BrunoBass

You’re too good for ‘em Fred 😁

Yep, in Middleton Cheney just outside Banbury.

Oh I’m not doing the gig, decided. They can stick it up their collective a***s. I’m just keeping from slagging them off everywhere, as much as I’d like to. It wouldn’t reflect well on me.

With Frusciante on board it’s the return of the classic lineup, in my humble opinion. I haven’t liked much of their work in the 21st Century so I’m interested to see what they come up with. No disrespect to Josh.

Hello, OP here. Yes, we’re just a pub band, nothing special but with enough integrity for me to always want to do the best I can - for me, my band mates and the punters. That integrity extends to being as dignified as possible over this whole sorry matter. Inside I want to vandalise the social media accounts and call them all sorts of words that the Basschat swear filter would censor. But as a grown up man who likes to think he knows how to conduct himself I’m keeping my feelings to myself, publicly at least. The local scene is small and cliquey enough that I don’t want to look like I’m wingeing. I put something on my Facebook status and I’m surprised, touched even, by the responses from friends, mates in other bands and people who come to see us regularly. Also, I know how few bass players there are locally, I may well have the last laugh yet. All there is to do now is move on and enjoy a bit of a break until the next thing comes along. Happy Christmas 🙂

That’s incredible. So tempted! 😁

Spot on Dave.

It is indeed very strange.

Ashley McBryde. I watched the excellent movie Wild Rose on a recent flight and Ashley has a cameo appearance in the film playing her song Girl Going Nowhere, which knocked me sideways and necessitated me seeking out the album of the same name from which it comes. This is as good as modern Country / Americana gets in my opinion. I love Country music but have little appetite for the ‘yee haw’ cliches that blight a lot of it. This album is mercifully free of all that and instead features world class story telling songwriting delivered by a voice soaked in honey and racked with sorrow and regret. Outstanding and so far up my street I’m going to start charging it rent.

One of my favourite Christmas songs!

The more I think about it the more tempted I am 😂

Cheers. Talking to a mate of mine in the pub earlier who suggested this: ‘Buy a cheap bass off eBay and do the gig with just that bass. No pedals, no amp, just turn up with the cheap bass and go straight into the venue PA. Last song, smash the bass to pieces, give them both the middle finger, jump off the stage and exit the building through the middle of the crowd.’ I wouldn’t do that, but what a defiant FU gesture that would be!

As mentioned previously me and the drummer had a bit of a difference of opinion a few months ago. I was getting a bit frustrated with his sloppy playing, a tendency to speed up / slow down, and a reluctance to try to improve. I ‘dared’ to mention it, which he took exception to, and this began a chain of events that led to him verbally abusing me and the frontman in the street after a gig and racing off in his car. I was ready to walk that night, but he later apologised and we moved on. Or so I thought. I don’t think he’s ever let it go and I think it’s been seething away inside him. He has limited ability as a drummer, he knows it, and he’s hyper sensitive to any criticism for the greater good, no matter how diplomatically the subject was broached. None of that was given as a reason for sacking me, but that’s the crux of the decision, I think. Instead he came out with a load of stuff like ‘we’ve drifted apart as people’ (we’ve never been anything more than colleagues), ‘we want to play original material and you don’t’ (playing original material was mentioned vaguely once, maybe two years ago, and I said I didn’t think a Saturday night pub crowd wanted to hear original material, and loads of other random nonsense too. It’s as if he has racked his exiguous brain to dredge up anything, however inconsequential, as a lame reason to fire me. Lots of stuff makes sense now; for instance I was storing some of their gear, various drums, PA speakers etc as I have a storage unit. I had the gear for ages, and then suddenly a couple of weeks ago they both decided they wanted their stuff back, as ‘we want to sell it’. I should’ve seen it coming...

Ah it’s so tempting... 😈

I think these are quite cool.

Are they any good for metal?

Thanks for all the comments guys, makes me feel a bit better. I was on a huge downer last night. We’ve been through a lot since I joined in summer 2015, and the way they’ve handled it just leaves a bad taste. I’ve decided not to do the gig. It’s their problem and they can fix it. When I asked them what they were going to do they both looked surprised, as if they hadn’t considered the possibility of finding a new bass player. Weird... unless they have a replacement already lined up. Oh well, onwards and upwards... (Incidentally, I suspect they’ve forgotten that I run all the social media accounts and am the only one with the passwords 😏)

The best gig for me was a charity ball we played just a few weeks ago. It was just a 30 minute set, so we played all the bangers, no gaps, and absolutely nailed it. Massively ‘up for it’ party crowd. Logistically it was a bit of a ballache but it didn’t matter, we played great and went down a storm. Equally memorable was our gig last weekend, the reason being that the band sacked me yesterday and it turns out that that was my last gig with them. The low point was driving all the way in the freezing cold to a gig in Bletchley which turned out to be a rough pub populated by two factions (families?) who spent the entire night facing each other off across the bar. They constituted the ‘audience’, probably eight or nine people, for the whole night. They then preceded to beat the s**t out of each other as we loaded out. ‘Don’t worry’, said the landlord, ‘they do this every weekend’.

It’s not Cold Blue Daze, although I am friendly with their singer, who is also a bassist. Coincidentally he was let go from his bass gig with another local band because (according to him) they didn’t like him being in another band.

Thank you. I have no intention of doing the gig; it’s like dumping your girlfriend and still expecting her to accompany you to a pre arranged event, it’s not going to happen. I told them I’d have to think about it, but by that time I just wanted get the hell out of there and go home. I think they know I won’t be playing it.

I looked into the HRC in Dubai airport yesterday while I was waiting for my flight home. Got my son a t-shirt but no bass related ephemera on display, just a tatty old sweater worn allegedly by Christina Aguilera and a jacket owned by some bloke off of Korn.

The spiteful little devil on my shoulder agrees....

I like it. And for an encore an avant-garde atonal bass solo dedicated to Antonín Zápotocký,

Our drummer called a band meeting for tonight; he said it would only be a quick one but he wanted to see us. I’ve never met a musician so apparently disengaged with music. Everything about the band bores him, he moans about every aspect of band activity and I’ve wondered frequently why he bothers to do it. Anyway, my assumption was that the meeting was to inform us that he was leaving the band. No. The meeting was to inform me that I’m out of the band. It came out of nowhere and I’m pretty stunned. I joined them four and a half years ago and in that time we’ve gigged pretty much twice a month since. We’ve always been tight, we’ve always been popular locally, it’s always been fun. We’ve had our ups and downs but we’ve always had a good working relationship with each other. I say ‘working relationship’ because I have no social relationship with the other two members, it’s a purely professional but amicable arrangement. Or was. I feel the drummer is the prime mover behind my ousting. We had a bit of a ‘didn’t see eye to eye’ situation over something a few months ago. He later apologised and we moved on. Or so I thought. He did all the talking tonight, the guitarist / singer / frontman kept quiet, even though he’s the defacto band leader. They both then started chipping in with other ‘reasons’ why they want me gone: we’ve drifted apart as people etc. We have a gig booked for the first weekend of January. It’s a multi band lineup ticketed gig, with us headlining. It’s sold out, 400 tickets. I was really looking forward to playing. Having just fired me, they then asked me if I’d still play the gig. It took every ounce of will to remain dignified and not tell them to **** off. I think they’ve underestimated how difficult fishing for a new bass player in our small local pond will be. So, I’m ‘single’ again. If I’d have left the band of my own accord I’d have done my best to maintain cordiality and try to remain on good terms with everyone. But the way it’s happened and the way it was handled leaves a bad taste and inevitably some smouldering if not fully ablaze bridges. I’m off to have a few beers and think about what I want to do next. I feel pretty down about it and I don’t feel like a bass player if I’m not in a band.

As @Delberthot mentions above; John Carruthers’ series of videos are short and informative: