Recent content by Wanker_Joe

I am a very out-front, "lead bass" kind of player. Basically a giant wanker on the instrument. One day, many years ago, after we had performed at a multi-band show one of the other bands was chatting at our table with us and I don't recall exactly what the other people were talking about but...

This story reminds me of a halloween gig we played once. Sold out show, and we were playing dance/EBM music so the crowd was very into it and the dancefloor was packed. A woman was in the crowd dressed in a mask over her eyes and a robe. She was staring intently at our keyboard player and...

It seems my bands have only ever played weird/unusual/odd gigs, usually it was us who made them odd. I have so many to choose from. One time in particular we played a feeder stage/show for a folk festival. Kind of like a tryout held at a local bar. In attendance was a number of booking...

That is an insanely cool looking bass. Wow!

Nah, nothing as cool as that. It's kind of hard to explain. Maybe think of an obtuse comedy act done to a soundtrack of noise. For example we have an upcoming show where we put together a tribute band to our band since we haven't played this venue in a while. The tribute band has most of the...

One of the acts I get to occasionally play out is a noise band that makes weird noisy stuff that is more performance art than "music". I've had people take pics of my pedals and ask about particular settings after those shows. It was always nice to talk about effects and all, but honestly even...

That's so great. What a fun idea.

Excellent advice. I also love the learn to shred/learn to support points being in the DO column. One of my favorite aspects of the band I'm playing with now is that I get to do both in many of our songs. It's so much fun to sit in pocket, ramp it up to 1000% and then chill back in the pocket...

That was so awesome. Perhaps it's not for everybody but I really love her tone and the one million notes a second craziness. I really need to up my game...

As a lover of extreme and weird sounds I find nearly all modelers and multieffects units way too vanilla for my liking. I want effects that push the boundaries and are nearly uncontrollable. Definitely some MFX units go the weird route (I love my Zoia), but they aren't the norm. And I get it...

I think I love you with just conga drums sounds like an amazing idea. I wish I could pull off something like that haha. You are right, I should do a better job embracing the weirdness of my divergent covers.

This week I started chipping away at a bass + vocals only arrangement of The Gambler. Fun song. My version is kind of turning into it's own thing, maybe diverging too much from the original haha. But that's how it goes sometimes... At least I'm using the right chord structure.

That's an amazing finish! And a cool bass too. What a find!

So pretty! It makes me want to play it!

Here is how I managed continuing the play/create music, a new family, 2 homes, a demanding job managing an IT department, being a part-time prof at a university and supporting my wife while she was doing her PhD: scheduling! Every night, I scheduled at least 1 hour for music, and of course my...