Happy Jack

Just phoned the venue for tomorrow night, warned her that the band has had illness this week but we're pretty sure at this stage that it's not Covid-19. She says we should come and play, just don't expect a full house.

And if you're not serious, read this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-51866403?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5e6b6add3cfb2a06519c121d%26Alex Jones told to stop selling bogus 'coronavirus-cure toothpaste'%262020-03-13T11%3A27%3A22.364Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:956f12a4-5461-4dc7-8355-926bcbeaf6d7&pinned_post_asset_id=5e6b6add3cfb2a06519c121d&pinned_post_type=share

I'm finding this really helpful: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It had to start somewhere, I guess. We nearly cancelled tomorrow's gig when the BL went down with a high fever; it turned out to be sunburn (seriously) but sooner or later it's going to happen. My two gigs last weekend were both packed, no signs of C-panic at all, but clearly that's not going to last. I'm working on the assumption that every gig for the next two months is liable to last-minute cancellation.

And you've signed up for Basschat? Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!!! Welcome to the Great GAS Generator.

Don't forget the flipping truss-rod cover ...

Thank God he labelled the strings so we'd know what they were tuned to ...

From the title, I assumed that @alexclaber had branched out into making percussion equipment ...

Totally inspired by Bilbo's "I Was There When ..." topic, where I posted: One of the early monster gigs at Knebworth with a line-up to die for ... so good that 40 years later I don't remember anything about the gig except the point when the DJ between bands put on Jilted John. When we got to the appropriate moment, about 40,000 people all yelled "Gordon is a moron" in unison. So I thought, that's ridiculous, how can I not remember any of the bands who were there? I had a vague memory that Zappa might have been involved, but was I confusing that with seeing him at Empire Pool Wembley (along with a bottle of amyl nitrate)? Surely I saw The Tubes around then, but was I confusing that with seeing them at Hammersmith Odeon and just three weeks later in (of all places) Oxford? So ... Jilted John was a big hit in the Summer of 1978. I checked the line-up for the 1978 Knebworth Festival - no chance. I've never seen any of those acts live - Genesis, Jefferson Starship, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Kept searching and discovered "the Knebworth Park Concert", looked it up and Bingo: FRANK ZAPPA THE TUBES PETER GABRIEL BOOMTOWN RATS ROCKPILE WILKO JOHNSON'S SOLID SENDERS Blimey! I've seen Peter Gabriel live? I had no idea. Boomtown Rats? Ditto. Even more embarrassing is that I have been for many years a big fan of both Rockpile and of Wilko Johnson without realising that I saw them in 1978.

"I think it was May 1975??? I seem to remember attending 3 big gigs in the one month - Led Zep at Earls Court, Yes at QPR and Wakeman at Wembley." Yup, 1975, and my Arthur ticket was my consolation prize for not getting a ticket for Yes at QPR. Well, that plus I knew I wouldn't have to sit on wet grass for the entirety of Tales Of Topographic Oceans. Oh, and I walked past Earl's Court on the Saturday night ... and there were still tickets for sale on the door. It wasn't sold out. I didn't have any money so I kept walking.

Incidentally, and seeing as this is a genuine "I Was There" thread, can I just point out that I am one of the very few people (relatively speaking) who actually SAW King Arthur On Ice at the Wembley Pool. Seriously. Accept no substitutes. Far more people have claimed that they were there than could possibly have attended one of the three (count them, three) shows that Wakeman played. He even riffs a chapter about this very subject in his Grumpy Old Rock Star book. But I was there and I saw it.

Which reminds me that I was at Bad Company's first London gig after their first album came out. 'Twas at The Rainbow and - as we all realised later - they had the 40 minutes of material that was on the album and f***-all else. They kicked off with Can't Get Enough. Then they played the rest of the album, including Can't Get Enough. Their encore was an extended 20-minute jam of Can't Get Enough. All through the gig there were hundreds of people screaming for them to play something, anything, by Free. They didn't.

https://www.joinmyband.co.uk/classifieds/country-singer-songwriter-t1229463.html

One of the early monster gigs at Knebworth with a line-up to die for ... so good that 40 years later I don't remember anything about the gig except the point when the DJ between bands put on Jilted John. When we got to the appropriate moment, about 40,000 people all yelled "Gordon is a moron" in unison.

In 1981 I was living in a derelict Council block in Roffey Street on the Isle of Dogs. Things had slightly ... erm ... gone to 5h1t for various reasons and this place was like a communal Halfway House for people connected to a certain bunch of wannabe musicians & rockstars who never got anywhere. I had a mattress on the floor in what was once a large bedroom so, when Bruce Bruce (singer for local pub-rockers Samson) needed somewhere to crash for a while he threw another mattress alongside mine and we shared the room for a few months. One day he never came home. Didn't come back for his record collection or his clothes, just vanished. Until he re-surfaced a week later as the new singer for Iron Maiden.

In 1979 I went with a friend to The Nashville Rooms in West Kensington to score some dope. William & I were hanging around the main bar, which was rapidly filling up with a bizarre assortments of mods, rockers, punks and new romantics ... these were people you never saw in one place unless something was kicking off between them. Will had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming and flagged down a passing skinhead to ask what was going on. "It's a great new band called Madness" he shouted. Will and I looked at each other, said "nope, me neither", and we went off to find our dealer.

In the late 70s my local was The John Bull in Gunnersbury and I was trying to make it into the pub's pool team. Some Saturday nights I'd be in the back room playing pool while some pub rockers called Streetband played the main room, and the singer would chat up my girlfriend (Isabelle) between sets. He was Paul Young.

And in all fairness some covers are better than the originals.

Well personally, I reckon that the forests will echo with laughter.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/led-zeppelin-win-stairway-to-heaven-copyright-court-case/ar-BB10XI1M?ocid=spartanntp&fbclid=IwAR1GHcQMdRjGlDnGBsV6vwJTTf3umOw6_1diP0g0r8hN0XEa1wFY2XhD7Mk That's all very well, but ... why?

... he's still The King.

At least he's OPEN TO TRADES. Now where's that unwanted Wal of mine?

Guns don't kill people, Guns make YouTube videos ...

I'm pretty much with Hooky on this, but I also note that you seem to be assuming that we all want to see the wood. Quite frankly I don't give much of a toss what wood a bass is made of, and most of my high-end basses (Fender, Mike Lull, Mosrite, Rickenbacker) have solid finishes which means they could be MDF for all I know. If your focus is solely on basses with a natural finish, then I'd suggest that the range of stains, varnishes and coatings out there is so immense that any piece of plywood can be transformed into something more interesting to look at.