LONDON BOUND!

We went to the London Bass Guitar Show, now combined with the UK Guitar Show, and came back with minds blown

If you were fortunate enough to be at the Business Design Centre in London’s Islington district on 21 and 22 September, you were in for a feast of bass goodness at the UK Guitar Show, Future Publishing’s combined guitar and bass event. It was essentially a new venture for us at Bass Guitar and Bass Player magazines, because we’re previously sponsored a standalone London Bass Guitar Show: when the LBGS was merged with Future’s existing guitar event and moved from the previous Olympia venue to the BDC in Islington, many long-time visitors predicted widespread catastrophes, a plague of locusts, the imminent implosion of Earth and so on.

However, we’re delighted to report that the show was packed to the gills, with a record number of tickets sold and a huge number of bass players giving performances and masterclasses. It was definitely a bit warm in there, the British weather at the end of September having actually been sunny for a change, and volume levels from competing instruments were intense at times, but those were the only widely-reported downsides to a generally excellent and successful event.

We raise our glasses to (deep breath): John Patitucci, who delivered two performances on the first day and broke all our hearts with his emotional reaction to being presented with Bass Player’s Lifetime Achievement Award; Nick Beggs, who redefined the words ‘huge tone’ with his Auditorium performance; Ariane Cap, who both played and taught at the event; Lorenzo Feliciati and his terrifyingly virtuoso band; Cody Wright, pick-master extraordinaire; and loop lord Steve Lawson, as ever the master of all he surveys.

Visitors were also treated to the masterclass wisdom of Ellen O’Reilly, Phil Mann, Paul Geary, Jon Liebman, Scott Devine, Nik Preston, Becky Baldwin, Alex Claber and Dave Marks, while the Tone Zone hosted audience Q&As with former Big Country bassist Tony Butler, Mark Gooday of Ashdown and Dave Boonshoft of Aguilar. Does it get better in bass world? Well, it may well do next year. See you there!