I've been in have gone down better. The last two gigs I've done, there have been people down the front dancing from the first song and even singing along! That's all to music I've written. Maybe there are some people who don't like it. Who cares? There's plenty of people who do, and they are the ones that count. You can't please everyone and you'd be stupid to try and do so. That way leads to madness. Embrace the good, ignore the crap and get on with entertaining those who want to be entertained.

No bootlegs (that I am aware of). One of my songs was covered by the band that eventually become 13 Candles. I also had a request via GarageBand.com for the chords to a song we had on there as someone wanted to do a cover. After sending scans of the various convoluted shaped the guitarist used I never heard anything more.

Are there any other shapes available other than the vaguely J-shaped acrylic basses that have been posted recently?

In the "Sliding Doors" universe where my band got signed rather than Wham! after our single (minor) hit the next time you would have seen me would have been in the Identity Parade on Never Mind The Buzzcocks...