skankdelvar

Being declared uncool by a bass players' forum is like a badge of honour

These days I spend more time on sixers than I do on fours-ies. Neither is ever going to make me cool.

Thanks, matey! I'll give that a go and see what transpires. edit for: Success! Thanks Charic!

Sorry to bother you chaps... Tried logging in to the all-new bright 'n' shiny GC with my BC log-in UN and PWD. Yikes! GC doesn't recognise me and boots me out of log-in after a few attempts. What is a boy to do?

The other grand thing about these Eros / Eko's is that one can shim the bolt-on neck. Very handy, as I discovered when setting up a pal's Ranger 12-string. (Deserted warehouse.. what are you like? )

In the past I have used: * Web sites - JMB, etc, also Gumtree * Rehearsal studio noticeboards / Guitar shop noticeboards (if they still have them) * Talking to people at gigs / making sly approaches to band members between sets * Unexpectedly approaching complete strangers who show evidence of being interested in guitars, musical performance etc. Did this while manning a bookstall at our village fete when a guy walked up wearing a CF Martin T-shirt. Also tapped up a gardening lady who had a gig flyer taped to the rear window of her van. Turned out she was a jazz saxophonist looking for a guitarist. Basically, one has to be completely remorseless and unembarrassed.

Is it good for Metal?

One time I was in a band, we're auditioning for a guitarist and the best one was 60. Our drummer says: 'He's too old. It would look wrong'. I said 'FFS, you're - what? - 46 and no spring chicken yourself' at which he sort of curled up like an autumn leaf and sulked for the rest of the night. I think some people are remarkably stupid when it comes to age. Sure, if they're a bunch of bibbity-bobbity teens looking to get signed, that's one thing; but a klatsch of tubby, greying, (usually hobbyist) dadz banging on about 'too old' is a step beyond reason.

Years ago I saw a band at a London club. Three or four kids aged about 12-18 with their Dad on something, keys, bass, can't recall. TBH, it all looked a bit creepy, not least because Dad had a tendency to bark instructions at them between songs and scowl whenever one of them fluffed a note. 'Tennis parent,' I thought and sidled off to the bar.

* Young people in bands tend vocally to reject new or diverging initiatives straight off. Old blokes tend to let it fester then suddenly explode when triggered by an entirely unconnected issue * Young people gig in skimpy t-shirts and unfeasibly tight trousers. Old blokes gig in waistcoats and Australian bush hats with corks on. * Young people miss rehearsals because they are (i) off their faces on a lethal cocktail of drugs or (ii) putting the brisket to some sweet young thing. Old blokes miss rehearsals because (i) its their brother-in-law's birthday or (ii) they've got a proctologist's appointment the following week. * Young people play too loud on cheap, generic gear. Old blokes play too loud on exotic and very expensive gear * Young people obsess about being friends with their bandmates. Old blokes obsess about suppressing their hatred for their bandmates. * Young people want to make exciting new sounds. Old blokes want to get exactly the tone that Jimmy Page had at the Albert Hall on the evening of 9th Jan 1970. ... and so forth.

It's worth remembering that at different times in their lives people have different reasons for being in bands. Some interesting research:

@OP Yes, some hard rock / metal bands comprised of young people will probably turn their noses up at you. More fool them and who wants to hang around with fools? So go play with people around your age. For one thing, they won't be obsessing about 'making it' and for another they'll probably be more experienced musicians. Mind you, middle-aged blokes in bands have a whole different set of quirks from young people in bands and that's something else you'll have to get used to

Quite so, though posterity would have to wait. The Frankenstein guitar was first successfully animated by Dr Edward Lodewijk Van Halen in the mid-late 20th century. Ita fiebat. Funnily enough, Mary Shelley is the aunt of Pete Shelley out of The Buzzcocks.

Stromberg catalogue 1929 At the risk of being even pickier - in 1929 the Stromberg Voisinet Company was selling flat tops with an integral pick-up and a companion amplifier which looks remarkably like something Phil Jones might have put together. So that's six years before the Rickenbacker / Electro-string Ken Roberts archtop in the article about the guy in Lewes and three years before the frying pan. Vivitone Electric Guitar circa 1933 Now let's get really picky... Gibson's Lloyd Loar was working on pick-ups and amps from 1919 onwards and in 1924 designed an electrically amplified upright bass. Though Loar was their mainstay guitar designer Gibson's management scoffed at his ideas about electrics. Outcome? Loar got the ar$e and had it on his toes to set up his own operation. By 1933 Loar's Vivitone company was chopping out arch-tops with a pick-up and a companion battery powered amp (busking, anyone?) that pre-dates the Pignose. There wasn't much demand so Loar turned his mind to the idea of electric pianos. Gibson would eventually catch up in 1936 when the company released the ES-150. Vivitone electrics / dope cubbyhole The eagle-eyed observer will have spotted that Lloyd Loar's hollow-body Vivitone has no f-holes through which to insert the electrics (early attempt to reduce feedback?). Loar's elegant solution was to put everything in a little sliding drawer on the bout which presumably also provided stash-space for jazz cigarettes. All this was 85 years ago and two years before Rickenbacker. Jazz Great Perry Botkin with Doc Kauffman's Vibrola guitar / amp combo My favourite early guitar is the Vibrola designed by Doc Kauffman which debuted in July 1936 and was taken up by Electro-String. The guitar was mounted on a pole which was attached to the amplifier. Inside the solid guitar body was a system of electrically driven pulleys which provided a mechanical vibrato effect. Doc Kauffman not only invented the first guitar whammy bar in 1928 (Les Paul bought one) but went on to found K&F with Leo Fender in 1945, leaving around the time that Leo started working on the Telecaster. In another wang-bar coincidence, around this time Leo was allegedly picking Paul Bigsby's brains for solid body guitars and nicking the design for the Strat headstock. Fender's distribution company was owned by Francis Hall who in 1951 bought Rickenbacker from Adolph Rickenbacker, he who had first produced the frying pan, drawing on his experience manufacturing steel guitar bodies for Dobro back in the 1920's. (Francis Hall's son John now runs Rickenbacker; his hobbies include firing off menacing threats at UK bass forums). Thing is, all these guys knew each other or were aware of each other's work. Fascinating times.

The great thing about Oliver's Army is that it's a lyrically powerful song that works on a number of levels. It queries the validity of the British Army's presence in NI while sympathising (to an extent) with the predicament of young unemployed men thrust into urban warfare. The song also satirises certain hard right positions and references global trouble spots of the period. Costello uses multiple voices (i) The unemployed man who would rather be anywhere else (ii) the recruiter dangling the offer of travel (iii) the right wing bar stool preacher and his predictable complaints. [Edit for] Or maybe the right-wing views belong to the unemployed man. Who can say? It would be interesting to hear the lyrics delivered as a poem without the peppy music and the Abba-esque piano. And, yes, it's an anti-war song but it's message is carefully ambiguous about issues of responsibility and a lot of other things besides. Don't start me talking I could talk all night My mind goes sleepwalking While I'm putting the world to rights (Suggestion that the character's opinions are uninformed by any real thought) Called careers information (Refs Army Careers Information Service) Have you got yourself an occupation? (Double meaning - a job / a military occupation as perceived by Catholics in NI) Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today There was a checkpoint Charlie He didn't crack a smile But it's no laughing party When you've been on the murder mile Only takes one itchy trigger One more widow, one less white n****r (Verse suggests that PTSD leads to unregulated and illegal acts of aggression? Pejorative ref to Catholics, maybe refs Bloody Sunday?). Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today Hong Kong is up for grabs (Refs decline British Empire, perennial right wing complaint) London is full of Arabs (Arab potentates were buying up swathes of London during the 60's-70s; much bemoaned by certain sections of the population) We could be in Palestine Overrun by a Chinese line With the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne (Areas of high unemployment at time song was written). But there's no danger It's a professional career (refs Army recruitment slogan at time: 'Join The Professionals') Though it could be arranged With just a word in Mr. Churchill's ear (Deliberate anachronism: maybe refs perennial right wing view that Britain needs a 'new Churchill') If you're out of luck or out of work (Further reference to unemployment). We could send you to Johannesburg (Apartheid state at time: rumours prevailed that British were secretly offering military support to white SA government)

The odd thing to me is that the black ruby fish was / is named Barbus Nigrofasciatus rather than Nigerfaciatus. Though I am no etymologist I understand that the N-word is a corruption of the word negro which is Spanish for black and itself derives from the Latin word niger (also meaning 'black'). Opinion appears to be divided as to the etymology of niger before its appearance in Latin. Familiar modern descendants of niger include nero (Italian) and noir (French). By contrast the English word for black derives from the proto-German blakaz (burnt) which may descend in turn from the Indo-European bhleg. Funnily enough the defunct Old English word blac meant 'light or pale coloured' and derives from an alternative reading of 'burnt', referring not to the blackened quality of the burnt item but to the flames or light generated by the burning process. The Old and Middle English word for black was swart as in the English word swarthy and the very familiar German word schwartz. It is not just obsessive pedantry that leads me off on these ramblings. I believe that a wider understanding of words helps to understand and to de-fang troublesome examples such as the N-word. In the broadest historical context the root of the word has no inherent meaning beyond its function as an adjective; the issues we must prioritise are the hateful beliefs which have accreted around the word and the actions which spring from those beliefs. The fact that an adjective became a noun is significant but not critical, and agonising about Elvis Costello is of secondary importance

I feel the same way about impressionists like Rory Bremner, Jon Culshaw and Alastair McGowan. I mean, they put on these voices and say stuff the real person would never say, which is stupid, isn't it? Why don't they be themselves and just tell some jokes. Quite beyond me.

My first bass was a Zenta very much like Kodiakblair's above ^ but with two pups (only one of which worked).

A cursory examination of the lyrics and of such background as is available indicates that the song Oliver's Army is a meditation upon the enlistment of young, unemployed men into the British Army. The 'Only takes one itchy trigger, one more widow, one less white n*****' line refers to such collateral damage as was sustained by Irish Catholics during the Troubles. The title plays upon the dark reputation of Oliver Cromwell and his frankly savage acts against the Irish people during his conquest of Ireland. The song was - apparently - written upon Mr Costello's return from a trip in 1978 to NI when it became apparent to him that the British soldiers serving in Ulster were both very young and from a background of poverty. It works on a lot of levels.

A book which in its British publication stumbled over the years through various titles from the original (as above) to Ten Little Indians to Ten Little Soldiers and eventually ending up with the current iteration And Then There Were None, the latter being the title of the US version as first published back in the 1930's. At the time the Yanks saw issues of sensitivity where - it would seem - the Brits did not.

Funnily enough, my Mum is 92. All my life (and before she went crazy a few years ago) she would refer to a particular colour as 'n***** brown'. I really don't think she could see any connection at all between the word and people in the real world. She certainly exhibited no racist characteristics, preached a sort of 'do as you would be done by' philosophy and thought 'that Enoch Powell' was an awful man. So - as a youth in the early 70's - the word had no resonance for me because in our house the word was never used in any context other than as descriptor for sundry items of clothing e.g. "Wear your n***** brown woolly hat, it's cold out". I was consequently astonished when I first heard the word applied to another person. Even then in my ignorant innocence I thought, well, I suppose it's a corruption of a foreign (Spanish / Portuguese?) word for black, what's the problem? Sometimes one doesn't see what is going on around oneself

2nd May 1997

Whatever impression you may have garnered from social media, it is certainly the case that Bass players' gear gets nicked. Also, any number of people here have been scammed out of instruments and other stuff. And they've usually experienced difficulty getting their stuff back. One BC-er is currently participating in a police enquiry into a repeat scammer and there's a crowdfund to help cover his (and another BC-ers) losses.

So basically it's a 5-er with three courses per string?

How best to react to a drummer who keeps changing the beat?