Misdee

Paul Webb is another one of those overlooked but bloody brilliant bass players.

Tony Kanal is such a terrific player. I've been a fan since that first No Doubt record, which must have come out 30 years ago now!!! How is that possible? Anyhow, I like that he's quite a busy player, but his taste is so impeccable that it always works. I like his tone, too. Everything he does is just right.

I used to regularly see Mike Dirnt playing that very bass onstage in a student pub called The Bear's Lair when Green Day were just another local band.

That's a lovely bass. If it's as good as my Fender AVRI 74 Jazz Bass that I have had for nearly ten years now then it's an excellent investment. I've thought about one of these for myself but haven't managed to find one that weighs under 9 pounds, which is my weight requirement for a Jazz Bass nowadays. I would swap the scratchplate for an off-white one, but that's just my preference. I expect most people would prefer the Tort, but combined with that shade of green in reminds me too much of those boiled sweets, chocolate limes.

Try the ones from Home Bargains. Excellent value for money and decent quality. I think of them as the incontinence equivalent of Elites bass strings or Sire basses.

Lets not forget the part(s) Chas and Dave played in Eminem's rise to world domination:

Chas and Dave! Now they are gone there's really no substitute and probably never will be. Sadly, I'm old enough to remember when the general consensus of opinion amongst the British public was that Jim Davidson was hilarious and anyone who took exception to his routines was an eccentric weirdo. I don't think Jim should be edited from history though. Better to leave him in it and let people face up to what was considered perfectly okay at the time.

I remember blokes doing that dance at heavy rock discos in the late 1970's. It was definitely a thing. Probably much safer than headbanging, too. Not that anyone bothered about anything like that in those days, though.

Yes, but in a good way. To be fair, I don't think John Entwistle was searching for the perfect tone when he was amassing his bass collection. He just liked buying stuff.

Funnily enough, this thread has had me thinking about how for so long I had to sell my main bass to replace it with another one, and never had more than two basses at a time. I was always looking to get a "better" more expensive bass than the one I had and that was the only way I could afford it. That was probably true for the first twenty years of me playing the bass. I expect lots of folk have followed the same route with similarly mixed results. Nowadays I just like a bass that I can have fun playing, and that could be at any price point. The problem is I'm one of those people who has been cursed with good (expensive) taste, but I've also got a Sire and a Harley Benton that I do most of my day-to-day practising on and they are both very satisfying basses and amazing for the money. I think when I reached the stage in life where I could comfortably afford more expensive basses it took away the imperative to "upgrade" before I missed the chance. That realisation helped me concentrate more on practising playing bass rather than putting time and energy into trading up to endless,"upgrade" basses and then discovering their strengths and weaknesses. Most of the time I was just swapping one dissatisfaction for another. If you've got a relatively inexpensive bass that has certain things about it that annoys you it's easier to live with than if you have paid upwards of three grand in pursuit of perfection only to find disappointment.

Another belter...

I remember that dance that people did to Mud records, putting their thumbs in their belts and moving their shoulders ect. It was a dance that blokes could do after drinking lots of beer Little-known fact: Despite being from Surrey, Mud front man Les Gray was a lifelong fanatical Leeds United supporter.

I'm actually so old that I remember my friends older sister coming home and furiously whacking him with her wooden sandal as punishment for playing her Mud records without permission while she was out at youth club. That young girls in those days gravitated towards a group of blokes who looked, dressed and sounded like Mud says a lot about what a macabre time the mid-1970's was in Britain.

Another good one gone. One of those artists who we all took for granted, but now he's no longer with us I can't think of any equivalent singer-songwriter to replace him. I remember hearing an interview with Chris Rea once where he spoke about wanting to be like Joni Mitchell, where each album was a progression of his style regardless of commercial appeal or fashion trends. Well, I think he achieved that, so rest peacefully Chris.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of wish-fulfilment if you can afford it. I really don't go for the idea that anyone has to justify their purchases in terms of how and where they are going to use them. If it's your own money to spend, do as you please and enjoy it how you like.