peteb

I had one of the early jazz bass models, which I did a lot of gigs with. It had had a slightly longer (34.5”?) scale that I thought was a great idea and gave it a really nice feel. It did come with a cheap bridge that I swapped out straight away, but a really well made bass that was great to play with a superb neck. The trouble was that somehow, I could never quite get it to sound how quite I wanted, despite changing pickups and installing an East preamp circuit, etc. I ended up moving it on and eventually getting an Xotic jazz that played just as well but sounded far better. Still, the Mayones was a great bass if you liked that sound.

Good idea! They've had to cancel. I've been asked to learn the set as they will probably need a dep for a couple of gigs in two weeks time!

Just had to turn down my first gig of the year! Just got a call @ 3:30pm from a guy I’ve been talking to about doing a band with next year, asking if I could do a last minute dep for a Led Zeppelin tribute. I would have had to finish work pretty early, jump in the shower, load the car up and drive two hours to the gig. If it had been a straight blues rock gig, I would have happily busked it.But I think that it’s a bit too much of a push for a Zepp tribute with an audience who will know every song backwards. As much as I love Zeppelin and know the catalogue, I don’t really know that many of the parts (at least all the way through). I’ve asked him to send me a setlist so I can have a listen for any deps he might need in the future. A shame though…

Actually, that P bass you've linked to does look great and at about £670 or so (probably nearer to £850 by the time you go through the rigmarole you have to import from Europe these days), it still looks pretty reasonable!

My missus is a Catering Manager at a chain of nursing homes. She has got them to use their entertainment budget to put on acoustic gigs out in the car park of some of the homes and then getting several of our friends to play to entertain the residents.

Yes, I sold an AVRI57 with the intention of looking for one of these until I got the opportunity to buy back my old 70s P bass! I don't think that you will get a better Fender P bass than the recent Am Stds unless you go vintage (and that is always hit & miss). I wasn't bowled over by the only Limelight that I've evr played, but Lakland obviously make really good passive P & J basses (in fact one of the best jazz basses I've ever played was a US Lakland).

Personally, I would look at an American Standard Precision from 2011 to about 2015 (the ones with the CS pickups). They are really nice basses and you can pick them up quite reasonably secondhand.

Just to mention that the "heavy outdoor music" was from a pub just down the road from Lidl. As far as the penalties go, the guys who took them did so because they were the best in training. Unfortunately, it was perhaps a step too far for two young lads with limited experience at that level (no such excuse for Rashford who is a regular penalty taker and has plenty of experience, he just missed - it happens). Maybe they should have left an experienced guy like Henderson on the pitch, just in case. Who knows! Whoever took them would still have had to beat the giant Donnarumma, the best goalkeeper in the tournament!

Joking aside, that’s the problem right there. The game went ahead with a crowd of 67,000 because the government is desperate to push the idea of a ‘Global Britain’ (against all evidence) and didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Brussels & Dublin, which had pulled out (the latter at the last minute due to Covid concerns). There was no way that they or UEFA were going to restrict the crowd, hang the consequences. To add to this, once it became clear the England had a chance of winning, the government was looking for a significant slice of reflected glory. Ironically, it became a PR disaster following the disgraceful scenes outside the stadium on the day and the players’ reaction to comments made by the PM and (in particular) the Home Secretary.

Cool! Unfortunately, lockdown caught my new pub covers band halfway through rehearsing up a set, so we are starting from scratch again (well not quite, but nowhere near ready to start gigging straight away). I will let you know when Sons of Robin are gigging this side of town - always entertaining! Perhaps meet up for a beer?

I'm afraid that all the bands I'm currently playing with are a touch heavier than SOR (some in a keyboardy AOR way)!

Oh Jamie & crew (the guy who sold you the Lakland)!

I'm afraid it won't be me playing locally until the end of the year at the earliest!

That is a perfectly good point. The counter to that is infections are rising exponentially and no one knows how that will play out in terms of the death rate in a few weeks time and whether this will help to create a variant that is resistant to the vaccines. I suppose that my point is why are we lifting all restrictions in one go and that (for example) surely allowing more than 67,000 people to attend a football match was criminally reckless.

Which Lidl?? I live near you and obviously went to the wrong Lidl today!!

Abso-f**king-lutely

It is indeed. Perhaps we should consider that we have been very lucky that we haven't had a pandemic for a hundred years. We also have to consider that this is the first time that we have had a worldwide pandemic with a so many people alive at the same time. I do know that a pandemic on this scale has been expected by the authorities for thirty plus years.

British exceptionalism at its finest… We're all in the same boat mate, it's not a great time...

I imagine that it will be longer than two weeks before we go back into lockdown if it all goes tits up! The thing is that at some point we have to lift restrictions, but is now the time and is completely lifting all restrictions at the same time the right thing to do? The thing is no one knows because we have never been in anything like this situation before. My worry is that this is being led by internal party politics rather than science. There is no way that I would go to a football match or a festival where there are tens of thousands of people, but perhaps meeting friends or allowing pubs / smaller venues to open up with a two hundred or so people might be the way forward.

To be fair, SRV wore his influences on his sleeve and there are plenty of other guitar players you could say that about him as well as Hendrix (Albert King, Lonnie Mack. Lightnin’ Hopkins, etc). Doesn't stop him being my all-time favourite guitar player (along with EVH), nor does it make me appreciate Hendrix or Albert King, etc any the less.

I was in a band that used to do that 25 years ago (not every time, just the occasional line to see if any punters noticed)!

Hi Albert, glad to see you on the forum. I had a quick look at your website and was interested to see that you have a red Ken Smith Burner 4 string (the original Burner series). I used to own an identical bass, which was one of only a few that I've ever come across. Yours is the only other red one that I've ever seen. I just wondered where you got yours? I had to move it on when I needed a P bass for a particular gig, which was a shame because it was a lovely bass.

I don't think that they have at all. Hopefully there might even be a bit of a bounce with punters having missed seeing bands throughout the pandemic. Let's hope that it lasts...

The pub covers band isn't ready and has to rehearse up a set / learn enough songs to play live. Most of the decent local venues are pretty booked up now, so the earliest we are realistically going to be ready is the back end of the year for any cancellations and start booking gigs for next year. The originals band will only play supports for better known bands of a similar genre, so we have to wait for those types of bands to start doing club tours again and hope that we can pick up some supports. Not sure what is happening with the Magnum tribute - we've been offered a couple of gigs but there has been a lineup change, which means quite a lot of work to rehearse it back up to the standard it was. The idea is that we are putting it on ice until next year to see if it is still viable to carry on.

That reminds me of a big rock club I played in Barrow-in-Furness in the 80s. Big room with a massive stage and plenty of punters there, but the most hostile audience I have ever played to (only rivalled by a pub gig in Egremont, just up the coast, many years later). There was a bit of heckling, minimal applause, threats to the guys doing sound and lights out front, someone unplugged the PA from the wall, etc. We played pretty well actually and even did an encore to spite them! After the show, we had to lock the singer in the dressing room for his own safety for a bit, as a few guys were making threats after he had taken the p155 out of them onstage. Once we had packed down at the end of the night, the management bought us a drink and were saying how good they thought we were. I said it was a shame that audience didn’t agree, to which they replied we were the first none local band not to get bottled off since they started putting bands on again a couple of years before. They then went to talk about all the bands who had played there (it had been a bit of a circuit gig in the 60s) and how many had been bottled off, including a few well-known bands! Sorry for the thread derail, as you were…