TrevorR

Off to see a performance of Adrian Snell’s rock opera, The Passion, performed with a choir and full orchestra at All Souls Langham Place tomorrow night. One of my fave musos - Dave Bainbridge (Iona, Lifesigns, Strawbs etc) is in the band. Should be good. And just bought tickets for Trevor Horn’s band at Hampton Pool this summer. Can’t wait!!!

He’s such a fantastic musician- still miss Iona. Will be seeing him playing up in London on Saturday evening, playing in Adrian Snell’s band for a live performance of The Passion, with full orchestra and choir! Can’t wait!!!

You should check out Bela Fleck’s new album… several versions of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue arranged with banjo taking the piano parts… an orchestral version, a bluegrass version etc… Here’s the bluegrass version.

Not played MRL in years. Was always a blast to play. So long as you’ve got a keys player who’s not afraid to bash out a rhythm-heavy piano part enthusiastically (as opposed to a polite, Richard Clayderman playing style) you’ll be golden.

Agreed, no problems propagating and bass sound with that rig!!!

But hopefully NOT plastered!

Must have been a bit before my time. Can’t ever recall a music shop in Staines itself…

But all too typical with volunteer teams. Our team would occasionally ask me while setting FoH “Do you want it a bit louder or quieter?” I’d say to them, “Nothing to do with me. Front of house is entirely between you, the pastor and the worship leader.” We had one of those set ups where we could each set out monitor mix from our iPad.

Alan Spenner tearing up a groove with Andy Newmark and Neil Hubbard before launching into a speedy Love is the Drug…

Bass by the fabulous John (“Johnny Gus”) Gustafson on Love Is The Drug using a P-Bass that Ian Waller (later founder of Wal basses) rebuilt, modified and rewound the pickups for. Roxy had some stunningly good bassists, especially Johnny Gus, Gary Tibbs and Alan Spenner.

Andy, Pro bass pots are weird… never seen the like on any other bass. Rather being an integrated part of the same unit like most pots, the pot and the shaft for Pro basses are separate items. The body of the pot has two locating holes at the centre of the hub and a separate plastic spindle with two locating prongs fit into those holes. Yes, bonkers! After many years the plastic locating prongs get brittle and can snap off - which is what has happened to yours. Give them a gentle tug and you’ll find they come right out and you’ll be able to see where the prongs have snapped off. Same thing happened to my Pro2E about 15 years ago. I took it to Paul for him to fix and he did is bang up job. The pots locate directly onto the circuit boards so I wouldn’t have trusted many people to have replaced them. When he fitted the new “normal” pots it really brought the bass back to life! So my advice would be to take it down to Fetcham and get Paul to swap them.

For me it’s Tiran Porter’s exquisite tone on Takin’ It To The Streets.

The three that spring to mind are the Fender Geddy Lee Jazz, the Fender Marcus Miller Jazz and the Epiphone Jack Cassidy Semi-acoustic. All very well known bassists but with basses that you would be happy playing in all sort of contexts. The fact that two are flavours of Jazz bass probably helps their transferability. The bass I’d feel pigeonholed by would be any pointy metal type bass. They look silly enough in their coven genre but utterly ridiculous anywhere else. I saw Chuck Berry at a festival in 1983 and he was clearly using a pick up band. The bass player had an Explorer shaped bass - an Aria ZZB IIRC. Playing Maybelline and No Particular Place To Go it just didn’t look right!

So, at last night's Woking Weekly Monday Night Jam night Beth (one of the regular singers) sidles up to me and says "Trevor, you could play Hocus Pocus by Focus, couldn't you?" "Erm... give me 10 minutes to work out the riff and I could try..." And so this happens... bonkers but such great fun! A bit random but, what a blast!!

In my world it’s “Oh bum!! Oh well!” …and no more reaction than that. Now, if you’d spotted the chip AT your tech’s place or very, very soon after, then you would at least be entitled to say, “Erm, look. That wasn’t there before. Guess you’d better retouch that.” However, having taken it to a session and then played it all night then it’s hard to say for sure the knock wasn’t while it was with you. These things can easily happen unbeknownst… either way, it’s hardly worth stressing over. It may have its first knock but it probably won’t be its last. If you [want / feel you need] to pay to get it retouched, that’s for you to decide but don’t get into mind games with it like your Option D.

Fantastic! That’s definitely a result! Enjoy the next one.

Apart from the ones @obbmlater made for me, same here.

Just read on the Award Session Facebook page that Stuart Ward is retiring and closing down the business at the end of March. They’ve been a bit obscure over recent years but they had a real moment in the sun through the 80s. Their Sessionette amps were great little amps and their guitar preamp/speaker sim pedals were absolutely stonking! British SamsAmps before anyone had really heard of Sansamp. Sad to see another British small manufacturer close but hopefully Stuart will enjoy some well earned feet up time!

Mine’s upstairs right now. It’s a lovely Aria SB700 which I got new in 1982. Still gets played. Some chums and I did a fun 80s set for a fundraiser back in November so, of course, it was my weapon of choice!

She was great. Soooo watchable! Can’t decide if it was cheesy, crap or brilliant that for the last lot the auctioneer and a load of the phone bidders put on red sweat bands for the last lot… probably all three simultaneously!

Over half a mil for the stage used sunburst Les Paul! Yikes!

Yeah, set up by the guy who runs a local music school and very much with that inclusive attitude. Highly recommend it to anyone in travelling distance to Woking. Great fun night… https://www.wokingmusic.co.uk/weekly-monday-night-jam For full disclosure I should say that this jam is a bit of a one off. There’s another one near me which is a bit ramshackle but friendly and keen to get everyone a go. Been to that a few times and it’s a fun night. And then… there’s another which just seems to be an excuse for two groups of chums (I.e. the organisers) to get up and play up on stage and wasn’t welcoming at all… never went back to that latter one.

I’m fortunate to go the the most fantastic jam night every Monday in Woking. The have the most fabulous house band - headed up at the moment by the phenomenal jazz/rock guitarist Nicolas Meier. How good is he? Let’s just say he played in Jeff Beck’s band a while back. However, it’s an absolutely ego free affair. The house band will do a couple of songs but the main priority is ensuring everyone gets plenty of chances to play if they want to. The music ranges from jazz to Latin to rock to pop to soul… just depending what the punters want to do that night. The jam has full backline and a sweet bass rig… a Tonehammer 500 into a pair of MarkBass 1x12s. Very nice! The house bassist if a fabulous player called Ana-Maria Lazar but there’s no hint of hogging the light. She’s happy to play if nobody wants to but would much rather have folks getting up and having a go. Here’s a vid I took a while back which gives you an idea how good the house band are. Nick and Carl Orr on guitar, Ana on bass and Adam Bond on drums. So e photos from a typical night here… https://www.facebook.com/100092387225241/posts/pfbid0phhRubD7m4uqENxThosDW5CT4e7z5FjQsEBNaWafzejNDkZqDW2dYEK1jtB8B7wwl/?

Late to the party but yet more love for Newtone… like others, have been using their acoustic strings for years… decades, actually, including custom sets for my Fylde Bouzouki. Back in the pre-internet days it was always nice having a chat with Malcolm on the phone. The guys who took over from him when he retired seem to have carried on the ethos of hand winding the best possible quality strings. Using their Diamond 45-105s on my Frankenjazz,and one of my Wals. They’ll be the choice for restringing my other Wal and my Aria when the time next comes to order some strings… love their strings.

Sitting on the train listening to Yes - Live from Lyon. This was the only recording released with Oliver Wakeman in the band in the late 2000s (until he dug out the tracks the band were working on when he got booted out and finished them off the other year). He’s quite a chip off his dad’s old block. Shame this version of the band didn’t last longer before he was ditched in favour of bringing Geoff Downes back into the band. He’s a much more lyrical player than Downes and feels more suited to the Yes vibe to my ear. Shame.