Muzz

A lateish recap, but only a single gig last weekend, and we had the ex-main drummer call it the day before, so a quick reconfiguration back to a trio and we could afford the A Drummer (who I play with in the other band). Always good to play with the very best, and his small triggered kit and skill with sound production always means less kit and better sound overall. Quite wasted on the pub to start with, really, but it warmed up later, and we even did a couple of requests we didn't know/don't play (via some iPad-peering) at the end, which always goes down well with the punters if it's a small crowd. Less kit means quicker packup, so back on the road and home in decent time. Cheapo P, Stomp, inears. Trio again Satdy night, more local and a reasonable crowd in the offing, so it'll be a run of decent gigs over the last three weeks...and I've got the next weekend off for a jaunt with the lads*, which will also be a nice break. * And when I say 'lads', I mean 'five 50-somethings, but we've all known each other 40 years and we'll be away from the families for the weekend, so 'lads' it is...'

That's what I use every gig; simple and useful (and cheap), not had any issues with dropout or levels or anything like that...

It was right on the estuary. Probably Lower Heswall...I just Satnav'd my way there...

So the dreaded return to the Monthly Misery place fell through (I didn't ask why, but it's always nice to get through a gig without the 5-0 making an appearance, so gift horses and mouths, etc) and we ended up doing a last-minute return gig at the Weasel Dust Palace in Burnley. We had our guest girl singer (who is very very good) and her presence means lots of changes to the setlist, which is a breath of fresh air. Most of the crowd were in Halloween fancy dress (tricky to tell some nights in Burnley, but I'm pretty sure this was the case), and it was a chemically-assisted (on the part of a lot of the crowd) Banging Night. Stooopid late finish, tho (the landlord wants bands on at 11pm), and because you play at the far end of the dance floor, the punters encroach as you're packing up: the drummer shifted his drum bags to his car, came back for his carpet, and there were three girls dancing on it... Satdy was a house party/birthday at a huuuge house on the West coast part of the Wirral (the posh bit of the Wirral where they get out of the bath for a wee), very nice people, catered, free bar (obviously, seeing as I had 70 miles to drive home...pfffttt...), nice early start to go with the extra hour later. This one was remarkable in that we lost the left hand PA top (we were using 2 x RCF 12s and the 12 sub, no amps and triggered kit) at the start of the second set, and nobody noticed. Nobody at all, other than the three of us. I turned the right hand top to point more directly at the dance floor and they all carried on oblivious... Lightweight cheapo P, Stomp, inears...

A largely unheeded double over the weekend, which always tends towards a slump of the shoulders, but hey, we got paid. Friday night was in one of those increasingly rare pubs which are focused on live music (decent in-house PA, lights, small stage), which meant the load-in and -out was a Personal Gear Only delight, especially for me with just a rucksack full of Stomp/leads and my Mono. Sadly the crowd hadn't got the message (tho it was a grim and dreich night up in Darwen; even I didn't want to leave the house, and I was getting paid) and we played to a handful in the music side of the pub, while another handful of punters lurked around the bar side. The place was apparently open till 2:30am, so it may well have gone bonkers at 12:30, but by that time I was back on the road home. That evening's Pisht Mitherer was an older bloke who very very much wanted In The Ghetto, and seemed to think that by asking every ten minutes we'd suddenly all learn it by some kind of osmosis... The landlord (also a sound engineer, apparently) liked us enough to re-book us, and offered us a spot in next year's festival, so there's that. Saturday was a chi-chi bar in a converted mill, up two flights of stairs, this one with the D drummer, so I had a multi-tasking shift on playing, singing and keeping him on tempo, task, and starting and stopping within a bar or so of the rest of us. Bloody draining, is what it is. It's one of those transitional places (we were packing up by half eleven, most people had moved on) where people come in (notably gangs of half a dozen ladies) to meet for a drink or two and then go somewhere else so there's very little chance of any engagement with the crowd - I say crowd, but it's a very big room with lots of booths, so the 25-30 average of people were very widely spaced. Then there's the stairs to be tackled at the end of the night, too...again, though, we got paid, and it wasn't a super-late one. Next weekend is the Monthly Mither of the very lairy place on Friday (just for once I'd like to do a gig there without the 5-0 making an appearance; it's been three on the trot now), but then a private gig with the old trio on the Saturday, so that'll be a nice change.

Much posher pub (well, we were in South Manchester, dahlink) last night, although another where the band seem to be pretty much surplus to requirements (seating/tables all over, no-one standing - it's clearly a big food pub during the day/early evening), and applauding might be seen as a bit passe...half a dozen ladies got up to dance in the second set, tho, and we got a woman whose 60th was being held there (sparkly dress, big sash, balloons, etc) jump on a mic...and blew us away with one of the best voices I've heard in a while. I surrendered my mic to her, and she did a couple of numbers (Good Times and Proud Mary), which made a very pleasant change from the usual Give Us A Go pish heads...oh, and she knew when to stop, too, voluntarily putting the mic back and buggering off while she was ahead...again, making a pleasant change. Oh, and one Karen type walked up to me mid song demanding something or other - I pointed at my inears (the fact that we were mid-song had apparently eluded her, too) and shrugged several times, she just persisted in that Talking Louder And Louder To Foreigners Means They'll Suddenly Understand You way. She then strode into the band space (always disconcerting when that happens, no?) and walked up behind(!) the singer to repeat her request/demands...for Oasis. Luv, we're in Timperley, it's not like we weren't going to play any...in fact we'd already done one in the first set before she arrived. We should've charged her £50...no, £75...actually it's now £125... Normal hours for once, home for oneish. Cheapo light Sonic P, Stomp, inears. Bliss.

Yeah, I don't name and shame per se (tho I would if we were ever treated badly by the venue; drunks are (mostly) not the fault of the venue), but locals will pretty much be able to spot the places from the descriptions/arrangements...dunno where exactly we are this weekend yet, but I'm sure the BL will let me know at some point...

If it helps, I have extensive experience gigging over a few years without backline in all sorts of pubs and bars in two bands, and the two setups have been a pair of RCF 312 tops and the 702 sub, or just a pair of the 315 tops. Either can go silly loud and handle bass as well as miked/triggered drums, guitar, keys, vocals and even percussion as well. A good digital mixer with Aux outs than can support individual inear mixes makes things very simple and very enjoyable indeed. If pushed, I'd take the 315s, just because it's one less biggish box to carry, and I'm getting very lazy...

My current faves from the set are Rio (which I play with a pick, because...errr...I think I was watching a lot of Bobby Vega at the time it was suggested, and I wanted to faff about with all the ghost notes) and Stuck In The Middle, because when that's right, it bounces along a treat. Both go down very well with the crowd, too.

OK, bit of a catchup one...last two weekends were double-headers, starting on a Friday with the Orrible Monthly Residency pub, where as I arrived at about nine (we don't start till tennish - it's a late bar place) the place was festooned with the merry blue lights of the 5-0: two cars and two vans, all there to remove a resident (the landlord rents rooms above the pub: if you want to pay £21 a night including breakfast for a very exciting and possibly unpleasant evening, I'll pass you the details) who wouldn't go. Usual routine in there, tho: total indifference from the dozen or so regulars, and a late finish. Bah, but I'm used to it. The Satdy was a much livelier place, the only downside of which is it's a good 80 minute drive ooop into Lancashire proper, again another late bar (we were asked to start at 11, and sure enough at 10:45 it was like a switch had been flipped that said Add Crowd To Maximum), but much dancing and singing from the punters made up for the previous evening, the lateness and the drive home. Trio format meant a bit more money, too. Then to last Thursday, a corporate gig at the posh Midland Hotel in Manchester with the old trio...usual corporate/wedding hoohah, though: there for 5pm, set up and done for half six (in-house PA and (very good) engineer), then hang around for the speeches/videos/charity auction, etc, etc, which inevitably overran till 10:45pm. At that point (exactly as last year) the organiser said 'Just go on and do an hour, it'll be fine', so it wasn't too late. We'd all dressed up for the gig (and by dressed up I mean black shirt & trousers, not proper dressing up like Dave's Glamtastic outfits), but this year's theme was Rock Night, so we needn't have bothered. It was ironic, though, that the portly balding CFOs dressed as Slash and Axl actually looked pretty accurate these days, and the more two more elderly (and thinner) blokes who came as Keef and Mick were pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing at 20 feet... Lots of bubbly-fuelled enthusiasm from the crowd, though (and at £200 a ticket they were clearly getting their money's worth), which is always nice. A super-light load-in and out (we all just carried our stuff in one go), too. Friday was back down to the hoi polloi with a bump, tho; a regular gig in Burnley at a place that has bands on (on one end of the dance floor) before it turns into a club night (bands do 11-12:30 or so), then you pack up in between the ever-encroaching dancers and leg it. It's a banging gig, but for mostly the wrong reasons; the place has been on the slide for a good while (the amount of Weasel Dust circulating was ridiculous; the urinals were full of small suspicious plastic bags, you could smell it in there), and we had some mither from some lads who thought it was hilarious to turn one of the PA tops round on the stand repeatedly until I went to stand next to it; I played two songs with hammer-ons while I held the speaker with the other hand. I had my cheapo P with me, and was ready to ping someone in the grill with the business end, but thankfully it eventually sank into their tiny befuddled minds that moving away from the band might be a good idea. They need more and better security in there these days; as an example, about midnight a bloke fell down the stairs (bogs upstairs), and smashed his face badly, and a very drunk girl came up to us first to tell us mid-song aand demand action...like we could do anything about it - the security were all outside chatting. The paramedics turned up and were tending to him while people stepped over his unconscious form to get to the bogs. Lovely place. Hoping for a nice quiet early-start (well, nine would be nice) pub one this weekend...we're in poshish Timperley, what could possibly go wrong? Cheapo P, Stomp, inears...

Oddish one this weekend; a 3:30pm start yesterday at a Bowling Club in Burnley...yeah, sounds like a recipe for disaster all round, but it was OK. In fact it was better than of late because we had the #2 drummer who I know of old, so we got to entertain ourselves during the more boring numbers (Sit Down, Sweet Home Alabama*) by playing off each other around and about the song. Audience were another 60+ lot; age, not numbers, sadly, despite the landlady saying 'It'll get really busy later'; I can only presume she meant after we'd left, because there was no evidence of 'busy' anywhere; maybe 25 people all afternoon. 2 x 45, encore not requested, so they didn't get one. We had more room than we've had in a while, which was OK, and I was home for half six, which will do, I suppose. Under-8lb Cheapo P, Stomp, inears. * Revived on the spot for the set (I pulled my face a bit) because they weren't an indie crowd, so we'd shelved several songs, SoF being one of them, so I guess swings/roundabouts...

I've used ACS custom fits for years, they're very good indeed, and any custom fit is a big step up from foam tips. I have custom fit ACS attenuators, too, which I use on my motorbike and at other people's gigs.

I'd agree with the 'they certainly make you think you're better' sentiments above, plus for those super-talented musicians inextricably linked with drugs (most of whom we have no definite Clean performances for to compare with the opposite), I'd suggest they were fantastic despite the drugs. The shrinking number of stoners I know (they're all artists of one sort or another ) have always come up with convoluted excuses to get out of it while pursuing their art (including a common contradiction in terms of 'it vagues me out, I can concentrate more'), but if you've convinced yourself you need to be altered while performing, then that will subconsciously restrict your performance when you know you're not. I can, however, completely see how Weasel Dust is the entertainer/performers drug of choice for stage times, providing the King Of The World sensation that allows uninhibited performance. It's when the audience are the ones gurning and grinding and thinking (in spite of all the rational evidence otherwise) that they're All That that it becomes tedious.* * Wow, I got into a bit of a 'that' loop there...my apologies. I must stop snorting Shake'n Vac**... ** Terrible high, but leaves you with lovely fresh sinuses...

We've added (even) more Oasis songs to the three/four we have in the set, if we weren't all so good-looking we could think about a Trib act... 😐🙂 Playing (mostly) in the North West it really is a no-brainer for Oasis stuff; like it or not, the punters love it - they did even before those Gallagher boys became the topic of conversation again...

Gig at the BL's local (and the place I did the Jam Night Band residency for a year or more a while back) Satdy night, it had been booked for a 30th with public walk-ins allowed, too. Small bar, very full, tiny stage with five people on it so no room and boiling hot. It sounded OK through my inears, tho we were on the 4th choice drummer which meant a busy night for me, but the guest singer is very good, so she made up for it (sort of). Got paid, but motorway closure meant my journey home was twice as long as it usually is. No setup or breakdown, as the BL had been there during the day setting up, and left the gear (PA, lights, etc) to pack up Sunday. Bonus. £150 Squier (modded) P, Stomp, inears. Packed down in 4 minutes. Boom.

Does that bloke in the bright orange hat and the camo jacket actually want to be seen or not? 😐🙂

I can get ballpark on pretty much anything with the Stomp, but, as has been said above, I still sound like me doing it. Once I'd come to terms with that (and the realisation that no-one else is listening that hard, especially not the paying punters), it made life a lot easier.

Yep, that's essentially what I do. Although I try not to boost and cut kids; you can end up in a lot of trouble for that sort of thing... 🙂

I play in bands with a big spread of songs, and the switching between pick and fingers (with a bit of EQ tweaking on the bass - something with a sweep-mid control is most useful, but just rolling the passive tone off does it, too) is enough to make the change. I do have a Rawkier preset on the Stomp for the very noisy ones, but even that's just the basic preset with the gain turned up for some grit.

Both of the above, plus about 1000...my main musical habitat these days is wedged into small spaces in pubs right next to the drummer, and that's where IEMs are of the most benefit. I slipped one half-out during one song on Satdy night, just to see how loud it was...I put it staight back in fully...

Yeah, I know, but he's not listening...which, ironically, might be something he struggles with in the future...

Decent outing Satdy night in a local-to-the-BL-but-not-me pub we've played before. Dep drummer B (A is seeking gigs elsewhere, C is the best of the lot but he's put his price up, D is...well, D) I like playing with (he's depped before (for a good run) a while ago in the trio I used to be in), tho he's an, erm, forthright drummer, so he's a little louder than the others. Rock solid, tho, and has a seasoned musician's confidence, so he's great to stand next to. No percussion, but we had a keys player who's a friend of the BL, but very Starlight Lounge Michael McDonald for a pub band - in fact, his main living is solo piano bar stuff. When he was good, he was very good (he's clearly an accomplished musician in his own genre), but he couldn't not play on some songs where he really shouldn't, if you see what I mean, and he didn't like the drummer's onstage volume. There was even a Dep Flounce at the end of the evening. He moaned to the BL, who picked up the moan about onstage volume, so I spent yesterday with the tray of Ferrero Rocher out doing my best diplomat impression trying to get them to compromise. Don't think it's going to work. The BL says he doesn't need ear protection with other drummers (and we play in small spaces), he has IEMs but doesn't use them, he has an RCF 12 PA top as his monitor instead. I've told him, anyway... A shame, because we sounded better with Dep B than we have in a while (through my IEMs, anyway), we've got Dep D for Satdy, at a muso-infested place (the BL's local), we're having a rehearsal with Dep D before then to get him fully up to speed.

Last weekend was a two-gigger (would've been more but the BL also goes out solo, so he had four), started with the monthly place, where there were no serious assaults and the Polis didn't show up (which was a bonus...tho I do question my musical choices when I'm typing that at this stage in my part-time career), we had a guest singer, a really talented girl who myself and a couple of other guys had tried to get a band off the ground with not so long ago: she's very very good, but ultimately not committed enough for a regular gigging band, but the occasional gig with her is a lot of fun, because it means a different setlist. Surprisingly lively in there (perhaps the reduced threat of being knocked unconscious had boosted the crowd...yeah, I know), and we had the second-choice drummer, who's so loud we don't need to mic his kit (a slight issue with the whole inears hoohah, but I can still hear him, it's just not as defined as through mics), and he and I had some fun with the older bits of the set; near the end, the BL seemed unable or unwilling to end Go Your Own Way, and stuck in a soloing loop, so the drummer and I gradually sped the thing up to about 200bpm until he couldn't keep up, and we ended it... I shot off at the end (one of the joys of bass, Stomp and inears; I was done and on the road in about four minutes) to go and pick the Lad up from Manchester Pride (he'd gone down on his own, didn't want him trying to get a taxi/bus/tram back solo; much of Manchester was faaaabulous, but there's still dickheads everywhere looking for trouble on the fringes), all was well. Satdy was a pub local to my mother-in-law, and my Lad stopped at hers, and he, his Gran and his Gran's bessie mate (the latter two have been going in there for 67 years) came to see us. It was nice to see them there, a 19-year old and two 85-year olds up and dancing for a good chunk of both sets 🙂 Fourth choice drummer, tho, so I spent a lot of the time doing my best Border Collie impression keeping him in time and on the starts, changes and ends. It's draining... This weekend it's the second choice slammer and an additional keys player (no percussionist) who've never played together before; they're both good semi-pros, but one's RHCP and the other's very much Steely Dan, it'll be...interesting...

Well...yes and no. If you save the Inevitable Cheese for the last few songs the punters are well oiled, and that's exactly what they want to hear: something obvious they can sing along to. It might come as a shock, but 90% of punters aren't as aware of music or as opinionated about it as musicians are... The trick is to do it well, of course, no matter what it is.

I've owned and moved on a lot of basses, but I've never wanted to own a Hofner violin, a Ritter (too expensive anyway), a Fodera (ditto), a Wal (ditto ditto) or the Jaguar-type shapes. And lots of smaller luthier stuff which I just don't like the look of. Other than that, I've tried lots and lots, including fretless (even a Wishbass...eeek), pointy BC Rich, T-birds (love them), Dingwalls, headlesses (inc.Status), Stingray(s), Warwicks, Alembic, Yam BBs, Overwaters, ACG and all the usual suspects, 4, 5, 8 and 12-strings, with flats, rounds and everything in between. These days my main criteria is low weight, which would rule out an awful lot of basses before they start. I've mentioned before I've come to know I'm a 'split-P pickup in the right place' bloke, so I can now look at a bass and know it won't suit. Knowing that twenty years ago might have saved me a chunk of money, but then I'd have missed out on the fun, and sometimes you have to try things to learn you don't like them.