Happy Jack

What she said ...

They're playing The Horns (Watford) this month.

I just love the idea that there was a Great Fire Of Potton (in 1783). Sadly, you're too far North of us for much useful info to emerge from Chateau Happy, but you will be pleasantly surprised by the size and enthusiasm of the music scene in Leighton Buzzard. On the other hand, you will be thoroughly depressed by the musical wasteland known as Luton. There's a fair bit of activity in Stevenage too. Are you looking for good-quality jams as a source of (competent) musician contacts? If so, then there's at least one contact I can share who should be useful.

Agreed, especially since the vendor apparently doesn't even know the name of "the bass player in S & the B" ... Coming soon, the actual microphone used on TOTP by that guy from the Sex Pistols, you know, the one who sang, what was his name again? Anyway, a snip at £5000 and still covered with gob too.

Yup - seen a bit of that myself recently! In other news, a rash of phone calls over the last week has taken both my bands into double figures. Quite frankly, I never really expected to reach that point this year. Even more bizarre is that I'm now running out of available gig slots. Each of my bands prefers to play no more than three gigs a month (so that would be six for me), each prefers to avoid double-headers (defined as playing gigs on consecutive nights), and obviously each band can only play on a night when the other band doesn't have a gig (no deps, unless they're drummers!). With 17 gigs in the diary for the second half of the year (four already played), it turns out that I can only accept another eight gigs for The Junkyard Dogs and eleven for Damo & The Dynamites, and there's a rapidly-shrinking list of dates on which those gigs can be played. Get your orders in soon, guys ... 😂

The news today is awash with carefully-planned leakage preparing us for the disappearance of the 21 June release date. My guess is that they'll put it back by a full month.

Aaaaaaaaaargh!!!

Nah ... you should finger the instrument!

Alternatively, https://idonner.eu/products/donner-power-supply-guitar-pedal-power-supply-10-isolated-dc-output-for-9v-12v-18v-effect-pedals-dp-1?currency=GBP&variant=39812037607599&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=Google Shopping&gclid=Cj0KCQjw8IaGBhCHARIsAGIRRYovnI7KRRRXCR714AJpjeLq2BxMPxUTfEWeBHaCorjCMbmQBSpAOlcaAkJJEALw_wcB 😂

Is that why he's unavailable?

In the run up to my cover band's first gig since September (low volume outdoors) the drummer forgot his cajon, had to go home to get it instead of coming straight from work, and we lost half the evening. The following week, unbelievably, he did the exact same thing. This time the guitarist & I insisted that we scrap the rehearsal and do it properly two days later. Drummers, eh?

If that's really all you need, then respect is due.

Time to move the discussion along so as to reach "rare transitional models" which are in fact more common on eBay than factory-standard basses.

Does this mean that something is wrong on the Internet? Say it ain't so ...

Well my band's not playing Glasto this year ... I know that much. 😉

Good to hear from you again mate.

One? We've got three! Baby Bear is for acoustic-stylee gigs, especially outdoors in dodgy weather ... Yamaha desk controls a Crown power amp driving passive 10" tops. There's nothing there that I would want to lose, but neither is there anything that would break the bank if I had to replace it. It's all strictly analogue, old-school, and simple. Mummy Bear is our go-to rig for most gigs ... XR18 controls a lovely PowerSoft Digam power amp driving passive 12" tops. Daddy Bear is for big & loud gigs ... XR18 controls the Mark Audio linear array system. This approach also makes it mix & match if required. There's nothing at all to prevent us (for example) from setting up Daddy Bear, then hanging the whole of Mummy Bear off the side of it using just the Aux Out L/R. Now we're talking peak Glastonbury. 😂

Either you play much larger pubs than my bands do, or you play much louder music! Our biggest gig is a barn of a pub in West London where we routinely play (3rd set anyway) to 300 people. For that, we use a Mark Audio system where the 210s are both the subs and the base units, and then each has a linear array of 3" tweeters on poles above. Nothing heavy gets lifted more than about two inches. For most of our gigs though, usually playing to perhaps 100 people, we have a very nice power amp and a pair of passive 12" tops. Even with my dodgy back, there's no effort involved in lifting these onto their poles. At every single gig, we keep the backline fairly quiet, put the entire band through the PA, and have @Silvia Bluejay out in the audience with a tablet controlling mix & volume. We get complimented on our sound all the time, most commonly by the landlady / manager. One band plays old-school rock'n'roll & rockabilly, the other plays classic pop/rock covers from the 60s-80s, so that's two quite different sounds and - in the main - different instrumentation.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? Or at least a Mod would have locked it by now. I dunno ... you just can't get the staff post-Brexit ...

Doesn't actually help much with the fretting, but it gets plenty of interest from other bassists ...