What were you up to 10 years ago?

[Phil W]

5 years before I joined this forum.

 

I was playing with this world music group and a few other one off gigs:

 

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=4392740

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=4392654

 

I was also planning a family and, when my son arrived a year later, I took a few years off playing live but returned totally refreshed.

 

What were you up to?

 

 

[picker]

Playing with a band I had been with for close to 30 years, living in the first and only house I ever owned(and lost about 4 years ago), and working one of several dead-end jobs I've had since I moved to Kansas City.

[jeremy c]

Same as now.

[Cthulhu Fhtagn]

Had just about picked up the bass for the first time in over 20 years. Was just starting to try and get my chops back.

 

Actually, right about now 10 years ago, I was astride a 16" air transfer pipe about 10' off the ground and wacking on a jammed electro-pneumactic valve with a dead-blow hammer. I believe it was -7 degrees F and my co-worker was on FLMA to celebrate the birth of their daughter. I was repsonsible for 5 air separation plants, three of which were frozen solid and I was too damned dumb to plug the desiel service truck's block warmer in.

[davio]

I had just finished my first season of marching band during my sophomore year of high school (EW&F field show). I'd had my first bass guitar for about a year and I was a string bass major at a performing arts school. I had decent accomplishments to my name for a 15-year old from Tampa but I and my closer friends still knew that we all sucked and it was a big-fish-small-pond scenario. It kept us humble. Good thing too or I would've gotten eaten alive when I got out of there.

 

I now have much more education and experience and I realize even more than before that my level of suck has achieved new heights...or lows.

[The Geoff]

I hadn't picked up a guitar or bass for 25 years.

 

G.

[fingertalkin]

Didn't own a bass for another 5 years. I was in bed when the hour struck midnight. My second daughter was 6-7 weeks old at the time.

 

I remember hearing her cry and looking at the clock and saying "well, the power's still on".

[tnb]

On a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

[b5pilot]

I had taken a little time off because the current band was on hiatus because of the death of the guitar players wife. I then started in a house band that eventually morphed into the band it is now.

[MoodyBluesKeys]

My wife and I had gotten back from a 10th anniversary trip to Hawaii. I was self-employed and teaching Microsoft and Novell computer networking - after mid-December to Feb or March was always dead time. Had not picked up a bass in 10 years at the time. On the 31st, I was doing end of year bookkeeping for my company, we had dinner at home, and stayed there.

(Tonight - New Bern begins celebration of the town's 300th anniversary, and we expect to be downtown listening and dancing to music.)

[Seamy ALB]

I was playing the last new year's eve gig I've done. It was in the local community centre where my wife was from. All her family was there and we got to stop 10 minutes before 12 so folk would go outside for a fireworks display.

 

We got married that year, we now have a daughter and are moving down to our new home later this year!!

 

It seems such a short time ago.

[moot]

I was playing a gig . . . somewhere.

Last year was the only time I didn't play a NYE gig in recent memory.

[kenfxj]

I was partying like it was 1999.

[Bobby LowTones]

In a bunker, watching critical computers crossing over the 1999-2000 timeline (nothing happened, as expected).

 

At 00h15, I was home, enjoying NYE with the family...

[jlrush]

I was still in the construction business at that time and hadn't been in a band for three years. It would be two more years until I got in another band. I still owned my 63 Precision bass then too.

[ZZ Thorn]

I had been 'playing' the bass for about 3 months - by then I figured out the melodies from Hendrix's "Who Knows" and "Smoke on the Water". My girlfriend was not impressed but she did think my pathetic ineptitude was cute - didn't we all start playing music to get girls, lol? Too bad it doesn't work more often - I guess I should have stayed lousy.

[Davo-London]

I only had 2 basses at the time! Neither of which I play any more!!!

 

Davo

[picker]

I only had 2 basses at the time! Neither of which I play any more!!!

 

Davo

 

Send them to me, if you aren't using them...

[DanYmaL X]

If I recall correctly, I was on a core drilling rig in the middle of the northern Nevada desert... 20 below and blowing sideways etc. etc. yadda, yadda, uphill both ways and all that.. but then, that could have been the previous winter... I don't remember all too clearly.

Maybe I was preparing to make the move from Alaska to California... I don't know. Either way, it was probably cold. I'm tired of cold.

 

DX

[5 string Mike]

I was 22, single, and laughing at all the Y2K Chicken Littles that were hoarding generators and gas and guns and ammo and all that stuff. My brother in law was one.

 

The funniest thing I remember was local farm and hardware stores were putting out big signs in Q3 of 1999 saying 'Generators bought between now and the end of the year cannot be returned except for warranty and manufacturing defects' and other similar policies.

 

It's amazing to look back at how much my life has changed in the last 10 years, though.

[Tom Capasso]

Stonefly was coming together. We were playing once or twice a year at band member house parties. I was singing lead (eewwww).

 

I was playing every Spring in the Christian theatre troup (I now only do a few services per year).

 

My first kid was in his first year of college, my second was in 10th grade.

 

I was also working Y2K as part of a new system (that replaced one that the company didn't want to fix).

I think I've had 6 jobs in the intervening years, and I think my wife has had 3.

 

Tom

[duff beer]

I was partying like it was 1999.

 

I was trying to convince people that the millenium hadn't happened yet.

[J. Dan]

I was racking my brain trying to figure this one out, because I thought I remembered playing 1999, but I guess not. I had to resort to looking at "saved" dates on some old files (songlists, email lists, etc.) to figure out my band timeline. I was pretty much between bands. My duo really wasn't playing anymore, even though we never "officially" called it quits - it just kind of faded away. And early in 2000 was the first band I played bass in, called Radio Star (actually, another all 80's cover band). I was playing a cheap Alverez at the time (back when they still made electrics). A few years later I got my Steinberger. I actually thought I'd be auditioning for that band on keys (my primary instrument), but they told me to leave them in the car and just bring in my Bass. Somehow I still made the band.

[EddiePlaysBass]

Music-wise, I had not yet started playing bass. On a personal level, I was deciding whether to take up accountancy or translation. I ended up picking translation. And now, 10 years later, I'm still not sure it was the right choice, so I'm looking into evening courses in accountancy So hopefully ten years from now, when this thread appears again, I'll be able to look back and say "Oh yeah, that's when I changed directions!"

[Chad Thorne]

I was partying like it was...

 

Anyway, I had been playing bass exclusively about a year, and was playing in a Christian band with my then-wife and two other friends. Also attempting, ultimately unsuccessfully, to hold that marriage together. Still trying to work a "day job," despite being manifestly unsuited for it.*

 

Perhaps needless to say, while 10 years older I'm much happier today!

 

 

I was partying like it was 1999.

Aw, shoot, I didn't see this before I posted. Ya beat me to it, kenfxj!

 

* "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results every time."

[Rocky McDougall]

On New years Eve, 1999, I was admiring the 20 Gold American Eagle coins I had purchased because I thought that Y2K could possibly destroy life as we knew it. By 12:05am I figured maybe everything might be OK. I smiled, laughed quietly, then toasted the new year with Champagne.

Rocky

[Norwegia]

Watching Angry Beavers and AHH! Real Monsters and playing Nintendo 64

[Warlock1016]

I still thought I was a guitar player. Married for two months. Not playing for anyone yet, and didn't know just how little I knew about anything regarding playing in bands, sound systems, band/club politics...

[getz out]

Year 2000: Working 60-70 hours a week, on a flight at least once a week (usually to the Midwest US or Bermuda or Las Vegas), chasing broads, drinking heavily and generally enjoying most of what I remembered. At the time, I was band-less.

 

Year 2010: I work significantly less now, I fly about once a year for work (usually to Bermuda), I chase my daughter around, and drink much less (but much better quality) and I enjoy pretty much everything about life. Currently, I have one recording-band and I am playing a benefit show in a couple of weeks.

 

Not much has changed. In between there were a bunch of bands, some great shows, some awesome recording studios, some terrible recordings, a record label and distribution deal, a collapsed record label and distribution deal, one good singer, a bunch of drummers, and nary a keyboard player.

 

This decade I buy an upright and take lessons to learn how to play it.

[JBFLA]

Year 2000: ... chasing broads, ...

 

R.Getz - I'm guessing neither your daughter or Ms. Getz fits that description (though you don't specifically say that)

 

As for me, I was practising on my '78 'Ray, no band in sight but hoping to meet up with some players in my new home site (FLA), and being Mr. Mom and single parent to my elementary school age daughter (now almost 20).

 

What a difference a decade makes!!