Norris

It's over a year since we last played at the White Hart in Ashby de la Zouch. It's usally a really buzzing town, having at least 6 pubs within a couple of hundred yards of each other on the main road, and a constant stream of itinerant drinkers. The cold February drizzle reduced the number of young ladies wandering around in next to nothing, but didn't stop them completely 😄 So the pub was a bit quiter than normal, but a more challenging load in due to the number of cars stacked up outside the surrounding takeaway outlets, making it nigh impossible to park up outside. It's always a place where we debate if we want to carry on playing there... until we do. We had a great night, managed to retain a crowd, got so many compliments and only had one instance of a drunken dancer trying to knock the guitarist's teeth out with his mic stand. We're back there in June - the night before we play another pub in Ashby! We wouldn't normally book gigs that close, but the other pub is off the main drag and we'll be doing it acoustically, for a completely different audience, so no conflict there. Usual kit: Sire & Rumble + DMs and elderly drummer On another note, in a recent post I mentioned that I have 6 weeks off. No I don't. We have a smattering of gigs over the next month or so, but then 5 weeks off. Still, it's a bit more relaxed gigwise and I might be able to get some spannering done on my old VW camper

My P7-5 (version 2?) is lovely and comfortable. Great pre-amp. Looks fabulous in black & tort too imho. It's been my workhorse for a couple of years. More expensive basses stay at home

Plenty of gardening and spannering to do. It'll be nice to have a few weekends to myself

I've got two this weekend! ...and then about 6 weeks off while the guitarist goes on a proper tour of UK & Germany 😀

I bought a Roland PK-6 midi pedal from Ash. Great communication. It arrived promptly, well packaged and in perfect working order Thanks Ash

Vaughan Williams?

It's a few years old now, but my Roland Boss GT-6B can do pretty much any effects. They are cheap to buy used now (<£200). Obviously a lot more than just a compressor (actually a choice of several compressor emulations), but can also do that weird synthy/flangy/ring-mod/echoey sound you need for that one-off song. I mostly use mine with a "flat" pass-thru for most songs, but then on the odd song I'll use up to 4 different patches. It's also handy as a mute between sets and a tuner

My favourite noodling guitars were a Hofner violin bass and a nylon-strung classical guitar. Both of which my son took with him to university. Ah well, I guess they do belong to him 😂

Most of our "breakdowns" were actually just running out of petrol because we were too skint to put more than a fiver in at a time. We'd be running on fumes a lot of the time. The number of times I was roused from my post-gig slumbers by "Norris wake up - we've run out of petrol" doesn't bear thinking about The heater never worked so we were always freezing in winter. We had a piece of carpet that we used to put over ourselves to keep warm. Why we didn't keep a blanket or two in the van goodness only knows. Stoopid youths, eh? Then there was the night we pulled into the motorway services for fuel and the engine wouldn't start again. Then it was a ring-round of people to find someone with breakdown recovery cover to be "driving" the van. That was a long night! It turned out that a piston had blown

Absolutely when we started out. A 4th member would need to add a lot to a band to justify the others taking a hit on the pittance wages. There's also no excuse for not throwing in some backing vocals at least. Even better if you can lead a couple of songs to give the main singer a break

Did you watch it all? Screen grab just after half way, bottom right...

TV rule number 6357: Whenever there are twin guitars in a band the camera should never be on the one playing the solo

It's years since I heard of any restrictions on numbers of performers, and 3 was never one of those numbers iirc. We've always been a trio, because it suits us. We've always filled out to sound bigger than you'd think, and never been afraid of arranging songs that were originally done by much bigger bands. Three is the magic number

Back at the Piv in Nuneaton for another Sunday 4-6 slot. It's one of our favourite gigs, with a nice laid back vibe. They seemed to have the heating turned up to 11 though, so it was darned hot! There again it always seems like a "proper" gig when you're sweating, so I threw a few bass stances for good measure. I'm normally a reasonably tidy player, but this time had a rare melt down in the 2 octave riff in the middle of Frankenstein. Ah well, it gave my bandmates something to laugh at. No photos this time, so you can have another punter photo from Friday which I quite like because it shows how much fun we have playing together 😁

Like this?

And they were probably never asked back again "I just hate it... it really, it does disturb me, but I'll rise above it; I'm a professional."

It was a cold wet evening and Leicester City were playing an FA Cup tie on ITV (we woz robbed!) which probably all contributed to it being a little slower than normal in the Railway Countesthorpe tonight. However the people that were there were enthusiastic, and the fewer bodies allowed this rather good photo to be grabbed by one of the crowd (which I then stole from Faceache)... Friday gigs are always a bit tougher for a weekend warrior like me after a day's work. The guitarist had been rehearsing all day for an upcoming tour with Martin Turner, so we were both pretty done in by the end of the night. We have tomorrow night off though, so the whole band, WAGs and kids are going to see the new Led Zep film and grab a bite to eat afterwards The Sire again plus the usual GT-6B and Rumble 500. I also gave my black DMs an outing

I saw Sabbath in 2017 on the "last" tour. This looks to be a fabulous gig line-up of surviving members of great bands, but I'm not sure if I want to pay an enormous amount to watch from the back of a huge stadium. Most of the bands I love I saw "back in the day". I'm happy for them to stay there, forever at their peak, in my memories.

I played in a show band for most of 1985. It was a relatively short period of time, but so rich for incidents. The time that the band leader sacked 3 of us for being late back from a break - it was only a 5-piece band and we were the ones who could actually play. The Butlin's camp manager had kept us talking. There was a slight climb down the next, sober morning: "take as much notice as you need" The time I turned up for a posh do without my bow tie. My efforts to craft one from the vinyl cut out of the back of the driver's seat of the band Transit van and gaffer tape were not appreciated. I ended up wearing a horrendous giant vampire moth tie borrowed from one of the guests The time the band leader quaffed an amount of brandy and accidentally tipped his keyboard synth off the front of the stage. It laid there on the floor screaming away for several minutes until someone could cut the power

We did a gig in a WMC. We always did like curtains - just great for the occasional prank. On this occasion I set up my Traynor 400w head and 2x 15" cab behind the back curtain. In front of the curtain was a tiny 6" practice amp on a chair, with a lead connecting the two. I was chuckling all night 😁

There was the time I was playing in a cabaret band doing a season at Butlin's. We had just started a song when I sneezed. Next thing I notice the goop slowly running down the back of my plucking hand (ew!). A casual stroll to the back of the stage, a quick wipe on the back curtains and I didn't miss a beat!

I managed to do this around NYE last year. I'd taken loads of lights and my smoke machine. It looked great with a bit of misting in the air. The "whiteout" occurred because I didn't realise the footswitch had become gummed up and got stuck on, until I glanced behind me to see a wall of smoke and no sign of the rest of the band. The smoke machine was tucked behind my amp on a cramped stage too, so took some effort to switch off 😂

Winner!