We’re back at it!
Rehearsing this week - it’s the first full band rehearsal this year for us (the drummers have been rehearsing on their own). And we’ve scheduled more rehearsing in August, before starting out our tour in the U.K. Then we’ll play shows in Europe, Canada and Japan.
(Want to see the tour dates? They’re on my site’s main page)
As usual, I plan to have lots of photos here, of the band and the places we go. I won’t have my usual pictures from the shows, because we’ll again be asking our audiences to not take photos, and even though, yes, I could get away with it, it seems only right that I curtail that part of my journals. Well, maybe one shot of the audience, after the show… I’ll see.
For any who didn’t catch news of the band last year, when Robert Fripp assembled 7 of us for a new lineup, the members of the band are:
- Robert Fripp: guitar
- Jakko Jakszyk: guitar and vocals
- Mel Collins: flute, saxes
- Bill Reiflin: drums, synth and vocals
- Pat Mastelotto: drums
- Gavin Harrison: drums
- Tony Levin: bass, stick, vocals
Rehearsing with Crimson is always challenging… we’ve got material old and new to try to master, and new ideas are welcome.
For me it’s also a time to work on my sound, and try new techniques.
After a day or two, I see my rig has evolved into using the following pedals: volume, 8va, compressor, overdrive, digital distortion, bit crusher, analog distortion, and an analog double distortion pedal. (Then to an amp with more overdrive.)
Then, there’s my new idea: a Ppower Ppick! Or I might call it a Pppower Pppick.
That’s superglue. And the Yen coin… well, I’ve tried spacing the picks with a penny between them. That was too heavy, and back at home I happened to have a few yen coins lying around… turned out they’re perfect.
Well, as I said, this is the time for working things out.
I guess, has become a bit ‘vintage’, though it seems fairly new to me. It’s been my main bass since about 1989, when it was Music Man’s first 5 string model, and I’ve played it in a lot of musical situations, always with it’s distinctive sound.
Back in the 80’s I took to painting this bass the colors of whatever tour I was on. So, I’m not sure whether it’s the one I played on the John Lennon album back in 1980. Obviously, I stayed with the Crimson “3 of a Perfect Pair” theme after that tour. I can remember before that, the bass being white with a black hexagon, as the theme of a Peter Gabriel tour.
I hadn’t played the bass much since then, but in lead up to last years Crimson touring, I found it pretty ideal for the classic material, and kind of fell in love with it all over.
