WORST BASS EVER IN SHANGHAI

[brutuscheezcake]

hey there bass fans!

i have two stories for you today. the "best" and the "worst" scenario, so lets do the worst first....

i just got back from playing the Shanghai World Music Festival for a week with my celtic band Craicmore ( http://www.craicmore.com ). we were splitting a stage with two bands. the first band was New Blue Yonder (AKA wild blue hotties) (oh yeah... http://www.newblueyonder.com) a great bluegrass/americana band outta springfield, missouri. the other band was a 12 piece chinese all-girl band playing traditional chinese tunes to a techno backing track. i never did get a straight answer on the name of the band, but i think the translator said it worked out to " twelve girls in a chinese band" kinda thing. i am so bad.

anywhooo.... Jenna English from Wild Blue Hotties (www.newblueyonder.com) had requested an upright bass as part if their rider. she had specified everything possible about string length, height, what kind of bass etc... well, you know how that can go.

the first bass they delivered on our sound check day was a POS chinese lam job that had rusted strings and a bridge that looked like a ski ramp. seriously, it was ramped up at least two inches mad couldnt be tuned, so OK after much cross pollination of cultural mores, we got the promoter to go find a second upright for rent somewhere in shanghai.

this second bass was just as bad, but at that point time was running out and it could be tuned, to be fair. it had some cracks but hey Jenna used it for a day. we came back on the second day of performances and it had been left on stage all night!

this time we took pictures. after Jenna tried tuning it a big POP was heard, as a seem went out. Jenna decided to use my handy dandy sadowsky (shameless plug for ROGER!!! www.sadowsky.com ) for the rest of the week.

check out the pictures.


simon

[Brent Nussey]

Originally Posted by brutuscheezcake

hey there bass fans!

the other band was a 12 piece chinese all-girl band playing traditional chinese tunes to a techno backing track. i never did get a straight answer on the name of the band, but i think the translator said it worked out to " twelve girls in a chinese band" kinda thing. i am so bad.


simon

Haha. Yes you are. This band, called "joshi ju-nin gakubo" in Japan (yeah, it means "12 girls instrumental group", roughly) is actually kinda big in Asia. For your amusement, their Japanese website: http://www.12yuefang.com/ and a picture from a Japanese fan site: http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~koro2kai/LOVELOG_IMG/jysi.jpg

Wacky stuff.

How were the audiences?

[brutuscheezcake]

hey there,

the audiences were very attentive and quite appreciative. we did fairly well on merchandising. some of the crowds were in the thousands, of course the day it rained we had less than 100 at our first show of the day.


simon

[John Sprague]

Hey Brutus, great story! Ya know I like everybody here, but most of the guys I've met don't look anywhere as nice as the Wild Blue Bassist.

Next time you go to Shanghai, give me some advanced warning and Sam Shen will be happy to get you a bass to use. He has a retail store in Shanghai.

[christ andronis]

Originally Posted by Brent Nussey

Haha. Yes you are. This band, called "joshi ju-nin gakubo" in Japan (yeah, it means "12 girls instrumental group", roughly) is actually kinda big in Asia. For your amusement, their Japanese website: http://www.12yuefang.com/ and a picture from a Japanese fan site: http://www.h2.dion.ne.jp/~koro2kai/LOVELOG_IMG/jysi.jpg

Wacky stuff.

How were the audiences?

Yep...that's the 12 Girl Chinese Band. They actually are players from the national symphony orchestra and different conservatories around China. They also had to compete for that job with literally thousands of other women who auditioned. There are actually several different versions of that group who go out and tour. It's kind of like plug and play musicians. I'm surprised they had a backing track over there. The reason they used one in the states was for economic reasons, but I was told they had a live group backing them in China.

[Marcus Johnson]

Originally Posted by John Sprague

most of the guys I've met don't look anywhere as nice as the Wild Blue Bassist.

I hear ya..... I had to go check her out at their website, just to make sure. Verrrry nice.......