chris_b

Top Tips: If you think you sound good with 1 cab, use 2 you'll sound even better. If you think you need 300 watts, get 500 watts, turn up and play lighter.

The first bass I owned and learnt to play on. . . . my first pro bass, a Fender Precision. . . . 3 of the 4 most amazing basses I've owned in the last couple of years. . . . all sunburst. I rarely dream about basses, but when I'm thinking about them sunburst is what springs to mind.

Me neither, but I don't tell my wife if I've bought a bar of chocolate when I've been out. Gear is OK, but I really get told off if I eat too many choc bars!!

Gigs like this are a bad business model for someone and are not tenable in the long run. Most bands are playing in the corner of a pub. Many of these are not "proper" gigs but the pub manager thinking you'll deliver him a room full of punters. In the long run this doesn't work either. Some people will come out to see a local band at a local gig but "out of town" bands won't necessarily have that local following. If the venue can't generate an audience then most of the bands won't either. We had this when a venue decided to ditch all but the local bands, because they, "Bought in the punters". When I asked how many local bands there were they said, "About 4 or 5". So they were expecting 4 or 5 bands to fill the place twice a week for the whole year! Of course they coudn't sustain that and there are no gigs there anymore. The venue has to be responsible for filling the gig every week with its own punters (people who want to go to that gig and on a regular basis) and the band's audience will be the top up. Unfortunately the bottom line seems to be that in the UK most people are too lazy to go out to see most of the live music that's available. Compared to a night in front of the TV with a drink at your elbow, a gig is noisy, expensive, uncomfortable and inconvenient.

So the venue doesn't make any attempt to attract an audience?

Get the best bass for you. Spend the rest on lessons. Then get the best bass for your new found abilities. Use your old bass as your backup. You're done.

So I was talking to the wife about NYC Sadowsky's and she asked the price. When I told her she didn't miss a beat and said, "That's a lot, but if they're worth it, get one". When I load the car up for a gig these days I put 8 pieces in the boot and the list price is just north of £9k. To balance things up, I had one bass for 25 years and two basses for the next 10 years. It's been up and down since joining BC but I'm back to two basses again so I don't think I'm too extravagant.

They were when I first saw the Crazy World of, Drachen Theaker on drums and Vincent Crane on Hammond. Both impressive players.

Not so modern or different from the shows of The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown in 1967 or Screaming Lord Such in the early 60's.

Now. . . . in my head this is exactly what I'm doing!

We have a front man who has the demeanour of Bill Wyman's undertaker. He's a good singer but I'm now resigned to the fact that we're never going to get any return gigs.

When I started seeing bands musicianship was enough to get the job done. There was never much "show" in gigs by John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Jeff Beck, Alexis Korner and most of the others, but that didn't matter. There were lots of great bands that did "show" like Geno, Jimmy James, Zoot Money. We had a lot of choice. Me? Sadly a personality black hole. I make John Entwistle look animated. I don't like to look back at videos and see what is actually happening when I'm going through my "moves". . . . because the reality is there is never a lot to look at. At the moment I can get away with it because the main guy I play with does it all, dancing on the tables, out in the garden. He attracted the interest of the Police one night, soloing on the side of the A30, when they didn't believe that he was performing in the pub on the other side of the dual carriageway! Anyway, I don't loose too much sleep over it. I'm at the age when I fall over if I move too suddenly. Blue is right. We can be musicians in the rehearsal room, but on a gig the best of us are also entertainers.

I strung a set of DR Lo-Riders through the body on my US 55-94 and didn't think that made much of a difference, so went back to stringing through the bridge.

+1 In this situation I would lead the process. Tell them what I want and get them to do it. I also don't care for "naming and shaming". My experience of "young fellas" working in music shops goes back to the 60's, and it seems that the personality type that shouldn't be let loose in a music shop as an assistant still exists!

I don't know of any D class amps currently on the market that are unreliable or less than well designed. My minimum is 500 watts and my current go-to amp is 700 watts. Lots of headroom is always a good thing. I've used Aguilar TH500 and AG700 amps for a few years now and would replace them if they were stolen. I know a player who uses a Markbass 800 watt amp with an EBS Valve Drive. Sounds as warm as a warm thing!

Who suggested that you need a flatter fretboard for these techniques? I've seen all these techniques performed on every kind of bass, so I'd question that advice. I'd only change if I found that I actually had a physical problem with my bass.

I'm not disagreeing. I don't think Kaye ever claimed to be JJ. I think she was just claiming the sessions she played on and a couple (out of the 1000's) may well have been claimed in error. Back then songs would be recorded and rerecorded for singles, albums and for various other artists. Lots of chances to play on different versions of hit records and when you add in the overdubbing of parts the puzzle becomes more and more complicated. I think she got a couple wrong, but IMO that doesn't take anything away from her being one of the top players in the history of electric bass playing.

Why breakup a winning team? If your ego is big enough you can break anything. It seems Gordy would do anything to get into Hollywood. A lot of the creative talent was leaving Motown towards the end so maybe the ship was sinking anyway. Motown used many players in LA. Wilton Felder on ABC etc. Many of the LA tracks were released, and some, as we know, were rerecorded in Detroit. That is probably where the claims and discrepancies come from. Plus when the session guys were given a chance to get royalties from their work, they were screwed by having to apply for each track in a pretty short time scale. Even more scope for inaccuracies! I would imagine Carol Kaye's record keeping is pretty good, maybe better than the guys in Detroit (?), but she wouldn't know about the overdubs and rerecording that went on after. At one point JJ claimed to be the bass player on Cool Jerk, even though Bob Babbitt played on it. It seems things were not so clear cut back then and certainly don't look any clearer from the outside today.

Have a listen to the Pogues version. They just play root and 5. So chord C to chord G jumps from a low G note (the 5th of C) to the G (root of G) an octave up. Playing the same note between different chords doesn't matter. When the other instruments are playing their lines it all makes sense and doesn't sound clunky at all. It works because it is that simple.

With Higher and Higher, or any repetitive line, you have to focus on playing the song. Forget about the bass line and focus on the groove. It becomes very easy after that.

Hands up. Who, around here, has been asked to play What Is Hip on a gig? If I was asked to play Forget Me Nots I'd just picture Bernard Edwards playing it and do it that way.

How often have you run both cabs together? Was it at low volume? You don't have to sell anything. Just run 2 rigs and daisy chain them. Run an instrument lead from the send on one to the return on the other. So you'll be running the preamp in the amp your bass is plugged into and both power amp sections into their respective cabs. That will get you your extra volume from the second cab without risking any damage.

All the early stuff had the bass sharing a track with other instruments so it was mixed back and in many of the tracks where JJ was almost "invisible" he was using his double bass. No one ever recorded double bass in pop music properly back then.They started mixing him further forward when he morphed into the amazing "lead" bass player that still gets him so noticed today.

Not quite floating thumb. I believe he anchored his ring finger on the pickup cover.

This sort of mismanagement isn't confined to younger bands. Some of the oldies I play with are as poor in their organisational and communication skills as this. I find throwing the toys out even when perfectly entitled to do so rarely get any results, never makes a good impression and never makes me feel any better. I usually put it down to experience, moan like hell to the wife and move on. IMO never leave on bad terms, always be the professional one and leave a positive vibe behind you. Sometimes people will remember this and it could be you who gets the phone call when an ex band member is looking for a bass player. Edit. . .. hey Cat, we're on the same page.