skankdelvar

[quote name='juliusmonk' timestamp='1428465951' post='2741505'] I agree the review isn't particularly bombastic, however it says nothing specific as regards tone or playability to help others understand. [/quote] To be fair, was there [i]ever[/i] a magazine review that was specific as regards tone and playability? 'One of the best necks we've ever played ... reassuring heft ... let's roll back the volume ... liquid jazz burp ... throaty precision growl ... convincingly solid hardware ... embarrassingly smooth knob travel ... fleck of overspray on the binding loses it a star ... one for the well-heeled semi-pro and the touring musician alike.' One might paste that tripe under a picture of almost [i]any[/i] bass and save a fortune on buying mags for their reviews.

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1428489573' post='2741694'] Which kettle is best for metal? [/quote] A metal kettle. But the most metally is John Kettley. [size=3][b]Kettley[/b]: Not Bob Carolgees[/size]

Welcome Josh ... Bon ton roulet!

Ta for that, Molan. An interesting read, Sir. It rather begs the question of The Perfect Bass - a bass that might perhaps score 10/10 on every scale. A bass so universally [i]perfect[/i] that everyone who played it would love it, irrespective of their technical prowess and chosen genre. What skills might be needed to craft such a bass? How much might it cost? And would they do a £250 Chinese clone, please? [color=#ffffff].[/color]

Welcome to BassChat Luli Enjoy the forum

[quote name='KARIKAL' timestamp='1428386138' post='2740695'] You should definitely pay more attention at storing your kings' corpses. [/quote] Indeed. I don't know [i]what[/i] we were thinking. I suppose it was just something we meant to get around to and never did.

[quote name='poptart' timestamp='1428444574' post='2741417'] This is the small pleasureboard, there is a medium and large ;-) [/quote] Put me down as a 'large'.

[quote name='blue' timestamp='1428443638' post='2741406'] Young bands new to booking should think hard about whether or not to take this type of booking. They can be very painful. [/quote] True, that. On the other hand, they're all good experience and part of the rich tapestry of life. They also provide a rich store of anecdotes with which to entertain one's children and their childrens' children: 'Tell us about when you lost your eye in the great punk wars of '79, Grandpa Skank!' 'Well there was just the four of us and 500 speed-crazed mohicans in kilts and leather jackets. So we played 'The Pina Colada Song' and all hell broke loose. Nobby was the first one to die, an assegai in his chest and choking on his own blood ([i]that's enough - Tedium mod[/i]) '

[quote name='Tuco' timestamp='1428442410' post='2741387'] Spot on , excpet we have no singer [/quote] There's your problem, then. If you'd had a singer - possibly a plump middle-aged lady in a cerise camisole top - they'd have loved you. Schoolboy error, that. Try advertising on bandmix or joinmyband before you go out again. No need to thank me.

TBH, I can see both sides of this debate. Once or twice over the years I've turned up to what was supposed to be an enjoyable gig for everyone, only to discover a bizarrely hostile landlord and a cast of early evening punters who look at you with murder in their eyes as you walk through the door. Determined to entertain, you ignore the scowling, muttering local Cuthberts, set up like lightning and kick off with a good 'un. You finish the song to dead silence - then a single cry of 'You're sh*t, f*ck off'. At half time the landlord slouches over. 'I don't know why I booked you. They hate bands here. I won't be able to pay you.' Then he goes off upstairs to watch TV. A hasty band conference agrees you do the second set at twice light speed with everything set to twelve. Fifteen minutes later the singer - inspired by tradition - sits down on the edge of the stage and sneers 'Ever had the feeling you've been swindled?'. It's worth it, just for the look on their neanderthal faces. The only problem now is getting out without being killed.

[quote name='jonnythenotes' timestamp='1428429147' post='2741206'] Why thank you Skank...... [/quote] You're welcome, amigo.

Hats off to Mr Jonnythenotes for introducing not one but [i]two[/i] new aspects to the eternal Fodera debate. Nice work, Sir

[quote name='KARIKAL' timestamp='1428297187' post='2739956'] It may be my lack of comfort in English or my paranoid nature but I wondered for seconds whether Mr Skankdelvar and Mr Discreet were thinking of repeating Edouard Plantagenet's exploit (straddling within panache, elan - and aplomb- the thin line bteween morons and cretins) [/quote] No need for paranoia, chum! We don't do Edouard Plantagenet anymore, not since we recently found the bones of Richard Plantagenet under a car park in Leicester. In our usual loopy British way we laid on a full funeral procession and spent crillions on a memorial for him. Even rabid republicans were heard to say 'Oh, that's quite interesting...' and the leftiest of our TV channels gave him a week's worth of programme-time. Tearful members of the public queued to pay their tributes to a king who died 500 years ago. We're odd like that and BC is a perfect example.

£11,000? Is that all? Was not the Ritter Royal Flora Aurum a princely $250,000? Diamond encrusted board and a gig-bag made from 10,000 year old mammoth's foreskin? Frankly, I think it's marvellous that people make these things and other people buy them. And it costs us [i]nothing[/i] to look at them. Even better that it pisses off those who'd have us all driving round in identical beige Trabants, the better to [s]enforce[/s] express the fraternal comradeship of the proletariat.

[quote name='Bloodaxe' timestamp='1428302526' post='2739966'] ... we definitely wouldn't have had Hendrix if it wasn't for The Animals. [/quote] Going a bit Pete Frame for a minute: Hearing about the Animals from Graham Bond, Giorgio Gomelsky (the Stones first manager) helped them out in their early days, recording some live material and getting them on a tour where they backed Sonny Boy Williamson. The London 'scene' was very incestuous in those days; everybody knew everyone else and - in some cases - were prepared to give each other a helping hand. Quite apart from covering each others' material and nicking each others' riffs, the UK muso community of 1963-67 was remarkably tightly knit. They all lived in the same village but there were only two mansions on the hill. The Beatles lived in one and The Stones in the other. Down from the hill came templates for performance and production techniques, favoured instrument brands, fashionable clothes, interview styles, politics, philosophy, band management strategies. Those who came after the Stones and the Beatles went on to develop their own voices and to enjoy their own success. But those two bands are woven into the DNA of rock in such a way that even someone who has never really listened to them might be influenced by extension and at a distance. It's just one of those truths that can't be denied.

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1428271203' post='2739875'] +1 They are are fundamental force of nature, much like the weather. [/quote] Indeed. Much better put than my ramblings.

Frankly, it doesn't matter whether some people like / get / value / understand the Stones while others do not. To this day the Stones exert a gravitational effect on anyone who picks up an instrument, whether they want to sound like the Stones or want very much [i]not[/i] to sound like the Stones. 'The Stones' is a monolithic, historied entity with its roots in the earliest days of rock. As an idea 'The Stones' exists (sic) far beyond the confining boundaries of genre and musical taste. 'Liking or 'not liking' them is such an irrelevance it's probably easier just to like them and spare oneself the trouble of coming up with reasons [i]not[/i] to like them. And at a certain level the Stones don't really [i]care[/i] whether people like them - if they ever did care. Which is all part of the charm. [color=#ffffff].[/color]

Welcome to the forum Karikal! [quote name='discreet' timestamp='1428185844' post='2739012'] Yeah, we're mostly complete morons. [/quote] And the rest of us are complete cretins. It's a thin line between moron and cretin but many of us straddle it with panache and élan.

The 'Curse of Skynyrd' strikes again.

Under-rated bass players in [i]humungous[/i] bands and who rarely get mentioned on BC possibly because they're a bit unfashionable or because they eschew fretboard acrobatics, preferring instead to 'play for the song': Mike Rutherford Bill Wyman Noel Redding John McVie Dusty Hill Garry Tallent (E Street Band) Joe Bouchard (BOC) Tina Weymouth Colin Greenwood Under-rated, older British bass players of whom we rarely speak: Tony Levin Sparko (Feelgoods) Johnny Spence (Pirates, Johnny Kidd) Gerry McAvoy (Gallagher / NBZ) Henry Cluney (SLF) Tony Goggle (Wayne Fontana, Mungo Jerry, Foghat, Yngve Malmsteen, Quartet of Doom) Ronnie Lane (Faces) John Wetton (Family, Crimson, Roxy, Heep, Wishbone Ash) Johnny Gustafson (Big Three, Roxy) Barry Adamson (Magazine, Visage, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) Jah Wobble And Rocco Prestia.

[quote name='tranmere' timestamp='1427963295' post='2736272'] how can I make my bass part more interesting? [/quote] More interesting than [i]what[/i]? The original bass lines on the records? Than the templated trad root / 5 country bass line? If you play something 'interesting' the best you can hope for is a cold, murderous stare from the bandleader. The worst you can expect is being ripped limb from limb by enraged elderly men in cowboy boots and Hank Williams t-shirts.

The amazing thing is that the idea of 'genres' only started about thirty years ago. Before that there were just pop, progressive rock, easy listening and comedy records. How did we manage? Now there seems to be about 300 genres [i]just in the UK[/i] including one called German Show Tunes and another called Deep Neo-Folk. So many 'genres' and such a proliferation of fantastic music as a result. What a time to be alive!* [size=2]*Deep Sarcasm. Which is not a genre.[/size]

It's good that the forum will get some valuable publicity. Kudos to Bluejay for the time and effort she'll be putting into an exercise which will benefit all of us by extension.

[quote name='Mykesbass' timestamp='1427317882' post='2728935'] Some nice points Skank. The one I've quoted is probably the crux of the matter, and the one that I hope can be addressed by a younger generation, much like the folk examples I gave (point taken about country though). [/quote] I didn't mention folk mostly because I knows nothing about that folk music TBH, I think the worst thing we can do is try to guide the music's direction. We have to let circumstances produce an outcome - otherwise we become unpaid curators and who's to say we're right. Better, perhaps, just to put an outfit together that aims to avoid all the cliches and see what happens. I have a theory about using the blues as it was originally intended - ie. contemporary social commentary. Sadly the idea of a '43 Tesco stores closing Blues' doesn't sound [i]quite[/i] right. But not as 'not right' as a white, middle-aged computer programmer from Milton Keynes singing about being on a convict chain gang in Alabama.

This potentially such a huge topic I'm going to restrict myself to a few observations. * Country music was - and still is - a huge mainstream market in the US. The blues is not. Possibly because young Americans continue to relate to Country music's themes, seeing them as reflective of their daily lives. The blues has not enjoyed this continuity of widespread acceptance. * Paul Oliver makes a plausible case that the blues 'died' in the mid-60's when its natural constituency and many of its practitioners migrated to soul, then funk, then rap. One might argue that rap is blues in its modern guise - hypnotic urban rhythms, harsh contemporary lyrical content and performers who enjoy a resonance with their community. * Country's continuing success does not stem from piecemeal replacement of one or two instrumental components. The form underwent an evolution into country-flavoured rock and a complete change of performer image from folksy Uncles and Aunties to hot chicks and cool dudes with egregiously large pick-ups * UK radio has narrowed its musical focus over the last 30 years. Soft country gets daytime airplay on R2. Blues does not. * In the UK (unlike the US) the label 'country music' is still perceived by many as awful, whiny sh*t. Any successful practitioners of the form either play to niche audiences or deliver 'ironic' perfomances or have re-labelled themselves for wider markets. Blues continues to perform for a niche market. * Many believe that the UK Blues audience is mired in tradition and constrained by 'The Blues Police'. To an extent, this is true but only if performers continue to play venues that specialise in Blues. Get in front of a different, younger audience and they'll respond well, particularly if one eschews the same old songs. * Many UK blues bands focus on musical delivery and instrumental breaks at the expense of audience communication and engagement. The successful Blues bands bring something to the mix beyond faithful re-treads of old chestnuts. In other words, something more than pasteurised noodling around 'Keys to the Highway' and staring at the guitar neck. * Younger audiences do not perceive Jack White (in White Stripes mode) as occupying the same musical space as Eric Clapton. * Too many under-rehearsed hobby blues bands with predictable setlists and arrangements are clouding perceptions. Not all blues is tubby old white guys (like me) knocking out the same ploddy rhythms. But the kids don't know that. My conclusion is that the blues will continue to be performed and consumed but it is moving into the same closed box as Jazz. If that's the case, we should stop worrying and simply enjoy it as a curio. There's no law that says musical genres should be immortal. Ragtime was huge one time, but it doesn't sell sh*t these days. [color=#ffffff]*[/color]