12stringbassist

Out for a gig last week....

It's hard to show that much love for something that you don't love, so I wouldn't expect it.

@Muzz please check your PM's. Ta.

The similarity to Geddy Lee is only that the bass is prominent in the mix and very melodic, while sometimes 'busy'. Fortunately. Bruce was very influential on my own playing and inspired me to use Rickenbacker basses.

So.... Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have fired Zak Starkey from The Who after this recent performance. I find it absolutely staggering that some of my favourite musicians could go out and play like that, being so badly under-rehearsed and then turn round and blame the drummer for it all. To be honest, Roger Daltrey's voice stopped being great years ago and Pete Townshend did very well to stand through that show, following his recent knee surgery. He soldiered bravely on through the pain, but his best years as a guitarist have also long gone. It's an old joke to say turn round and blame the drummer when a song goes wrong. If I were them, I would have taken the band back into a rehearsal room for a week or two and have looked honestly at what, if anything, is lacking. 'Go To The Mirror Boy' - to quote Pete Townshend. It really pains me to say that The Who are nothing like they used to be at all. A man's got to know his limitations. Lesser mortals like myself have set sensible end dates. Quit while you're ahead, I always say.

Oh, I think I know the one...

We've run one for about 11 years now (9.5 years with our band line-up). Anything but cliquey, as we will NOT allow that, but you do tend to get the same people turning up playing the same things badly. We have never ever told anyone what to play. People have asked to play with us and we give them a set list to choose from in that case, but it's their night, not ours, which is why it's been going for so long. But we do get some new blood doing different things, we match people up to play together, or back them and people get decent length spots. I will be doing it up to the end of the year and it will no doubt carry on without me.

It's utter cack. A venue we play at tried to get us to use it and I did all the stuff to get registered and submit ID and tax docs. It never ever worked properly and the venue ended up paying us cash on the night. The venue manager has moved on and we are now being told to use it again. There's a little help from the venue, but setting me up with a new login ID that doesn't work is not much help. It's not the venue's fault, but I can see our three remaining gigs there going up in smoke and 90% of their bands pulling gigs. EDIT: They are going to take invoices from us and input them so we get paid. That totally defeats the use of the C247 system. God knows what all the other bands are going to end up doing. This is as far as most will get: https://www.c247.eu/index.aspx

Blobdie

The WhY

This is my usual rig at the moment. I do have the option of swapping in a 4x10.

When it becomes work.......

My band have been hosting a jam night for the last 9 years. It's getting to be rather groundhog day now, with a number of the same people fluffing their songs in the same place and the same way every week. I'm fed up of hearing the same joke week in week out for this long. I'm beginning to get really tired of backing people who aren't very good and who show no sign of improvement. We have built it up and it is very well supported. We have some new blood in recent times, a bunch of teenagers who are sticking in and learning songs and doing very passable versions of them. Last night they asked me to play Everlong as their bassist was on holiday. Never heard of it. They couldn't quite believe it. I'm 66 and an amount of more recent music that young kids like has passed me by. I am still stinging from the dirty look I got shot for a slight mistake during Sweet child of mine (not a song I mess with). I could hardly hear the guitar for the drummer they had last night. Cymbal city. He left the spare guitar tuned down a semitone which messed up the next act. I mentioned to our drummer that I want to stop doing the jam night in the new year. They can carry on with another bassist, but the money's not great and it's really hard work as I end up backing near everything all night. He wasn't overly impressed, but I've made my mind up to get my Sundays back and to play every other weekend The good point was that we worked up a song from our album and played it live for the first time at the start of the night and finished with it as well. It's a band album, but I ended up doing all the playing on about half of the songs and getting any of the album songs played live has been a problem. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_-1W3deukY

I was talked into selling a Ric style bass made by John Birch by someone who pretty much begged me to, then he flipped it pretty quickly. I was annoyed when it suddenly reappeared in someone else's hands simply because I had always quite liked it.... but not enough to fend off an offer for it. Would I buy it back? No. I have never let a bass go and wanted it back. I sold a friend a Fender Precision Lyte bass and he gave me first refusal to buy it back with a practice amp thrown in, as he wasn't really a bassist, just fancied a go. Someone else took it off my hands a little while afterwards, as I preferred my other P Lyte