tony_m

Just relieved Gerry of his 1 Spot combo pack. Nice easy transaction with spot-on comms throughout, item in perfect condition and received the day after posting. Another excellent BC deal, thanks Gerry! 👍

Warning: Long post! TL;DR It was an interesting night... So, a friend of Mr Rhythm Guitar had decided that our Country-fried Rock & Blues combo would be the ideal entertainment for a relatives' 80th birthday bash, to be held at a small "Gin Bar & Cocktail House" in Louth where they describe themselves as "Curators of Good Times". Okaaayyyyy... 5:30pm We all arrive, and are informed by the Friendly Lass In Charge that we can park in the large side entry outside the fire door, and load-in through there. Awesome. 6:00pm Friendly Lass In Charge returns while we're setting up, and informs us that she's had it in the neck from the landlord (who's not actually on-site) and he won't let us park in the side entry after all, so we need to move our vehicles to the public car park 200yds down the road, the wrong way round the one-way system. 6:15pm We finish setting up, and all do a lap of the one-way system to the approved car park, with vehicles full of empty guitar and drum cases etc. as there's nowhere to store them at the venue. 6:45pm Friendly Lass In Charge returns again just as we're about to soundcheck, and asks how long we'll be playing for - apparently the landlord now has concerns about noise and wants us to finish at 9pm, despite us being quieter than the piped music blaring out around the place. We explain that we normally do two sets, one 45m and the other 1hr 15m, which isn't really going to meet his 9pm deadline as the bash doesn't officially start until 7:30pm. We soundcheck, and prove to FLIC that we're not really Metallica in disguise. FLIC goes away seemingly satisfied. I am slightly less satisfied, as every time I play a C, it booms out far louder than any other notes, and no amount of EQ tweaking will cure it. I resolve to pluck any C's more gently, and see how we get on. Why do so many of our tunes have so many C's in them? 7:45pm We launch into "Green River" to a few interested folks, a few more less-interested folks, and a number of small kiddiewonks running around with balloons. 8:10pm My monitor (which worked perfectly at rehearsal on Thursday) starts crackling horribly. Hitting it doesn't help, so we turn it off and me and Mr Drums both work off his. 8:30pm Set 1 ends to applause and more than a few complimentary comments from those who've stayed in the function room with us. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is going on loudly in the front room of the venue. 9:00pm As nobody has come to tell us we can't, we launch into "Call Me The Breeze", to the same interested folks as before plus a few new ones. 9:15pm Mr Drums' monitor (which worked perfectly at rehearsal on Thursday) starts crackling horribly and peaking out. We turn it down, which seems to cure the crackling, but Mr Drums can now no longer hear his electronic kit properly so plays the rest of the night by feel (aka "Hit And Hope"). 10:00pm As "King of the New York Streets" reaches its climactic ending, Grumpy Bloke who has seemingly replaced Friendly Lass In Charge taps Mr Rhythm Guitar on the shoulder and tells him we need to wrap things up. We launch into "Bad Moon Rising" by way of wrapping things up. 30 seconds later, Grumpy Bloke reappears and through the medium of mime informs us we need to wrap things up NOW or else!!! 10:03pm We do indeed wrap things up, to the apparent disappointment of the folks watching. 10:20pm We start breaking down, only to discover that the miserable beggars have closed and locked the barrier into the side entry, so having retrieved our vehicles and cases etc. we end up trying not to block the narrow street outside while loading-out, surrounded by inebriated Louthians, and accompanied by the sound of breaking bottles. 11:45pm Home! On the plus side, we had a good number of folks dancing through our Mary Jane's Last Dance / Roadhouse Blues / Walking By Myself section, and I enjoyed an odd feeling of detachment throughout the gig as though someone else was doing the playing while I was just watching on, and apart from a couple of small glitches when my mind drifted a bit too far off course, everything just seemed to flow beautifully. Oh, and we did get paid... 😃

If I'm listening to music, then I do tend to pay equal attention to the words and the music, but if I'm playing then normally I'm just following the rhythm of the vocal (treating it as another instrument, I guess) and listening out for the occasional stand-out phrase which signifies something's about to happen / change.

We've got a VW Caddy Maxi - similar to other MPVs, big oblong load space with the back seats folded up, and nice level access at the rear so one doesn't have to lift anything over a lip / any bodywork. Even with most of the space permanently occupied by a metal crate large enough to hold two Standard Poodles, I can still fit my gear in easily enough, although we do have to remove the aforementioned crate if we ever need to carry anything larger / messier / more unwieldy.

Similar to @BassAdder27, I'm fortunate to have joined a band which suits me to a tee. We're all in our 60s, and while this is my first gigging band, the others have all done their time playing the pub circuit, and simply aren't interested in doing that any more, or replicating what umpteen other bands in the area play. As it is, the response to our first three gigs so far (all in local village halls) has been encouraging, likewise the comments we've received on social media. We are spreading our wings and doing a couple of pub gigs in the next month or so, so we'll see how they go, but as far as we're concerned, they're not make-or-break - if they don't work out, we'll just stick to our Local Shows for Local People and doing bits of recording etc. for our own pleasure.

Friday night saw the 3rd gig with the new band, and a return to the village hall we played at in December. Once again our frontman and guitarists were down on the dancefloor, while myself and Mr Drums were up on the stage (thankfully with slightly more room than last time as there's now no Christmas tree to get in the way!). After an annoyingly prolonged set-up trying to get the singer's guitars, mandolin and effects to all play nicely together, we finally got the sound we were after with five minutes to spare,and kicked off. Five songs in, and a horrible boominess erupted which I presumed it was down to me - cue much fiddling with amp and EQ settings, all to no avail. We got through to the end of the set, and then spent most of the break attempting to track down both an annoying buzz and the source of the aforementioned booming - after a degree of, erm, "percussive maintenance" on the singer's crappy old amp and equally crappy pedal board, both irritants disappeared. Mr Lead Guitar could now hear himself properly, I was back to my preferred settings, and the second set went superbly, possibly the best we've played over the course of our three gigs so far. According to various members of the audience, the sound out front was excellent despite the on-stage issues, so all's well that ends well. We'll now be spending part of our next rehearsal trying to sort out Mr Singer's gear once and for all, prior to our next gig (a charity event) in a couple of weeks' time - one suggestion involved a Viking Burial on the river behind our rehearsal shed, but I suspect that's not going to happen...

Mine certainly has over the years. Back when I started playing in the early- to mid-90s, I simply believed the bass should be bassy and thumpy, and honestly sometimes wondered what the point of the tone control on my bass was, never mind most of the EQ on the amp (and of course, I didn't have the internet / Basschat to inform me in those days!). Since then, I've meandered between bassy and thumpy to raw and twangy, but now seem to have found a happy medium of warm and full, but with enough presence to not get lost, which really seems to suit the band I'm in now (single-coil P bass, TI flats, volume not quite 100%, tone about 60%). Oddly, I do still struggle on a couple of numbers, when the combination of the vocalist's tone + one of his guitars in particular seems to mask the bass somewhat, but that's summat I / we just need to work on.

Chap up the road in Skegness (John Hayward aka Hubcap John) does an assortment of fuzz pedals, but I believe they're all intended for guitar rather than bass. https://hubcapjohn.wixsite.com/hubcapjohn/production-pedals https://www.facebook.com/hubcapjohn/

Erm... 🤔 h/t: Threatening Music Notation on Twitter https://twitter.com/ThreatNotation/status/1480529990064218116

Cheers! Definitely my #1 bass... 😎

One from our gig t'other week. No idea what the song was, but it obviously required a lot of concentration! 🤣

Second (and last) date of the Rascallion Village Hall Tour 2021 last night. Interesting setup - the folks at the hall had said they'd be removing the DJ desk for the night, but then decided it was too much hassle in between Friday night's regular "village pub" event and Sunday's Christmas Dinner, so we ended up with me and Mr Drums on the stage, and the other three down on the dancefloor, which made for occasionally interesting inter-band communications. Also possibly the ultimate in socially-distanced gigs, with us at one end of the hall, and the small but perfectly-formed audience seated at tables at the far end. Anyway, despite a few minor "incidents", with final choruses omitted, extended codas added where there shouldn't be any, and somebody down the front starting at least one song before everybody was ready - cue much scurrying to catch up - we got away with it, and the audience enjoyed themselves and were *very* complimentary at the end. On the strength of last night we've been booked for the hall booking fella's birthday bash in February plus the promise of four more dates through 2022, and also a slot at a local outdoor festival in July, so it presumably can't have been as bad as it occasionally felt from where we were sitting!!! 😎

Yeah, when I was first looking after we'd moved over here I'd wondered about Newark (and Lincoln itself). Then I discovered just how shocking the road system and surfaces are over here, and how long it can take to get not-really-very-far-at-all, so decided to limit my search to the coastal strip. It's taken a while and a number of false starts, but hopefully things have all fallen nicely into place with this little combo. As for Gainsborough, that's one of the places we've still never visited despite being over here for five years now - my Better Half's daughter and her partner are old-time folk / Americana players, and attended the "Friends of American Old Time Music and Dance" festival held at a school there last year, but that's as far as my knowledge of music in Gainsborough goes!

Hmm, don't know how to describe it really! I'm originally from Blackpool, so Skeg's a bit like stepping back in time 20 or so years! As far as live music goes, there seem to be enough classic rock / indie / pop covers bands to go around and do the "lively boozer" scene - the rest of the guys have all been in umpteen bands over the years and don't want to get involved in that any more, so we thought we'd aim for the more music-oriented pubs (I'm not yet totally au fait with the area, but think there's a couple in Louth and one in Horncastle for starters) and local festivals etc. Well, it's either that, or we stick to the village hall circuit, where at least there's a chance they'll feed us on the night... 😆

Thank you! Hopefully there'll be more to come from future events. 🙂

Couple of weeks ago now (19th November), first gig for the new band, and actually my first ever gig other than a few open mics. Nothing major, just a fund-raising evening at a local village hall which we did for free, but guess we've all got to start somewhere! Got through the evening with no major foul-ups, the audience enjoyed it, and we got lots of compliments afterwards, which was nice. Next gig on the 2021 Village Hall Tour is the weekend before Christmas, then we're booked for a private event in March 2022, but hopefully we'll get more gigs as word gets around. Onwards and upwards! 😎 https://fb.watch/9JPwI3N4wk/

Not a live album as such, but a mixing desk tape I've got of Rose Tattoo at Liverpool Warehouse, 1981. Mr Anderson lives up to his name... "Is it loud enough? It's OK, you paid to get in, you can complain. Is it loud enough for ya? I didn't think so... TURN THE FAAACKIN' THING UP!!!"

Good point, very well made! 🤣

Just reading through other people's experiences, looks like I've been luckier than most. Over the past five years, I've been in a number of false-starts which never went anywhere. Then a local bunch, who've all been in umpteen bands before and most recently were playing as an electro-acoustic trio + drum machine, advertised for a percussionist to fill out their sound once things kicked off again post-lockdown. Having found a suitable candidate, they then decided to go down the full rhythm section route so added a bass player they knew from a previous band. Sadly, said bass player fell seriously ill and passed away in a matter of weeks, but the drummer knew me from one of my previous false-starts so put my name forward, and the rest is history. So far we've managed a few rehearsals including a bit of recording, and things are going well. Unfortunately the festival at which we were scheduled to make our debut got cancelled, and the only gig we've got booked so far isn't until March 2022, but hey-ho. At least we're having fun getting a couple of sets of country-blues-rock covers together. Best bit is, the drummer has converted an old chicken shed into a tidy rehearsal studio, so we're fully self-contained and independent of any other facilities and the associated costs etc. Now, if we could just get the timing of the break-down in "Guitar Town" sorted... 🤪

Really sorry to hear this. All the best for the future. 👍

Reckon the original ad will be long gone now as it was back in 2008 when I first joined BC, but my persistent nightmare is the Fender Japan '65 Jazz Reissue, Oly White with matching headstock, tort guard, dot and bound neck, which IIRC was being sold by somebody in Scotland, asking price £450. I really should have bought it, and to this day regret not doing so... 😭

Yep, The Real People supporting Ocean Colour Scene at Blackpool Empress Ballroom. Watched TRP, stayed for the first couple of numbers from OCS, then went to the pub to meet my mates and play cards.

Haha, sadly the Keith Ferguson Tribute Throw went to the Great Home Furnisher in The Sky a few years ago... 😞

I won't be letting my mid '90s MIJ '51 Precision Reissue go anywhere anytime soon. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary maybe, but it just has the look, the feel, and the sound for me...