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I recently got a mail from Ellie, the double bass player in the Red Aligatorz.
In preparation for the fourth coming reunion gig he sent me a photograph of his double bass. He had to “ assemble” his bass as it was in bits. This did not surprise me to much, Ellie’s double bass has had its fair share of scrapes.
Once when we were heading back to play a gig in Carlisle after busking in Preston, the neck off his double bass decided to part company with its body. It was while it was strapped to the roof of his car speeding down the M6 motorway.
If you have read any of the pages in this blog you would have read that I prize the D.I.Y. ethic a lot, well true to form, surgery was performed on the bass that afternoon just prior to the gig. The neck of the double bass was drilled into and a 6inch bolt was inserted through the neck and body. The problem being that the bolt was too big and it stuck out from the neck by a good 2inches. The effect reminded me off a wooden Frankenstein! But it held strong, even when it was stood upon that night, thrown around and ‘slapped’.
With all this ‘slapping’ a bass string was broken occasionally, and although the band had a rule of taking guitar strings out of the busking money, this did not stretch as far as to a set of double bass strings that cost over £100. Ellie found out by buying some thick grade strimmer-wire from the Penrith D.I.Y. store it worked just fine, and costing pence instead of pounds.
It is not surprising that the double bass realized this was not rock and roll and therefore it decided to fight back. The bolt caused Ellie some problems one day when his hand got cut open via the bolt head, so Ellie decided to hacksaw the head off leaving a sharper edge to cut his hand upon at a later date! also the strimmer-wire cut into his fingers while he was energetically ‘slapping’ the strings and his fingers were shredded. Undaunted he taped up the flayed pieces of skin and carried on.
The cut fingers were also a problem even when using proper double bass strings, after gigs especially in London and Amsterdam, his face would be covered in blood due to the spray from his bloody fingers.
One day he told us about a man he had met in a pub who was an old blues and jazz double bass player, “piss on them” this man told Ellie “it makes the skin go hard” needless to say we made it a habit not to shake hands with Ellie or any jazz double bass players after that.
I am sure, true to form, Ellie’s bass will be fit and ready for the gig… I cannot say the same about my acoustic guitar..but that is another story.
