peteb

I'm a little bit tempted by a Kala uke bass, but my problem is that I had an Ashbory for a short while and it was horrible - never stayed in tune, strings were awful, nice idea but just unusable! Is the Kala any better??

Hardly a sham. The OP has had a year improving his playing and making contacts, as well as acquiring pro quality gear. All of this will put him in good stead for future musical endeavours. Very few non-famous musicians make 100% of their living from purely playing music these days and many of those who do live on a combination of beans on toast and fresh air. Start teaching, find an income stream you can freelance at and generally embrace the gig economy whilst furthering your musical career. I've just joined a tribute band and we have had a fair bit of contact with the main band. Their bass player even has a second career (as a freelance photographer) when he isn't doing music based gigs.

That's f**kin obvious...

Dude, who knows?? I suspect that cetera may be a bit old to be part of my potential offspring, but the thing is that I have been around a bit and I've just got a clue how it works...

I remember working on the stage crew on a gig where there was a pretty good band from Newcastle that had a similar bass player i.e. had lost the use of his right arm.

I can answer that one. Without people like cetera, i.e. who can actually play and know how to put a band / show together then the music scene at the medium size club / better pub level would die and people would stop going to watch live music all together, apart from the big production pop acts and the occasional band that could still manage to tour…

Nah, it just occurred to me he may be that sort of person. Really, why would anyone start a post beaching about bass players to take their hands off the neck?

The point is if you are putting on a rock show there needs to be an element of ‘show’. Therefore, you should try to develop some degree of stagecraft. This may include the singer being able to engage with the audience, the band making eye contact with punters, the guitar (or bass) player throwing a few shapes, the drummer twirling the odd drum stick, or even, the bass player taking his hand off the neck when it doesn’t need to be there. I think that the pretext of the OP is that he doesn’t like anyone who is a better player than him or has a better command of stagecraft. I suspect this goes far beyond bass playing and he also probably hates anyone who has a bigger car or eats olives, etc.

Anyone know how much the 400w version costs in the UK??

Pretty much what I was going to say! FFS what an inane topic for a thread...

Interesting video from Stewart Copeland (in conversation with Terry Bozzio and Chad Smith), saying that there are two types of musicians; musicians of the eye and musicians of the ear. I'm not saying that I agree 100% with this view (there are guys who are both), but I think that he is more on the money than not...

Nice little solo piece

I had a sort of similar experience at Bass Direct, with a slightly different outcome. I had gone down to BD to pick up some parts for a pedalboard I was putting together. Whilst I was there, I picked up an Xotic jazz bass in natural and just noodled for a bit, then asked to plug it in I was starting to think that it was the best jazz bass I had ever played when Mark shouted across the room (it was quite busy) 'if you fancy buying it today you can have it for £2k' (a couple of hundred quid or so off). I just said that I had only come down for £70 of bits and pieces, not for a 2 grand bass. However driving home, I started to regret not just getting my credit card out and buying it there and then. I decided that I would save up a bit of gig money and look for a secondhand one in six months time, preferably in black cherry with a maple neck. Of course, as luck would have it, exactly such a bass come up on the BC For Sale forum a couple of weeks later. It ended up costing me two nice jazz basses (a Mayones Jabba and a Nash 63 relic) and about £100 in cash. That was a few years ago and it’s been my go-to bass ever since, done maybe 200 gigs or so, and is the best bass I’ve ever owned (and I have had a few good ones in my time) …

Wonder if it was us?? If he's got the right gear (and preferably spent the 80s / 90s playing in hard rock bands) it should be easy enough for him to just play it - it was meat & drink to the guy I used to play with...

Guitar with a Floyd Rose, hit the appropriate harmonics then pull the (floating) bar up - that's how an old band of mine used to do it...!

I would say that even if you are a 'root note' player (which I am a lot of the time in some of the bands that I play with) you still need to know what a scale is and how chords are put together, basic harmony, etc. It amasses me that there are people on what is supposed to be a musician’s forum who can’t see the benefits of knowing and being able to play scales – where do they think the notes that make up tunes come from??

That's not entirely true. Sting gets the sole credit for 'his' songs, but Summers and Copeland get points on the publishing to recognise their contribution to the popularity of the Police's ditties...

It's in the set...!

A mate of mine in the North East deps a lot for a Free / Bad Company tribute up there. I keep telling him that could possibly be my ideal gig...!

That's great - there seems to be plenty of Magnum fans out there (more than I imagined anyway). We be out gigging with a full set from June, with the first support gig on 30 March in Rotherham. I think that we will (hopefully) get around a bit, but mainly playing in the north of England and the midlands. If you want to keep track of us, the band is called 'A Storyteller's Night' and the website can be found at on https://www.storytellers-night.co.uk/ and of course you can find us on Facebook as well. There are a few clips from the (very) early rehearsals on the Facebook page.

Yep - Curlers Arms supporting Backstreet Thunder

Well, I'm expecting that we may get around a bit - there's talk of gigs all over the place. Whether we get down to South Essex is another thing, but you never know (I have done gigs on the Kentish coast before now)!

We are based around Leeds and surrounding areas. Let me know if you can make it to a gig once we get up and running and I will make sure we can meet up and I can introduce you to the guys. The band is called 'A Storyteller's Night' and the first gig is in Rotherham on 30 March. The website can be found at on https://www.storytellers-night.co.uk/ and of course you can find us on Facebook as well. There are a few clips from (very) early rehearsals on the Facebook page if you're interested.

I have already been surprised at the interest in the band. I was very much part of 'the rock fraternity', but to be honest they kinda passed me by. It has been cool to hear all these great songs that I hadn't really listened to that much. They are a bit of a cult band, not really massive, but with an obviously sizeable and dedicated following…

I’ve just joined a Magnum tribute band, which hasn’t done a gig yet but still getting a load of interest. Great players with an excellent singer and a keys player who has a bit of history with the original band (played / wrote on the singer’s first solo album), so all pretty exciting and can’t wait to start gigging. The main issue we’ve had so far seems to be to ensure that we avoid copyright issues with the merch / website, etc. We have had a few messages of support passed on from the main band (as well as advice on copyright), which is really good of them. It is a bit of a strange one for me as it was never a band that I really listened to and a bit of a bizarre thing to get a text message out of the blue asking me to join. I have a couple of friends who were in a Foo Fighters tribute that did make decent money and years ago I was asked to join a U2 band that did really well, but I doubt that Magnum is a tribute that will make big money – it is probably a bit too much of a niche band for that – but still seems to have enough fans out there to be viable. Hopefully it will help to raise my profile again as well as get to play decent size gigs, so who knows where it might lead to? So far, it’s all good…