scalpy

Michael Jackson medley- I want you back, Billie Jean, thriller (to nods of approval) darling dear (tumbleweed)

Bizarrely, I have trespassed on the very same land! A singer songwriter I play for lives on that lane and I missed it the first time I went there, headed up that driveway. Realised my mistake pretty early on though. My ‘one step closer to a bass hero’ is more of a stumble followed by a face plant. Sometime around 99/00 my band was doing a lot of recording with an engineer turned producer who had been McCartneys studio engineer for about a decade. One night we were in London going to meet a ‘manager’ about a ‘record contract’ and walked passed MPL offices in soho square. At that moment McCartney’s driver comes out and spots our engineer, and they briefly chat about old times and we get introduced. At that point he invites us in to meet Paul. However…. We were late for the manager and I declined……

My band all tremble before me as I lay down the law- my way or the highway! We’ve a set up that the two singers and myself are directors of the company, me as MD, and all the other players are hired in a gig by gig basis, invoicing for each performance. I prepare all the musical material, transcribing and arranging charts, backing and guide tracks and as it takes forever each new number we cover (up to 15 minute medleys at times) I want it the way I heard it when doing all the arranging. However, whilst that might sound cold the players who make up our regular band are free to make suggestions or improvements- we’re booking provincial level pros and know what they’re on about so it’s wise for me to listen and deps often mention what a good relationship we all have. It doesn’t always work, we’ve just lost a drummer from the team for instance, but what we’ve found is players come in as deps and gradually become more involved to become the first call. If you’re wondering, the singers roles are respectively manager and sales each.

The Blues Brothers mean a huge amount to me. I first heard them on the radio as my dad and I returned from a mundane shopping trip to tescos ( I was about 11) and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love came on. I can remember finding it so exciting but wishing there was another gear before it ended- then Duck stepped out with that walking bassline and I was hooked. My dad knew it and as a soul fan from the first time round we really bonded over stax, muscle shoals, Motown, and when my wife and I started a soul band, got him in on sax. A great experience, but needed Duck to kick it all off.

Great interview. His first statement made me smile- biggest lesson in the whole thing. Scott did really well too understandably fanboi-ing a bit but his questions generated some good talking points. Loved the anecdote about Jaco’s wife!

All went pretty smoothly, nice and lively, timed midnight ok and we did our new to us arrangement of Auld Land Syne- pipe band style into punk and back, well received. Even better for me the new line up of the band includes two guys who are tour managers. This meant they had stacked all the cases and gig detritus in the order it was going to be packed, planned the exit strategy and we were loaded ready to go in twenty minutes, not bad for an 8 piece band with no crew. I hope everyone else’s went well and 2023 has packed gigging diary for you all with many adventures ahead.

We’ve been booked at the same venue for the last two years, only not been able to do because of Covid, so this year is finally going ahead and I’m pleased, decent wage, no promotion or marketing for us to do, ticket sales to worry about etc, just rock up and play. It’s a restaurant in Hereford who are putting a big buffet and treating it as a party for their staff and friends.

We’re doing Fairytale of New York, Jackson 5’s Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday and Merry Christmas Everyone. Fairytale is a risk as mentioned so we’ve put it at the end of the first set which seems to be working. Fortunately our Sax player can shift over to flute which helps and we have male/ female vocals who rip the mickey out of it so it’s been going well. The bars of 3 and 5 can trip some drummers up mind!

We’re a function band with an established line up and a bank of regular deps who all know us. We’re up to 15 gigs for next year at pretty frequent intervals which is an improvement on our current lull post covid mania rebooking and some new gigs. It’s been a long slog for my wife who does all the promo etc, one of the biggest battles is being top of the search rankings which is where the agencies have us beat. I did one of those in the summer and wanted to hide the whole time- didn’t get the set until the day before, then the dep singer didn’t want to do most of them, then arrived to find the guitarist didn’t have most of the tracks, so spent an hour in the car park learning what he did have, sax player had no charts at all and noodled the whole gig. To cap it all there was no guitar in the in ear mix, so that coupled with unhelpful click guides made the whole thing torture. Best gig fee of the year….

Ok so the drummer’s Chris Dave and the bassist is Pino, but a great clip, really clear shot of the man himself and his pedal technique, belting playing and tone.

Time, musicality- understanding what energy level they need to be putting in for the relevant part of the song (especially they can create that intensity without face melting volume) and drumming vocabulary, if we’re playing for two hours in an evening we’re going to have a variety of feels and tempos in the set, they’ll need to be able to shuffle, swing, disco, rock as we’re a function band. Our current drummer has none of the above, our dep drummer does but he’s simply not available enough. It hurts!

Bryan Ferry, Jealous Guy. Not posting a link, no one needs to endure that.

Had a dep gig over the summer with an agency. Booked the Wednesday to play that Saturday. I had a general idea of what they did because of a previous booking that fell through so started working through 30 or so songs, but they didn’t confirm the set or keys until the Friday afternoon. About 50% difference. Got to the gig the Saturday afternoon, the agency hadn’t agreed the set with the singer, who couldn’t/ wouldn’t do a lot of the songs, so we redrafted the set, only to find the agency hadn’t sent anybody any tracks, so we could only use what the guitarist had from previous gigs on his laptop. Cue me sat in the back seat of the car with an hour to spare desperately trying to chart as many as possible. To cap it all, it was an in ears gig and the guitarist, doubling as sound man could not send me any of his signal, I was stood directly behind the sub and one ear in one out was actually worse than both in. My issue is that in my wedding band we use lots of medleys and mash ups so I don’t automatically know structures/ bridges etc as we’ve messed them all up on purpose. Couldn’t wait to get home, it was awful.

We should pitch Netflix a new series. Inventing Mick.

Beat me to it! 5 is tricky though, so… Chuck Rainey Nate Watts Carol Kaye Pino David Hood …for good measure.

Played WSS a few times with am-dram companies. Everyone is on it and it’s beautifully arranged- some parts look terrifying but once you’ve got your head round them they fall under the fingers really well. There’s some nice moments for bass too, although there’s one cue at the end of the rumble at the death scene and it’s very dependent on the stage action. The MD typically just gives a tiny upbeat after a variable pause and it’s up to you to deliver a 6 note jazz motif that closes the act- gives me the sweats thinking about it. (Mostly because I made a compete hash of it the last time I had to do it)

I bought a preamp pedal from them earlier in the year. (Warning- something of an idle boast coming up) This was because I had a session for a producer who had remarked I hadn’t bought any new kit in a while, and I needed an excuse to get it anyway. I placed the order with BD, who apart from sending the automatic invoice gave no indication of dispatch. I gave it a day or two then followed it up- curt and dismissive reply received saying basically it was in the post, no tracking number etc. So I had to sit it out. Package arrived 2 days before the session, just left by the postie on my doorstep in full view of all passers by. On opening I discovered the correct box and power supply, but no pedal, so I contacted them immediately via email at which point they were extremely helpful and responsive, saying they’d realised the mistake and were going to post it next day delivery asap- this was late afternoon so they’d missed the last postage for that day. This meant I was not going to have the pedal for the session. I contacted the producer and said sorry, no new toys etc. He suggested getting it sent to the studio. So I rang BD this time to see if they could do that and their attitude was basically ‘yeah yeah just send the address, sorry about that whatever’ and they couldn’t put the phone down fast enough. Back on the emails I sent them the studio’s address- Studio 1, AIR, lyndhurst. Within seconds I got a reply, all nice as pie, asking who I was recording with, nicey nicey and interested again. So basically in one deal I experienced BD’s best, and poor customer service, literally changing by the second.

Did a dep gig with the singer of this band the other day and did the obligatory Facebook friend thing. Interesting to see this pop up…

Finally made the move to in ears and had a few months to get used to it. Generic shure model, as recommended by Cory Wong! They have to be in exactly right to be their most effective and I can’t smile as the bottom end disappears completely! But will eventually get some proper molded jobs now I’ve discovered how much I like playing this way. The pre has been in action for about half that time, but as a long time Markbass user it seemed a good choice (I shopped blind- or is that deaf?) and it has quite a pronounced character but I’ve dialled my perception in now and really like it. There was a debacle involving empty delivery boxes from the retailer etc but I’ll save that for another thread. I’ve just finished a run of show gigs under ‘normal circumstances’, amps and cabs and tinnitus, and have to say I’m another in-ear convert.

What does she want to learn for? If she’s writing/ playing in original bands then she can tune it whatever way she likes. If she’s looking at reading gigs and covers (I’m thinking your standard pub/ function repertoire) then you’re going to give her a major headache, even if it’s not insurmountable.

I’d also be interested, my long serving Markbass is not in the rudest of health as well.

This particular gig it was bottles of champagne. The guitarist was constantly moving them away from his floor mounted Kemper and off the subs. We all made the move to in-ears not so long ago but the singers have been on them for over a year- we’ve definitely noticed that the stage invasions and littering have increased with the lack of psychological boundary. We thought that the lack of monitors posed less of a hazard for punters but actually the singers have had more people piling into them and their iPad, it’s daft how these things work out.

Punters on stage is recurring issue for us, as is using the stage edge as a bin.

Funnily enough this was a young farmers style gig- basically that community. So technically a private event booked by joe public so no venue insurance (in all likelihood I imagine) and no team dedicated to cleaning or security. We’ve done several for this set and every time something has wrong footed us, the only time we’ve had stuff nicked for example or been expected to play much louder than we have the capacity for. This is despite my wife being the former county administrator for the YFC and running their chairman’s events each year and the like. All the above advice has been very helpful though, thank you all, we shall look at how address these issues and navigate who has the responsibility etc. Looking at Dads picture of a stage above in the thread I’d be worried about the lack of rails around the three sides, but it may have been still in construction.

To be honest I've not thought of a function/party band like ours using a barrier. Another thing to negotiate!