tvickey

My band 'Shreds.' played at The Outpost in Liverpool last night. This was our first time playing in Liverpool, and we were headlining a show that had three other bands on the bill. The fam came along with me to watch the show, and my son is always happy to help sell merch (he sold 4 t-shirts!). We arrived well in advance and were greeted with an incredibly competent and friendly sound guy who said he's been working there for 14 years. We normally play LOUD, but this was a small room and he asked both the guitarist and I to trust him and turn our amps down a bit, so we did. We had a setlist of 20 songs, three of which were new. During the soundcheck we managed to 'rehearse' each of the new songs. Things sounded just fine to me during the soundcheck. I think that about 40 people showed up and when it was our turn to play, I soon realized that I could not hear myself very well on stage. I backed up against the bass cabinet, which helped somewhat, however it wasn't quite loud enough for me. I usually have problems hearing our guitarist on stage, but now both guitar and vox seemed super loud through the monitors. I probably should have commented to the sound guy, but I was afraid of losing the guitar feed in my monitor so I just carried on. The show started 30 minutes late, there were some technical issues with vox during one of the other bands' set, and the bands before us seemed to burn a lot of time by talking to the crowd. Once we got up on stage, we were told that we'd have to cut our set short. So, the three songs that I worked so hard to perfect on bass this past week were tossed out! Oh well, at least I learned them in preparation for the next show! They did sound really good during the soundcheck, which was attended by the fam and a couple of the other bands.

Tonight!!! My band Shreds. hit Liverpool for the first time. If you're around and don't have much else to do, please come check us out!

My band Shreds. is opening up for the SUBHUMANS at The Drill in Lincoln, UK on Friday April 26th! The venue has an occupancy of 550... this will be the largest venue that we've played to-date. I hope that a lot of Basschatters come to our show... please help pack the place! 😎 Tickets are available here: https://www.lincolndrill.co.uk/whats-on/subhumans-shreds/

Yes, they exist... I have this exact bass and purchased it new from GuitarGuitar. However, I don't believe they are in stock in the UK anymore. The 2023 Rics are superb! Single truss rod, outstanding bridge, powerful pickups, Schaller strap buttons, low action, thin neck...

Holly was running the sound. A young person, and they did a really great job!

My band 'Shreds.' played our first headliner show last night! We were at Cafe Indie in Scunthorpe. It was our first time playing Scunthorpe, and Cafe Indie was a really great venue. Nice large stage decked out with a lot of new gear and lighting. Apparently there were about 200 people that showed up! The person running sound did an excellent job, and was even super helpful about letting us put our recording rig in-line with their setup (we have 16 transformer-isolated XLR splitters, preamps, laptop and usually record our live sets). We arrived early and set everything up well in advance of the show start time. The other bands were keen to be recorded live, so I hit 'record' for each of those first three sets. When we got up on stage to play last, I tuned my bass and then focused on silently warming up during the precious few moments that I had. Our drummer looked over and indicated "let's go" and off we went. Unfortunately I forgot to hit 'record' for our set! Ha! Oh well... next time I'll be more careful!

Tonight! Come see my band 'Shreds.' play in an 800 year old pub in Nottingham! We hit 'Ye Olde Salutation Inn'... show starts at 7pm!

My band 'Shreds.' played ALOFT at 'The Haworth' in Hull last night... this was part of the Hull Punk Festival that is taking place this weekend. The venue room and stage were quite nice, but the drums were situated up on risers to the far left. We were informed ahead of time that amps and cabs would be supplied as part of the backline. I didn't know exactly what gear this would be, so I brought my usual Mesa Strategy 888 and ultimately plugged that into the Mark Bass 4x10" cab on stage (sounded good to me!). Our guitarist usually uses a JCM800, but decided to go with the backline amp which was a combo and seemed to have a single 12" speaker (if even that?). The cabs were mic-ed up and fed back to us as part of the monitor mix. However, the 'monitors' there were smaller than my home stereo speakers... and with the small on-stage guitar amp that was part of the backline I really could not hear guitar at all. While playing we asked the sound guy to turn up guitar in the monitors... he seemed to acknowledge this, but the volume never went up. I had to watch our guitarist and rely on some visual cues. When we finished, our guitarist muttered to me, "Well, it's definitely not a Marshall". We seemed to play well despite the impairment, and even sold two t-shirts and gained a number of additional followers on Facebook. All in all, it was a fun show.

My band 'Shreds.' has our first show of 2024 is in Hull, UK on Saturday January 20th. Get your tickets in advance here: https://www.seetickets.com/tour/hull-punk-festival Act fast, because I heard that there are only 30 tickets still available for purchase online!

The bass looks brand new, so that's great! Good deal!

I'm curious about your comment Ian, what makes you say this? I'm especially interested in your opinion because you have so many other Rics!

Just curious which shop you picked this up from? There seemed to be a few of these walnut Rics that hit the UK last year... and then they quickly seemed to vanish / get sold!

I would sign up, but I'm afraid that this could adversely affect my GAS.

I agree that the 2023 Rics are amazing... Rickenbacker made some excellent improvements and I'm really enjoying my 4003.

My band has a group Facebook messenger chat, and one day out of the blue our drummer just sent a message "Sorry, I can't be in the band anymore." My first reply was, "Are you okay mate?" My second thought was about the gig that we were due to play in two days time. My third thought was oh #&%$ we'll never find a drummer as good a fit as him. He then sent a follow up message, writing "I'm now playing with these guys." and included a some other band's pr photo with a guy who looks exactly like him in the shot. My fourth thought was WTF?!? Why would he leave us out of the blue for some other band? I even announced to my wife that our drummer has decided to leave! Turns out our drummer played an evil joke on the rest of us. That group photo just had some doppelganger stranger who happens to look JUST like him in that band image. Long beard, piercings, etc. Thankfully he's still with us... but I remain shaken and paranoid. I am really happy with all of my current bandmates, and I do appreciate that we might all be incredibly privileged / lucky. But, I guess it could happen, one day, with any of us... someone could just decide to move on (or up!).

On Saturday, December 16th, my band 'Shreds.' head to Bolton to play our 14th and final show of 2023!

It was our 13th gig as a band, so we knew that something just had to go wrong! We played the Akēdo Gaming Bar in Lincoln last night (it's our second time there this year), which is a great little venue but with one of the smallest stages that I've ever seen. The guitarist and I live relatively close, so we loaded up one car with gear and started out relatively early to give ourselves plenty of setup time (lots of snow, ice and fog on the road!). Just as soon as we set off there is a text message from our vocalist: He's just been in an accident. Fortunately our singer is physically okay, but his car is not. Guitarist and I quickly divert to head north one additional hour and pick up the vocalist. We arrive at the venue about 30 minutes before we're due to start playing; the organizer is relaxed and doesn't mind a late start. Phew. We played really well last night, maybe the best yet. As I've mentioned on Basschat a few times, we always record our sets live. This significantly added to the stress of a late arrival (with mic setup, etc.), but it all worked out in the end. There was a small boy, maybe 6 years old or so, in the audience (with some pretty serious hearing protection, of course). He really seemed to enjoy the show, dancing around as we played our set. He and his mom are friends with our drummer and came up to the stage area afterwards. We gave the boy a few souvenirs (setlist, drumstick, plectrum). Our singer crowd-surfed at the very end of our set, and fortunately survived. No one broke any bones, this time!

I just move my home bass rehearsal by an hour or two.

Octopus uses a 15 day running average for your power consumption during the relevant hours, and so far there have been about two weeks between "saving sessions". The previous savings session could impact the calculation, but maybe just at the ~5-7% level.

The recent energy crisis hit CERN / Large Hadron Collider as well. They stopped the annual run early to save money.

Oh that's interesting. We have solar panels but no battery. What kind of battery system do you have, if you don't mind my asking?

There was another Octopus "saving session" last night for 1.5 hours... just waiting for the tally to see how our household did.

What they pay you is relative to your average use during that hour. So even if I had 26 imaginary flats, if my deviation from the 'average' use is still the same then there wouldn't be an advantage.

I do already have solar panels installed... and I have had many 'solar powered' bass sessions. I thought about getting a Tesla Powerwall, but if you do the math it's not really worthwhile.