Fender Japan Jazz Bass in action

hieronymous · June 24, 2010, 09:26:53 PM

On facebook a friend shared a link of a recording of a show I did 14 years ago! The band was Max Creek, they are a jam band from before the term was invented, they are soon to celebrate their 40th anniversary. I had quit my own band Jiggle the Handle (which in hindsight was a glorified Max Creek cover band) the previous year to pursue my interest in Buddhism, but I was called in to cover for the Max Creek bassist, John Rider, whose wife was having a baby. We played two shows, one at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, and then this one at 7 Willow St. in Port Chester, NY, just over the Connecticut/NY border. Anyway, here's the link to the show at archive.com:

http://www.archive.org/details/mc1996-06-15.flac16

I played my Fender Japan '62 RI Jazz Bass, through my old Boss half-rack compressor, Acetone amplifier (Acetone eventually became Roland), and Carvin 1X15 & 2X10 cabs. Man, besides the bass my gear sucked! The recording is soundboard, the mix is really weird in places, but I think the playing is pretty good. The bass sounds great in places, crappy and dead in others, in yet others it's almost completely inaudible! But the guitarist/vocalist Scott Murawski sounds great - he's currently playing on and off with Bill Kreutzmann & Oteil Burbridge in BK3 and with Mike Gordon, the bassist for Phish. The drummer on this one was auditioning - I think he sounds pretty good! My regular drummer Greg DeGuglielmo who is on most of my recordings used to be in Creek and is playing with them now.

Here's an earlier shot of me with the bass:

Freuds_Cat · June 24, 2010, 10:12:29 PM

Harry that seriously rocks in parts. Really enjoyed it. Cheers.

chromium · June 24, 2010, 11:57:52 PM

Seconded! Great playing (Cruel World is smokin'), and extra bonus points for Willie the Pimp.

They did a nice job archiving that stuff. Thanks for sharing it!

Freuds_Cat · June 25, 2010, 12:02:52 AM

I got caught up in that whole thing and ended up listening right through (and downloading it)

Mate you really held your own in there big time considering you and the drummer were effectively ring ins. Awesome stuff.

hieronymous · June 25, 2010, 10:51:21 AM

Quote from: chromium on June 24, 2010, 11:57:52 PM
Seconded! Great playing (Cruel World is smokin'), and extra bonus points for Willie the Pimp.

They did a nice job archiving that stuff. Thanks for sharing it!

Thanks Joe - Creek were definitely in the Grateful Dead orbit of things, so their shows tend to get taped. I think I saw some shows at archive.org from the early '80s! The craziest thing is that they're still playing...

Quote from: Freuds_Cat on June 25, 2010, 12:02:52 AM
I got caught up in that whole thing and ended up listening right through (and downloading it)
Mate you really held your own in there big time considering you and the drummer were effectively ring ins. Awesome stuff.

Mr. Cat - there's two sides to that - one is that, as I mentioned, my band Jiggle the Handle was really modeled on Max Creek (though I didn't realize 'til later), so we actually played a lot of those songs in Jiggle and I was already familiar with them. In fact, two of our drummers, Greg Vasso and Greg DeGuglielmo, were former members of Creek. And on top of that, we had had a side project with members from both bands called - wait for it - Jiggle the Creek! It was me and the Jiggle guitarist and then the keyboardist from Creek, Mark Mercier, and then one or another of the Gregs. So I was familiar with most of the material by the time of the show I posted.

But the crazy thing is, we didn't rehearse at all for these shows! I'm not sure about the drummer - he sounds really good for it being an audition, huh?!! But definitely I never played with the guys in the days or hours leading up to the shows, they just trusted me to get up and play! It was definitely a rush - my musical career was basically over at this point - I had quit Jiggle the previous year and was gearing up to move out to Berkeley, California to go to school to become a Buddhist minister. After the previous show, Scott the guitarist came up to me and said "Wanna join my band?" I had to turn him down, my heart wasn't in music anymore. I didn't really play much after this for 6 or 7 years, though I'm finally back in it!

Highlander · June 25, 2010, 11:26:07 AM

Nothing to be ashamed of there, Harry... some great music (presently heading for the ipod); nice to have in your resumé...

That is a great site (if they have your preferred sounds) - I've downloaded a significant quantity of Warren Zevon shows (there are 80 uploaded - some really great ones) but Heaven help you if you are a Dead-Head... 7,609 shows presently uploaded...

hieronymous · June 25, 2010, 11:35:09 AM

Thank you sir!

Found another couple of shots of the MIJ Jazz:

This is Jiggle the Handle at Mama Kins in Boston, probably '93 or '94. The bass is still around, though I gave it to a friend for safe-keeping and haven't gotten around to getting it back.

And here's an even earlier shot at the Middle East (upstairs?) in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

You can see my rig in this shot, the two Carvin cabs and Acetone amp - I think it was someone else's rack on top... EDIT: actually, looking again, the rack system is behind my amp - you can just see my little half-rack Boss compressor.

Highlander · June 25, 2010, 11:46:11 AM

Damn...! you never let on that you played with Leslie West...

hieronymous · June 25, 2010, 01:43:27 PM

Just found out a friend of big fan of Jiggle passed away.

Maybe there's a reason this old stuff came up? His moniker was "Matt the Hat."

So in his memory, here's a song that he would always request -

. (Here's the complete show: http://www.archive.org/details/jiggle1995-04-13.shnf)

Highlander · June 25, 2010, 01:54:41 PM

... and a hat's off for Matt - rip...

hieronymous · June 27, 2010, 06:48:05 PM

Found another shot from the old days, unfortunately it's small - someone posted it on facebook:

Same bass, same rig as the previous pics.

hieronymous · June 30, 2010, 09:55:06 PM

Found myself wondering what kind of multi-effects unit I was using in the recording - it was an old Boss Bass multi-effects unit, and I think I found it: ME-6B

I remember buying it used at the E.U. Wurlitzer (or "P.U. Wurlitzer" as we fondly referred to it) in Worcester (a pretty P.U. place in itself), Mass. I never really figured out how to use it except for a few of the sounds - distortion, auto-filter - I'm not sure if the flanger in the solo in "Big Boat" was part of that unit too, it was a long time ago...

Highlander · July 01, 2010, 12:29:59 PM

You look rather Geddy in that shot...