4000

It was indeed!

I was only saying to another band member recently how Nick Cave makes me feel like an infant in terms of lyric writing. He’s on another level entirely.

As Hellzero says, he used just the back pickup, and has stated that he turned the bass control up full on his amp. He also said that his Acoustic rig was crucial to his sound (although he recorded his first album at the very least direct), as were the Rotos - and the boat epoxy, obviously. I still have some magazines featuring interviews with him, from back in the day.

I get that. I still can’t believe I’ll never get to see Chris Squire or Lemmy again, never mind John. I’m just grateful that I got to see them at all.

Several years ago Wilko was playing near me and Norman was the bassist for the tour. I went specifically to watch him. Unfortunately when I got there he hadn't been able to make it and there was another guy standing in. I stayed for about 10 minutes and went home; sadly I was never really a fan of Wilko’s music.

We played immediately before Martin at the Acoustic Festival of Britain last year. I got to talk to him at length and had a good look at his current Ric, a ‘72 Burgundyglo 4001. The action was literally about 3 times as high as mine. It was the opposite of low! Can’t speak for his TBird as he didn’t have it with him. He was using a Hartke head and an Ashdown Mag 2x10; I helped him carry his rig onstage. I think his full rig includes an ABM head as well as the Hartke; not sure about the cabs. Have to say he was an absolute gent, extremely warm and generous and extremely funny. In fact the whole experience of chatting to him, playing, then getting to watch his (blinding) set, - Argus heavy, obviously - then chatting to him some more, was my most memorable gigging experience ever. I just wish I hadn’t been quite so embarrassing a fanboy! Got him to sign my Warwick Alien, which I used for the gig. Watching him made me feel a lot better about my style too, which is very similar.

I use a Squire/Glover-esque sound and can easily obtain it using a One10. My amps are Tech 21 VT500. But I’ve always eq-d fairly heavily. I generally dislike tweeters and prefer to eq in the highs. I always find tweeters add a brittleness that I don’t like. Of course YMMV.

Strangely I’ve never seen The Stranglers. I missed the classic line up and kind of feel about them like I feel about the classic Motörhead lineup; anything else just isn’t the same. Maybe one day. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Hawkwind far more times than anyone else, although I haven’t seen them since Brixton Hawkfest several years ago when Lemmy played.

I seem to recall that the always calm Mr Blackmore said he considered hitting him round the head with his guitar when he had it cut. 😂 An interesting thing about music, like many other things, is you tend to remember the good and forget the bad. On the way to a gig recently we were listening to the top 20 on the radio from that same week in both 1974 and 1984. We cheered at 1974, but in reality it was awful. Loads of really bad soul/r&b that I’d completely forgotten, and have now forgotten again. The only decent things were Queen - head and shoulders above anything else - and David Essex. It wasn’t what I’d remembered 1974 being like at all. For balance, 1984 was possibly marginally worse. 😉

Fotheringay live in Rotterdam.

I try to avoid pics these days, but I’ll let this one go:

They also misspelled the first word. 😂 EDIT: ok, this filter is wearing thin!

John Otway played at the Acoustic Festival of Britain last year, the day after we did our first slot. I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed as much. Comedy gold.

One problem is where a drummer isn’t really aware of the parts the other members of the band have to play/sing, and the feel of those parts (e.g. in the example above the singer not being able to fit the words in). The more au fait the drummer is with the music/singing, not just their drum part, the more chance you’ve got. Too many drummers IME just think about playing the drums, rather than playing the song, and it doesn’t seem to occur to them that playing the wrong tempo can make other people’s parts difficult or unworkable.

Feel free to ignore me, but speaking from experience, I would think very seriously about continuing to use basses in the 10lb region. Because eventually, given you’ve already started with back issues, they are likely to exacerbate them. Obviously my situation is somewhat different, but if I put on a 10lb bass my legs go numb and I get highly unpleasant nerve pain through my abdomen, to say nothing of other issues I won’t mention here. Trust me, you do not want to end up there; no bass on earth is worth it.

There was a time I would have told myself I loved this, as I did with stuff like Weather Report. Unfortunately I’ve realised over the years that it really does nothing for me, other than me being impressed by the bass playing. Andthese days that just isn’t enough. As with pretty much all of Jaco’s output (and a great deal of fusion generally), it just doesn’t move me in any way, shape or form. Unlike this, which really does:

Ah, I think it was new when I was procrastinating. Looks like a cracking bass either way!

I bought this about 35 yrs ago on the same day I bought the brown Stanley Clarke album. I was so excited to hear it, far more so than I was the Stanley album, which my dad talked me into buying. Ironically when I listened to them I was utterly underwhelmed by Jaco’s album and blown away by Stanley’s. I’ve listened to the album many times since and it has never gelled with me, although I do really like Okonkole y Trompa. I prefer his work with Weather Report, but to be honest, I’ve never been a particularly huge fan of his playing, although I totally respect him as a player and musician. There’s nothing wrong with not liking something you expected to. After all, everyone has different tastes. Just don’t go down the route of thinking that because you don’t like it it has no value. EDIT: unlike most, I’m not a huge fan of the Joni Mitchell stuff either, but then I’m not a massive fan of JM or Pat Metheny. Again, just not really my taste (FWIW, I am a big jazz fan).

Thing is, this was actually IN the late ‘60s and very early ‘70s!

Yep, it does seem to have a subtle chamfer. Interesting. A two tone finish sounds cool, although I do love the colour as is, but I understand re the holes. Did you get it new or did it have the holes when you got it? If it did you must have bought it after I was looking at it because it didn’t have them then.

I was always a pretty big strong guy, did loads of weights, could carry my old Trace 4x10 in one hand no problem. Then aged about 35 one of the discs in my neck went. Long story short, several more went in my spine over the years. My last MRI showed scoliosis (which I may have had from birth and which had never been noted) and spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal canal, which can become very serious). In addition I have joint hyper mobility, which means my joints sublux (partially dislocate) all the time. Something as simple as rolling over in bed can mean my shoulders sublux, or kneeling down means a knee goes. Sometimes my wrists go when I’m playing, and occasionally even my fingers, mid-song. The last two years I’ve been back in the gym because I could no longer stand what I’d become, but I have to be very careful what exercises I do. Someone above mentioned squats and deadlifts; I can no longer do either. You probably wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with me by looking and I’m still reasonably muscular, but nothing really works properly anymore. I used to fight it and try and do the normal stuff I used to do, but over the years I’ve learnt the foolishness of that. I never play standing for more than a few minutes now (usually to pop out front at soundchecks); thankfully as an acoustic band it doesn’t really matter. I can certainly see a time when I have to go very light bass-wise and probably headless too, simply to make things easy to carry. You may not really wish to go light, but if it becomes a necessity, I wouldn’t advise fighting it. Besides, there are great sounding lightweight basses out there. BTW, I’m just short of 56.

Nah, nothing so specific. But there were probably way fewer makes and possibly gauges available then.

Yeah, Jaco used them too.

Well our iMac just died and any pictures are on there, although we’re hoping to recover them in the next few days. Yes, at the time I bought it I used it as my main bass in my band, which was a power pop thing. It sounded great IMO, although it could be a bit of a bear when playing very fast runs, as all 8s are.The strings it came with were quite light in the E and possibly A IIRC; think the E was a 90. The G was a 45. When I sold it it had a 45-105 Roto 8 string set on it, but it didn’t like those anywhere near as much as the Ric strings.