G L WILSON from the guitarz on blogspot tagged me in a blog meme 7 (Useless) Things about me – as he says, I don’t normal do these things, but this one seemed like a fun way to find out more about folks.

It  originated on TheOpenSource.com, and the rules are as follows:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog. 
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird. 
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

So, here are my 7 random things – I’d love to hear some from you – either via your blog, or in the comments here.

1. Although I play bass right-handed, I am actually left-handed – at least for writing.
2. The first instrument I learnt to play was piano. I went from that to classical guitar, and then on to bass.
3. I ‘made’ my first fretless bass at home, by pulling all of the frets out of the neck on a P-bass copy, then varnishing it. Sadly, it didn’t turn me into Jaco.
4. My biggest gig is around 2,000 people. It was much less nerve racking than when I played in front of 5 fellow bassists.
5. Worst gig moment was when a strap came off of my bass. I ended up playing the song sat on the floor with the bass on my lap. Not as cool as it might sound, it was a rock number.
6. I’ve never broken a string during a gig… So Far… Although I used to break G-strings with alarming frequency when I started playing.
7. Although I’ve spent lots of time in the USA, I live in the UK – hence the odd spelling here ;).

I’m tagging the following bloggers, as they are people I’d like to know more: Carol of She Lives (a great writer), Gary of Thumbrella – Words to a Void (check out the Electro harmonix factory tour), Sebastiano of Sebinomics (You Know You’re a Bass Player when…), Jason of the double bass blog (YouTube Symphony bass part – another Tan Dun), Emon of guitarkadia (his pointer to a great TED video), the other two I hand over to you…

If you blog, feel free to join in – write a post, with a link or trackback to here so I can find you. If you are a non-blogger, and not feeling to shy, you could add 7 random things about you as a comment here. By the way, if you want to write about bass and don’t feel up to running a full blog, how about writing a guest post for the bass guitar blog?

Two posts on technique and bass maintenance coming up next!