TheRev

Our band calendar looks very similar. October, November and December are lookng very busy (for now.....) - we even have midweek gigs!

I can lend you a G and A if you want to try them? They'll be 3/4 though.

Yep. Presto Jazzicato Tungenstens. I'm not keen on the D from this set. There's not much difference in guage between the D and the A, so the D has a much higher tension than the rest of the set. I liked the sound and feel of the G but just couldn't get past the stupid tension imbalance across the set.

Is that Ginger Baker on drums?

If it's a general 'if you don't mind not being paid, please come along and play' type thing then fine - it's up to you if you take them up on their offer or not. I do object to events messaging us direct and asking us to play for nothing, but we usualy reply saying that we would love to play for free - will they be supplying a PA, travel expenses and food and drink for the day? I honestly don't think there's any malice or greed behind these requests, most people just have no idea of what's involved in putting a band on. Just before plague, I was a punter at a beer festival where they had a bunch of bands & solo artists playing for free. The festival provided stage but no PA, so each artist was loading in, setting up & soundchecking a seperate PA, plus there was no stage management to make sure bands didn't overrun their set. It was utter facking chaos - the punters spent more time watching bands setting up and breaking down than actually playing.

'Don't f**k about, just play the f***ing bass' Danny Thompson

two of my favourite bands: X-CNN (Inc Tim Bricheno who was in All About Eve) and Dark Star, who were made out of the remaining members of Levitation

Do they smell of wee and have a tramp living in them? Of course, Digbeth might be all gentrified and stuff now with a nice shiny bus station free of tramp wee.

Just watched the vidoe - not sure if I'd ever watched it all the way through before. F**ing typical - we have to watch 4 minutes of Paul Kossof gurning his way through a solo but as soon as the bass solo comes along, it's off on a frickin' helicopter ride because, y'know, there's nothing interesting happening on stage.

Love that solo - it's probably the only bass solo that I actually perservered with bothering to learn. Andy Fraser is a legend and one of my three big influences when I started playing bass. He was only 17 or 18 when he recodred 'all right now', which is frankly bonkers.

My band are loud... this is my recipe for feedback free playing. 1) Krivo magnetic pickup (available from promenade music in the UK) 2) HPF. I also have an EA doubler, but find the HPF a bit feeble. I *think* the EA HPF is a 12db per octave roll off, wheras Fishman and the wonderful Fdeck HPF is 24db per octave, but the EA will be better than nothing.. A phase inversion switch is also useful. 3) Plug your f-holes. I use F-its. www.f-itsfeedbackblockers.co.uk 4) Raise your cab up of the ground, as close to ear height as possible so it's not firing at the body of your bass and making it vibrate. I use a folding keyboard stand. Also, putting your cab to yor side rather than behind you can help as youre pesenting the ribs of your bass rather than the whole back (i.e a smaller & less resonant surface area) towards the amp. Dave

Me! Me! I'm in Bristol mind, so not uber close to Chard. I have a gig in Cerne Abbas on Saturday, which is a bit closer. I'd be interested to hear how it compares to my Mike Arnapol cabs.

Except that Wormley and The Dread Pirate Druzil (his real name is actually Drew Sexsmith) have left and been replaced by Aled Jenkins (ex Smokey Bastard) on mandolin with Leroy (aka Seamus O'Flanaghan in previous incarnations of the band) covering fiddle and acccordian duties. Fang (AKA Uncle Touchy) occasionally plays with my band as Vinnie Blue (on accordian or mandolin or whatever he's into on that particular day) and stepped in on guitar for a small USA tour when our guitarist flounced off in a huff 10 days berore the tour started.

Auralex Gramma pads. I bought one, used it a buch of times. left it backstage at a festival somewhere, never bothered to replace it.

@BigRedX 🤣 Good point...luckily anyone we've used has been happy to dress up and neck cider.

Yep, this. If you have paid gigs and a professional approach then you can find professional musicians to get the job done. When our guitarist threw his toys out of the pram 10 days before a small tour in the USA, we called up a guitarist that we knew in New York, sent him the songs and flew him to Portland, Oregon to start the tour. This wasn't even a big money tour - it was classic punk style, relying on mates & other bands to supply gear and drive between dates, sleeping on floors and in s**tty motels. It can be done. Stop worrying about a stable lineup and look for people who actually want to play gigs (money helps...). In the circles my band moves in, there are bands who have had 6 different drummers in 10 years, or will have 3 bass players who know the songs and they use whoever is alailable.

I usually refer to them as 'FOH sound' as in "Is James doing FOH sound on our stage again this year? I've also used 'sound bloke/dude' (when it's a bloke/dude) and 'that grumpy c**t' (when it's a grumpy c**t).

I quite like having a stage name - it's like an alter-ego that gives you that allows you the freedom to be a different persona on stage, cmpared to your day job. In a previous band I was The Rev (hence the user name), in the current band it's Magners O'Magnersson: http://skimmityhitchers.co.uk/who-we-arr/

Rothko had two, possibly three.

After 30+ years of playing in bands, I am still surprised at the number of people in bands who don't actually want to be in a band. The trick is spotting these joy sponges before they rip all your enthusiasm out.

We've done a handful of gigs in the past year, each time we've been asked by the promoter to bring our own mics. Before plague, when I've worked as a stage manager at festivals, there would be people wanting to use their own mics for hygiene reasons. The FOH and monitor engineers didn't have a problem with that, as long as the mic wasn't cheap rubbish, which yours isn't. Asking to use your own mic in the current situation isn't an unreasonable request - the promoter might even insist on it.

Ohhh, that is nice.

I hadn't even heard of Oceansize until 7 years after they split up. Still don't know why they passed me by, they were exactly the sort of music I was listening to in the late 2000s.

The Ovations