The Last Bass Outpost
Gear Discussion Forums => Gibson Basses => Topic started by: godofthunder on March 19, 2020, 04:50:11 AM
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Not Gibson but close enough? It was about time I did a little video story about my Jaydee Jim Lea bass. https://youtu.be/fbPubECM9hY
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Too cool. 8)
Thanks for sharing.
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That was great, Scott. I remember the story from way back in the early Pit days but that was before YouTube.
Are you using Rotos on that?
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The strings are what Jaydee shipped it with, they are dead. I am going to put some Rotos on it and do a demo with my Slade Hiwatt.
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https://youtu.be/5cIWBWunAGw
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I love the vid, Scott!
What can you tell about the distortion circuit? Is it comparable to an excisting floor unit?
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I must admit I pulled out my 'cuz I luv you' LP after seeing your video🙂 I'm no diehard Slade fan, but I've had this record since my teens.. Just one of those albums that reminds me of a happy youth. And yes, great bass on all the tracks!
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The strings are what Jaydee shipped it with, they are dead. I am going to put some Rotos on it and do a demo with my Slade Hiwatt.
I feel like something bad would happen if you didn't have Rotosounds on that bass.
I learned recently that Jim Lea played John Lennon's harmonium on Merry Christmas Everybody. I never knew what the extra instrument was on the intro.
Quick Edit: Just stumbled upon this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRqj_EB4HME
Presumably this is his much modified EB-3 that was the precursor to the sunburst bass?
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Jim was an accomplished pianist und played all keyboards on Slade albums - und there were quite a few, even among the hits ... My Friend Stan, How Does It Feel, Thanks For The Memory - he wanted the keyboard intro on that played by a "real pianist", but as no one could replicate it, his "demo" version stayed on the recording.
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Jim was an accomplished pianist und played all keyboards on Slade albums - und there were quite a few, even among the hits ... My Friend Stan, How Does It Feel, Thanks For The Memory - he wanted the keyboard intro on that played by a "real pianist", but as no one could replicate it, his "demo" version stayed on the recording.
And of course he played the fiddle as well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrasNTwuF1o&list=RDGrasNTwuF1o&start_radio=1
Slade had the right formula. Extroverted singer and lead guitarist, introverted but musically brilliant rhythm section. As in, Queen wouldn't have worked so well as a band without John Deacon on bass, but he was never going to try and steal the spotlight (Roger Taylor might have, just to ruin my theory slightly).
I've dipped back into Slade's music a bit recently, and it strikes me how much of the DNA of each song is coming from the bass lines. Stuff that I didn't even realise was the bass part, in some instances. The intro of this stands out! I had this tune on a compilation CD when I was a kid. If you asked me to hum the intro it would be the bass parts I would whistle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qysk6IgeFmQ
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Scott, I absolutely love this post. What a great review and bas. These clips have been a highlight for me over the past few weeks!
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Even Dave - albeit grudgingly - learned something about Jim Lea und Slade here!
Jim Lea was Slade's musical heart who wrote all the songs - Noddy Holder wrote double entendre lyrics to them and made some of Jim's musical ideas more accessible to the public.
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I love the vid, Scott!
What can you tell about the distortion circuit? Is it comparable to an excisting floor unit?
My John Birch SG bass has the same circuit. It was a gizmo designed by John Diggins who built Jim's bass under the John Birch label. It's about the size of a postage stamp and in JD's words is "very simple", so while it doesn't answer the question I'd guess at not as intricate as a pedal. Jim used his when it was in the middle position, ie. both pickups. the level pot on the scratchplate was set to about 8. He then controlled it being in or out by adjusting the lower volume pot which you see him do on the above video when he says he wants to play with his booster. Jim's fullbackline was about 18000 watts through a whole PA range of cabs. The sound was .... immense.
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I can attest to that! When I first saw Slade, they had just returned from their self-imposed yearlong US exile (in an effort to crack the market there which proved futile). They played in a club (their fortunes in Germany had waned), but it seemed like they had stuck their whole US arena backline and PA in there und turned it up to eleven! That was the by now legendary "nose bleed incident" - a guy standing beside me - right before the PA bins - got nose bleed from the truly physical volume. And while the band was "louder than war" (a Fidel Castro comment backstage to the Manic Street Preachers when they played Cuba), Jim Lea was loudest. Three songs into the set, he played a bass solo from atop the right PA tower, the place just shook.
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I saw Slade live 36 times, the majority of the time I was stood directly in front of Jim. I also saw Motorhead live 16 times.
My tinnitus is pretty bad.
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Pardon...? :mrgreen:
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I wish they would get back together, downtune everything a couple of half-steps und do one unplugged gig, is that asking for too much? If Ian Hunter can do it with Mott the Hoople in their various incarnations ... It would certainly bring me closure. I only saw them twice, once at that club gig and a few years later as Whitesnake's (Moody/Marsden era) opening act. By the late 70ies, they weren't a regular touring act in Germany anymore.
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I believe that Dave Hill recently unceremoniously fired Don Powell.
So I don’t think it is going to happen in the near future...
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And then he had a stroke about a month after that. But having your stepdaughter who is a doctor at your house while you're having a stroke is about as lucky as it gets.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/showbiz-tv/slade-drummer-don-powell-suffers-17853177
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I wish they would get back together, downtune everything a couple of half-steps und do one unplugged gig, is that asking for too much? If Ian Hunter can do it with Mott the Hoople in their various incarnations ... It would certainly bring me closure. I only saw them twice, once at that club gig and a few years later as Whitesnake's (Moody/Marsden era) opening act. By the late 70ies, they weren't a regular touring act in Germany anymore.
As Nod has said a few times there's no way they'd ever get back together now, too much water under the bridge and they struggle to have a same room meeting without it turning nasty. A few years ago I had a two hour chat in a local bar with Nod and while I won't go into particulars there's no way it will happen. Meanwhile, after departing what was left of Slade Don Powell has abandoned creating his own "Slade" and for now is planning a few UK gigs with a band called "The Ex Men". Jim Lea is has a few items in the pipeline and I had a great long catch up with him a few months ago.
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Pardon...? :mrgreen:
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!
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I think royalties must play a large part in it. Slade had a songwriter team with Lea and Holder that hoarded all the royalties. Once the hits in a band's career dry up und record sales of new output dwindle along with - eventually - ticket sales, you get a schism: The writers can lean back and live from the back catalog still being played on the radio, the non-writers have to keep on gigging for lack of other income to diminishing returns. That poisons everything.
It was Jon Lord who once said that the beginning of the end of DP was when the band gave up the hitherto mandatory five-way-songwriter credit (at the instigation of Blackmore, the chief songwriter): "And that's not economic sour grapes, the band just worked better as a collective that way."
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Sabbath ran that policy too, iirc... a great work's collective...
As known, I was lucky having "grown up" with Slade, just as I did with ACG, but unlike Status Quo, who were just as much an influence on me, I just never got round to seeing them for some reason or another; again, all those Hammy O gigs, and Wembley at their peak and them just round the corner from me... Much later, I just did not want to see them as the "Frantic Four"... It was them, but not...
I got to the point with them (Quo) that it was just "SingalongaQuo", to coin a Brit expression...
When Slade got their second break they produced some decent rock material and, live, chucked a significant quantity of it in... Slade doing an "unplugged" would be a nice idea; I'd watch it, from a "Far-Far Away", but I would not feel the pull to go, unless they played the Ironworks in Inverness... :mrgreen:
There's not a massive amount of stuff I still can be bothered to see, though we (me and daughter) have a re-scheduled Satriani gig to see next year and a Hollywood Vampires gig to see later this year, if it takes place...
I will never see Grand Funk or Foghat, both of which I loved, and Free is just a warm memory of something I could have seen... at least I saw Bad Co early on...
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If you saw Quo pre-Lancaster's ousting, then you did good not to see the Frantic Four reunion gigs. Alan Lancaster, in his prime, was one of the most muscular and forward-pushing bassists ever, but he could barely hold the pick anymore and his bass playing had lost all its former pummeling urgency (his voice otoh was fine, had hard aged) due to his muscle/nerve disease which he refuses to admit as MS. Coghlan had lost stamina, but his playing still had more character than any of his successors ever had, Parfitt held it all together in a superhuman effort and was truly chuffed to be there und Rossi was visibly pained/irritated by the deficiencies in Coghlan's and Lancaster's playing and at the same time extremely worried about Lancaster's health - constant sideway glances like a male nurse worriedly looking at a patient who is overestimating his fitness during reconvalescence. After each gig (I saw them twice) he breathed a deep sigh of relief and must have thought to himself "phew, we barely made it ..." . It was also patently clear that Rossi no longer enjoyed playing the 70ies heyday stuff mostly sung by Lancaster and Parfitt, though he showed discipline. He's on record for saying that he dislikes "Quo" (the 74 album, imho the pinnacle of their work together with "On the Level" which followed it ) for being too dark and heavy an album.
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I think royalties must play a large part in it. Slade had a songwriter team with Lea and Holder that hoarded all the royalties. Once the hits in a band's career dry up und record sales of new output dwindle along with - eventually - ticket sales, you get a schism: The writers can lean back and live from the back catalog still being played on the radio, the non-writers have to keep on gigging for lack of other income to diminishing returns. That poisons everything.
You'd be correct, after a lot of wrangling H and Don were each given a six figure pay check/cheque for back-dated royalties. My guess would be that it was a one-off.