ubit

Twas indeed a very lairy evening. Mrs Ubit appeared wearing my gear and I was duty bound to return the favour 😂

I’m a bit wary of adding more salt to my diet as I’m on medication to lower my blood pressure. I do try to drink as much water as I can. We are not playing at the moment, so it’s all ifs and buts until I can find a job with more regular free time.

I found my plucking fingers would spasm and it was like I had my fingers crossed 🤞 I physically couldn’t spread them apart. Wierd feeling.

It’s been a couple of years since we last played but I remember vividly our last gig. Towards the end my fingers cramped up terribly. I was finding it impossible to keep a constant bassline and was searching for a pic. I see players like Chris Wolstenholme who has amazing stamina. Does anyone else suffer from this and how do you get around it? Is it just constant practice to build up the stamina? Is it lack of salt? Id like to find a way round this. It happened more than once.

I play with fingers 90% of the time and I always dig in. Make those pups work!

I have an Ampeg SVT 2 Pro, American P bass and a Barefaced Super Twin. Always use new or nearly new roundwounds. Gives me just that sound. My favourite.

I take offence to that! I was a bearded cross dressing sott until recently!

He’s got two gloves. Looks like he’s going for the Hellboy look. Must be rock n roll 🤘

I think that’s allowed. It’s the hand hanging down by your side that is the Richard move.

We started playing once in one of the towns tougher joints. Just as we started , a group of boys came in. That was rubbish one of them said. It wasn’t rubbish I said. What did you say? He retorted. I said look, you might not like it but it’s not rubbish. Right you and me outside was his reply. I said no bother pal, just as soon as we finish playing I’ll see you outside. I’m in no doubt I could have taken this little scrote , but the trouble is he comes from a family of famous crazy flipers and I was starting to think maybe this wasn’t such a good move. Luckily during our break he came up to me and apologised. Ah, it’s just the drink mate. No bother I said. Phew! I don’t know if he had possibly talked to some of his relations , because we were in quite good favour with them because we were in the band and they liked us. Whatever happened I was glad and also amazed at how these idiots can so quickly get to I want to fight you stage. They can’t have a disagreement without wanting to settle it with violence.

We played a long time ago. Must have been different owners because I remember it was a guy we dealt with. Steam Inn doesn’t ring a bell and it certainly wouldn’t hold 100 people. It had a lower area , a couple of steps and the bar and band area were on the top level. I think there was a lounge bar next door. The people were great craic if they liked you and we always got invited to a party afterwards. I copped off with birds regularly up there. Good times! 👍🤘

Only recently has Mrs Ubit been allowed to perform tea making duties for me. It was always too strong or even worse too milky. She has now just about mastered the art 👍

I’ve always just made sure my master is higher than the input. I have an SVT 2 Pro and it has a natural dirty Ampeg tone

Can’t remember, it was on the right hand side of the hill as you went up it.

I am VERY fussy about my tea and I have to make my own. I always put the milk in first, but it has to be a tiny amount. I’m sick of being told it’s wrong as milk in afterwards tastes wrong to me

I agree, it looks dickish. Back in the late 80’s, I witnessed a bass player who wore his bass so high that he rested his chin on it. I thought “ you knob”

My Mrs bought me a Gibson Les Paul bass for my 50th. She’s a keeper!

We had a quiz at work and one of the teams called themselves quizlamic state. We all thought it was brilliant, but the manager gave them a warning as the place was supposed to be equal to all and taking the pee out of terrorist groups is not allowed apparently 😔

I can confirm that the *#+* is a fan of Celtic 😢

I think it’s a chain. It’s certainly a bit more up market now. It was becoming a bit tired I think.

Yeah, the Columba. The Caledonian is on the other side of the bay between the piers and is now The Perle. Great that The Oban Inn is open again. It’s Obans oldest pub and a local institution. It’s one of the places that puts live music on, but it’s restricted to solo artists or dou’s

That Curry’s branch has been closed for years now. Sad, as I really liked it. The live scene here used to be great in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s , but again sadly, this has fallen into decline. One thing about Oban, you certainly will learn to drink here as the ratio of pubs to people is very high. Just a shame that the ones that used to promote live music, have stopped all that. I am sure that live music comes in cycles and will again be in fashion. Trouble is, round here they all seem to want Scottish music rocked up. It’s just not my scene.

We played at this guys 40th birthday party. Great night. Packed with lots of folks who loved us. Guy was so impressed that he asked us to play next year at his wedding. Great, we thought. We turned up and it was in a big tent. The wind was wild and we had a problem with flapping canvas all night. Anyway, our set consisted of a mixture of rock/pop/ country and traditional Scottish. We started and half way through our first song this guy interrupts us and says, no, we want you to play traditional tunes. I told him that we would but we would play them later after we played our other songs. Next song, same thing happened. I’m starting to lose patience. Finally we played some trad music. They danced. We then carried on with our other songs. Nothing, but this guy continually interrupting us and saying play traditional. Eventually he appeared with a CD player and asked to play it through our pa. by this time I was miserable. We eventually tracked down the groom who was trousered and complained about this guy, who turned out to be the best man. He had a word and we were allowed to carry on with our set as normal. It bombed. The best man must have spread his disdain at our choice of songs. Clearly the grooms guests were a completely different crowd than the ones that had been at his 40th. It was a real beam me up Scotty evening.

Talking of playing to no one. We played a pub in Mallaig once. First time we had ever played there. First set we played to the barman. Thing is, during our break, the place filled up and it turned into a great night. We went on to play there quite a few times and always got a good night. A tale of two sets. Nb. In reference to my earlier post. We did get paid quite a while later. The girls boyfriend convinced her to pay us.

We played a party once. There were only about forty people there. It’s was a decent sized hall. Quite a high percentage of the crowd were little kids ( we do seem to have a problem with playing to little kids. I love them really, honest). No one was dancing. We played one set , then another. Still no dancing. A few weeks later I was asking the guitarist about the fee and where was my cut. He said I didn’t want to tell you but the girl didn’t want to pay us, because she thought we hadn’t done enough to get people up dancing. I hit the roof. He said that’s what I thought you would do. The couple had seen us play in the pubs. Liked what they saw, but thought it was up to us to get thirty adults to dance when it was bright, they were sober and there were kids running across the dance floor!