The Last Bass Outpost

RIP - I found it odd that his website is showing a 2024 date of death but the announcement came only yesterday.

You're doing God's work, my friend. Or somebody's...

Quote from: uwe on August 05, 2024, 08:32:34 AMThe Runaways and early Kiss had one thing in common: They sounded like primal garage hard rock/punk must sound to people who just despise that type of music! It had charm, but very little lasting musical value. Just don't overthink it.

As a 16-year-old when their first album was released, I found them to be exactly that, but the good spots have stuck with me all these years. I will still give my undivided attention when anything pops up in random shuffles on my playlist, especially tracks from the live album. I actually prefer Lita Ford's playing back then as opposed to what she did during her solo career. She used to be Blackmore-obsessed and you can hear the rudimentary results of that in the early stuff (not unlike Andy Scott from Sweet).

Quote from: uwe on May 04, 2024, 04:56:47 PM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sG8zeyOAouU

And the Blackmore connection - because there MUST be one, after all - is that Manfred Mann lead vocalist Mike D'Abo played King Herod (to Ian Gillan's Jesus) in the original cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psJ7i7X06VE&list=RDpsJ7i7X06VE&start_radio=1&rv=psJ7i7X06VE&t=63

Quote from: gearHed289 on March 29, 2024, 10:49:56 AM
Set to land Tuesday. Now I need to order a "Gibson" TRC and some black reflector knobs.

Upbadging?

Quote from: gearHed289 on March 27, 2024, 10:19:32 AM
Thanks, I figured I could explain this one as somewhat of an investment, particularly in white. It does have Wilkinson tuners. The case kind of sealed the deal for me.

Yeah, white was the move for me too, with both the VP and CP. All that gawking at Jackie Fox in the Runaways...

Quote from: uwe on March 27, 2024, 08:46:50 AM
Now that is interesting, those guys were really great and quirky, I like the theatrics of the singer and his voice. What a find!

Steve Harley would have no doubt been chuffed too. He never meant a dime in the US and then there is all of the sudden this US band covering (very well) one of his freak arrangements of a Harrison song for which he caught an incredible amount of flak when it was released in the UK. It was deemed a lèse-majesty and the NME riled that "Harley has massacred all the song's inherent charm with his awful version". (To me it was what a good rearrangement should do, I love both the original and his version of it.) Harley had been a rock journalist himself before he formed Cockney Rebel - there were frequent barbs against him by his former ilk and he gave as good as he got.

Terry Roth was a great frontman and entertainer - HEAVILY influenced by Bowie. Sadly, we lost him last year. And yeah, quirky is a pretty good descriptor. Their original material ran the gamut from pop to jazz/swing to cabaret to rock - and somehow it all worked, even for guys like me who were usually listening to Kiss, Foghat or Nugent. The band went though a few phases and lineups, with its most successful being the one in the video, and the "revised" version when Tico replaced Tony on drums. Great players all.
I'm sure the British press would have loved this one...

Quote from: uwe on March 18, 2024, 06:29:09 PM

This brings back memories. Back in the late 70s-early 80s, I used to go see a band in the NY/NJ Metro area called "T. Roth & Another Pretty Face" that did Steve Harley's version of HCTS - usually as a set opener. Their song list was a mixture of originals and eclectic cover songs - they are the ones who also initially hipped me to the Smith version of "Baby It's You", which was another of their staples. They recorded two albums which are up on YT as well, the first of which includes Tico Torres, who was their drummer pre-BonJovi. After seeing your post, I had to go back on YouTube and find a 1979 live video that was posted.

Quote from: 4stringer77 on March 16, 2024, 06:50:33 PM
Hey, we're just catching up to the rest of the cool kids around here. I don't envy the youth when it comes to what they're looking at for buying a house now. Fifty isn't really such a huge number. Just fifty thousand bucks gets you that new Jimmy Page double neck. What a deal! 

They're also making a lot more money (generally speaking) as they come into the house-buying years too. Plus, they're generally not amenable to fixer-uppers, which is something many of us just accepted as a matter of course. Every generation has its challenges - personally, I'd rather deal with this than the Depression, WWII or Vietnam.

Quote from: godofthunder on March 09, 2024, 08:07:20 AM
   Sigh. I don't have the energy to pursue this topic any longer, discuss amongst yourselves if you desire. I  am just baffled how they could take something as near perfect as the Vintage Pro and F it up. I need to lie down it's making my head hurt.

And they charge more for it, too.

Quote from: n!k on March 08, 2024, 04:16:21 PM
Since it was a slow work day I decided to summarize the issue at hand

Shouldn't the original Embassy bass be in there somewhere?

You won't regret it. You won't lose money on it, either, if things keep going the way they are. The VP, IMHO, has a couple of advantages over the '64, depending on when the VP was made. The earliest ones (2017?) have the large plate Wilkinson tuners, while the 64 has unbranded ones with the small plate. I prefer the rosewood board on the VP as well, over the Indian Laurel they use now. In any case, enjoy - they're great basses.

Quote from: Basvarken on April 23, 2014, 01:13:23 PM
The control cavity would always be a dead giveaway.

A cavity search usually turns up a multitude of things...

Quote from: uwe on November 20, 2023, 02:12:58 PM
I know. He and The Band were booed at some gigs of their later UK tour too - folk fans couldn't handle it, any rock'n'roll element was perceived as intellectually lightweight and not authentic, an escapist passing fad. It must have bee akin to Led Zep performing in, say, 1974 with a dance troupe and horns during Stairway To Heaven.

Which would have given that song some entertainment value for once.

Oh dear, this sounds like a prompt for a "oddest cover songs" thread...

Quote from: uwe on November 19, 2023, 10:11:26 AM
Well, in that case that SG is now exactly where it belongs, namely in a collection of 20th century cultural artifacts. In essence, a bunch of rock'n'roll Stradivaris. A good home. You don't really want guitars like that to be continued to be played until they need a refin, a refret or new pups - they need to be preserved in the state they were used to write rock history.

I agree with his assessment of the Dylan Strat btw. Dylan was no Chuck Berry or Jimi Hendrix in a musical sense, but he brought the power of social commentary into rock music.

The Fool SG has already been repaired extensively during Rundgren's ownership - retouching, clear-coating, replacement of portions of the neck, headstock and some electronics - so it's not exactly pristine. Somebody actually built him a replica, which he said played and sounded better than the original.

Dylan's Strat is is of great importance primarily because he used it onstage at Newport, which was his first-ever performance on electric guitar. That set was seen as a turning point in popular music - where acoustic folk and electric rock were inexorably linked. Dylan's hard-core fans were horrified by his embrace of the electric.