Stub Mandrel

Apparently most people who sign up want to be lead guitarists... they tend to run short of bassists and vocalists.

I hope so, or I'm in for some very long drives...

Not like (some) bass players then 🙂

I'm really keen to start playing again, so I recently signed up for this: https://abbey-road-music.com/abbey-road-army-registration/ The details have just come though and it looks like enough people have signed up to form five 'bands', including a good number of returners from the previous one (which has to be a good sign!) There will be a first meeting this month to divvy us up (a bit like the Sorting Hat?) There will be seven rehearsals starting in April and a seven-hour several bands gig on 19 May. I'm pretty much the target demographic (50's , haven't played in a band for decades, vaguely competent rather than talented...) and it's a lot cheaper than buying a Lamborghini. Now I know the timetable all the questions start coming... Who will I be playing with? What if the music they want is crap or needs a Billy Sheehan/Pino Palladino? What if I suggest a song then find out I can't play it &^£^%$*^!!!!! Big worry is I know it takes me an hour to settle down my nerves when playing with new folks so at first I will come across as complete crap! I know the aim (and what I want) is just to enjoy the crack and make some music but what if they all go off note-perfect first time like the Commmitments playing Mustang Sally.... Has anyone on BC done something similar? All the backline is supplied for practice and performance; for some reason taht's making me worry even more about choosing which bass to play. I suppose I should take the one I find easist first time,but it's tempting to think 'which one will sound best' or worse 'which one will give me the most cred'. Crikey this is worse than worrying about my first band audition over 30 years ago (which was a miserable disaster - I spent weeks trying to learn all the songs on a tape, then they didn't want to play any of them).

I had a very crappy nylon string acoustic and put steels trings on it which gradually destroyed it. It rattled so much I painted a rattlesnake on the front. My mate and I got cheap Kay electrics (mine was the 'SG' copy (K-T2, I still have it), his the 'strat' and we managed to figure out 'Running Free' between us (it had just come out and he had the single). That guitar took part in many very drunken and scrappy sing-alongs (mostly helped by the Beatles Compleat) when I went to college. My first composition was called 'Mindless Violence' and it went something like '||: what we want is mindless violence:||' Much later a mate of mine leant me his precision (!) which was the start of the road to bassiness. I would guess my first bassline that wasn't a guitary thing was probably pounding along to Hawkwind.

Perhaps for Yes, Genesis and King Crimson the challenge should be 'name a track in 4/4'?

Delta Lady reminds me - Joe Cocker's take on With a Little Help from My Friends is utterly charged with emotion 🙂

I've got an Orange Crush practice amp, all five of my basses sound great through it, just plug in and play... I've got a 'stack' with a 150W Laney covered in sliders, pre-shape and para-Q. I can get them all to sound great through it, but it takes a few minutes fiddling to get a good setting for each bass.

A load of good musicians with Stagg kit would sound a lot better than a bunch of 'all the gear no idea' bozos...

Squier VM Jaguar SS My photo seems to have killed the beautiful candy apple red.

I doubt you are as crap as the previous owner...

No. Having fewer than 20 stringed instruments in the house is stupid 🙂 Seriously, I got a Squier Jaguar a few weeks back. I've played virtually every day since, sometimes for a couple of hours at a stretch. It's not my best sounding bass, but it's wonderful to play. My brother has recently got a Ukelele bass which is tiny and it's brilliant. I've ordered a neck and I'm going to make a 'rad' piezo in the bridge on, just for fun. If you really want short scale... how about this crappy 13.5" scale micro-bass I knocked up in the 1980s 🙂

House of the Rising Sun was an old standard. Hey Joe was a 62 song by Billy Roberts but the famous arrangement was by Tim Rose of the Thorns.

No prizes for guessing which Clark - they don't mean the one on the high street 🙂 RIP the Divided Alien.

Agreed that one is pretty tasteless, but white pickups can look good, and not just on Strats...

I remember seeing Jim Lea play Purple Haze at a Slade gig. Mindblowing 🙂

For some reason I was thinking of Planet Caravan, but its 4/4. Computer God has some 7/8 in it and there's the example off 13 which has 6/8 in it.

Oh yes. But it's the one well-known song of his where I prefer his version. One problem perception of Dylan has is that he came from a tradition where attitudes to covering and changing songs was a lot healthier than today's lawsuit culture. Anything more than 20 years old was considered 'trad. arr.... A great example is Masters of War, which is essentially the same song as Fairport's Nottanum Town at the root, but in practice both very different. The convoluted story of House of the Rising Son is pretty much impossible to untangle. I rather like this; I've been enjoying a lot of the Chris Cornell covers that have been getting airplay (at least on Planet Rock) since his death. I prefer the originals of many of them but I really enjoy hearing an alternative take. Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons do a great job of Motorhead songs and take a nice approach of being close to the original but in their more contemporary style (I liked it when, just before the encore, four spots started spinning to make a miini-bomber so we all knew what was coming 😁) I like covers done in a band's own style (whether big established artist or a pub band) - not to knock tribute bands, but I see the tribute approach as being closer to a blend of classical 'performance of a piece' combined with (at least with the most sophisticated tributes) an element of theatre. One other thought on covers - I was probably the only person who enjoyed Sabbath playing Smoke on the Water at Reading '83 with Gillan :_)

Just about anything by Bob Dylan with the exception of Like a Rolling Stone? Actually, a lot of his early work was covers/traditional songs anyway.

You sir, clearly need a Fully-loaded Fender Jaguar 🙂 TBH I usually leave the tone right up and just switch pickups. Big exception is the Fender Performer where the TBX control is magical. I got a bit weeny about tone in my gig days swapping basses between songs, plus having a Boss bass graphic eq pedal. Sad.....

It's not just me then! And by God it's fugly!

Waltz time is sadly much neglected in Rock but it surprising who has dabbled (Sabbath, Stranglers etc. etc.) Golden Brown is a lovely example of a wonderful song that did well in the charts that alternated bars of 5/4 and 4/4 making it compelling to hear but virtually impossible to dance to. There are some nice early Tull songs in 3/4 and 5/4, also a tendency to stick in bars with the odd extra note. Zeppelin do very odd things with Page and Jones' parts shifting around relative to Bonham's drumming on some tracks. Most early Yes and Genesis... Then there's YYZ by Rush*... *Listening to 13 today I noticed one track has several short spiky passages in 6/8 which are very reminiscent of YYZ, surely a coincidence.

I assume you've tried loosening the truss rod right off and fitting heavyweight strings? I'm no luthier but a kill or cure would be to take the finish off the neck and steam it for several hours while holding it straight in a jig. I accept no responsibility if/when this kills the guitar...