He was fine when I saw him with a version Yes touring a few years back. He had a cape too but fewer keyboards than Geoff Downes had in the other Yes I saw around the same time. One of the bass players had 6 or 7 different bass guitars he used for the different songs. Now guitarists change guitars typically as they have different tunings for chords or raised action for slide etc. But a huge number of 4 string basses, that’s proper prog. 
1 Like
“Dropped A” tuning is frequently used, particularly in “metal” as it changes the timbre to something often described as “dirty”, heavy and edgy. Tom may tell us more, I’m just a humble sax player! 
2 Likes
Pity the poor sound crew. 
The band always needs at least one more channel than the desk has. Well, in these days of digital desks and instantly recallable set-ups it’s a whole bunch easier, but I remember having fun helping tech a band back when changing set-up required a lot of adjustment between songs…
2 Likes
3 Likes
Now we’re talking! As a string bass player myself (and Fender electric bass, too), Eugene Wright of the Brubeck Quartet was always a hero of mine, along with the incomparable Jack Bruce of Cream. Needless to say, the bands in which I played never quite achieved that level of fame and/or fortune…. 
2 Likes
Can I ask what the 50 years ago connection is?
50 years ago last week, I bought my first vinyl copy of Dave Brubeck’s Greatest Hits LP with money saved from my 16th birthday. A seminal moment in my musical education.
2 Likes
I was conceived roughly 50 years ago.
1 Like
Yes indeed! I’ve not heard that performance before. Incidentally I rate Paul Desmond as one of the best jazz improvisers, eschewing fireworks, he invented beautiful clear melodic variations whereas so many artists disguised their lack of invention with highly technical flurries of notes. I could never get his glassy sound out of an alto, I would love to know what mouthpiece he used!
2 Likes
Off topic(ish) how do you rate Eugene Abdukhanov?
Not heard enough of him. Going to put that right by seeking out some Jinjer tracks shortly……
Try “Wallflower”, “Teacher Teacher” or “Who will be the One”.
2 Likes
Me too. Without checking I can remember that sides 1, 2 and 3 had just two tracks each. For any youngsters, vinyl albums tended to have 4-6 tracks on each side. Side 4 had just one track - a long (20 minute?) version of Space Truckin’.
There was an amusing moment in the soundcheck for last night’s gig - for a Michael Buble type singer. There were only two horns on the gig - trumpet and tenor - but playing arrangements that were originally orchestrated for 6 horns. When the two horns hit a note a semitone apart we weren’t sure whether it was supposed to be part of a major 7th voicing - or Mingus-esque dissonance!
I played that stunning venue on the 60s Gold Tour in late 2019!
*Edit - my mistake, it was The Sage in Gateshead - though could be the same arena? Keeping it SOTA-related … Hoove NP-024
I tend to just take my trusty Fender Jazz on most gigs, but on the first gig of the Bob Floyd Experience tour on Friday (Pink Floyd tribute), I needed my fretless as well - so took the pair.
Drop D tuning is what it is! (Bottom string down a tone).
I sold my upright a few years ago, but found myself unexpectedly playing one on the cruise gig last year! (The ship had a double bass on board). My own favourite steam bass player is Ron Carter - I like how he plays electric bass style figures on an upright bass.
2 Likes
ROTFLMAO! I would guess you played safe and went for the major 7th.
I’m told that in some numbers he uses drop A on his five string, I’ve never swung an axe so I wouldn’t know, but on close-ups you can see a huge vibration on the bottom string! I love it when in a sudden quieting he uses the bass as a melodic instrument in counterpoint with himself.
2 Likes
Ah yes, possibly (yuck).
@M1EYP Brilliant player, Tom, and he had to be, working in that quintet with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams…! Apparently he has given up playing electric bass at all now. I love your Fender Jazz bass. Always coveted a fretless one after selling my trusty and well-used Musicmaster a while ago. Somehow I ended up buying an Elecraft KX2 instead - . arguably better on the summits than a Fender but no use at all at gigs…
2 Likes
6th October saw the 50th anniversary of the album “Foxtrot” by Genesis. I had meant to cover this on the day, but unfortunately I was in hospital - I went in with gastric flu and caught COVID there, but enough of that!
Foxtrot was the band’s fourth studio album, and musically their most advanced, it was followed by the rock opera “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” after which their amazing plastic-voiced singer Peter Gabriel left and they commenced a slow slide into pop music. It has just six tracks, opening side 1 with “Watcher of the Skies”, a haunting piece featuring the thoughts of aliens orbiting a destroyed and empty Earth. This is followed by the quietly thoughtful “Timetable”, “Get 'Em Out By Friday” (described by the band as a minature opera) and “Can-Utility and the Coastliners”, about Canute’s inability to hold back the tide.
Side two opens with a short guitar instrumental sounding curiously classical, featuring its composer, Steve Hackett, on 12-string acoustic guitar accompanied by Mike Rutherford (Bass) and Tony Banks (keyboards) both on acoustic guitars. Though it is a separate composition it is often thought of as the introduction to the final track, “Supper’s Ready” because that begins in the same sound world and segues straight from it. “Supper’s Ready” is the big track, a 23 minute long adventure, for want of a better word, and it is this track that I am going to talk about because its influence has continued throughout the succeeding fifty years, and even today there are several highly skilled prog bands that regularly perform it as a tribute piece. As an aside, pretty well all the current crop of prog bands (it never went away) either take inspiration from Genesis or Pink Floyd!
I am an unashamed music nut. My big love is symphonic music, which I listen to with running in depth analysis, experiencing it in part as architecture in sound an approach that colours my approach to my other loves, prog and jazz. I mention this because full appreciation of how “Supper’s Ready” works needs all my skill - not that such skills are needed to enjoy it! On the surface it works as a series of songs linked together, with moods of comedy, sombreness, and drama. It begins like a quiet domestic love ballad:
walking across the sitting room, I turn the television off. Sitting beside you, I look into your eyes." Expressions of love become interspersed with psychodelic visions and launch into the next song. I won’t list songs, much better to experience them, but note how the opening theme keeps reappearing as a divider between songs (like a classical rondo) until its apotheosis to finish the album. Everything in the piece is based on the opening theme, little clusters of notes (motifs) from it appear in every song, if you don’t notice them don’t worry, the music stands up without needing to see the nuts and bolts holding it together!
One section I will talk about is the “Apocalypse in 9/8”. Back in 1972 my friend and I listened to it for the first time, I with my mouth open in amazement but John curled up with his hands over his ears, unable to take the disorientation. 9/8 is normally a jolly little time signature, think of it as waltz time three in a bar with each beat divided into three, (3+3+3), quite harmless - but it has another side to it that is rarely seen. The beat can be divided into (3+2+2+2) as a quick three followed by a slow three, but then you can get mischievous and start moving the three about in the bar, giving choices of (2+3+2+2) (2+2+3+2) and (2+2+2+3). Any of those choices are OK on their own but Genesis mixes them together with lyrics based on the Book of Relevations, and to top it all Tony Banks overlies a keyboard solo in straight 4/4, leading to strange rhythmic dislocations all over the place, a perfect representation of the chaos as good fights evil in the end days.
I could say more - dammit, there is a book in there somewhere - but I’ll just say if you haven’t heard it take a listen, if you have heard it renew your acquaintance with it, its worth it!
4 Likes
As it’s you, I’ll have a proper listen (well via YouTube) later. There’s odd Genesis tracks I like but can’t name… a case of that was good oh it was XXX by Genesis. The only stuff I like enough to know is Trick of The Tail and I’m not sure if that is really prog or just rock. I used to hate Trick Of The Tail when it came out and now really quite like it. Explain!
As I have been on my own for most of October and November, I’ve been able to let the Hifi rip. Sadly someone has stolen the cymbals. I thought I’d blown the tweeters and as the new price of the speakers is now £5K I was worried how much this would cost to fix. But no it’s just my ears letting me know they too are getting old like my eyes. Current Messrs. G . Rolie and C. Santana are tearing it up. I’ve been soldering by touch (ow that’s hot) rather than by sight the last few days. Time for either a flip down magnifier or an illuminated desk magnifier. And some new ears. I blame that Lemmy in 1979 when I saw Motorhead supported by Girls School… I couldn’t hear properly for a week after that.
Foxtrot appreciation to take place tonight.
1 Like
Loss of cymbals? Tell me about it! All I can reliably hear is the drums even with a lot of treble boost, but if I put on my hated hearing aids I can hear nothing but cymbals, I can’t win! And yes, I’ve more or less given up on soldering, a good magnifier doesn’t make my hand any steadier! Ah well, tempus franjit!
1 Like
I’m a newby to the devices but last night listening to a boy soprano singing “Once in Royal David’s City” he hit a note which made them oscillate - worse than an S9+20 signal, without AGC, on headphones 
4 Likes