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Thunderbird Club

#159,703
bassgtarman said:
Other than "Duke" (which I really like still), I didn't discover them until my first year of college, in '83. I dove in deep then, and they're probably my favorite of the classic Prog bands. Somewhat humorously, the first time i remember hearing Gabriel solo was when "PG 3" was first released. "Duke" was the only Genesis I'd heard, and the radio DJ introduced "Games Without Frontiers" as "the new song by former Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel". I thought "There is NO WAY that guy sang for that band!". Oh how young and naive I was then! Now, I love all of his solo stuff, but "PG 3" is far and away my favorite. It still sounds very sonically advanced fort years on. And I never get tired of Genesis (at least up through "Duke"). Rutherford is a hugely underrated bassist. I can't play much of Chris Squire's stuff, but at least I can understand what he was doing. Mike Rutherford's parts, on the other hand, are impossible to get my head around!
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I have always enjoyed PG3, but can't say I was ever much of a Genesis fan. Probably never really gave them a proper chance to be honest.
 
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#159,704
MCF said:
Yep. I can’t imagine not playing Thunderbirds.
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I know what you mean. I kind of feel bad that now that I can play a Thunderbird without taking the '64 out all the time, I'm not playing anything else. I do at home, when when I get to play outside home I've not used a Thunderbird since sometime last year. Too many good Thunderbird options. I always loved my Precisions, but if I could only have one bass, it would clearly and without question be a Thunderbird. We're all spoiled.
 
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#159,706
I was going to put the DR Black Beauties back on the 06 because they sounded really good, and thought I'd put the Dragon Skins on instead. Both are SS on round core with K3 coating. At home they initially do sound very similar if not identical. Both sets came with basses and I don't know exactly how much use is on them. The BBs were said to be a year old but had hardly any actual playing time. The interesting thing is the BBs have a rubbery feeling compared to the Dragon Skins. I don't know if over time they changed the formula or what, but the K3 coating unmistakably feels different. (DR never replied to my email about this and any differences between the two.) The DSs sound really good at home. Might prove to be another great option.
 
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#159,707
Nocturnal said:
I have always enjoyed PG3, but can't say I was ever much of a Genesis fan. Probably never really gave them a proper chance to be honest.
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I didn't really pay any attention to Genesis until sometime around Abacab, which featured Collins. Never really knew of them when Gabriel was with the band. Come to think of it, I didn't really pay any attention to Gabriel until Shock the Monkey. Liked a lot of his stuff after that. As time progressed, I grew tired of Collins, all his songs started sounding the same. Gabriel on the other hand was constantly evolving so I never really got bored with him.
 
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#159,708
GBassNorth said:
I didn't really pay any attention to Genesis until sometime around Abacab, which featured Collins. Never really knew of them when Gabriel was with the band. Come to think of it, I didn't really pay any attention to Gabriel until Shock the Monkey. Liked a lot of his stuff after that. As time progressed, I grew tired of Collins, all his songs started sounding the same. Gabriel on the other hand was constantly evolving so I never really got bored with him.
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sheer genius imho.....Levin rips it up too..
 
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#159,711
Engle said:
I’m pretty sure I could get together a group of middle aged guys to play Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Stooges etc. The problem would be rehearsing safely and finding venues to play in.
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If no one has said it yet.... the rehearsal part could be done via the Jamkazam app. My band and I are pondering using it just to have fun from the safety/comfort of our own homes. The playing out part is a tough one.
 
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#159,712
TBird1958 said:
Something really nice in my FB feed from Geddy Lee and the passing of Pete Way.




Lovely tribute from Geddy Lee of Rush: We're very sorry to hear that the legendary bass player Pete Way has died. Having played in UFO for more than 30 years, Pete also had stints with Ozzy Osbourne and formed the bands Waysted and Fastway. UFO opened for Rush on many dates of the A Farewell To Kings Tour as well as a few of dates on the Hemispheres Tour. Fastway also supported Rush on the Grace Under Pressure Tour. As a result, Rush and Pete became good friends.
Geddy recalls the A Farewell to Kings Tour : "I do remember him falling off the stage on two occasions on that tour. The second time the three of us in Rush were sat talking in our dressing room and Pete’s bass just vanished from the stage. It was like, "Uh-oh, Pete's gone over the edge again." But everybody partied back then; we were all of us younger and making the most of our opportunity to be out on the road.
That tour was my introduction to UFO and their music. They were all very friendly, but you couldn't help but notice that they would all be in their cups, shall we say, and before every show. They would pound a few drinks and then hit the stage flying. That was their thing. I recall us doing one show in a dry county in Texas, which meant there was no alcohol allowed the building. We were backstage and I’d hear the UFO guys bitching and moaning about not having any booze. I looked out of our dressing room window into the car park, and there they were all in their stage gear, brown bagging it out of the boot of their car. Hey, necessity is the mother of adventure.
They were also always insulting each other for the sake of humour. That soon extended to us, which I took to be a good sign and a compliment. We used to play the song Xanadu at the time, and yes, all kinds of dry ice would come on stage. Pete and Phil Mogg would stand at the side of the stage and yell things about honeydew and melons at us, because one of the lines in the song goes "I have dined on honeydew". On one occasion, they even snuck up on stage and nailed a pair of slippers beside my foot pedals. There the slippers were when the dry ice dissipated, I guess to go along with my kimono.
Pete and I spent a lot of time together on the tour and I enjoyed his company a lot. He was, of course, a very different kind of musician to me. He was this guy in skin-tight pants with his shag haircut and playing his big Thunderbird bass. He had a typical Thunderbird sound, too, with a really heavy bottom end. He described it to me once as "three-quarters nice, one quarter not very nice".
Whenever Pete's name comes up between the three of us today we all smile. He was a lot of fun to be around, but also very sweet. He truly was a wouldn't-hurt-a-fly kind of guy and dedicated to his music. And he was very rock and roll. I was on our tour bus one time and listening to the new Bill Bruford solo album, which had just then come out. There was a great bass player on that record named named Jeff Berlin, and it was pretty complex sort of jazz-rock. Pete came stumbling around the bus and was just appalled at the sound of it. He sat down beside me and said, as if in profound pain, "Glee", which he used to call me, "don't listen to this, it isn't rock and roll." You know, Pete's a rocker at heart and he's remained true to that from the music that he's played to the way he's lived his life."
Rock in Peace Pete.



View attachment 3947701
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This is truely AWESOME!!!!
 
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#159,713
dagrev said:
I was taking a break from work this morning and did a very short and horrible clip comparing the 06 Gibson to the VP. First time I've ever recorded anything so don't laugh. This was recorded on an iPad with no editing or accessories. It's just sitting in front of my Ampeg the 4B and 212 cabinet about 5 foot away. Both have GHS strings. The Gibson has round core boomers and the VP has regular boomers with a fair amount of age. Pay no attention to the playing as I am just noodling. At one point the Gibson slipped from my lap while kneeling and it got a little weird but I wasn't gonna go back and redo it as you still can get the idea. The Gibson is first then the VP with fingers, then Gibson with pick and then VP.

Both sound kind of similar in a living room setting. In a big room in a live mix they are quite a bit different. Live both of them sound much bigger. The VP sounds a little small sounding but is huge live. The Gibson here sounds pretty tight, but live yesterday it was kind of flabby and booming in indistinct.

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How ironic. This plays fine on my Linux desktop!
 
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#159,717
MCF said:
I’ve been to shows like that. I remember a Doobie Bro’s show in ‘75 at the stadium at UCSB. I don’t recall who opened. Dave Mason was on before the Doobies. He was so good that day, not even the Beatles would have stood a chance following his show. The Doobies were terrible; it was around the time Johnston got sick and had to leave the band. I don’t recall many boos, but a lot of people started leaving at about thirty minutes into the set.
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I really wish I could recall who opened for the Who in Atlanta, Nov 1975. It was a very weird pairing. The rabid Who fans kept booing the opening act off the stage. Alex Cooley would come out and talk to the crowd and get them calmed down, and part way through the next song, the crowd got ugly again. I think Daltrey may have come out once, too. After the third time, the openers refused to come back out. But the Who wouldn't come out until their time to play, and some of the rowdier (and alcohol or chemically "enhanced") fans got testy. We were on the floor, and about 20 feet away some guy got ugly with a girl. Another guy busted a beer bottle (no glass inside, of course!) and swung it at the first guy. The first guy pulled a knife. Nearby people with no involvement got involved for the heck of it, throwing punches, kicking, etc. Cops waded in, looking nervous enough I'm glad nobody tried to stab one of them; someone might have gotten shot. Crazy night. Once the Who came out, things were better.

First band was not Pere Ubu, but it feels like the name was similar. Afrobeat influences, at least some of the band was black, some tribal outfits. Cool percussion. Memory's hazy around the rest.
 
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