Dub No Bass In My Head Man

During my jaunt to the family home in lovely Poulton-le-Fylde recently, I had to make a difficult decision.

I decided to give away my bass amplifier. This may sound like a piffling decision to most, but it's actually had quite an effect on me. It wasn't much to look at - around a metre high and a metre tall, with a sloping front grill covering a large 15" speaker cone, and with two vents at the bottom. It had seen quite a lot of action too, even by the time I bought it second-hand from Brent Forbes. It was the amp he had used during the recording of the "Les Miserables" soundtrack in London (you will see his name on the credits), and it had travelled over the world with him. The body had been gloss-painted over in black to cover up marks and scratches in the original paint work. The foam inside the flight case had begun to sheer off, and the lid of the case soon bit the dust (last seen being burned on a ceremonial pyre). The electrics had begun to be troublesome, and shortly after I bought it, the gain control knob sheared off and had to be replaced. It also had an annoying habit of shorting out at the most inconvenient moments, such as in the middle of a gig, though this was rectified with a little bit of electrical tweaking.

But it was a thing of beauty when played. I had so many memories tied up with it. I remember playing Grey Day in 1998, the biggest gig I had done when playing the bass, and watching people key in to the sounds that were coming out - it seemed everyone keyed in to the bass, and it surprised me that these sounds were coming from my fingers. I remember the unholy sound I managed to extract from it when doing a Cactus Lounge gig in Collingwood and, doing a running leap across the stage onto my pedals, managed to explode one of them. I remember working out exactly where I could hit my bass on it which would generate the best harmonics on the low B string while not damaging the instrument. And I remember recording the Chaulk demo, where I rigged it up to two cabinets containing two ten inch speakers, and running the distortion through those and the clean bass through my amp, and producing the finest, loudest sound I think I ever got out of it.

I hadn't played it for years - it was too big to bring to London with me, and not having a car emant transporting it would have been impossible. But deciding to give it away to a friend in need means that one of my few tangible links to these moments is gone. Which is sad for a number of reasons, but perhaps most of all because it forces me to face up to something I have known deep down for a long time. I am never going to be a full-time bass player in a signed band.

I know that sounds fanciful, and the kind of dream you have when you're much younger, but havign played so much with various bands, it looked for a long time like this might happen. And I came so close on a number of occasions. The two other band members from Wug tried to encourage me to spend a year after graduation touring, playing and trying to get signed. I could not give a firm commitment, and so the band went their separate ways. James is now signed to Creeping Bent records and has a small label of his own. Danny is a promoter in Manchester and getting rave reviews for his Folk Collective. I spent a year trying to make ends meet as a professional trombonist and am now a Civil Servant.

Then there was Chaulk. Our demo sold extremely well, and we actually got several phone callsf rom a couple of major labels (if memory serves me rightly, Parlophone was one) asking for more material. But by that time the band had imploded, the fractious relationships collapsing to the point where the concept of speaking to one another, let alone trying to record another demo, was impossible. So in desperation, Rich A, Ben and I cobbled together the unused, rough versions of extra songs we'd recorded for the first demo, some without vocals, some very shoddy, and sent them off on an unmarked CD, without telling Rich Meehan. It was without a doubt one of the more shitty things I've done, and unsurprisingly we heard nothing more.

And Andy Logan's attempts to get me to play wiht him in various bands after graduation were appreciated, but ultimately futile, as by then, after my trombone experiences, I had a sensible job, a regular wage, a little bit of trombone playing on the side, and not enough time left to give him the commitment he wanted.

So now, I am giving away my equipment. I still have my bass, although because of space issues, it is in storage, as I have my electric piano instead of it now. And in theory, I am going to replace my amp, but again, with space issues, I will only do this when I need it. Deep down, I suspect this day will never come.

All this came flooding back to me yesterday when listening to some of Ben Folds' EPs. I thought of how powerful, and how fantastic, the bass is. It always has had this primacy - when doing my harmonisation of Bach Chorales, it is amazing of how altering the bass even by one or two notes can imply and create a completely different aural effect. But yesterday, when walking down towards the Wetland Centre in Barnes and listening to "Protection", there was a moment where the bass came in at the beginning of a verse with a slight bit of syncopation and it almost made me jump with delight. And then I listened "There's Always Someone Cooler Than You", and heard the impact the fuzz bass makes when it come in, and I just thought that all is well with the world. And a tiny tiny voice said in my head...maybe one day...