NancyJohnson

I just looked on the Gordon Poole agency. £20K+ buys you Greg Davies and Rob Beckett. That's each, mind. Saw them on the same comedy bill in Wokingham about 20 years ago. How times change.

You haven't said how the audience would be made up. Interested punters or business lunchers on a work jolly? With sportspeople (and by sportspeople, I mean the retired, well known, Question Of Sport contender type of sportspeople), these are well known to most people and have transcended the sport they once competed in and have become celebrity; they're known by pretty much everyone (unless they've lived under a rock for the last 40 years). The problem with musicians is that there's very little transcendence; few non-working/retired musicians become celebrity (Noddy Holder, maybe), they just disappear disgruntled or come out of retirement to appear on Buzzcocks once in a while. Your paying audience may cover a broad age range and musical interest spectrum; from the interested punter perspective, I'm sure there's a lot of people that would pay for a lunch and Q&A chat with Debbie Harry/Toyah, but if you're being dragged along to the lunch and the speaker is Dizzy Rascal, you're not really going to appeal to the whole audience.

My mother-in- law is 87 and she does her shopping lists in Excel. My mother did the same until she died. 87 as well. It's really not crap. There's this loose rule that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you a virtuoso; I could sit pretty much anyone in front of a computer and teach them Excel fundamentals in under an hour. If you know how to type (you replied here, so yes), if you know how to use a mouse, it's easy as making a cup of tea.

Excel is going to be as easy and intuitive to use as anything; I'm not entirely certain what a 'proper app/program' (your words) is or what it's supposed to deliver. The basic fundamentals of any program are going to be dragging/copying/cutting/pasting, if you can't handle these, then the way forward is going to be paper and a Sharpie.

I was in love with The Sweet; I found myself drawn to Steve Priest's little bass breaks in some of the b-sides/album tracks. I think the breaking point was the inner cover of Desolation Boulevard, the band looking normal. I had no idea what a Rickenbacker 4001 was at that point, but deep in my conscience I needed a bit of that.

I haven't had any need to take my NXT out as of yet (but feel that time might be coming). I saw a suggestion elsewhere about buying a 'deluxe fishing rod bag'. Intrigued, I found this on Amazon: + Honestly wondering whether this would be up to light use (I'd probably need to wrap the bass in something).

I did about 20 songs for a project slightly before the pandemic. Subject matter? Russian nukes Surveillance Telephone surveillance Living in an iron lung The Spookwaffe (a group of black escort fighters during Ww2) A heavily edited version of the Kings 'we are at war' speech The third shock army snipers Oppenheimer Drowning in a submarine Being in the belly of a tank Borodino Sleeper agents Drinking vodka from the sandals of heathens The Heavens Gate cult The Jonestown suicide event American marine peacekeepers in Afghanistan Cheery, eh? We had a few more things in process before the project folded and moved on to something else. We just used to get a little obsessed with old photographs; for instance one of the group of people that assassinated Lincoln and how one guy had the looks of a current day male model. We did a rough demo of a track called Behind Confederate Eyes on that one.

When the original models came out, the control knobs were in a line. Yes, I know, these models aren't historically accurate blablablah, but it looks nicer in a line and you can use a right-angled jack and loop the cable round the strap button.

https://open.spotify.com/show/4sG8ibrTnGjSJSuer6iLA9?si=5b4ca490eee94981

Uncertain whether this is posted here, but the the Geddy Lee biography is up on Spotify Premium. I've got the book but I'm finding sitting-down-to-read time limited, so this is a nice treat!

The only bass I've never taken out in a live context is my 5-string Lull. It arrived while I was between bands and while I've rehearsed with it a few times, it's never seen a stage; it's also a bit heavy (oversized Thunderbird NR and quite a slab of mahogany). The value of the thing doesn't really come into it, it's more about suitability of the projects I've worked on.

Lest we forget, the stacked knob closest to the output jack is a push/pull as well, giving double stacked knobbage.

I told a friend of mine about an Integra that was on eBay about a year ago. It was about £100.00. Mental. It needed a bit of a set up, but it was stonking.

All you need do is swap the tone control and the output jack around and you're set!

Old Bass POD.

I was at one bass at one point. I think I was about 14 years old.

I just listened to the deluxe edition of Def Leppard's Pyromania. I'm sure that the original was staple listening amongst our jolly troupe when it came out. I'd read a review recently in which someone had written that the bonus content - a live show from the LA Forum in 1983 - was 'all killer'. God, it's just awful. Off the scale terrible. How this band ever got to, and continue to be, as big as they are, is truly beyond me.

Perhaps to give this context have a listen to the track below. Ignore the vocals as the originals will be removed/redone. I would imagine any vocals would be all done live, so realistically we'd be trying to reproduce this with bass, guitar, drums and three voices. https://open.spotify.com/track/6EHEcJSm1OJrvlRgGG7Uvi?si=XEUoHOgUSeK_r1H4_5z4KA

The drummer we have in mind should be fine with a click.

Interesting twist following the recent backing tracks thread. Had a coffee yesterday with a guy I'd worked with remotely during the pandemic; he seems very keen on resurrecting our long-dead lockdown project. Musically it was pretty straightforward, live guitars and bass, live vocals, drums were all drawn from live loop packs (Beta Monkey), loads of voice/keys/noise samples. He's keen to try and take things out live, utilising everything that sits behind the musical elements. Think of Public Service Broadcasting. I'm not entirely certain how this can be achieved on a budget, so am looking for a bit of advice. Could we strip all the guitars/bass from the original recordings and just route these through front of house and somehow give the drummer (or all of us) an in-ear mix so we know what we'd be playing along with? Suppose a bare bones solution at this point. Laptop running a DAW etc.

When we had some building work done last year, we had a just in case contingency in the event of emergencies. A week before the work started, the boiler went. Then the garage door broke and when the builders were working at the back of the house it became clear the extension roof was rotten. I had about £8k to play with. All gone. No holiday. No joy. After everything was paid I had under £3.00 left in the bank. ☹️

Limited by design specifications, you'd have to think all these cheapish/entry level basses must be coming out of the same handful of facilities in the far East. This week they'll be making Harley Benton, next week Fazley, the week after something else. It would be interesting to have owners of these just break them down and see the similarities. Given the level of secrecy, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if stuff like Limelights were sourced from the same locales.

The Badbird is a direct replacement for the two piece bridge of yore; it does not replace the three pointer on the existing holes/studs (the bass will not intonate). Scott did make a prototype two part bridge to replace the three-pointer...it required an anchoring plate to hold the ballends and a long throw harmonica style bridge unit that floated/sat on two of the studs. I don't believe he actually put it into production.

I borrowed a Watkins bass and a WEM Dominator from a bloke a few doors down. I guess I was 14 or 15. We had a three piece band, sharp learning curve, then through sixth-form this kind of expanded to a group of about eight to ten members and it all got a bit interchangeable. Some 40 years on, over half of our merry band make a living from the music business; two run a successful mastering business, another writes/produces/sessions, others are touring musicians/session players, one has a career in set design (TV and film). My plans dissolved about 35 years ago after a meeting with a Polydor A&R guy. So close. So far.