StingRayBoy42

Kenya dig it?

TONIGHT! Played Sousaphone with The Acid Morris for their Solstice (ish (Solstish?)) dance out under the concrete henge of Spaghetti Junction (Gravelly Hill Interchange for the pedants). The Acid Morris are like nothing you've ever seen, even in your wildest Psilocybin-fuelled fever dreams: Border Morris Dancing to techno remixes of traditional Morris tunes and tonight for the first time ever, a Sousaphone. Probably one of the weirdest things I've ever done, and possibly the world's first (?) Techno-Sousaphone-Morris Dance mashup (under Spaghetti Junction). It was a ton of fun, there were sermons (one entreated the audience (there was an audience!) to teach their tortoises to sing) , testimonies (mostly nonsensical (one about the benefits of Morris cats as opposed to Morris dogs (of which there are many))), there was a bit where we all cast soft toys into a bin bag (not sure why), a speech about how the Sousaphone is in fact the preferred instrument of the angels (followed by a short (improvised) Sousaphone solo) and several techno Morris dances. After that, it descended into a more or less full on rave (with Sousaphone accompaniment) which was ace - it was my first time jamming along to a techo DJ and it went down really well. I don't think anyone there had ever seen/heard a Sousaphone player jamming along with loud dance music under Spaghetti Junction. The ONE TIME your Sousaphone lights aren't charged up, you end up at a rave. LIVID. I was tempted to stay and have one of the funny looking peppermints that were going round, but my designated driver (who is also (sort of) the main idiot (and also my Dad)) was keen to nake a move (and I'm gigging tomorrow) so good sense prevailed and it was back home about 11:30 for a homebrew cider (ABV unknown) and a cheese and pickle roll instead. Their sound system has the potential for hooking up the SA C4 synth pedal, so there's every chance the next outing will involve Sousa -> Wireless mic -> synth pedal, which could be quite something.

There's reasonable offers and there's taking the piss. Nowt wrong with asking someone (nicely!) if they'll take £50 for something that's up for £55, or £1200 for something that's up for £1250, or "Will you include postage?" IMHO especially if it's been up for a while. I wouldn't then try and haggle further if they said yes, that's taking the piss. They can always say no! I certainly wouldn't be offended by it. If a listing says "No oferrs, the price is firm", that's different. As long as you're nice I don't see a problem.

Bought some TI flats from Ian - top comms, quick (first class!) postage. Top Basschattery, deal with confidence.

Don't tell him, Pike!

Have a look at stuff that uses 5.8GHz - I *think* it's a different frequency to wi-fi (anyone who knows about this stuff, please correct me if I'm wrong) so less chance of interference.

No, we don't have community policing south of the border... certainly not in the refined and lofty establishments I play!

So sorry for you rloss @Dad3353

And I thought I'd played some dodgy boozers! What sort of places do you play?!

TONIGHT! The Dysfunctionals 3-piece at O'Neills in Solihull. Dep drummer (our usual skin-botherer was out on the lash), lovely old geezer called Nige - 70 years old and still doing the business. It was nice to not be the oldest one in the band for a change. I was a bit trepidatious about having a dep drummer if I'm honest, but he was great. He's been playing since before I was born and I'm no spring chicken... He's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know. We've done a lot of O'Neill'ses (O'Neill'ss? whatever the plural of O'Neill's is) with a few different lineups and they're always an absolute hoot (we *still* talk about the Paddy's Day one in Nottingham) so we were looking forward to it. I had a gig cancelled last night, so I was extra looking forward to it. Load in was the usual, the place was pretty empty as everyone was outside in the sun so we thought it might be a quiet one. First set at 9 went well, enough people appeared to make it feel like a pretty decent audience and a good few dancers by the end. One woman was loving it but hiding round a corner, so I went for a wander to go and say hello. The wireless setup's working well! (Subzero bug and Lekato wireless XLR for IEMs - they've worked perfectly every time (so far (touch wood))). I sang lead on a new one, which was nice. It was too low (my fault) which was not. Half time, we went out for some air, got chatting to a young lady who turned out to be a singer (the fact that she had a wireless mic case and mic stand with her gave the game away) so I tapped her up to do some depping with us which she seemed really up for. Second set is a bit more party time and the place was rammed. Packed dancefloor, everyone loving it. Great stuff! Our singer friend from half time appeared and absolutely loved it. Three songs in, our singer reckoned his voice was going, so he suggested we invite her up to sing one. We did Summer of '69 (It's O'Neill's on a Saturday night, of course we're playing Summer of '69) and she was brilliant, absolutely smashed it. I went and joined her other half on the dancefloor for a bit of it.. did I mention I'm loving the wireless? Our singer was starting to croak a bit, so I 'helped out' with the vocals for the rest of the set (remembering lyrics isn't my strong point) and he got the audience to sing the worst bits, so it was all good. I got to sing the stupid high bit in Teenage Dirtbag (It's O'Neill's on a Saturday night, of course we're playing Teenage Dirtbag) which is always fun. It was an absolute corker by the end, I had a couple of "I can't believe I get to do this! This is ace!" moments, which don't happen at every gig. Played the StingRay (Old Faithful!) -> amp board (Thumpinator -> VTDI) -> MB802. I didn't bother with pedals, as I was inbetween the DJ and our beloved audience - visions of a punter treading on them on the way to ask the DJ for the latest smash hit record by the coolest new beat combo on the scene (?) put me off. All done, the DJ played a couple of absolute bangers before descending into thumpikrap, pack up and load out was a nightmare as there was an absolutely heaving dancefloor between us and the exits and all the cases were in the van. All evenually done, home about half twelve for a blue cheese and chorizo sandwich, an Aldi Weston's Vintage Cider (6.8% ABV) and all the tunes I wanted that the DJ didn't play (Groove is in the Heart, Loveshack, Sweet Dreams, Kickmuck etc). A good night!

Sounds a lot like my gig last weekend - glad it went well!

Ask his school if they do Rock Steady. Full disclosure: I work for them.

Yeah, it's slow at the mo... I'm guessing money's tight all round. IME, ebay is OK as long as you take advantage of the 80% off fees offers (but read the small print - I got stung for a hefty extra whack selling some vintage comics as they went for an eye-popping amount of money (but that's another story)). As someone above said, it's the widest audience by quite some distance, and for a lot of (non music) stuff, it's the only game in town. Personally, I wouldn't sell on FB Marketplace, I've heard too many horror stories.

+1 for cobalt slinky. *Sort of* halfway between flats and rounds.

It sounds like flatwounds might suit your sound and style - they have a bit more 'thump' than roundwounds, and they last for ages - years in most cases. I like LaBella deep talkin' flats on my Precision. If you fancy trying flats but don't want to break the bank, Adagio are a good, cheap (£20 ish) introduction. If you like roundwounds, Ernie Ball Slnkys are pretty good IMHO. Let us know how you get on!

TONIGHT! The Cantina Band at the wedding of Lewis (?) and Gemma (?) at a posh hotel somewhere near Nuneaton. The happy couple had seen our subtle blend of extremely loud rock covers and slapdash half-arsedery at a gig a few months ago and liked the cut of our jib for some reason, so they booked us to play their wedding. We mainly play Motorhead, AC/DC, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Clash, Ramones, Sabbath type stuff, so obviously they thought "This is the perfect band to make our special day truly memorable". Arrival at 5:30, load in to a tiny marquee filled with very well turned out wedding guests, elderly relatives and infants sliding across the small dancefloor. This... could be a weird gig, lads. Quick setup, soundcheck resulted in lots of bemused/disgusted looks before a quick pint and band conflab (many variations on "We're going to go down like a broken escalator/turd in a lift/Pork pie at Passover") and then we were on. Three songs into the first set, half the people had left. I can't say I blame them. One table seemed to be quite enjoying it (including Uncle Knobhead (there's one at every wedding)) so that was something. A few hardy souls braved the dancefloor for a couple of the less overtly offensive numbers, and at the groom's request we'd learned a McFly song (!) for the bride (Five colours in her hair (that's the name of the song, not... the bride only had one colour in her hair. Two, max) which is good fun to play and more complicated than you'd think) so we got her to join in with the singing on that, which went down well (especially with Uncle Knobhead, he loved it) and dispelled some of the air of "WTF?" . First set done, we stepped out for a vape while they cut the cake and had their first dance (not counting five colours in her hair (the song)). Second set kicked off with Highway to Hell, and suddenly they were all loving it. Packed dancefloor, everyone singing along and having a whale of a time! The second set has a few more well known/not as deliberately obtuse rock numbers in, so it went down really well. I took to the dancefloor for Sex on Fire, and had a boogie with Uncle Knobhead and the mother of the bride, which was an absolute hoot. The singer was recovering from a chest infection, so he was really struggling by this point... I helped him out on Jonny B Goode, then attempted to give him a hand on Proud Mary, before realising I don't actually know any of the words (apart from "Left a good job in the city" and "rolling") so it became a comedy number. Played the Sterling ->small board -> sansamp -> MB 121. All done, loads of people said they'd really enjoyed it (some of them even aked for our card(!)), couple of onion bhajis from the buffet, photo of the bride on the drums and the groom on Bass, pack down while the DJ played the sort of music you'd actually *want* to hear at a wedding, well paid, home about 11:15 for last nights chicken curry & dahl and a pint of old father StingRayBoy's homebrew cider (ABV unknown). Actually a pretty good gig, considering how bad we thought it was going to be.

Nice work! Basses sound great, lovely playing and you've nailed all the intricate little bits. 10/10 no notes.

Just out of interest, are your Spectors shielded?

I once stated a gig on completely the wrong song... should have been E up to B (clean), I started on drop Eb to D with lots of distortion... 🤮🤮🤮 Shall we make sure we have setlists?

What you need is a Hipshot!

Cobra make some fairly decent cheap bags https://www.terralec.co.uk/136-cobra/flight_cases__bags/12502_0b.html https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/terralec

G4M got back to me, they reckon: "Unfortunately the power going through active pickups would most likely cause interference with the transmitter." So make of that what you will.

I've emailled them to ask, I'll report back when they reply

The subzero guitar bug I have definitely works fine with all of my active Basses (EBMM StingRay 4, EBMM StingRay 5 and EBMM Sterling 4). It looks exactly like the one I linked to, I bought it used from BC. The G4M site does say they don't work with active pickups, I've no idea why - the only thing I can think of is *maybe* they used to use a stereo jack? For some reason? Which *might* cause issues with a stereo jack socket? Which some (?) active Basses use? Or maybe some active pickups have a really hot signal? Which it doesn't like? This is just an uneducated guess! Mine works with my Ernie Ball Basses, YMMV!

Get in among them for Dancing Queen, they'll love it!