Behringer Ultrabass

For the Halloween show we used MR's boyfriend's Behringer Ultrabass amp.  It was a two piece. The cabinet was heavy as hell. I'm not sure of the wattage.

The head looked just like this (ULTRABASS BX4500H...450 Watt) though:

On Musician's Friend the head runs $250, which surprises me as cheaper than I'd of expected. I'm going to guess that the cab was a UltrabassBB410, which seems to be discontinued (I wonder if the head is on the way out too and hence why it is so cheap).

It was a nice rig other than the cabinet being a monster (listed as 100 lbs in specs)

CJ as The Devil's Insides at Dane101 Freakin' Halloweekend at HNS

Every year CJ says "never again" about Halloween, and every year we do it anyway. This year we had trouble assembling players (I think we asked at least 5 keyboard players)...but eventually ended up with 9 people...2 trumpets, trombone, sax, keys, guitar, bass, vocal, drums. We NEVER had all 9 people in one room together until the night of the show.

But things went really, really great.

I'm beginning to feel like CJ is really coming into our own. I used to feel like the bands that I played in were sort of "B team" bands in the local scene. Somewhere in the last few years I think we've surpassed that though. I don't mean that we are any more popular or that we get any bigger crowds or more media coverage. I mean that we have become professionals. We treat the thing seriously...and we are good. We forget this too often. We undersell ourselves. But really we're pretty great.

Setlist:
Kick
New Sensation
Listen Like Thieves
The One Thing
Never Tear Us Apart
One X One
Need You Tonight
Don't Change
What You Need
Devil Inside

SVFD 10/24/2013 Lakeland College

We played for a music appreciation class. We did a little rap about ska history, which most of us didn't know anything about prior to last night. Did not realize until 30 minutes before performance that there was no PA. I ran home and got mine, which sucked a little (only a little) cause we only played a couple of songs.  Someone at the gig said they wanted us to play at a campground for 1,000 people. This seems unlikely to pan out.

I couldn't hear myself, so made weird mistakes associated with that. Also, I have not practiced in weeks or months or I don't know how long. Probably should get back to it...after Halloween.

Setlist:
Freedom
Rudy
I Will Survive
Hope I Never Lose My Wallet
Red Rubber Ball

Followup, TD on Wisconscene

A while ago I posted about this gig. I never followed up with the goods tho.


Our segments in the above show are at 5:52 (Better N Better; Gun in Your Grave) and at 25:26 (Gotta Tell U)


This one is all us. It features Haven't Seen U Lately and an interview about crazy gig stories. It is kind of epic.

Getting Off Book

So I've got this Halloween tribute gig on Saturday. It is the 4th year that we've done a Halloween show and the 3rd year that we've learned a whole new set for it.  The last two years I had a really hard time memorizing my parts. When we did Flaming Lips the parts were just harder than I was used to...but last year was Love and Rockets and the parts were dirt easy. I just found them hard to commit to memory. This year it is INXS and, again, the parts are dirt easy. But I've been traveling a lot lately and also now play in 5 bands and I was beginning to wonder if I'd be able to get off book at all for this.  I tried to not use my notes at Saturday's rehearsal and failed.  On Sunday, I did not open the book at all for my private practice session. I thought "let's just see how bad it is". To my surprise, I had 99% committed to memory. The other bit was just a matter of a quick look up and reinforcement a few times. Monday night I played the whole set perfectly.  On Wednesday I'll be ready to play dress rehearsal off book...and I'm actually not nervous about the gig and don't think I'll need to make any notes for myself at all, which is rare.  I plan to try to play the entire set every night this week to keep it fresh.

How did it happen that I memorized it all? I really can't say.  I have not been putting in the time until last week and this. But somehow, when I buckled down, it came.

I'm always afraid that my capacity to memorize tunes will vanish. It was a surprise to me that I was even capable of memorizing.  That first Pixies gig was probably the first rock show I ever played off book on bass. Muscle memory is like a miracle.

I haven't made a very strong effort to get off book for ska. I admit this is in part because my bandmates haven't bothered to get off book, so I've been indignant about putting in the time. But I probably ought to give it a shot. It IS nice to put away the music stand...both cause it is a pain to haul around but also because it feels like a bigger accomplishment.

SVFD at Adult Swim 10/18/2013

Played two sets (of exactly 45 minutes each!) at Children's Museum Adult Swim night. In full costume:

Show went darn well and we even managed an impromptu marriage proposal sort of thing for a fan.

set one:

rascal king

came out

freedom

sergio

spiderwebs

somewhere

dandelions

i don't love u

about a girl

i will survive

set two:

mr smily

rudy ("A Message to You Halle...vamped for proposal)

superman

wallet

thigh high

grazing

metro

point counter

lost again

red rubber

That Disgusting Thing at Her Feet

So I've not really talked about the whole "new Kim" thing here. And I'm not gonna get into it now.

But a while ago the "new Kim" posted this photo online:

Which is this horrible thing:

And looks like this on stage:

Anyway, it implies that future live Pixies shows will feature bass effects either on old or new songs or both. I like to think that I'm open-minded, but in some things I guess I'm a purist, and one of the things that I like best about the Pixies is the simple, un-affected bass lines.

Plus, this fucker costs TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS.

The boys can go any direction they want and go with god. But I don't think I'm ever going to want to play this thing and I hope no one asks me to.

Wrapping Cables

This weekend a boss-sort-type-of-person-of-mine-but-not-really said "If you don't know how to properly wrap a cable, ask D or another staffer" Me being D. The funny thing is, I know there is a proper way to wrap a cable...but I've never done it before in my life. And I'm 99.9% certain that none of the other staffers had any idea the proper way to wrap a cable. I watched a video about it once and got thoroughly confused and gave up. Since then I've done the..."I'll be careful and neat but I know this is still wrong" route.  Being called out as the expert...I did some research today and came up with a simple, short video that gets it right. I tried it and it isn't as hard as I'd thought. But it IS totally different than I've done it in the past and I've never seen another staffer do it correctly.



 It's nice that my boss has faith in us...but probably better if she verified that we know what we're doing before asking us to teach others.

Princeton Chorus Amp & the Red Bass through Tubes

I manage gear for a girls music camp. Most of what gets donated to us is entry level gear or very old semi-functional gear of no real value.  We do have one decent drum kit and a collection of very nice mics.  This year someone gave us a Princeton Chorus amp...which I was pretty excited about...but then it turned out to have an intermittent problem. A pro guitar player amongst us suggested that the inputs on those amps go bad, so we sent it for repair. It came back and now seems to be working, though I find it a little buzzy. Last night I played through it for a while cause it is sitting at my house waiting to return to storage.

It certainly is better than most amps we own, but I gotta say that I still prefer the teeny-tiny little Vox amp. That thing kicks ass.

The red bass, I think I said earlier this week, sounded better through a tube amp. Someone also told me that the Squires are notorious for shitty wiring and that I could easily upgrade the whole thing. I'm not sure it is worth it. The whole raison-d'etre for having the red bass is Pixies aesthetics. That, of course, becomes sort of ridiculous what with the makeup of the band changing. And who knows how many more years we'll even keep the schitck up? I'm reminded that '62 reissue replacement pickups are $70-90 if I ever want to try and upgrade.

SVFD, Reedsburg, 10/5/13

We played 3 sets at the Touchdown Tavern in Reedsburg. We made $200 plus food/drinks. I didn't have anything to drink. It was a typical small town bar with the kind of crowd you'd expect, but they were nice to us. I think we were kind of a weird match for the venue. There was an incident with the bar owner borrowing M's guitar and breaking a string and us not having a replacement, but our sound guy came to the rescue. We stretched all the songs with solos twice as long as normal which worked pretty well even though unrehearsed. Half way through 3rd set we were ready to quit early and head home but two guys from Chicago ran into the bar and skanked their butts off, so instead we replayed all the fast songs we'd already played and it really seemed to raise everyone's spirits.

It was nice to get out of town.

We played everything we know and a few things we didn't. Some things twice.

CJ Dragonfly 10/11

We played after a poetry reading and a Pavement tribute act.  It was dark on stage.We were under-rehearsed and made lots of mistakes but several in the crowd said we were "tight". I started Tame in E instead of D...I think because of the light I just went to the wrong fret...didn't get it resolved until just after "cookie I think you're tame." I don't know why it took me so long to correct because I knew what I'd done right away but I somehow got out of synch with the chord progression trying to switch to correct key. Ironically 2 people later told me we "nailed" Tame and that it was amazing. It is so hard for me to believe anything an audience member ever says. I know they probably really believe whatever it is that they say...but even when I'm not being unreasonable hard on myself I rarely agree with their assessments. I have, at least, learned to just say "thank you" and not argue with them or make excuses.

RS went straight into Something About You after Broken Face without calling it and it took me a second to remember what song that is, but I figured it out in time. We should go back to testing ourselves like that.

Drinks were had but were not a factor in my performance. I'd been sober a week prior to show. I regret breaking the streak. I think we took home $35. I borrowed Pavement guy's rig, which was a tube amp head played through an Ampeg 4 x 10 I think. The red bass sounded better played through that than it normally does, maybe that's the key.

Setlist:
Wave UK
Nimrod
Here Comes
Bone
River
Space
Subbacultcha
Debaser
Holiday Song
Isla
Crackity
Dead
Monkey
Dig
Motorway
Bird Dream
Hey
Gigantic
Gouge
Tame
Vamos
Where is My Mind

encore by request:
Broken Face

2nd encore cause RS felt bad he messed up lyrics to Broken Face:
Something Against You