gjones

As mentioned earlier, the Japanese Silver Squier Precisions and Jazz basses shared a neck which was 40mm at the nut and very shallow. I own a Silver Squier Jazz Bass and the neck is great.

I bought a bass with a smelly case 15 years ago. The bass is long sold but the case is still too smelly to sell. I'll try the bicarbonate of soda trick and hopefully it will get rid of the pong.

Rotosound Tru Bass is what McCartney had on his violin bass. I've just put a set on my Precision and they have a nice attack, which means you don't get lost in the mix. The only problem is they come in one gauge, which is gigantic. I'm not a fan of flatwounds as I find them too woolly and indistinct when they're new.

Occasionally the guitarist in my band takes two to the gig but he usually only takes one. I've seen him break 3 strings on one song and carry on playing 🤣

I've owned a Barefaced Compact (now discontinued) for quite a few years now, which is a great sounding, very light and extremely loud cab. I tried to replace it with a Super Compact but it wasn't any lighter, didn't sound any better and was nowhere near as loud. So I sold the Super Compact and kept the Compact. I do have a Markbass CMD 12 P combo, which is great, but I'm pretty sure the Barefaced could go louder if that's what was needed for the gig.

Yes, I saw him at the Edinburgh Festival about 20 years ago.He wrote a book about his life as a session bassist called 'My bass and other animals' and he took to the road telling stories from the book (which is great by the way).

I'm astounded that there are any session bass players left. Guy Pratt had to become a stand up comedian, when all the work dried up, 20 years ago.

Unless my band was a ironic tribute to that genre (such as Young Gun Silver Fox) , I wouldn't want my music to be classed as 'Yacht Rock' which is seen as pretty lightweight vacuous stuff. Steely Dan certainly isn't lightweight or vacuous and Donald Fagen obviously shares my opinion.

Well, at the beginning of 2024 the drummer, singer and guitarist of the band I'd been playing with for 20 years, told me they'd be doing a few gigs with a band formed by a sax player and a bassist they knew. They said it was going to be a Rockabilly band and they'd be doing Rock & Roll festivals around the UK. I'm not particularly into Rockabilly, so wished them luck in their new venture. The problem was they started playing venues that the old band was playing, which I thought was odd as they were supposed to be playing festivals. What was even odder was that a guy, who videos bands as a hobby, put the videos of their full set up on Youtube and it was exactly the same set as the old band I was a member of. I, as most bassists would, started to get paranoid and suspected they wanted to get rid of me and this was their way of doing it. I got quite wound up about it and was very close to quitting. Weirdly, they kept on moaning to me about the sax player and the bassist but continued to gig with the new band, sometimes 4 or 5 times a month. With gritted teeth I played with them in the old band (we had at the most 1 gig a month at that stage) and then out of the blue, after 10 months, the new band folded as mysteriously as it had started. I've never raised the subject about what the deal was all about and it's good that I didn't quit. But you do have to wonder, why start a new band that plays an identical set to your old band, at the same venues and has virtually the same band members, where the only difference is that new the band has a different name to the old band? I still have no idea?

Luckily, if I can't make a gig, the deps who cover for me usually have pretty horrendous depping skills, or have serious personality flaws 🤣🤣🤣 When I play the next gig the band members are really grateful that I'm back. Thankfully, I don't book the deps I leave that to the band leader, because I'd make the mistake of choosing a good solid bassist, with a pleasant personality.

It's worth at least a fiver.

I wouldn't know. It sounds like a P bass with flats, or old roundwounds on, going through an amp with the gain turned up a smidge. Frankly I was amazed that it wasn't a live bassist playing the part. It sounds very human and a bit sloppy (in a good way). The Producer who played it on a keyboard isn't even a bassist. This is a quote from the wikipedia page for the song. Ian Kirpatrick recorded the track.... 'Although the bassline of "Don't Start Now" sounds live, Ian Kirkpatrick created it with MIDI. It was influenced by similar basslines the Bee Gees and Daft Punk used in their music that he had listened to in his youth. Kirkpatrick used a Scarbee MM-Bass plug-in for the leading bass sound and played it on a keyboard before modifying it.'

I've been in a band, with a couple in it, for the last 22 years and that works fine (an occasional domestic on stage between them both in the early days but not so much now). The wife is the singer the husband is the guitarist and the band is named after the wife. The arrangement is, the singer makes all decisions on what songs we play, and everybody else does as they're told. This arrangement works fine, as I don't think I should pressurise the singer in any band I'm in, to sing a song they don't want to sing.

Successful bands are never democracies. If a charismatic and talented singer/front person is good at what they do, then the band revolves around them. All the successful bands I've ever been in have revolved around the singer/frontperson. Play what they want you to play and things will go smoothly, think you or any other band member has a say in the set and suddenly you no longer have a singer/front person.

Drummers don't have the right to be opinionated, they're just drummers after all. Stewart Copeland never figured that out.