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I tend to find most of such banter extremely tedious, because I'm old and I was alive and in my teens in the 1970s, so nothing much offends me any more. This kind of stuff does occasionally still p!ss me off, however. I've said this before - try imagining a similar situation to that described by the 'joke' or 'banter', and replace the female with a black person or a gay person, and see if telling or laughing at such 'joke' still sounds acceptable to your ears. Most of the times it won't.

Ok. My dear darlings:

Yep! Women become experts in shrugging off crap jokes and stupid comments pretty quickly. If you really want to talk about 'toxic masculinity' focus on the important things. I've been a working musician in London for 14 years now and it definitely feels less safe now than when I arrived. For one example, rape prosecution rates have fallen over the last decade to 1.6% - read this article "We are facing the 'decriminalisation of rape', warns victims' commissioner" https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jul/14/we-are-facing-the-decriminalisation-of-warns-victims-commissioner There are serious topics to be upset about. Toxic masculinity doesn't just affect women, and certainly shouldn't be reduced to a conversation about crap jokes. I do like seeing it get called out though, to me it's a sign of professionalism - and I appreciate many of the comments here. I work with a lot of young women and girls who struggle with confidence even though they are often very talented musicians - there's a lot of work to be done to create a culture where they feel welcome. I always call out any racism / homophobia etc when working even if it is disguised as 'banter', you never know who in the room is quietly really appreciating you standing up for them. Thankfully, it tends to be quite rare in professional music environments these days, you'd get called out on it pretty quickly. Caroline

Does the war in Ukraine imply we should forget about, say, violence in the street or the climate emergency? Or anything else that we find intolerable and worth fighting against? Do we only have space in our brain for being appalled at a limited number of unsettling, unfair or downright horrible happenings? If that's the case, could we please have a list of currently acceptable topics to be appalled by?

The thing is that this was a slightly clumsy joke about a real life incident that had become a running joke between the guy who posted it and a girl who is a member of the band he plays in. She doesn't seem to have been offended by it, so we just have somebody (presumably a bloke) getting offended on her behalf. There are more important things to worry about these days.

Hi all. Shutting this one down as it's a discussion we've had many times before, and it never goes anywhere other than south (with apologies to Southerners).

Some nights, I wish I had a dustpan and brush with me to sweep up my bum notes. I can't help feeling that rather than being offended on their behalf, we should ask our female members what they think? When I was at tech college back in the mid 18th century, one of the guys there was an afro-caribbean fella named Alex; he was a bus driver doing the BTEC electronics course on his days off to try to get a better job with prospects (his words), being a drive he'd obviously been subjected to a bit of abuse in his time but he said the thing that offended him far more than the actual racism, was being told what he should be offended by... more often than not, by well-meaning white people. Remember the whole 'you can't call it a blackboard' and 'baa baa black sheep is racist' stuff? It made him absolutely furious, he said it was patronising in the extreme. As he put it, he was perfectly capable of knowing what pssed him off and what didn't. He was a lovely bloke and I really hope he went on to get the career he craved.

It doesn’t offend me, and it wouldn’t bother me if it were the other way round, but then I’ve not had years of people taking the pee out of me because of my gender. Maybe if I had it would be different.

Marusczcyk is also something to look at. I am loving my 30" Jake P from Marusczcyk

I always find it best to understand 'context' and the relationship of 'those concerned' before heading off into rant territory and being offended on one of their behalfs....

The problem is that you’re unlikely to be a marginalised group the target of humour. If someone came on here and the butt of every joke was a balding, post-50 year old man who is slightly overweight and buys loads of gear they can’t play very well then you may feel different. (I’m making a crass generalisation because that’s how this works…) Call it empathy, emotional intelligence or simply not being a Richard and you’ll be fine.

These threads always rapidly end up with everybody acting 'offended' even if they're mainly being offended by others taking offence. It's almost comically circular.

I don’t think anyone is saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to express their views, but freedom of speech is not freedoms from consequence. Say something that the majority believe to be abhorrent, as is one’s right, get excommunicated by the very nature of a majority not wanting anything to do with you. Si

I'm not in the least bit offended. Just extremely bored with people who seemingly spend their entire lives looking around for something to be offended by, so they can whine about it on the internet. If you want to be offended, put down your phone, turn off your computer, and look out of the window. Seriously! There's far more important things happening in the world.

Ever wished you could practice at home with the kind of sound you might expect from an SVT but at a volume level calculated not to destroy the furniture nor incense the landlady? This little chap, in its Trace Elliot style livery, is physically tiny, but sounds, at neighbour friendly levels, absolutely amazing. 50 watts is plenty for home use, I'm pairing it with a single 10" 8ohm speaker, but I'd be interested to hear it slaved up through a power amp at a gig. I stole, sorry, bought this, at an extremely good second hand price, and apart from one outing for a YouTube review, it's as it was when it left the shop. It comes with a foot switch for the compression which I shan't use, compression being, for me, an always on effect. And has built in Bluetooth which is not just great for practicing but for amplification of YouTube videos, audiobooks, playlists etc as well. Highly recommended.

Ian Dury. 👍

I remember an audition from many many moons ago, myself and another bassist turned up and we both did two songs each. I'd done my homework but the other guy very obviously hadn't, he was all over the shop. It also became apparent that the band were playing a bit fast & loose with it too. They called me next day and said they were going with the other guy because he lived a bit closer to them. 🤦🏻‍♂️

We've progressed from criticism of a dated gag about a dustpan and brush to the Holocaust in less than two pages. None's the wonder the world's on a knife-edge.

But you honestly see a difference between how you’ve communicated your ‘extreme boredom’ and when others standing up for what they believe? It reads like you put yourself above them in some hierarchy because they’re ‘offended’ (your words, not theirs) about sexism in this case, but when it comes to you literally shouting about it on a forum, that’s ok, you’re just extremely bored?! Colour me fascinated. Si

On a related note, I wonder, in an anonymous poll, how many female members have experienced sexist content on this forum including that dressed up as "banter". I guess we won't know as they've probably just left.

Not offended by that kind of humour or any other, if I find something funny I treat myself to a laugh and move on with my day, if I don't find it funny I skip the laugh and still move on with my day. I'm not so tender that I feel the need to care about the ism's on the internet.

No Genz Benz amp was ever a Fender designed or built amp.

https://m.soundcloud.com/alu-folie-361410504/experimentpostambient?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=1&si=6179896A6CC2494CAF9F823DD2C0F61D&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

I still like the Ida model, I haven’t got around to getting one, other purchases always seem to get in the way first, I will when the times right

The beastie has landed. Very pleased with it, punchier than a punchy thing that walked into a bar looking for a fight. I've put some flats on the bass as a bit of an experiment but it turns out that they work really well. Here's a couple of pics. Apols for the mediocre quality. I'll get some better ones when the light is better.

Louis Jordan. The true father of Rock n Roll

The revolution will not be televised - Gil Scott heron

The Macc Lads always made me laugh, I know in todays world their style might not be flavour of the day but to the 20 year old me I found them hilarious. Sadly not many realised the actual joke - and nearly 40 years later that’s still the case.

Things that you've learned from gigging... that you feel should be passed on. In addition to the practical replies above - I have the following 'aide- memoire' handwritten at the top of my set list. There Is An Audience Out There. These People Have Made The Effort To Come And See/Hear You. Be Conscious Of Them And Treat Them With Respect.

There's only one way to resolve this.

Of "The Eleven" my personal fav is this one, probably because I really like the LE77 and LE79 Euros. 'Only' £4.6k too

I can say from experience that I wouldn't feel different, if anything it reinforces my belief. The group think is the issue in a lot of cases, people forget that they're still an individual person above a member of a group and the sort of jokes in this post are 'generally' based on the group and/or stereotype and not a personal attack. Not saying I find them particularly funny, just not worth being offended about, specially when it's on the internet. The difference between "women are stereo-typically bad drivers" and "you Jane, are a bad driver" is paper thin to some people and a chasm to others.

I don't think the post that you referenced was 'toxic'. At best, it came across as an unfunny, stereotypical joke, but when the poster explained a couple of posts later that it was based on something that actually happened to him, it made more sense. As for 'banter', I can't remember doing a single gig in 25 years where there hasn't been at least a bit of p!ss taking. In fact, the better the mates,the harder (and more insulting) it often becomes.

Or indeed Jimmy Carr. His latest show was hilarious, but the cancel culture brigade's reaction to it was even funnier.

I'm of Italian and Austrian parentage and raised in Liverpool. Over my 52 years I've had people sieg heil me, call me a Nazi (I have a German surname), been called a spic/wop/kraut/nazi etc and heard every scouser joke under the sun. Am I bovvered though? Haven't been for many decades. While sexist banter/jokes are not particularly funny in themselves, I'd say to anyone to just let it wash over.

All about these two for me: Although I would have put a dark fingerboard on the gold one! Si

Actually, voltage, current, impedance and power are directly related and can not be separated. Double the voltage into the same nominal impedance and the power quadruples, that's non-negotiable. Power factor, or the phase angle between the voltage and current doesn't really matter because it applies equally to both situations. Power = Voltage squared divided by the nominal impedance. The reason the power quadruples when the voltage doubles is due to the squaring of the voltage. Bridging carries the risk of one of the two speaker conductors being accidentally connected to ground. Because the output of the amp is not ground referenced, grounding either terminal can damage the amp. Some amps are designed from the ground up to be bridged, these are generally fairly tolerant of real world loads. Some amps bridge as an afterthought, these tend to be more vulnerable. Many class D amps are designed using bridged topology, in part to improve the power supply efficiency when driving inductive loads. This is an important part of some of these amps.

banter is a tricky one, it's nasty if it's too near the truth and the people it's aimed at are lacking in self confidence, it's a thin dividing line between a bit of a pi55 take and bullying, getting a feel for when people are getting upset is important. Something that is difficult when written down in a post. I walked in the pub tonight where I'd done open mic on Friday, a couple of the blokes said "hope you've not bought your guitar again" but it was said in such a way that I took it as a compliment, they'd actually enjoyed my little set, if I'd been shite they wouldn't have said it, hopefully I read it right 😂

No. Just behave.

I always remember the lovely Allan's@niceguyhomer advice he once offered up (and I paraphrase): When turning in for the night after a post-gig wind down at home, always remember to move the TV off the Babestation channel so the first person who turns the TV on in the morning doesn't rumble you 😂

Yes, of course. That's one of the attractions to The Beatles. Quite a few songs are meant to be silly and funny, and some of the stuff is just plain naughty--"four of fish and finger pie". Some of it is dark--Maxwell and Bungalow Bill. Even I am the Walrus is comical. And I do love Zappa--The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life is one of the greatest albums of the rock era--the lonesome cowboy Burt stuff is hilarious to those of us who saw that donkey Swaggart get his own. Most listeners now probably don't get the references, but even without, the lyrics are funny. I love humor in music. What I don't like is those who take themselves and stupid macho-ism seriously. It ruins a band like Foreigner for me.