My fifteen minutes in which to rock and roll
Wish me luck. I'm off with two friends to play a 20-minute live set which will represent my first appearance on a rock stage in almost exactly ten years. I'm on bass, we don't know what exactly we're going to play, and tonight and tonight only we are under the moniker "Tonight We Hunt And Kill Crispin Glover." Our one finished song is an instrumental called "I Am Your Density."
Accolades to the first reader who can tell me what these two titles have to do with one another.
We're gonna rip their lungs out. It's gonna be that good. Bad. Good. Definitely good.
[wik] ...and accolades go to the pseudonymous "Edward Van Halen" for accurately identifying "Back to the Future" as the unifying theme.
It went okay. It was definitely a fun fifteen minutes, and it was good to play in front of people. I only have two things to bitch about, which is about twelve less than usual. First: I hate, hate Hartke amplifiers. They're the leading bass amp maker, and they suck. I play an early-'70s Fender Jazz Bass, which like its cousin the Stratocaster guitar, is a versatile, clean-sounding instrument. The trouble is, much like the Strat, getting a good sound has partly to do with what amp you pair it with. Hartkes, especially the high-end heads/cabinets like I played through last night, have a very clean, clear, even brittle sound to them that's great for the studio but doesn't do it for me. Even though the head had dual-channel many-frequency eq's and high- and low- bandpass, the best I could do was a sound that was round and low, but still sort of shiny and tanky. That's what you get from putting a clean-sounding bass with a clean-sounding amp.
Non-bass players won't get this, but when you bear down on an electric bass, especially one of the classic models, you get a different attack to what you play that's a bit metallic. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers makes great use of this sound. However, through a Hartke, this sound can never be more than mannered and polished. I prefer a fuzzier, less trebly sound like you can get from Fender Bassman or a Gallien-Krueger. So the sound was a bit of a drag.
Also, I'd forgotten how hard it is to hear in a live setting. Even with just three instruments and no vocals, if you don't have a monitor system to go by, trying to get a tight groove in a room that's new to you is like trying to drive a car blindfolded. Deeply frustrating.
But what the hell. I'll do it again. I'm married, so I no longer have to worry about getting chicks, and I have a job so I don't have to worry about doing it for money. I answer to a higher power now: ROCK.
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Accolades for me! They're
Accolades for me! They're from "Back To The Future".
It's great to hear that you
It's great to hear that you're back at it! Let us know how it went!
Go get 'em! And break the
Go get 'em! And break the appendage of your choice. By coincidence, I started playing bass again for the first time since 1998. Got a show July 23.
On the money on the Hartke
On the money on the Hartke amps -- I've always considered them highly overrated. I prefer the very tube-warm, compressed bass sound you hear on a lot of late-60s/early-70s rock (think Badfinger, or Big Brother & the Holding Company, or Abbey Road), and it's hard to get that from Hartkes particularly and solid-state amps generally.
My 75-watt, 1968 vintage Bassman head has served me well as both a guitar and bass amp, with a 2x12" cab for the former and a 4x12" cab for the latter. I'd get a Twin Reverb for the guitar if I could afford it, but what are you gonna do?
In any case, isn't it great? Isn't there just nothing else like that feeling of playing live? Glad you had a good time!
NB: Your temporary band name is also a great homage to Bill Hicks' wonderful TV pilot proposal, "Let's Hunt Down Billy Ray Cyrus and Kill Him."
J,
J,
The first thing I thought of when I read this post was the "Jazz Odyssey" bit from "Spinal Tap": free form jazz exploration in front of a festival-sized crowd. Heh.
And then I thought, Johno doesn't need to put gourds in his pants. You have big brass balls to play a live set of songs you don't know or are half finished. I salute your low-slung balliness. And it's great that you had fun with it, without the pressure of trying to get laid or paid.
The idea of a "trebly" bass makes me nauseous. Gallien Krueger are the key to the latter-era Megadeth's earth shaking evil metal death piledriver sound. When I was playing out I always wanted a GK rig. Come to think of it I still would. Maybe Santa will bring me one if I'm extra good. And Dual Rectifiers while you're at it, OK Santa buddy...?
More often than not I ended up going straight through the board since almost every room we played insisted on it.
As for attack...well as you well know I am nobody's musician. I refused to learn proper hand technique and played with either a metal thumb pick or, in studio and at the end of my rock career, with a plectrum which was a sliver of brass about 1/4 inch thick. I just wasn't feeling it unless I was really bearing down on the strings and hurting them. And myself, for that matter.
VIKINGS!
I mean, ROCK!
PS- my uncle is making guitars now. I've seen the pics but haven't played any yet. Can't wait to get over there and hear 'em. Whenever you're in the market for good ol' Yankee luthiership...
Phil, good lookin' out! Bill
Phil, good lookin' out! Bill Hicks is the MAN, except when he scares me talking about Rush Limbaugh. In truth, we ended up billed as just "Crispin Glover," and I ended up announcing that our second song (the one we made up on the spot) was titled "Tonight we hunt and kill..." Either way, we ripped everyone's lungs out with the ferocity of our playing.
The Bassman head is a killer rig for guitar AND bass, and if I had the scratch and space, I'd get me one for sure. I tend to prefer a 4x10'' for guitar though, because 12''s just don't quite give me the bell-clear tone I'm after. My guitar is a '95 Strat Ultra with Fender Lace Sensor pickups, and that particular guitar has some incredible subtleties that can be brought out by the right amp.
My current amp is a Fender Bassman 70, which is about the size of 2 twelvies of Bud tallboys and completely badass sounding. Mic'ed up, it would be my first choice.
GL, I also thought of "Jazz Oddysey," and was trying to think of a puppet show joke I could work in onstage.
Yer uncle's a luthier? What's he making-- acoustic, electric, folk, classical, flamenco, mandolins, dulcimers, all of the above??
J,
J,
As for puppets, make a song title of 'em, ie "...And The Puppets Got Top Billing".
As for my uncle, he's been a picker for a long long time. Not the flailing sloppy rock type but the folksy bluegrass sloppy-but-so-sweet type. The whole fam digs watching him play, which he rarely does due to his "aw shucks" sensibility.
Anyway, I saw him at my semi-cousin's last weekend. He's been getting more into building recently and had some pics of finished models. All acoustics, as might be expected given his groove. He might do solid body electrics later, but building the complex and sensitive hollow bodies is where he is now. A labor of love for the complexity of the task.
As a one-man operation he is not quite ready to sell for real, but he does have a few finished. He's trying to get the production going to where he has several going at once and can finish one, move the rest along, and start another in relatively short order.
I'm going to see if maybe I can get over there tomorrow and check 'em out. Lady Lethal and I are going to the big gun show nearby this weekend anyway, which is like halfway to their place.
I'll ask him if I can get take some pics. If he doesn't have any heartburn about it I'll take some and email them.
Ampeg SVT on two four-ten
Ampeg SVT on two four-ten cabs. The room will shake and thunder when you want it to, and yet the top end will still be precise enough for attack. Or just get a Gallien-Kruger if you prefer not to utterly wreck your back carrying the dang thing. I concur, they're nice, too.
GL -- please send pix or post links to pix. I'm curious about the whole acoustic luthier thing.
What GuitarPicker said. That
What GuitarPicker said. That's out of my league, but I'm very happy with my older Ampeg V-4B, played through 2x12" Cerwin Vegas in a Traynor cabinet (sometimes two o'those). My bass is a '65-67 Precision.