ubit

There is nothing worse than overstated bouzouki!

Quite. I have found that through my musical journey/ life, the music that I have been into at the time is still relevant to me. I don’t go off it. I just widen my taste.

I’m lucky, Mrs Ubit has a far more extreme taste in metal than I have!

I generally put the music on random. Beethoven one minute, Slipknot the next. I don’t listen to music depending on mood. I find that the music can actually set my mood. I love the way I never know what is coming next. When I was younger, I would buy an album and play it to death. Now I struggle to know what songs are on a particular album.

I realise there is a very wide demographic involved in this forum and I also understand that this topic has been loosely addressed in the what are you listening to just now thread , but I wanted to dig deeper and ask just what kind of music you are all in to ? Personally, I grew up listening to Neil Diamond and Glen Campbell. As I got older and started having my own taste, I became a heavy metal fan. As I’ve matured, so has my taste in music. I’ve always loved reggae, but my taste grew into dance, trance, grunge, death metal. To be honest, I struggle to think of any music that I hate. I am not quite so keen on jazz funk, but thats not to say that I don’t like it all. I take each song as it comes. Pop is probably my least favourite music as I dislike people with little talent being given a chance at stardom by being manufactured. I realise that some of these pop stars are talented too. It’s just the X factor generation I suppose that get me wound up. Anyway, I digress. What kind of choons make you lot all moist?

What has him being Scottish got to do with it? Harumphh!

I have an SVT 2 Pro and it’s all I will ever need in an amp. Killer tone and control. Only complaint is that it’s bloody heavy!

My guitarist mate actually said to me that the bass should be felt rather than heard!

Also does he stand his round. My mate, our guitarist used to dissapear every time it was his round. We started doing a kitty and lo and behold he was always on hand whenever the rounds were coming

Whyaaaaii thank you 😂

It was actually a song about his Cuban shoes that were en vogue at the time. He had damaged the heel of one of them and just as he was about to walk on for his encore the loose heel fell off.

You need a better sound system in your house then mate!

No!

Certainly Mrs Ubit has made a difference to my diet. She advocates healthy eating and I have actually lost close to three stones in weight in this last year. I just can’t bear the thought of no more of the things I like. I just try to have them less frequently.

I appreciate your choices and would never knock what someone else believes is good for them but the thought of no more steaks or beers would make my life unbearable! 😳

I once gave this guy a mouthful when he crashed headlong into our gear, leaving a chip in our drummers kit. He sheepishly apologised and it was only later that I found out from someone else that it was some cow that had pushed the guy. She never apologised!

I’ve met people like this. One guy was such a teller of tall tales that it was entertaining! He was, apart from the stories, which everyone knew were a load of codswallop, a really nice guy and the only total liar that I have ever met that I liked

Reminds me of when we played with a different drummer for a while. We played a song and I just got lost. Forgot the bassline, forgot the lyrics. The song fell apart. The drummer threw down his sticks and walked off. What really annoyed me was that my mate the guitarist backed the drummer and said you mucked up. I said, we have played for years and any time there’s a mistake, what do we do? We immediately hit them with something good that we know. Evening saved. There and then I said, you stood up for him against me, Tou think it’s ok to go mental and storm off stage thus ending the night. I left the band and it was only after many months that I came back after apologies from them , as they needed a bass player and a singer.

Don’t tell me, the support band were so bad that the crowd were still booing when you came on? 😂

We went to see the Mission a while back. They were great but they were supported by Peter Murphy. I was so looking forward to seeing him but he appeared with an acoustic guitarist and a violinist. It was rotten and he behaved like a spoiled brat. He thrashed an acoustic , then next song started and stopped the song, took off the guitar and shouted this effin guitar is out of tune and threw it away. I felt sorry for the roadie as it was Murphy that had put the damned thing out of tune. The whole sound was weak and thin. A real legend went down in my estimation that night.

Many years ago we played at yet another wedding. There was a young couple also playing who had fiddle and accordion. When we arrived they were playing. They had full house lights on and the dance floor was empty. The first thing we did as we set up around them was to switch on our lights and turn off the house lights. Immediately folk started dancing. It turned into a good night and the young duo were very grateful to us for helping them. They could play, but it was just not the right atmosphere.

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I can see by a few of these posts that weddings quite often feature in worst gigs. I think, certainly in my experience, that some couples see you play in a pub, think, oh, they are good, then book you for their wedding and the place is full of possibly older relations, couples who might have had fun once, but have young kids to look after. Said kids have free reign over the dance floor cos it’s cute. A mixture of relations that have never seen you. Plus the venue might be a large hall , when your pa is suitable for a small pub. At the end of the day, it’s a completely different animal to your pub gig edit. We played a party once and the whole of the first half, the dance floor was empty. The lights were on full and everyone was sober. As the evening progressed, gradually people started venturing onto the floor. I spoke to a guy after the gig and he said, once you started playing dancey stuff people got up. We had deliberately changed our first set to include more popular songs that this same guy had danced to at an earlier party! You can’t expect people to dance in bright lights sober. We were agonising as we know that you need to dim the lights to tempt the first revellers onto the edge of the floor. Once they get up, the rest will follow.

We actually had so many terrible gigs over the years. We did have many superb gigs. I think it was just the sheer number of gigs we were playing back in the 90’s and 2000’s. some of the wierd and backwater places that used to put on music , that by the law of averages, you are gonna get some terrible gigs. It’s funny, most of them we can look back at and laugh now. Just about everything that happened in Spinal Tap happened to us at some point. I think that’s why I can relate to that movie so much. It’s funny but you are thinking , wait a minute, we did that !

We were asked to play at a wedding once. We turned up at the venue and there was another Celidh band playing as well. They had set up taking up the whole stage. Everyone was still finishing off their meal, so we never got any kind of a sound check. We squeezed into the tiny bit left for us and started. It was like tumbleweed blowing across the dance floor. I’m also the singer, so I kept shouting to the guitarist , get out front and tell me how it’s sounding, is it us or is the sound bad? He wouldn’t move. I was raging because something was clearly wrong. A few weeks later the groom met me in a bar. Do you rehearse ? He asked. Yes I said. Well you should have rehearsed before you played at our wedding. I was mad. He knows we could play and it was himself and his wife that had asked us to play on the strength of seeing us play in the bars. It was all down to no sound check, no monitors, no room and the wrong crowd. Note to self. Never put up with another band leaving you no room. Always have some kind of sound check , no matter how many people shout at you to hurry up and start. Different venues have different acoustics, so settings from last Friday, won’t cut it for the wedding!