Jackroadkill

I've been listening to "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" a lot this week.

I gig with what I like to play. I have pedals that cost me more than one of my favourite basses, for example, but that's just happenstance - I like the pedals and I like the basses. None of my gear is top end, but it's workmanlike and reliable. I like to tinker and upgrade bits and pieces here and there but I'm not precious about having the "best" gear, really. My Jazz Bass is an early 1990's plywood Korean job with crap tuners, poverty-spec electrics and nasty ceramic pickups, but it plays well and sounds surprisingly good. I have a Player P that I bought new a couple of years back, and that's probably my "highest" end bass.

I had an identical pair of New Rocks back in the day. A friend of our drummer made disparaging remarks about them and I went off him a bit. Fun fact; the next time I saw him he'd just lost control of his car and driven into the forecourt of a car sales place at 60-odd, totalling his 205 GTi and about fifteen other vehicles.

@StingRayBoy42.... You're a very busy chap, aren't you?! It was all going so well, and then you mentioned Morris dancing. We can still be friends (just).

Turn them around so they're behind the headstock. Or tell your singer to mind his own, if you like.

Every now and again, someone mentions getting my old originals band back together for a laugh, and at first it seems like a good idea, because it was fun, but then the longer I think about it the more apparent it becomes that I just don't want to do it. For one thing, it would mean me playing guitar again, for another the singer and I don't seem to be on anything other than extremely cautious speaking terms since our last band folded earlier this year (despite having known each other since we were 13, me being his daughter's insert-deity-of-your-choice-father etc etc). Add that to the smoking wreckage we left out local music scene, the broken hearts, drug dependencies, ruined relationships and unpaid debts and things get a bit sticky. They get stickier still when you add in the very intense intra-band politics and quasi-unionising of the rhythm section, too. So, all in all, I'd rather not. For one thing, the last time we played I was a snake-hipped rock Dionysus, draped with the affections of young ladies (at least in my mind, at any rate), and now I'm a grizzled old f*ck who would break a femur if he popped some of the same moves now. This remains the worst gig I've ever played, by the way, and is also the scene of the final gig with my last band (although we - or at least some of us - didn't know this at the time....). Oh my goodness, but we fancied ourselves something rotten... Yours truly at stage right; I'm truly sorry! So no, the one and only Son Of A Bitch will not be reforming any time soon.

Surely the time is ripe for some sort of Beano-style booby trap here?

Just when you think you've seen it all, eh?!

Much respect to Nicko; a superb drummer and a nice guy, by all accounts. I caught one of his skins at a gig in Manchester about 12 years ago and gave it to a drummer friend who wasn't able to go.

And if I win the lottery, I could be tempted by a Status Shark, in black (of course).

Oh, and a pre-CBS reissue Jazz of some sort.

A nice 4ohm cabinet to go with my Elf. A small, lightweight but poky cab with a tight bottom end, please.

Bastards!!!

A not-very-good original called "This Beast". I was on guitar (never good) and my main job was to chug away in drop D for a bit before ripping out the most pretentious and unskilled lead break, which involved phaser, tremolo and delay pedals, and was "performed" with a bottleneck. In order to complete the cringe-fest I wore a voluminous white shirt over a black sleeveless t-shirt, army boots, a cowboy hat and mirrored shades. The guitar was a Goldtop, so I must have looked and sounded like Eric Sardinas's favourite stalker. I was 23, properly old enough to know better.