peteb

The thing is, the more gigs you do, the more you know what the risks are and what you can easily carry to ensure the gig goes without any undue hassle. For example, I always carry a spare strap with straplocks and another cheap strap without. This is because a couple of times other people have had a disaster with a strap, or we have wanted someone to sit in on a gig and having a spare guitar strap to hand has saved the day. The reason I carry a box of batteries is that it is cheaper to buy a box of top quality procell batteries than it is to buy 3 or 4 ordinary duracells. If anyone else has forgotten to bring a battery then its no issue, nor do I have to remember to pop to the supermarket to buy an overpriced pack of batteries every time I have a gig and have had to change one.

As guitar players often do. If you ever play with one who uses a Floyd Rose you will want them to bring at least two spare guitars! To me, if you are travelling in a van or your own car, then its a no-brainer to chuck in a spare bass. If you are sharing transport or getting taxis, etc, or if you are playing festivals where you can always borrow a spare in an emergency and there may be an issue keeping track of gear then, sometimes you just have to rely of taking the one bass.

Not long actually. Active basses tend to work at full power then go very suddenly. I do change batteries long before I really need to. Boxes of industrial quality Duracell 9v batteries are pretty cheap on eBay.

Don't get me wrong, there are times that I only take a passive Fender to a gig. But usually I will take a spare, especially the big gigs. I've only needed the spare four times in 40 years, but that has included two of the biggest gigs that I have ever played!

If someone like @casapete brings a spare bass, then perhaps you should at least consider it too.

Changing a battery is not big deal, but it is not so easy to sort a jack socket failing or a more general wiring issue. As I said, four times in 40 years, but a couple of those were among the biggest gigs that I've ever played! When I first started gigging, I just had a P bass. When I first joined a band that really gigged a lot, a condition of them asking me to join was that I got a spare bass.

One spare 9V battery?? I always have a box of Duracell 9v batteries in my gigbag and another in my spares box!

You can't say it won't happen to you, because if you do enough gigs then eventually it will. Having said that, if I find myself obliged to take just one bass then I will bring a passive.

I even bring at least two spare tee shirts to the gig! This has come in use when the drummer spilt something on himself and had to borrow one to do the gig in...!

Yes, they all bring spares

For most gigs that is pretty much what I do. There are a few gigs where it is impractical to take all the spares you would like and you end up just taking one bass, but there is no way I would play a big gig without a spare of virtually everything. The last time I needed to use my spare bass was at at a big bike rally to 2,500 punters (somewhat bigger than the average crowd that I play to these days - it's always the big gigs where something goes wrong). Middle band out of three on the bill, no soundcheck as the headline band had turned up late then took forever doing their soundcheck, went on stage to find no sound from the bass (it turned out to be a wire that had come loose when changing a battery - £5 job to repair, but needed a soldering iron). I pulled the spare bass out of my gigbag and no one knew that there was an issue. So what would you have done if your bass had gone down in front of 2,500 punters??

I’ve been gigging for 43 years now and in all that time I’ve needed a spare amp or a spare bass four times each. Obviously, these have included some of the biggest and most important gigs I have ever done (including having to use my spare bass in the gig with the biggest audience I’ve played to the past fifteen years – the drummer didn’t even realise I had used the spare until he saw the video later). Fortunately, I’ve nearly always carried a spare bass unless there is a reason that makes it completely impractical. Carrying a spare amp is less practical, but I generally have had one to hand. These days I carry a DI and one of those Trace Elliot micro amps in my gigbag. It isn’t really loud enough for proper gig volumes, but it sounds OK and will get you out of trouble if disaster strikes…

I'm not so sure. There are lots of people who are sick of watching Netflicks and are itching to be in a pub with other humans. It could well be like 100 years ago after the Spanish Flu, when people flocked to live entertainment throughout the twenties. The massive demand for the festivals being announced seems to suggest that this is possible. Against that, you have pubs and other venues closing down and the real possibility of a long period of flirting with recession. The truth is that no one really knows how it will pan out. I suspect that there may well be a downward pressure of fees for bands, even if there are gigs going ahead. I was reasonably optimistic when they announced a pretty sensible roadmap of easing the pandemic restrictions following a vaccination programme that seems to be working out pretty well. But the idea of large-scale festivals with tens of thousands of punters going ahead in the summer is a case of much too much, much too soon. I’m hearing rumours of these festivals having potentially serious issues with getting insurance. I saw something on Facebook that said, ‘we’re going from two people staying six feet away from each to six people sharing a two man tent, sharing some dodgy coke they’ve just bought from a complete stranger’. For me, such large scale events should be at least a year away, when we have more idea of what the long term rates of infection are and have a better idea of what the ‘new normal’ will look like.

Back in lockdown by October then

I'm not really into this type of music, but I always thought that this was a cool track (feat. the Great Durga McBroom)

I agree. I'm not sure how comfortable I would be in a pub in the summer full of people dancing and singing, even though I am looking forward to seeing friends again in the flesh. Also, I can't see how pubs will make promoting live music financially viable while social distancing measures are in place.

I'm sure that others will be getting gigs in from June onwards, but not if they play ticketed events in clubs. I'm sure that if I had a pub band rehearsed up then I might be playing a bit before then. Who's being patronising? All I'm saying is don't get too carried away and think that everything will be back to normal straight away.

Try not to get over-excited. Pubs won't be opening properly (i.e. indoors) until 17 May at the earliest, but even then with social distancing in place and no groups of more than six. That will rule out any gig I'm likely to do. Restrictions will be lifted and clubs, etc will open on 21 June (again, at the earliest). We've just had an online chat and reckon that we will probably be getting gigs in the diary around September or so. Still, positive news and a bit of hope that things will (hopefully) be getting better reasonably soon...

I used to have all three of those in a box of singles that went missing, presumably in one of my many house moves in my 30s. I know a guy who deals in secondhand records (specialises a bit in NWOBHM stuff) and he reckons that they would all have been worth a fair few quid. He couldn't believe that I had somehow managed to lose them...!

Anyway, enough about Def Leppard already! I just thought that anyone into NWOBHM should appreciate their role in creating the scene and what they went on to do afterwards. You don't necessarily have to like them to acknowledge their achievements. I agree with you about Coverdale – one of my favourite singers with a superb voice, which he ruined by singing in the wrong register and trying to sound like Vince f***in’ Neil…!

Well, Joe Elliott is no Steve Perry that’s for certain – but then again, neither is Phil Mogg. Even DLR wasn’t the greatest singer around by any means (especially live) and he fronted my favourite band ever! To be fair, Bruce isn’t exactly a Myles Kennedy or a Seb Bach. What Elliott does have is a pretty impressive rock / pop sensibility and can draw on lots of influences (from Bowie / Mott to Aerosmith to way beyond). He knows his music and it shows in the writing. The ironic thing is that DL now have two industrial grade, top notch lead guitarists who are content to layer rhythm guitar parts and little melodic lead guitar motifs, hardly ever really letting rip. Maiden on the other hand have a big three guitar metal guitar attack, without remotely matching the potential fire power of Phil Collen and Viv Campbell. I don’t really want to go too far down the rabbit hole of defending DL – my tastes generally run to more soulful, more blues based hard rock and they are by no means one of my favourite bands. I just thought that they made a few good records, captured a moment of 80s rock and were deservedly successful doing so.

Actually, I didn't mind Bushell's writing on rock stuff, once he got over telling everybody how working class he was and relating everything to Punk...!

I thought that Barton did a review of a Def Leppard gig in a Sheffield WMC one week, with the review of the Soundhouse gig a week later (but it could have been the other way round). I seem to remember Barton first using the term NWOBHM in the Leppard review, but again it could have been the other way round. The Soundhouse was actually in Kingsbury, NW London.

Dunno, don't care... I would hate to dispel any illusions you may have, but there are plenty of far better bass players than Rick Savage who haven't played on albums that they are credited on (it has even happened to me, not that I'm particularly claiming to be a better player than Sav). It's not that he's Billy Sheehan or anything, where recording is performance rather than songs based. TBF, I haven't heard that Sav didn't play on DL albums, but regardless, all he would be doing is putting 8s up on a grid and then copy and paste. I'm not a Maiden fan (at all), but you have to respect the fanatical following that they have built up. But the bottom line for me is are the songs / records any good and I would rather listen to Hysteria than any Maiden album.