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The Returning Bassist Club
- Thread starter NickInMesa
- Start date
Give me a number!
Never thought I'd join a club but this one looks worth it!
I stopped playing around 1990... realized I wasn't gonna make millions being a rock star, got a devorice, got sober and decided it was time to start a career.
Now it's 2008... I have a very established career, the kids are moved out, don't know how much longer I can play basketball and wishing more and more I had never stopped playing. Fortunatly I kept my favorite bass (a 1981 Aria SB-R60)... I hadn't played it at all... started taking lessons again, went on some auditions (got all of them
but turned them down waiting for the "right" one). I found the "right" one a few months ago and just lovin' it!
I look forward to checking out this thread!
Never thought I'd join a club but this one looks worth it!
I stopped playing around 1990... realized I wasn't gonna make millions being a rock star, got a devorice, got sober and decided it was time to start a career.
Now it's 2008... I have a very established career, the kids are moved out, don't know how much longer I can play basketball and wishing more and more I had never stopped playing. Fortunatly I kept my favorite bass (a 1981 Aria SB-R60)... I hadn't played it at all... started taking lessons again, went on some auditions (got all of them
but turned them down waiting for the "right" one). I found the "right" one a few months ago and just lovin' it!I look forward to checking out this thread!
Nice! Now the silly question (since I don't belong to any other clubs)... what do I do with that? I do see the club names/#s in peoples signatures... is that all?
I gave up playing around 1985 after my cheap fender copy bass had a nervous electronic breakdown and I just never had the $ to buy something else. 22 years later I got the bug again and started playing. I'm just a play at homer that enjoys jammimg along with my MP3 player. I'd be glad to have a number here.
My story might be interesting or might not but here we go:
I started playing in 1977 and stopped, sold everything and moved on in 1986 or so. (does some math) ok....I played for roughly 10 years not 13 as Ive said in the past -- my bad.
Anyway, sometime in the early art of 07 I met a friend of mines best friend who is one of the best guitarists Ive ever heard (hes no /guitard/ player let me clue you). He brought his rig over one day and was playing and I was watching him. It all seemed so familiar to me. I still had my Les Paul but it was crashed (at the time) and I never touched it but I remembered my brief time on a guitar and then I suddenly remembered I used to play bass....yes I had actually FORGOTTEN all about it.... (there is a viable reason for it seriously...car wreck -- bad head injury - I actually had amnesia for a time -- yea it was a fierce head injury...)....and the more he'd come over and play the more I remembered. I commented that I used to play bass one day and he was like 'yea...sure you did...' and I was like 'yea keep thinking that, bud...'
One day I went to my friends house and he was there with his rig and our mutual friend had gotten a bass (that Brownsville Bat). I had been so serious thinking about getting back into playing that at the time I had a Peavey Millenium 5er and an amp on layaway (had just put it on maybe a couple of days earlier). Well I saw that Bat and flipped. Im watching as the guitarist is trying to teach our friend how to play Remedy....it was total fail for him (come on, how can someone screw up Remedy????). I remember I walked behind him and said 'no like this' and started playing it from behind him on the bass. Funny cause I had no idea until then how the song went but I had heard it enough and I picked it up by the second time the guitarist was showing him. Finally after a few minutes I asked if I could hold the bass. It was handed to me, I stood there and started playing Remedy with the Guitarist and that day was when I officially got back into it. Later on the guitarist was like 'you really did use to play... I could tell the way you picked up the bass and just started playing (the way I was handling it) that you had done it a lot in the past'....yea well...'duhhhh' LOL
I canceled the layaway on the Peavey *sobs* and got the Bat on a semi permanent loan until I found him something he wanted (which I did later). After a while though I started loosing interest in the bat and knew I had to get back into some familiar ground and along came that 92 Peavey Foundy. Not long after that I happen to stumble across this board and the rest is history.
As for GAS? Yea I got a case of it here last year and now Im so sick of buying basses it turns my stomach. Ive got 10...well 9...one finally got traded and that deal should be complete in a couple of weeks. I didn't trade for another bass but a compressor. That leaves at least 3 more to get rid of.... I still would love a Ric 4001 and a Bootzilla Shooting Star but Im not going out of my way to get either thats for sure....The last bass I bought was that yummy Yamaha RBX4 A2 back on Black Friday. I just don't want any more and not even about half of the ones I have to be honest.
I started playing in 1977 and stopped, sold everything and moved on in 1986 or so. (does some math) ok....I played for roughly 10 years not 13 as Ive said in the past -- my bad.
Anyway, sometime in the early art of 07 I met a friend of mines best friend who is one of the best guitarists Ive ever heard (hes no /guitard/ player let me clue you). He brought his rig over one day and was playing and I was watching him. It all seemed so familiar to me. I still had my Les Paul but it was crashed (at the time) and I never touched it but I remembered my brief time on a guitar and then I suddenly remembered I used to play bass....yes I had actually FORGOTTEN all about it.... (there is a viable reason for it seriously...car wreck -- bad head injury - I actually had amnesia for a time -- yea it was a fierce head injury...)....and the more he'd come over and play the more I remembered. I commented that I used to play bass one day and he was like 'yea...sure you did...' and I was like 'yea keep thinking that, bud...'
One day I went to my friends house and he was there with his rig and our mutual friend had gotten a bass (that Brownsville Bat). I had been so serious thinking about getting back into playing that at the time I had a Peavey Millenium 5er and an amp on layaway (had just put it on maybe a couple of days earlier). Well I saw that Bat and flipped. Im watching as the guitarist is trying to teach our friend how to play Remedy....it was total fail for him (come on, how can someone screw up Remedy????). I remember I walked behind him and said 'no like this' and started playing it from behind him on the bass. Funny cause I had no idea until then how the song went but I had heard it enough and I picked it up by the second time the guitarist was showing him. Finally after a few minutes I asked if I could hold the bass. It was handed to me, I stood there and started playing Remedy with the Guitarist and that day was when I officially got back into it. Later on the guitarist was like 'you really did use to play... I could tell the way you picked up the bass and just started playing (the way I was handling it) that you had done it a lot in the past'....yea well...'duhhhh' LOL
I canceled the layaway on the Peavey *sobs* and got the Bat on a semi permanent loan until I found him something he wanted (which I did later). After a while though I started loosing interest in the bat and knew I had to get back into some familiar ground and along came that 92 Peavey Foundy. Not long after that I happen to stumble across this board and the rest is history.
As for GAS? Yea I got a case of it here last year and now Im so sick of buying basses it turns my stomach. Ive got 10...well 9...one finally got traded and that deal should be complete in a couple of weeks. I didn't trade for another bass but a compressor. That leaves at least 3 more to get rid of.... I still would love a Ric 4001 and a Bootzilla Shooting Star but Im not going out of my way to get either thats for sure....The last bass I bought was that yummy Yamaha RBX4 A2 back on Black Friday. I just don't want any more and not even about half of the ones I have to be honest.
Sure, count me in.
I started playing back in '94 when some road hockey buddies learned I played guitar. They needed a bassist and they asked if I could do it. Fast forward to 2002 and the same band kinda fell apart, lots of petty arguments and wang measuring goin' on. Ended up selling my bass amp, buying a bigger one (this was before the split) and then selling that one for half of what I paid!
Just a month or so ago, I realized that a hell of a lot of the best memories I had involved playing music in some way, shape or form. Also, a friend of a friend said his band was looking for a bassist. Now I'm back into things. I try to practice at least once every day or two and I'm eyeing some cabs to go with my new (to me) tube head so that I can jump right back in.
I started playing back in '94 when some road hockey buddies learned I played guitar. They needed a bassist and they asked if I could do it. Fast forward to 2002 and the same band kinda fell apart, lots of petty arguments and wang measuring goin' on. Ended up selling my bass amp, buying a bigger one (this was before the split) and then selling that one for half of what I paid!
Just a month or so ago, I realized that a hell of a lot of the best memories I had involved playing music in some way, shape or form. Also, a friend of a friend said his band was looking for a bassist. Now I'm back into things. I try to practice at least once every day or two and I'm eyeing some cabs to go with my new (to me) tube head so that I can jump right back in.
Here's a thread I stumbled upon from awhile ago with some more stories of picking up the bass again: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=138229
Nice to see someone post here! I'll have to check out that thread to make sure there are more of us (returning bassists) out there.
Larz48: #15
StarscreamG1: #16
crayzee: #17
Sorry, I forgot to check my notifications in a while!!!
StarscreamG1: #16
crayzee: #17
Sorry, I forgot to check my notifications in a while!!!
Hey cool thread! If your passing out numbers I'll take one.
I started playing in my mid to late teens and played kind of regular until about the age of 22. I mostly noodled around by myself and sometimes some guitar player friends would show me some stuff. I got married at 23 and also had other hobbies mostly atv motocross racing.
Shortly after turning 30 I was looking for a hobbie so I picked up my bass that was still in my closet. To make a long story short I am on my 4th band (which is a well established local band)and last weekend we played for about 4k people!!! Not I don't see me ever stopping playing unless my fingers quit working!
I started playing in my mid to late teens and played kind of regular until about the age of 22. I mostly noodled around by myself and sometimes some guitar player friends would show me some stuff. I got married at 23 and also had other hobbies mostly atv motocross racing.
Shortly after turning 30 I was looking for a hobbie so I picked up my bass that was still in my closet. To make a long story short I am on my 4th band (which is a well established local band)and last weekend we played for about 4k people!!! Not I don't see me ever stopping playing unless my fingers quit working!
Started playing in the mid 80's and played through the early 90's. (Friends bands, brief stint w/the college jazz band during my first shot at college.) Gave it up when "LIFE" came along. Luckily for me, my daughter is heavily involved in her school music program, so I've been around music constantly since she was in elementary school (she's now a hs freshman.) About 2 years ago I was at a Jazz competition that her choir was competing in when it struck me...I REALLY missed music! So I spoke to my wife, bought a bass, rented a sax (that's a new instrument for me) and after a 17 year layoff (at 41) am entering finals week of my junior year in college as a music major. And I love it!!!! I'm in...number please!
Just giving a little bump here... I think this is a great thread and would love to hear more of the stories... it keeps me going!
Started playing in 1967, the heyday (IMO) of rock'n'roll. I actually was a singer first, but was offered a new opportunity if I learned bass. I played until late 1972, when I decided to travel. My first bass was a Harmony, my second was a Gibson EB-3. My first amp was a '66 Bassman, my second was a Kustom (black w/ JBL 15's). Man, did that EB-3 and Kustom suck together.
When I finished traveling, I had no gear and no wife. Went to work for the USPS, and my second major purchase (the first was a decent car) was a '67 Precision Bass. I still have it. I then bought and built a Heathkit TA-17 amplifier. I still have that also. I played a few times at church, but pretty much laid out from 1974 until 2006.
That year I was asked to sing for my wife's high school classmates reunion band. Somehow, I got to play bass on half-a-dozen songs, and once the reunion was over, decided I didn't want to stop. I answered a Craigslist ad 18 months ago, and I'm playing again.
I now also have two Fender combos, a 200 and a 400, a B-Dec for practice and church gigs, a MIM Jazz, a five-string Jazz, and a P-Bass Jr I got for my son (guess it's mine now). Played a benefit last night, and we had a few other gigs as well (actually got paid a few times).
Biggest problem? Memorizing songs...because:
Oh, yeah, I'll hit 60 in two weeks.
When I finished traveling, I had no gear and no wife. Went to work for the USPS, and my second major purchase (the first was a decent car) was a '67 Precision Bass. I still have it. I then bought and built a Heathkit TA-17 amplifier. I still have that also. I played a few times at church, but pretty much laid out from 1974 until 2006.
That year I was asked to sing for my wife's high school classmates reunion band. Somehow, I got to play bass on half-a-dozen songs, and once the reunion was over, decided I didn't want to stop. I answered a Craigslist ad 18 months ago, and I'm playing again.
I now also have two Fender combos, a 200 and a 400, a B-Dec for practice and church gigs, a MIM Jazz, a five-string Jazz, and a P-Bass Jr I got for my son (guess it's mine now). Played a benefit last night, and we had a few other gigs as well (actually got paid a few times).
Biggest problem? Memorizing songs...because:
Oh, yeah, I'll hit 60 in two weeks.
Nice story Hanson. Guess what? I have memory issues since I was a child (brain injury) and with time I developed all sorts of techniques to memorize. Basically I memory the 5x4 structure of each parts of the song, and it works pretty well.
Thou shalt be number 20
Thou shalt be number 20
