BrunoBass

Yes. Bellybutton is one of my favourite albums, every song is killer and sounds like a number one. I don’t know which edition of the album you have but I had the expanded CD, with terrific live covers of songs by Wings, Badfinger etc. Certainly showing their influences! Jellyfish should’ve been huge. I’m convinced they weren’t because of their image, which I’m sure put people off. Thanks for reminding me, I’m going to put Bellybutton on in the car on the way home!

Here’s another...

I’m looking for a compact, lightweight PA suitable for an acoustic duo, both people playing guitar and singing, for small gigs (bars, coffee shops, hotel lobbies etc). Ideally I’d like something with reverb, and a minimum four channels/inputs. Having had a look around, there are a lot of small single speaker set-ups available but most of them, if not all, only have two inputs. The Yamaha Stagepas 400 seems to fit the bill, but it has two speakers and at £450-ish is a bit more than I want to pay. Am I better off getting a powered speaker and a small non powered mixer separately? Can anyone recommend anything please?

+1 on that

Sounds like a great night!

Saturday’s gig was one of those that make it all worthwhile. We played a 40th birthday party in a marquee at a local golf club. The first set went well, probably about a hundred people there and six-eight girls dancing from the word go. We had a hour break before going back on again at 11 for the final hour. By this point the crowd had doubled I’d guess, and everything was going really well. Like everyone else we build our second set up to a peak, with all the ‘bangers’ (as our singer likes to call them) one after the other. By this point nearby everyone was up and dancing and we were really cooking, the best we’d played in ages. We had a great night, made some new friends and were paid handsomely. As we were packing up one of the barmaids came over and said that they had a load of unsold bottles of beer. She couldn’t be bothered to carry them back to the main bar inside and asked if we’d like to split them. Nice bonus! I played my RMI Boomslang Jive through my Genz Benz rig. I like a lighter bass for these longer gigs, especially as my dodgy shoulder gets ever dodgier. It sounded great, the whole room sounded great actually, with the solid floor, textile walls and ceiling, and a wall of bodies. Very happy, and a great way to finish off the festival / party season for us before we get back to the pub gigs. Drummer’s eye view below ⬇️

We went into Saturday’s gig massively under prepared (due to reasons beyond our control) and actually played very well, even songs from our full set that we’ve not played much in recent weeks, due to playing shorter festival sets. We’ve played them enough to be able to cope with not rehearsing, but it was a relief nonetheless to get through it with no issues.

Great musician, songwriter and singer.

There are no original members at all left in Napalm Death.

No, which is why I said (in the piece of my post you didn’t quote): ‘we gig regularly enough to be able to do a good job’. Why distort my post to try and make a facile point?

It’s the bit about him being her big brother that set my alarm bells a-ringing.

Yes it still gets played a lot! I know a couple of the guys in EMF, they have all done very well off the back of that song. They’re lovely lads, good luck to them!

I’m all for viewing things through the prism of the time they belonged to, but my god that song is vile. I remember hearing it as a kid and thinking ‘what did he just say?!’ Incest, paedophilia and entrapment all wrapped up in one fluffy teen pop package. Urgh.

We play that too, depending on the venue. Our singer always introduces it as ‘a former Christmas number one’. 🤣

We have a private event to play tomorrow, we don’t do many functions and we are being paid handsomely for our time. We practise every Thursday night, and last night I was just leaving the house to go to rehearsal when our singer called saying he’d just found out the studio wasn’t available due to some overrunning refurbishment works. No notice, and no alternative. So tomorrow we are going into a gig with the least preparation we’ve ever had. We are all, as you’d imagine, unimpressed. We’ve managed to wangle an early load-in which means we can have a long soundcheck and run through several songs but it’s nowhere near a proper rehearsal. I’m sure in time honoured fashion ‘it’ll be alright on the night’, and we gig regularly enough to be able to do a good job, but I’m still not happy about the lack of preparation.

A certain gentleman in Milwaukee? 😉

That one looks slightly different to my friend’s example, the upper horn is flared away from the neck.

And that's why Basschat is awesome. Thank you.

I recently found some negatives my dad took of my first band in 1985. I played drums back then and our bass player Alex Hermann had an unbranded short scale bass. It was pretty basic if I recall, but he got a fairly passable Mick Karn-esque tone from it (he’d pulled the frets out himself). The only unobscured photo I could find is this one. Is anyone able to recognise or identify what it is?

Beware hidden quality issues on the PB50. I wanted to remove the scratchplate for a ‘Sting’ look, but when I did I found a big hole drilled into the body, plus tbe very apparent edge of the photo flame paper. Scratchplate back on... Oh, and the pots didn’t work either. Turned out ok in the end though.

I wish I’d seen him, I never did. Frank was a true one-off, a maverick. There’s not many left anymore.

Old synth stuff like Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Fad Gadget, D.A.F. etc

Yes, U2.

The latest Later with Jools Holland thread with the other twenty 😉

I believe it was another band that didn’t pay John, for a later session, not Heaven 17? John Wilson was only seventeen when he recorded with Heaven 17, he was just some kid who Glenn Gregory knew through work. I think he played all the guitar parts on Penthouse and Pavement too. Amazing.