matski

I take it that you used a b&w photo in order to tone down the loudness of the Hawaiian shirts...

Ha! We also had a LWB Transit van photo, although it was a post-gig shot, our van was nicknamed 'Old Sh*tter' Before then I had a LWB Tranny of my own which in a previous life was an AA recovery van. It came to a sad end when parked outside my house one day and a bloke who had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car crashed straight into the front of it.

How ironic would it have been if you had been playing “Achey Breaky Heart”?

Hotel California is the one that makes my gorge rise. Can’t believe that no one has mentioned the abomination that is Cotton Eyed Joe yet...

Following on from the 'do you look like a rock star?' thread got me to thinking about the classic (cliché) photo of bands either leaning up against or perched atop of a wall. So who amongst us is guilty of participating in such a stereotypical photo? I will hold my hand up and admit that I am Here's one of my old bands from around 1989ish, I'm the one on the left. Don't be shy, show us your walls!

Don't know about the hottest, but the coldest was definitely when I played an outdoor gig in Poland in January a few years back. The outside temperature was -10. My fingers were bloody cold at the start of the gig, then warmed up a bit and then got really cold again. The only brief respite was when I found the sweet spot in front of one of those rocket engine type space heaters - typically about 5 minutes before our set ended. Doh!

I answered yes, because I actually do. I have an '82 Squier JV P bass that is great, especially for recording. I've had it for donkey's years.

Blimey! Maybe you should cut down on having kids instead! Alternatively, just wait for 16 - 17 odd years or so and then you will have plenty of free time and all your basses will be 'vintage' by that point...

How about these? I'm not sure if they would work that well - in fact they might make burger all difference...

Not sure if this has been posted before, but I saw this today. Enjoy, fellow StingRay enthusiasts.

I agree with this. I'm definitely no fretless virtuoso, but somehow it does seem easier on an unlined neck as, like ET says, with a lined neck I seemed to be focusing on where exactly I was fret(less)ing far too much.

Me, taking graphite-necked bass into music store: "Hi, I need to order new machine heads for this bass as the old ones are badly tarnished, can you order them?" Them: "Yes. Is this neck made of plastic?"

Hmmmm. Maybe... I had a fretless Thunder 2A back in the early 80s which was a great bass as it was a Matsumoko model. However in the 90s I bought a Thunder 1 fretless and it was diabolical - it was definitely not Matsumoko-era and sounded terrible and had the worst neck dive I've ever experienced in a bass.

Funnily enough, I've been going through a bit if a retro-VH thing the past couple of weeks - been listening to the Fair Warning album after getting the tracks 'Mean Street' and 'Dirty Movies' stuck on my internal jukebox.

The original 4001 basses didn't have the binding or the triangle inlays though - and the modern day 4003S models don't either. If you take a look at photos of Chris Squire and Paul McCartney's 1960s Rickenbackers you can clearly see this. I'm not sure why the triangle inlays were replaced by dot markers on the 4003S, but I assume that there is no binding because the top edge of the body has a rounded profile as opposed to the regular 4003/4001 sharp-edged slab profile (see the photo below of my 4003S).

I've still got my old Aria Black & Gold I - in fact I played it at a gig recently The Aria was the first bass I bought with my own money way back in '83 when I was a mere 15 years old. IIRC it cost the princely sum of £230!

I forgot to mention that he actually had a gig of his own in the same venue on the next night, so the charity foundation in effect paid his travel and hotel expenses for his own concert.

You've probably never heard of Leszek Mozdzder, but he's a quite well-known jazz pianist in Poland. A few years ago I was working with a charity helping disabled people and we had organised a big event featuring a concert and LM had agreed to participate (as long as his travel and hotel expenses were covered ). Anyways, the day before the event, a makeshift rehearsal session was arranged but as space was quite limited I had to stand quite close to the piano. Until the pianist's manager came and asked me to move further away, as I was invading his creative space or some such twaddle. To add insult to injury, this guy was supposed to accompany a girl with Down's Syndrome who had been flown in from England especially for the concert but when concert time arrived he refused to play alongside her and her father had to step in instead. What a bell end.

Ha ha ha! This reminded me of when I lived in Amsterdam and we had a big office party in the city centre and the dress code was 1970s: I dressed up as your typical Superfly-type Pimp - hideous white suit with big flares, repulsive floral shirt, massive wide-brimmed furry hat and nasty fake gold oversize jewellery. I had to travel in to the centre by tram and was inwardly cringing at the prospect, so was waiting for some sort of comments but none of my fellow passengers even batted an eyelid!