Bad Horsey

Bass: Status S2 Headless Custom 5 string, Fender Jazz 5 string
Amplification: MarkBass Jeff Berlin combo
Influences: Paul McCartney, Stuart Hamm, Boz Burrell

Now I'm not one of those purists who likes to keep their instruments in dust free, germ free, oxygen tent environment, but I do take reasonable care of instruments that I've bought. And this philosophy has stood the test of time well - I have a number of instruments that I bought out of hard earned money when I was still at school and still have, and one notable bass guitar (the Hohner Jack headless) that I spent my entire University third year first semester grant on. The Hohner was always a beautiful bass to my eyes and I couldn't afford the Steinberger or the Status. I argued with the shop keeper about the intonation and after he's adjusted it, bought the instrument and played it throughout the next twenty years. Alas, with the lack of a recording contract (although I did have a publishing deal) I grew tired of sleeping in vans and being poor, so throwing caution to the wind and the bass into the attic along with my adolescent dreams I retrained as a Systems Analyst and watched as my musical peer group of the time grew fat and lethargic.

Fast forward to 2003, and I get the urge to play again. Of course, my personal circumstances over this period had changed. I'd been married, got divorced, got married to someone else, got a cat, buried the remains of it after it got run over, cut my hair off and ironically developed a taste for progressive rock, but the most significant change was that there were now children in my life.

So, announcing my intentions to resume my musical career and ignoring the casual humorous abuse of my spouse, I climbed into the attic to retrieve the bass, and taking it out of the hard case that I'd diligently stored it in ten years previously (although not so diligently that I'd slackened the strings), I was amazed to find that it was almost in tune. Pretty impressive after all this time, and I brought it downstairs lauding it's praises to all within earshot. No one cared.

So I retired to the dining room to lick my wounds and play slow chromatic scales at a tenth of the speed I'd last played them. I played all evening and into the small hours of the morning, being interrupted only by the insomniac child that is my youngest who habitually wakes every 45 minutes and has done for the last seven months since he was born. Finally giving into chromatic exhaustion I headed for bed, placing the bass in the corner of the room.

Returning from work the next day, I entered the house to the sound of delighted screams and the children playing some sort of game. I went into the kitchen to say hello to my wife and we found that we had to shout over the noise coming from the next door room. It was beginning to sound increasingly like a horse race - one of them was shouting 'Come on Black Beauty' whilst the other yelled 'Stop hitting my horse with a stick. You're a cheater'.

'Ahh', thinks I, 'How nice to hear the kids playing together for a change' So with love in my heart and a spring in my step, I wander into the dining room and survey a scene that causes my blood to run cold.

It is indeed a race and my beloved Hohner Jack is apparently one of the horses involved. The bass is face down on the floor and has a four year old boy sitting on the back of the body. A set of reins has been fashioned out of duct tape and stuck onto the end of the neck. The wooden flooring of the room has deep grooves in it where the stacked bass/treble rotary controls have dug into the grain with the weight of the child, and judging by the resulting furrows, small boy and his horse have travelled about twelve feet in total. To the right of small boy is the second horse and smaller boy. He is sitting proudly on the back of my Alavrez Baritone acoustic guitar. A similar trail of damage follows him across the floor, but because this is a large bodied acoustic guitar, the back of the acoustic body has cracked to cradle his bottom, making it into a kind of custom seat for a two year old. And because of the cracking, the lacquer is chipping off as it scrapes across the hard oak flooring.

'Look Daddy' he shouts proudly, pointing at the lacquer chippings. 'Is snow!' 'Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow' sings the other happily, before shouting. 'Bad horsey!' and he strikes his black horse with the edge of the 12" steel ruler he's using as a whip.

Kids eh! (Silent scream…………………………………..)

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