The Last Bass Outpost

I just saw this doc / concert movie yesterday in our local art cinema.
It's well worth it!


The gospel choir is phenomenal.
Of course I thought there was not nearly enough screen time for the rhythm section:
Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey, and Cornell Dupree. But you can hear them.

I had the opportunity to see Joe Jackson last night on his "Four decade tour".
What a band! Versatile and rocking. They can get quite jazzy, silky smooth, latin-esque grooves, or kick ass as needed on the early tunes.
It's pretty harmonically adventurous material. Bassist Graham Maby has been with JJ since the very early days and played on pretty much any recording you may be thinking of. (My band used to cover "Is She Really Going Out with Him" and I always enjoyed the staccato verses and melodic bass licks on that one, though we gave it up because we could never get the vocal harmonies to sound good!).  One thing that was really fun was seeing how much Joe obviously enjoyed this band, whenever they really took off he'd be looking around at the other players with glee on his face. At one point he said to the audience, "People often tell me I should do a solo tour by myself, but I don't want to, it's so much more fun with a band."

Anyway, it's a very good live show if you can get a chance to see it. I believe a lot of dates are sold out though

I've been acquainted with current guitarist Teddy Kumpel since I was a very small child.
Teddy got me an unexpected backstage pass - as I was told to expect, Mr. Jackson did not appear backstage after the show, but I did get to hang with Teddy and reminisce about the time he was babysitting me and my sister and almost got us drowned in mud.
And - nice surprise!  I got to briefly meet and express my admiration to Mr Maby, who has a very warm and gentle presence in person, seems like a good soul.

There's various fan videos from this tour on youtube already, here's a song (from last week) that sounded great last night:

Looks like 3 of the Big Four thrash players got excited about their hero Geezer's signature set and wanted in on the deal:
http://www.emgpickups.com/bass/signature-sets-bass.html


What would a Tom Araya signature set sound like, though?  Megadeth and Anthrax at least have pretty clearly audible bass tones; I haven't spent much time with Slayer, but what I've heard, their sound is all guitars and drums with just a hint of non-distinct low end from Araya.

Can a Trujillo signature set be far behind?

Hey, maybe there's a "Justice" special edition pickup set in the works for vintage Newsted tone - with no magnets included 

What's a reasonable price range for converting a fretted neck to fretless?
I gather it can either by done by filing down the frets, or removing them and putting in a filler of some kind.

I've never owned a fretless, and suddenly find myself thinking about ways to get the kind I want if it's not readily available.

A friend posted this on FB:

I did not know this was a thing.
https://reverb.com/item/6071678-a-rare-early-1970-s-epiphone-long-scale-sg-eb-3-by-the-japanese-antoria_ibanez-fujigen-factory

So it's an Ibanez-made bass illegally using the Epiphone logo for a bass Epiphone never made? Confusing. Wonder why they didn't go all the way and use a Gibson logo!

My next gig is at small bar that has an Ampeg BA210V2 listed as their house backline amp.
I've never played through one. Anybody tried it?

Uh.  Okay.

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Gibson/Vintage-1970s-SB350-Electric-Bass-Guitar.gc