I'm a guitarist first and foremost who normally plays classic rock/AOR,
pop, funk but by chance, I depped on bass for these guys 18mths ago and
I'm now a permanent member - I've actually known them for over 30yrs and
played in various bands with some of them. In fact, myself and half the
band have a Squeeze tribute band as well.
Crikey. Madness basslines can
be a bit challenging, as can stuff by The Specials (we've just started
doing some of their stuff) and The Beat too, so's to add some ska-ish variety.
We've just got our website up (still needs some final tweaks) and that's us playing "Once step beyond".
If
anyone needs a Madness tribute band or fancies having one on a line-up
(Squeeze too), please get in touch with me and we normally cover London,
Herts,Kent, Surrey and M25, but we have travelled further afield too - thanks
www.cairoeast.co.uk
Comments
Re:The Beat, we're doing "Mirror in the bathroom" and I use an octaver on the bass and that seems to work well and I'm sure we'll do "Tears of a clown" at some point and "Hands off she's mine".
Re.The Specials, we're doing "Monkey Man", "Nite Klub" and will no doubt attempt "Too much too young" soon.
The Madness basslines by Mark Bedford (Bedders) whilst challenging at times do seem to make sense to me and they're nice patterns/arpeggios to play but I do find Horace Panter's parts difficult and he's a wonderful player.
As to connections, Mrs.KK is from Coventry and her brother was in the band King and so they know all the other Cov bands/musos like The Specials, The Selector and Hazel O'Connor. Some good music came out of that place.
The last gig we did someone requested Nite Klub, I've done it in a previous band and one of those where I'm not sure it's widely known. Our set is on hold due to using deps so we can't really rehearse more interesting stuff at the moment.
When I lived In Coventry I'd missed 2Tone but King were doing well and I dated Paul King's cousin at the time. She was a sexy MILF who would be a pensioner by now I think. :o3