peteb

Reflecting on his friendship and working with the great Jeff Porcaro

Playing a version of Black Hole Sun in fives...!!

Would love to see it - perhaps I should think about getting Netflix??

Would it help if I used less confusing adjectives like ‘sterile’ or perhaps ‘crap’?? The point that I am making is that the majority of bands using a silent stage approach in pubs do not sound very good. That is not to say that it doesn’t work in bigger venues, because it obviously does. But not at the Dog & Duck… As far as drummers goes, you are missing the point. You may be dismissive of ‘Dad Rock’, but that’s what a lot of us play and there is certainly an audience there. If you ever were to venture into that genre, you would find that any decent drummer will tend to be a reasonably heavy hitter. The challenge for them is to then vary their technique or otherwise find ways to get their levels down to work in a small venue / stage area. For example, I have seen drummers change the angle of their snare drum so that they get less rim every time they hit it. There are always compromises that you have to make when you are playing small venues. I should mention that there are plenty of perfectly good small pub gigs that I have happily done with R&B or blues bands that I would refuse to do with the louder hard rock band (despite being asked).

Haha :-) That was part of a discussion about playing a bigger venue, the point being that in pubs normally everybody can hear the onstage sound and it can sound odd if they can't...

That’s the point about the drummer – small gigs are inevitably a compromise between getting a great sound and be able to make it work in that venue. A drummer can get an awesome snare sound that sounds great to them and to a punter 30 feet away, but there are problems if he is blowing out everybody’s ears onstage and you can’t hear anything else every time he hits the damn thing. However, you do have to accept that the top rock drummers around are all big hitters (e.g. the Kenny Aronoff, Josh Freese, Deen Castronovo & Brian Tichys of this world). But you do need to find a compromise when you are playing in pubs and on small stages. You may prefer the clarity and spread of a soundless stage, but some musos (like me) and indeed many punters might prefer a more organic, ‘immediate’ sound. To take the example of my mates’ band that I mentioned above, (IMHO) it can sound more like a CD coming out of the PA rather than a live performance. It is undoubtedly different in big venues with proper stages, where only the first few rows can hear the onstage sound anyway.

Far be for me to intervene in a private argument, but just a couple of points: The first problem is that the biggest and best, fattest snare sounds occur when a decent drummer hits an ‘obnoxiously loud snare’ hard with just the right amount of rim. The trouble is that the such a snare sound risks completely overwhelming everything else in a pub gig, especially one with a small stage area. There are similar issues (to an extent) with certain guitar sounds. The trouble with these types of gigs is always finding the right compromise between getting great sounds and still having a suitable level for playing such small venues. Also, speaking purely as a punter, I would have to disagree that low onstage volume with everything coming through the PA. The problem is that pubs can have rooms of all sorts of shapes and they don’t usually have significantly raised stages, so there is often no clear demarcation between the stage and where the audience is. Different parts of the room can have different sounds and if you are stood in the wrong place then things can sound a bit strange without sound coming from the stage area to reinforce what is coming out of the PA speakers. For example, some friends of mine have a band that has completely embraced modern technology and rely totally on IEMs, electronic kit, Kempers, samples, etc. It’s not that it doesn’t sound great, it’s just that it sounds a bit unnatural in a pub (different thing in a decent club venue where it certainly does work). They laugh and say that I’m just old school, but I’m hardly the only person to have told them this. Their bass player came to see one of my bands and thought that we sounded great. He told me that he had to admit, he missed the big sound and physicality of having an amp behind him and a relatively loud stage.

Quite…! I would strongly advise the OP to ignore the last page or so of posts, just keep it simple and stick with what he is already doing. The thing is, there are several ways to get a great sound and even more ways to get it wrong. I have seen bands with loads of good gear sound awful because they don’t know to use it, as well as bands using cr*p gear sound terrible. Of course, I have also seen guys who actually know how to operate a mediocre PA system sound fine. A mate of mine (who I have played in several bands with) runs a big, well known PA hire company that works across Europe and beyond. He says that he hates having to deal with local sound engineers because the vast majority of them are useless. He reckons that most learn how to get a half decent sound from their own set-up without really understanding what they are doing. If they encounter something that they are not used to or have to use different gear, then they haven’t got a clue. What annoys him is that then they won’t listen and learn from people who know they are doing! FWIW, his preference was to keep things as simple as possible, use amps and for the band to be happy with the sound they were hearing onstage and then for the PA to reinforce that out-front. But that is not the only way to do it – it all depends on the gig, venue, band, etc. We would play pubs using £15k of Meyer Sound gear and often the only things going through the PA were the vocals, a mic in the kick and an overhead for the kit…

You are pretty unlikely to have a sound engineer in pubs and they will almost always take the DI from your amp. I do have a Radial DI box (one of those green bass bug jobs) as a belt & braces job, but it is rarely used by sound engineers. I would say that running a 500w amp (with the option of more power if needed) into a top quality 212 cab is ideal. You can always keep the master volume down and have more in reserve when you need it. Having plenty of headroom is always good. Good luck with your first run of gigging. You seem to have the right gear and approach, so I'm sure that you should be fine...

Over the years, I’ve seen one or two fights, a few pain in the a*se landlords and several times where they have booked the wrong band. This compares to hundreds of perfectly good gigs. The main issue has been perfectly well-intentioned punters putting their beer down in places where it shouldn’t be, so you have to try and make your stage area pretty much idiot proof. If you are going to play live regularly, then it generally means (for most of us) that you are going to play a fair few pubs. You take the rough with the smooth, but generally most pub gigs are great. I remember seeing Lee Sklar saying once that when he is off the road, he looks forward to playing bar gigs with his friends around town. If it’s good enough for Sklar, then it’s certainly good enough for me…

That's definitely a Fender, a couple of unidentified pickups and a mate who's got both a soldering iron and a router...!

I wouldn't have thought that Alembic would have done a bass that looked so much like a P bass. Back in the day when there wasn't so much choice in the marketplace, guys would just get a 70s Fender and keep modding it to try until it met their demands / was unique. Of course, this was when no one realised how much unmodded ones would be worth 30 years later and how much they were reducing the resale value...!

I always thought that it was a modded Fender P??

Dan Hartman started out as a member of Edgar Winter's band and then Montrose (if I remember correctly) before changing direction and becoming a leading light in the emerging disco scene. He had a big hit with Instant Replay and wrote Relight My Fire (yep, the same song that Take That covered and had a massive hit with) and co-wrote Living In America for James Brown. No idea about the wearable bass though...! Unfortunately, he died from an AIDS related illness in the early 90s.

Been a fan for years, but never seen them. I've got tickets for their tour in Holmfirth at the end of September, so here's hoping...

I'm sure that the managerial problems didn't help, but I don't think that religious strife was a big factor as it only really alienated the Christian rock market, which was hardly crucial to them. I think that their big problem was that they were just too original, which made them difficult to market them successfully. It was the 'if you knew, you knew' factor that made them a cult favourite, but didn't make it easy for them to appeal to a mass market...!

It could be argued that term 'genius' is often confused with 'virtuoso'?

Really??? I’ve got a LM3 (that I sometimes use with a Berg 410) and used to have a CMD102 combo. But I’ve also got a Mesa Boogie and the LM3 head sounds nothing like it. I haven’t used a TE rig for many years, but from I remember it sounds nothing like the MB amps that I’ve owned. Don’t get me wrong, I like MB amps (certainly prefer them to TE) and think that they always work great in a mix, although like FinnDave it took me a while to get to grips with the EQ. I would have kept the combo if I had room in the house for it – great amp. But they do have a certain sound…

I think that this is the real issue. I am not aware of any lightweight bass rig that is going to sound much like the OP's original Trace Elliot set-up

I’m afraid that I don’t agree. I would say that the list has pretty much included all of the musicians from the past last 60 years or so who have had the greatest influence on modern bass playing. Just look at the top three: No.1 James Jamerson – a highly skilled session player who isn’t a household name but played on a significant number of the most listened pop records of all time. No.2 Jaco – a virtuoso, who like Jamerson, isn’t exactly a household name but who is probably the biggest influence (along with Jamerson) on modern bass playing. No.3 Paul McCartney – certainly not a virtuoso like Jaco or JJ, but a great musician who has touched more people’s lives with his music than anybody and who is as famous as it is possible to be. These three archetypes are replicated throughout the rest of the list, but among multiple genres. Remember that it is looking at the ‘greatest’ bass players, not who is your favourite musician who happens to have a bass strapped around their neck…

The thing with Mark Bass is that the amps are pretty transparent, so it's not going to send like (for example) a SVT rig or whatever. I have used MB at various times in thepast (including that 210 combo you have) with a number of basses (including a Stingray) and they have always sounded great.

The thing is that there has always been a bit of a prevailing macho culture in musicians’ circles, which you could argue goes way back to medieval times. This is evident throughout 20th century popular music, from jazz to blues to the various forms of rock and roll. Even in classical music, there may be more females playing in orchestras but it’s certainly nowhere near 50:50 Of course, the occasional girl does come through. I can think of a few females playing successfully on the local circuit (generally bass players for some reason), but they are all happy to be ‘one of the boys’. Of course, not all girls are comfortable in that sort of culture.

I know that it's all subjective, but you genuinely can make a good case for everyone on that list (in terms of influence). If you include Tina Weymouth or someone relatively obscure like Kinga Glyk, then you are going to be accused of tokenism and you really don't want to go down that route. I suppose you could include Tal Wilkenfeld at a push. But good as she is, should she really be included in the top 100?

Top 100 ever??

The problem I have with these lists is that they claim to identify the ‘best’, rather than the most important or most influential. They have Paul McCartney as the third best bass player ever, which is a joke as he just isn’t. But the third most important / influential bass player?? Absolutely…! I know that it is all subjective, but given the above criteria, there are not many on the list I can argue with too much (even if they have ignored a few of my favourites).