borntohang

Festival talk has reminded me we once got a dodgy golf cart with a blown fuse. We bodged it with the foil bit out of a fag packet and it ran like a champ for a week. The following year, same festival, I got a suspiciously familiar golf cart. Opened up the fuse box out of curiosity and found that ciggy foil is much more durable than expected, or possibly that a series of unlucky crews were inspired by our initial bodge. At least it wasn't a nail this time.

I have the opposite story: the last time I went two of my social circle who were dating had bought tickets together and then split up just before the festival. They couldn't afford/didn't want to lose the tickets so went together in a tiny tent and somehow every act I actually saw they were stood somewhere at the back looking incredibly miserable. Why didn't they just split up and go find some interesting things/hot people, in this huge festival the size of a city, full of interesting things/hot people? It is a mystery for the ages.

Oh yeah, I've been to shows at Glastonbury with five people at them. There are just so many artists, so many small stages, and not enough time in the day. On my second visit I was still discovering entire areas of the festival site with multiple stages I'd never even seen listed on a timetable. Lots of them were just vendors or art groups throwing up a riser in the corner of their location or similar. It's not your standard "main stage and two big tops" festival setup. That works both ways though: there are punters who go to hang about Strummerville/Arcadia/Shangri-La for the entire weekend and will never even be within earshot of Pyramid, so there are built in crowds for some of the more niche stages.

My old man has been volunteering with Oxfam for 20+ years now. He was in the field again this summer shift-leading stewards on Vehicle Gate 3a which is where the interesting people come through. He claims it'll be his last year as he'll be 75 after the fallow '26, but we're not convinced. If it wasn't such a dog of a five-hour drive I reckon they'd eventually be carrying him out in a box because he loves the festival. Doesn't even go to watch bands but just wanders and occasionally texts me updates like "some old git looks like a muppet playing on Pyramid now". I did a few years with him when I was younger, although only twice at Glastonbury. Eventually my future wife started tagging along and we did many years at Leeds and Latitude plus assorted others we wouldn't have got chance to visit on our minimal budget. Hope your daughter enjoyed it as much as we did.

Sat in with a friend's band over the weekend and between wireless guitar systems and cheap IEMs there was so much crappy signal firing around onstage that my wired IEMs started to pick up interference even when not plugged into the XLR. Hard work and not a problem I've ever had before, but luckily only a one shot gig.

Zak out, Scott in to finish the final tour apparently. Pete says Zak has left to pursue other projects and Zak said he was fired. It's all refreshingly untrained and up close PR compared to the Foos and their faceless radio silence, I must admit.

TB can be a bit fussy but the Effects forum does specifically have a longstanding sticky thread warning zero-tolerance on 'real bassists don't use effects' posting in the Effects forum, whether humerus or otherwise. I doubt the mods get offended as much as they got sick of clearing up the mess every time that joke got posted and inevitably turned into a flame war. BC has the advantage of being a smaller userbase so you're more likely to know which particular berk is winding you up and how sincere they're being.

74% (exactly) of starting a tribute is finding a good pun. The band stuff comes later. Some of my favourites we've seen or worked with, in no order: The She Street Band (all-female Springsteen) Slady The G52s (Glasgow based B52s who formed to play two shows with us) The B-Hives (actually got franchised as official tribute by The Hives) Stones N'Roses (US based Stone Roses, Rolling Stones, and GnR tribute. Also play as Geezer and a bunch of other pun tributes)

Also me, although I don't play bass for them. It's been going seven years now so doesn't feel that niche any more. We have the advantage of there being basically no casual fans of Devo - either you've never heard of them, or don't like them, or you're a fanatic. Keeps the crowd numbers ticking over nicely.

Double post!

My friend briefly ran a club night called "Black sABBAth" at a local DIY space. They only played two bands, which you can probably guess, and luckily they have enough hits between them to fill a decent set. It was a good time, considering it was mostly a space to get out of your head while some music played. Back on topic, I'm actually a one-man Mountain Goats tribute called The Best Ever Mountain Goats Tribute Out Of Doncaster which I sometimes take to the local open mics to generally bemused reactions (unless there's another MG fan attending, in which case they act like a paleontologist finding a live Triceratops wandering around their local dog field). It's not a money spinner, but a man has to have a hobby and I believe that getting paid for all of your gigs isn't healthy for the soul.

Most digital reverbs have an LPF/HPF feature somewhere in the algorithm, even if it's not accessible. The TC Hall of Fame lets you access those parameters in the toneprint software and any of the HoF family will do it, so the Mini will work if you're pushed for space.

Based on the amount of smoke backstage last time I saw NWR with Wilko he might be too stoned to actually die. Still played like a bastard though.

I've successfully improvised an emergency belt from black gaffa several times. The trick is to pull a length long enough to wrap round your waist and fold it over onto itself so the sticky sides are inside, repeat with two more lengths on both sides for sturdiness, and then create a 'buckle' connecting the two lengths BUT ONLY AFTER YOU PUT IT ON. You do have to cut yourself out of it afterwards unfortunately and it's not a particularly load bearing band so not worth it if you have slim hips and heavy trousers - I haven't got a solution for that yet but I imagine a similar set of improvised braces could work. Careful not to get it on your chest hair.

XR18 with an external router for us. Only one plug extra and means we can all run our own monitor mixes without fighting the venue WiFi. We use the Mixing Station app which I don't love but is fine - if any of you aren't technically savvy spend some time setting up the view pages so nobody accidentally adjusts the mix when they mean to adjust an aux.

Comes from "detained under Section X of the Mental Health Act", where X is a different section of the Act depending on the reason for detention. I think you guys use '5150' for roughly same thing.

We played a little festival somewhere down south (I can barely remember where to be honest) and ended up with a midday slot on the main stage. There were in fact two main stages which ran consecutively so there was no downtime and the audience didn't have to move. Nice site but as we pulled up a band that shared our management were heading out looking like they'd just been kicked in the collective nards and gave us a sarcastic "good luck" on the way past, which was not auspicious. It was a family festival with a real mixed line-up and we had not been pitched well, so our audience was mostly kiddies playing twenty-five-a-side in front of the pit barriers: at one point a misplaced volley came up onstage and I had to hoof it back which got the biggest cheer of the set. We were pretty dispirited by the end and even more so to see the much larger crowd of parents gathering in front of the other stage for Dr And The bloody Medics, so we packed up and booked off sharpish. I was driving the van and remember pulling a slightly narky take-off out of the main gates with a muttered "...never coming back to THIS disaster again". Sadly, we had to sheepishly crawl back through security fifteen minutes later when our singer remembered they had left a custom mic stand behind the stage instead of packing it away. Nothing really wrong with the festival, just a bad match, but so far it's the only show where anybody has ever asked me for their ball back mid-song.

Roswell do a P in a MM size case. EMG do P soapbars. If you just want a cover then I've not seen anything available as stock, but this would be a good opportunity to make friends with somebody with a 3D printer. It's a simple enough design to put together. If you don't know anybody you could try a makerspace.

It has the same layout as the Stomp, so you can do it but it's a little trickier than just plugging in. You'll need to assign a Y split as the first block, then pan Input A to L100 and B to R100; B should then be on a parallel path with the 9 blocks able to be split between them. Mix block will need to be panned A to L100 and B R100 too and you'll have to use mono effects or they'll recombine at the output. If you want two stereo paths you'd need to use a Loop Send block to send the output for path B to the Loops and then set the Mix block to have 0dB of Path B in the signal.

Douglas Adams had a routine about how there are infinite planets but we know that not all of them are occupied, so there must be a finite number of inhabited planets. Any finite number divided by infinity is as close to zero as makes no difference, so the average population of the universe is 0. Similarly, having worked in a venue for five years and toured for another fifteen or so, my working theory is that there are an infinite number of shit bands and consequently zero good bands - any bands you might think are good are a statistical outlier and should be excluded from the study. Jokes aside I don't think you should be forced to lower your expectations, but it's worth acknowledging that by their late twenties most genuinely ground-breaking stellar musicians have either given up in favour of the the day job or are already in a full-time successful band (or more likely six bands). The ones looking for a new project are likely to form it with old bandmates or friends with good reputations instead of taking a risk on JMB strangers. You don't have to give up, just be aware of the playing field and that it might take a while to find a group that really fits. Much like online dating, you're probably going to have to kiss some frogs in the hope they might eventually be transformed into something vaguely resembling a deposed royal.

The upright has the advantage of being immediately visually interesting to audiences in a way an EB isn't and also being a very physical instrument to wrestle with. I'd suggest stealing moves from keyboard players who are similarly stage-bound - you can practice playing with exaggerated arm movements without affecting your dynamics.

Musicians in charge of their own monitoring have an unfortunate tendency to mix to the loudest dynamic of their instrument instead of the quietest, or to aim for a level where the instrument "sits" neatly in the overall mix. In my experience both generally lead to you leathering it all night or gradually turning up. Ideally you should be able to hear yourself clearly at all dynamics over everything else and break away from the idea that your IEMs should be a balanced band mix like the audience is hearing. I realise that as someone with FoH experience you probably know this already, but your drummer probably doesn't.

My partner politely requests that I keep the gear encroachment to one guitar in the living room and the rest stays in the studio downstairs, arguing correctly that as we have an entire room dedicated to music kit it seems a bit unfair to then start slowly moving it into the rest of the house... We also have an arrangement where she comes to one (1) gig per new band at which point her supportive duties are considered fulfilled unless something particularly interesting comes up. She once took a train across three countries by herself to see me play in Amsterdam so it's not like she's not interested, but if she came to every gig I did she wouldn't have time for a job. I was also away on that particular tour for two full months leaving her to look after the homestead solo - support goes both ways and unfortunately there have been times when I've not been great at it in the past. Hopefully doing better these days!

Musical wallpaper but one of the few major acts putting their money where their mouth is. Massive gesture and will be worth a lot of money to small venues.

Have you check the colour codes for the SD pickup are wired correctly to the diagram? Stock pickups and SD probably won't have exactly the same colours.