diskwave

Apart from a couple of grainy and totally embarrassing photos, Ive got one single set list on a tatty sheet of coffee stained note paper from a summer hotel residency in 1987. Fascinating to look at the tunes now...Pointer Sisters, Sting, Crusaders, Tina, all the old disco classics. Me, a Fender Rhodes, drums and a bird who was older than us and who could really belt it out....Dance floor packed every night....ahh the good ole days.

I kid you not just get a set of real cheap chinese no names off ebay...30 quid or so.  Got some in a P bass sounds grt and Ive owned a lot of fenders over the yrs. But yes those hi fi PU's have all the mids scooped out....no good at all.

Nobody cares what I think but hey this is a forum and I like it here, so.......There is absolutely no point in the OP's question. People do what they do and that's fine. But I will say this. I detect an insidious tone whenever this subject is brought up, in that if you play a five then you are somehow musicaly superior and cleverer than those of us who don't, and to those greats in the past who didn't. Beyond ridiculous and in a peculiar way brings this forum into disrepute... 

Nope 4 strings is not enough. All those Motown tunes and gazillions of 70's chart hits sound awful without that fifth string....he said.

16 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

The problem with plugs, ear protection, etc is that either the whole band has to use them or nobody. I don't like them personally - they make me feel isolated from what's going on, but I have to use them sometimes in self-defence. My preferred option is that nobody uses them and we keep onstage levels reasonable and let the FOH do the heavy lifting. Once one person, especially the guitard, wears them and turns up so he can hear himself, everything goes to hell in a handcart very quickly.

All that wil change if you read about poor poor old Debbie Harry. Shes got acute tinnitus now thanks to Clems incessant cymbal smashing. I know of two other cases of peeps who's tinnitus was so bad they ended it all. 

I depped in a hubby and wifey lead, 60's tribute outfit couple yrs back, they were all in their 70's and kinda decrepit but very good. Four part harmonies, the works and he and the singer/guitarist were both playing small classic Fender Combos. Jeez what a flippin piercing racket...It isnt just the heavy stuff that can do you for, Thank goodness I had my plugs with me.

The main reason Ive packed it all in. Dr's will tell u never ever "squirt" noise into ur ears and Im including in ears too.   If I do a gig now its with those purple, industrial 30 dec plugs with a spare set in a top pocket and I care not a jot if I cant really hear the all of the frequencys. My hearing is way more important than the show.

Very nice bassy tape system in a Mk1 Scirrocco (beautiful stubby little thing, shifted too) and at the time doing hotel lounge/club residency stuff. Twas all Al Jarreau, George Benson, Sting (Set Them Free...loved doing that one) and Quincy Jones....and playin a flippin grt heavy Mk1 Stingray which I eventually grew to loathe.  

2 hours ago, Waddo Soqable said:

And there were the musicians wanted ads in the back of Melody Maker😁

True. And you'll be surprised how many famous names met each other from the classifieds back then too.

Back in the late 70's when I was a very young fellow it was all word of mouth...it had to be, no internet, phones etc. You'd pop in the local guitar shop store on a Sat and see what the latest happening was, he might have a board but gigs back then were always full of local musicians on the look out for each other etc....But a couple of years ago I used JMB and it was ok. The only weird bit was sitting in a corridor with two other bassists....like waiting outside the headmasters office for a whack!...haha.   

Threads got me thinking and remembering a lot of stuff.

That thing when you've setup but the male bog door is on ur side of the stage, and this can be the case in the nicest of places and that wiff of toilet cleaner hits u every now and again.....I can remember it now looking out onto a packed floor, me killing Boogie Oogie Oogie or similiar and then that pong hits you. Haha, the life of a pro musician.

You either love the circus life and grease paint or you don't. To be fair I did for a few years and then it wained, and once it starts to go there's no stopping it.

On 23/06/2023 at 10:41, BigRedX said:

IME bass guitars require a degree of dirt to make them sit properly in most band mixes

This. If you were to isolate the bass in all those brilliant classic 70's chart tunes it will be ever so slightly distorted, usually a P bass run direct into a valve pre amp on the board......and yes it kinda places it perfectly in the mix. Even Jamersons P bass on the Motown stuff is purposely distorted.

Seems there's two aspects here. "Making it" ie fame and fortune (good luck with that as a bass player)  and then simply becoming a working musician earning good money.  The guys I still admire are the ones who stuck at it and then become first call for say a touring act or a TV show...That kind of thing....real work, real money, and to some extent some sort of celebrity what ever that means.

Well as a naive sprog, twas 1980 in a real good Prog Rock outfit....but we just could not find a good enough singer so I quit. Then a completely different situation in 1984. Prolonged summer season on the Isle of Wight. 5 nights per week. Start at 5pm for the tiny tots, 4 sets per night. Three months of that and I was done with the entire thing. Went off to college and studied photography which I did for the next 30 odd years, retired last year and having a blast now studying cello.

I still have a bass in the house plugged in and I'll fill in if needed tho its very rare nowdays. But that moment in that holiday camp all those yrs ago playing that fun, old school disco stuff but at the same time gazing outta the window wishing I was somewhere else cause I've remembered the chart?... That's the moment when I realised my dream of a life being a successful working musician was dead.

Ok, you want weird chk this out in the verse.

On 07/09/2023 at 12:45, chris_b said:

In their 7th decade. . . . good on them.

What for churning out a load of predictable mush?....

12 hours ago, Paolo85 said:

I have decided to give walking bass a proper try (I am useless at it and all previous attempts failed)

Have a listen to  the Gadd, Paul Desmond version of 'Autumn Leaves'. It'll do ur walking practise the world of good.

16 hours ago, smithy said:

So more SIS (Skill Improvement Syndrome)

This. Ive recently began studying cello. If there is anything to kill GAS permanently it's learning a classical instrument cause its all about study and practise practise practise....Sure you can get a better instrument but it'll be just has hard to get the notes right as the beginners instrument. I now see my bass playing in a completely different light as well....that its so darn easy in  comparison.

Watched it after the Proms. Seen if before too. It's brilliant. Proms, AC/DC, weird combo but hey...

That single sounds like an 80's American power rock big hair chart tune...Utterly predictable chord shapes...awful thick compressed sound...Mick on autotune? NFW! Yep, all nice and safe for the modern world which really is the definition of 'sold out'.

Luckily for me my music box has the antidote. Paint it, Brown Sugar, Honky, Wild Horses, Angie and Miss You for starters...That's better.

Calm down Malcolm..... Anyway, maybe...tho it'll cost ya  haha

Played finger style down where most of us play I can tell u exactly how it sounds....but I wont.

My days of earning from this caper are long gone so now it's nothing. Chromes on my P bass are 17 yrs old and very nice....they may even do another 17, well see, if Im still around that is.

For me its all about my No 1 tone and not bass so much tho after years of this and that its basically any old  P bass with dead chromes as  I just know that out in the room that dry biting lower mid bark is tearing peoples ears off.  

6 hours ago, Mykesbass said:

Adele's To Make You Feel My Love

Just had a listen and it sounds suspiciously like something from a long time ago...Cant think off hand what tho... So maybe BD was covering the original and not her "cover".