Taking us all out to dinner, then? 
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Come on up!
I visited you.
Fair is fair, lol
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Ooh sounds like they made their own yakidofu. Basically it’s tofu broiled for texture and flavor. Comes out awesome, I buy it that way all the time.
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@JoshFossgreen - Julian Lage is a gift to this planet. His trio stuff has been my favorite guitar music to listen to in the last bunch of years.
That video!
And it’s got David King on drums, who’s a personal hero of mine.
And I have a story about him if anyone wants to hear it later.
@John_E … is this a normal acquisition year? That’s more basses than I’ve owned and sold in my entire life. I’m a wide-eyed, (cough jealous) boy over here!
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hmmm…math…
25 basses
3 years
8.3333 basses a year
If you add in the 5 I have sold, 10 a year
Collection is now built, so this will slow down to next to if not nothing (yeah, right).
I also have 14 saxophones.
I also have problems.
Seriously though, I look at all of these as investments (or most of them).
The goal at the end is a (mostly) free hobby that when liquidated helps put the kid through college.
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Hmm.
Best of 2022.
2022 was a hard year. I spent most of it hating still being inside and not doing anything (holdover from the pandemic) but also slowly getting out and doing stuff while being afraid of getting out and doing stuff. I lost touch with many of my friends, and experienced extreme burnout when it came to my job.
On the flip side, I bought and sold a bunch of basses, and got better at playing them. So, there’s that.
As far as music is concerned, I have one true gem from 2022: CLOSURE/CONTINUATION by Porcupine Tree.
I got to see them live at the Greek Theater in LA a few months back. Absolutely amazing show, I cannot speak highly enough about it.
Aside of that, 2022 was mostly just repeating 2020 and 2021 over, and over, and over again.
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Steven Wilson is one of the best of the last twenty years. His music, collaborations, composing and presentation are absolutely awesome.
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OK, that’s the first time I’ve heard “collecting music gear” characterized as a “college savings plan.” 
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Nice @JustTim ,
Great song, but I love anethatize , that is an awesome 17 minute epic live song imo,
Cheers Brian
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Kinda the same here! 2022 was better on paper (ca$h), but kinda hard. Had Covid twice, tried hard at a relationship and felt cheated at the end. I started playing in a few jam sessions, they dwindled away. My family lost two people to old, old age.
I “survived” the pandemic as far as finding work was concerned . I worked 100% online and felt disconnected from life. In January '22, I started a new part-time job, so now I’m quitting old contracts and jobs. My work has been fragmented for the last eight years, so finding an anchor first felt strange. I had serious imposter syndrome when I realized how “little” you have to work for the same money.
Musically, I am really glad I finally joined Bassbuzz. My favourite song of the year was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XcN12uVHeQ
When I’m able to play that live, I’ll be a happy man. And it kinda speaks to my situation - not that I have mental health issues, I have people around me who do. As the “sane” one, I used to be in my own head a lot. I let go of that, and that’s hard.
Cheers
Antonio
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Hey, Brian!
The link I posted should be to a playlist containing the entire CLOSURE/CONTINUATION album. You should listen to the whole thing, it’s really good.
Yeah, Anesthetize is an amazing piece of music. No doubt about it.
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Favorite acquisitions:
-
Mayones Jabba Mala Federico Malaman Signature custom 4-string
-
Ernie Ball Cutlass
-
Waza Air-Bass
GAS eliminated in 2022.
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Favourite acquisition must be my Marcus Miller U5 short scale bass.
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I want to hear the story. 
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@eric.kiser !
Right on. I thought the story would go untold forever!
In 2006, Toast Machine put out the album Rock Wattage.
We were a big deal in one place and one place only: The Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, California. It was our venue.
We played amazing shows there to huge crowds. It is insane to look back and think of it. Our lil’ bass and drum instrumental duo.
Anyway, I wanted to really go big for the album release party.
26 year old me was at school for jazz and I was super into hip groovy jazz music and upright bass, and - having the kind of brilliant egocentric perceptions exhibited by most 26 year old boys - I decided that a Toast Machine show with the Bad Plus was a genius idea.
I went through the whole thing.
Negotiating rates, calling their management, contracting, getting ~literally~ everything on their tour rider for them.
My wife and I created a backstage utopia for them. It was ridiculous. But, at the time, I thought that was what I had to do.
So it was our album release party, and we had a high ticket price (to pay for The Bad Plus) and we - the loudest, most rockingest instrumental drum and bass band - were opening for a rather quiet, introspective, at-times-bombastic, but altogether chin-strokey acoustic jazz band.
It doesn’t make any sense to me now, but it made SENSE to me then.
Weeks of renting pianos, collecting specific gear for their backline, my years of listening to their music and learning their bass lines… all culminated in them arriving to the venue.
I was a nervous fanboy. The first person into the green room (which is a graffiti tagged concrete room full of busted couches) was David King. Everyone in my life that I know named David I have called Dave. Everyone. I know zero Davids.
I walked back to the green room when they arrived.
There was Dave King, eating the specifically requested Smart Food Popcorn that I had dutifully supplied from the rider.
I, all a flutter, said "Hi Dave, I’m Gio … " and then probably something identifying me as setting the show up or welcoming, or whatever.
He looked at me and said: “…it’s David.”
And it devastated me, and I did everything I could to not interact with them after that.
In the years that followed, people have pointed out that he goes by Dave, and that his sense of humor is super dry, cutting, and razor sharp.
If I had been a tougher, sharper 26 year old, I may have survived that comment.
Alas that I was not.
I don’t hold it against him. I think he’s very funny and a brilliant drummer. I do always remember to be as overtly kind as possible when people are interacting with me though so as not to demolish the potential fragility of some enthused soul out there.
They played an amazing show. An acoustic jazz trio rocking the skate-punk-teen-paradise of the Phoenix Theater.
It was rad, though in wiser hindsight, a terrible pairing of bands.
I still have the signed poster on my wall.
That’s my Dave King story.
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I so wish I had known. I’d have been there for all gigs. I was still living in San Mateo at the time, not too hard to get up there at all.
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That’s a great story! Good on you for putting all that together.
My brother, the drummer, was working back stage and ended up running into the great Neil Peart in their dressing room. He was stricken and just said “Hi.” and stared at Neil waiting for a response. Neil stared back and finally said, “Isn’t there somewhere else you’re supposed to be?” My brother said “Yes.” and left.
He was crushed… for a little while.
Then he thought about the line, " I can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend."
Later, when telling me about it, he said he wished the exchange had gone better, but he understood why it was what it was.
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Did he signed as Dave or David? 
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(and @Gio ):
I guess there is something about that saying “you should never meet your heroes” 
Even if she/he is a great person, fulfilling all those expectations one might have built up in one’s head can be an almost impossible, and doomed-to-fail task…
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