Sean

£300 on the floor. More than I guessed but I was out anyway.

I turned this down today when asked based on anticipated price and the fact that my mob always go for good seats, stay the night, have a good feed and a few scoops too. It gets very expensive. I conservatively calculated a £400 night out all in. £200 ticket, £200 transport, accommodation, meal out, drinks. They'll probably take the train and that'll take it up a bit. That's the price of a main dealer B Service + brake fluid change on the car. It's also going to be over a year away from buying the tickets and that seems a long time. It's also mid-March, which is when we tend to go away. I saw Rush 3 times in the past. Fabulous but not £400+ fabulous in 2027.

I have a folder with rehearsal reference recordings. The band plays a lot of the songs differently to the originals, an extra couple of bars here and there, timing changes, stops etc. Playing along to the originals is just the starting point.

I had two cheat sheets taped to the set list Saturday night. My own "shorthand" that I use. One was for the unique non-standard end section of Mr Blue Sky that the band plays and the other for One Step Beyond. Both are printed on the top quarter of an A4 sheet, cut off and taped to the set list, or back of a PA top. I've done it for years with various songs. After a few gigs they stick. However, Saturday night I had a little moment during the first bridge of Mr Brightside where I completely forgot where to put my fingers. Last non- encore song of the night, played it dozens of times over the years and rehearsed it last week without incident, then I get the "wtf moment". I probably fumbled half a bar but it felt like the world collapsing. I don't think you can mitigate much for brain farts like that. I practise until I don't get stuff wrong but sometimes we glitch.

I did my first gig with the covers band last night at The Whitmore Tap, Clifton/Redland, Bristol. It was quite stressful overall especially being the first time with a very established band. The footprint was so small and the layout so weird, we didn't have space for monitors, lights or my mic stand. I had my pedalboard on my amp and had to stand still to not hit walls, drummer and 2nd guitarist with the headstock. The pub has waist-high wooden screens that form booths and the sound was muffled everywhere. The load in/out was horrible too. No parking, yellow lines everywhere. The radiator behind us was red hot and didn't seem to respond to the valve adjustments we made. I was sweating and my fingers were slipping, more than you'd expect for a February pub gig. I told Guitarist 1 that he'd have EQ issues with his cab in a corner and guess what? No one seemed to know what time we were supposed to start, we had conflicting info from the agent/promoter and the pub and we went on in the end at 19:30. Finished up about 22:10 with a short break. 33 songs in total. That's as many as I've ever played I reckon. The punters were annoyingly all over us and wanted a go on the drums, guitar, they wanted selfies with the band, they thought it ridiculous that we don't do random requests. And of course they all stood in our way when we were packing up and unloading to the cars. It was like a greatest hits of pub gig niggles rolled into one! There were some tyre-kicking wedding enquiries that might or might not lead to decent function money but who knows? One bloke told me that my bass was the nicest Warwick he'd ever seen. Second time that's happened in the last 6 months. If you know, you know 😉. I kept my cool, did my job and went home only to find the road for last 3 miles of it was closed and I had to make a 9 mile diversion up the M5 to get home. Considering everything, I think we did well. If you can deliver the goods under those conditions, you're doing alright.

I've never liked Peach. It's my #2 least favourite retailer in the sector. Staff attitude stinks in my experience.

I saw a show last March where the Xtender failed and the bassist didn't have a spare bass. I'm not sure exactly what happened to it, my friend is in the band and explained that "...it was one of those drop tuner things you have on your basses that just fell apart on him. " I've never had an issue and check my gear all the time.

I've set one up, played it a bit and it was very good. I don’t want to get into comparisons with the Japan basses but the 235 I fettled was good and to be honest, anyone could have a career on it and be happy. I used to own a BB415, which is kind of the same but a generation earlier and that was my #2 bass for ages. Again, it was set up, fettled and made to play as well as any of my spendy basses. You can’t really go wrong with a well set up Yam at any price point. Even an expensive one is going to need some TLC “out of the box”.