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[gearHed289]

He who withstood the garish lure of collecting for fins is currently without space for ze colleckshün (it's been in storage for a year now) and hasn't touched a bass string for the last half year due to the breakup of his last band. I'm in bass menopause and totally frustrated about it. 

If you're 61, don't want to play covers or be a tribute, but do your own stuff in a vein that is somewhere between Be-Bop Deluxe, The Cars and Tin Machine, you're royally f***ed in Germany.

Oh, sorry to hear that. I'll be 58 a week from Monday. I have recently kind of unofficially retired from the standard cover band scene. It was fun and quite profitable for a while, but my heart's not in it. Chicago has a huge cover band scene, but over the past 3-4 years, there seems to be more sub-par bands playing for cheap, so it's hard to make good money anymore. I am currently very, very happy with my original band Nomadic Horizon, and the Peter Gabriel tribute I play with, Big Time. I am also looking to possibly do a tribute to John Wetton, covering Crimson, UK, and Asia. That will probably be a one-off if I do it at all. Thankfully this town is crawling with amazing musicians.

[Stjofön Big]

Please, do not bother about anything as uninteresting as age. I just turned 74, still playing bass in the Jukon Speakers in northern Sweden. Maybe one or two gigs/year. Does not really matter that it's seldom. I've done the business style too, lived on the four strings. Possible when you're young, harder with a family. Our music nowadays is only our own material. it's the old Take it or leave it style.

Following melody is from the days when I was almost just a kid. Hadn't even turned 68... Anyways, here are Jukon Speakers on the Guitar Museum in Umeå. Since then sorrow has affected us. Our drummer, Lasse Gillén, left for heaven ten month ago. So we got another one. Who's both a drummer, and a Lasse. Banksjö, that is. Retired academic, with a longing for playing music.

Let's go. Hope you can watch it:

[Stjofön Big]

Sorry. I understand you can't watch the video, maybe even outside of Sweden. Well, that's life. Somtimes you get what you want, other times you don't get what you need.

[morrow]

I pretty much gave up any rock star dreams when I started playing in blues bands back in the mid 70’s . And after doing the Maritime circuit for so many years I got sick of road food and bad hotels .
So by avoiding travel I was just going to be doing the odd session and the local bars . And having a normal life . The best case scenario was going to be working with some really good musicians and fairly steady work . I managed a second career doing commercial studio photography . (That translates as years shooting grocery flyers , and whatever came up . I worked first in the larger studios , and then opened my own and ran that for years .
 Finally retired , closed the studio , and continue to play the bars . I’m about to hit 70 ! And I put in a lot of personal practice time . I manage to learn stuff all the time .

Aside from the pandemic closures I’ve managed to gig a lot  . I play familiar rooms , generally know the regulars and love to get out , drive my amp around , and play . It’s good .

[TBird1958]

He who withstood the garish lure of collecting for fins is currently without space for ze colleckshün (it's been in storage for a year now) and hasn't touched a bass string for the last half year due to the breakup of his last band. I'm in bass menopause and totally frustrated about it. 

If you're 61, don't want to play covers or be a tribute, but do your own stuff in a vein that is somewhere between Be-Bop Deluxe, The Cars and Tin Machine, you're royally f***ed in Germany.

 

 At this point I haven't put a band back together and I'm a bit wishy washy about it mostly due to Covid, but we'll see. I will suggest repatriation for Ze Collection, Frank and I could build a nice climate controlled facility to house them all, and of course you can visit anytime. 
 

[Pilgrim]

 

 At this point I haven't put a band back together and I'm a bit wishy washy about it mostly due to Covid, but we'll see. I will suggest repatriation for Ze Collection, Frank and I could build a nice climate controlled facility to house them all, and of course you can visit anytime. 
 

Perhaps it's time for Kolleksion East and Kolleksion West?  A nice branch near Seattle?? 

[Rob]

Perhaps it's time for Kolleksion East and Kolleksion West?  A nice branch near Seattle??

[Granny Gremlin]

I never made music to make money. I just wanted to make music with people I like. And try to be a good as possible within the limits of my talent.
Most of the tribute bands are just proof of poverty of creativity. And lots of them just plain suck. (wearing a tophat and a curly wig doesn't give you the talent/skills of Slash for example)

Well that's true as well.  But there is a trend to tribute bands being composed of older musicians.  Maybe not so much trying to make money at it so much as not losing so much money at it.

[Dave W]

Sorry. I understand you can't watch the video, maybe even outside of Sweden. Well, that's life. Somtimes you get what you want, other times you don't get what you need.

I can see all three. I know I've seen this one (from Umeå Live) on your FB timeline, and I think I've seen the others. All good stuff!

[Alanko]

Interesting bass. I wonder how it sounds with the pickups in more extreme locations. If nothing else it looks like they cranked down the bridge pickup a little too keenly and distorted the pickup cover.

[amptech]

Perhaps it's time for Kolleksion East and Kolleksion West?  A nice branch near Seattle??

If the Gibson bass reich is on the move, it's coming to Norway pretty quick I suppose🙂

[Dave W]

If the Gibson bass reich is on the move, it's coming to Norway pretty quick I suppose🙂

On skis. 

[uwe]

Oh yeah, we still have some old maps.



With some support from indigenous volunteers, I can't really see what should go wrong!

[doombass]

Just make sure to go the usual route through Sweden:

[uwe]

Touché! 

Yes, those transit "rights" and the iron ore deliveries ... Nothing to be proud of.

But that same Sweden was responsible for saving the majority of Danish Jews (after they had been valiantly protected by their own population) and its Red Cross (after negotiations with Himmler) saved many concentration camp inmates from murder in the last months of the war, those "white busses" are legendary (and there was no commitment from the Allies - who feared some Nazi trick - that they would not be strafed by roaming USAAF or RAF fighters, the Luftwaffe had by then lost all air space control over Germany).





Sometimes you have to get real close to evil to do good. Staying neutral isn't always black and white, lots of grey in between. There was a saying in (likewise neutral) Switzerland during the war which I'm sure caught Swedish sentiment as well:

A true Swiss citizen does flourishing business with the German Reich six days a week - and goes to church on Sunday praying fervently the Allies may win the war.

But sometimes a little good can still emanate from something awfully bad, without the Wehrmacht occupation of Norway from 1940-45, we would have never had her:



Frida's mother was Norwegian, her dad a Wehrmacht soldier stationed there, people are people,



but after the Third Reich's surrender, Norway, perhaps understandably so, wasn't a good place to stay for a single Norwegian mother with a Tyskerbarna daughter fathered by a German Landser. So the two moved to Sweden, stayed there and the rest is (another part of) history.