borntohang

I've been on IEMs since 2019 through necessity, but never with a totally silent stage. My favourite compromise has been live drums and a small backline just in case, mostly kept extremely low for tactile feedback (and real feedback). My least favourite was electronic drums and the rest of the band on full volume backline and wedge; absolutely horrid and only got through the show in one piece because my isolated IEMs meant I could mostly ignore the ghastly stage sound. I have a show with a 30 piece orchestra next month which will be IEM only so that will be an experience - possible I will take a small tube head and a Captor setup for that one. I've started playing with an instrumental trio recently and we use 50 watt valve half-stacks simply because we can, it's fun, and there are no vocal mics to trouble the FOH. It's doable because we're not playing the Dog and Duck and the psych/doom scene we play in is very accepting of loud amps anyway as that's still the standard - we've actually found that our 50 watters are severely under-gunned on most line-ups. We know the amps well and use the extra headroom for big dynamic changes instead of just cranking them which helps us stand out from the drop-tuned masses a tiny bit.

Having known crew and promoters who have worked with The View I remain unconvinced they'd ever be together enough to be able to pull off staged promo... They did well back in the 2000s but unfortunately have form for last minute and mid-show cancellations. A number one record only gets you so much latitude before even the label are sick of you. On a side note I'd be terrified of scrapping on the stage at Deafies. Feels about ten foot up in the air with no handrail when you're up there at best of times.

Young 'uns don't use forums is the long and short of it. There's a shift in how they perform music too - being in a band unfortunately means having time, space, and resources (plus generous parents if you're too young to drive) whereas putting your recordings up online is basically free once you've got a guitar and an interface. Playing for thirty people down the Dog and Duck jam session might not seem quite as appealing in comparison to putting up a video and potentially getting thousands of hits. I can confirm that once they're out of the teens then being in a rubbish student-indie band is just as popular as it ever was though. You might put that down as either a pro or a con depending on how you feel. 🙂

No, but Chinese made models will start with C and Indonesian with I. The letters following usually indicate factory - my VM strat is ICS for Indonesia/Cor-Tek for example. My Chinese CVs are Cxx but the newer ones have Ixx serials. I should really stop buying so many Squiers. 🤦‍♂️

Not explicitly labelled on the guitars, no. Classic Vibe was basically a marketing term for slightly more accurate Squier reissues, or at least visually accurate. 'High end' manufacturing (for the price point), tinted necks, classic hardware and alnico pickups. Worth having a browse through the wiki: https://www.squierwiki.com/Classic-Vibe-Series https://www.squierwiki.com/Vintage-Modified-Series

The Squiers were good quality too - made in Indonesia before production shifted to China for the early CV models. These days they're a bit of a bargain as they're next to nothing and have SD Design pickups, real rosewood boards etc. I'm still on the lookout for one of the PJ models coming up locally to me. My VM70s strat is the best £140 I've spent on a guitar in years. Probably not the most authentic reissue (although the poly finish gives that authentically seventies plastic-dipped feel...) but the neck is brilliant, nice and light, and the pickups are hot with a mid push that sounds almost Telecaster-ish. Plus at that price when I accidentally picked the gig-bag up unzipped and it took a header into the warehouse floor I only cried a little bit!

For the classic tones, hollowbody and big strings helps but I've always got pretty close with any guitar into modulated slapback and stereo double-tracking/light chorus. It's the combination of stereo delay into more chorus for the super wide spread that gets the vibe. He played LOUD and with lots of speakers for physical feedback and sustain rather than distortion. He's got a style of writing that sounds 'Geordie' even with different rigs, as you can tell by the transition from his fairly clean early stuff to the modern hi-gain riff sound. His writing style comes from not being able to leave any space in riffs - every time he stops playing for even a second everything starts howling with feedback so he has to keep the pedal down on his right hand. I did prefer his tones earlier on, but everything from KJ (2003) onwards is absolute powerhouse.

Incredible tune that - Rhoda Dakar with Specials AKA backing. Many years back as a teenager I picked up a cheap Two Tone compilation cassette on the market and that was plumped bang in the middle of all the 'standard' upbeat hits. Chilling!

Well, they might say they'll make you one. What turns up is a shoot... Definitely worth doing your research on decent AliE sellers - there are good ones but there's just as many who will take your custom order and then send out whatever they have while relying on the return policy being too much effort.

With the utmost respect for the ABBA Voyage tour, particularly as I have a mate in the band, that's basically what they're doing with the new show. None of the original four are touring or playing beyond the holographic performance, and the band are all young bloods playing behind the original vocal tracking. I'm pretty sure the holographic captures were actually taken from body doubles too. It's an interesting take - basically a licensed tribute franchise. I actually saw an article in Rolling Stone about this earlier today as the Allman Brothers are doing an 'Allman Brothers Present: Trouble No More' tour again with top flight jam band players connected to the band playing their music. Again, effectively an endorsed tribute experience in the same way as the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Usual items at usual price currently up under Tom Bannister in Sheffield - account picture is of a muppet which gave me a brief laugh at least.

A nice venue if I remember right. Come over and say hi if you make it to Birmingham. I'm the one not playing bass, obviously.

Thanks! Was that the Art Centre show? I've started to lose track now the gigging is more of a regular thing than novelty...

'ello. I'm second from right in a very silly gig indeed. Do you have to be a fan of the original artist, or maybe you become one? Wasn't to start with, then listened to nothing else for six months to get into shape, then couldn't listen to them again outside of gigs for the next three years. I'm finally getting round to enjoying them casually again now. How important is it to be visually/musically identical? How much latitude are you allowed? Oh, lots and lots and lots. If you get the broad strokes right people fill in the blanks; even the hypercritical snobby fans (who are thankfully few and far between) don't notice as much as they think they do. We try to be true to the spirit if not the letter. We have an authentically upside-down left-handed bass player, and I'm a bald guy on keyboards/guitar, and that's about it. Our singer looks uncannily like Mark when she wears her glasses which is a nice co-incidence. The really odd bit is that we have a nice little sideline in logo branded t-shirts that do quite well. I think we've built up a bit of a following now so we get a fair few people coming to see us just because they specifically like what we do, as opposed to just liking the material. DEVO aren't touring over here and even if they were they aren't playing the early seventies vibe that we're trying to cop, so I'm happy to fill that niche. Do you ‘get into character’ or is it just a gig? A bit. It'd feel a bit daft to pretend to be the exact Spuds, but we go for the attitude and vibes and people seem happy with it. We have a lot of handy folks in the band so we've gradually built our own props/costumes/instruments over the years. It's helpful that our bass player is usually allergic to anything sniffing of 'commercialism' so we have a finely tuned barometer of "that's a right womble idea" to run ideas past; if he's game for it then it's probably not too cheeseball. Does it feel musically limiting, or is it fulfilling your needs? (Maybe you have a side band?) We all have other projects. I wish writing with these guys was as easy as touring with them because we've made it six years or so without any major fallouts or line-up changes. They're very accommodating of me dropping the odd "sorry chaps, but I have to block two months out of the calendar for this other tour" as it's not a full-time gig for any of us. Do you have any qualms about tributes ‘stifling original music’? I don't think putting a silly hat on is going to stop garage bands from playing original music. It doesn't even stop me. Have you ever met or been seen by a member of the ‘originals’? What did they say? DEVO shared us on their facebook page a couple of Halloweens ago and they were asked about us in a Guardian Reader's Questions feature (Jerry was very diplomatic) so they know we exist. We've spoken to their team a few times and they've politely requested we don't use certain bits of artwork which we're happy to do. My requests to be the UK franchise of the band have been politely ignored. What is the overriding thing being in a tribute act has taught you? I try to take something away from every gig I play with, but I suppose it's been an interesting exercise into really deep-diving into one particular catalogue. I can't think of many other acts where I know 30-40 songs to gigging standard. Having done it once, would you do it again? If so, would the musical angle be very different? Oh, probably not. I like the idea of doing brief dives into a catalogue to do a one-and-done Stars In Their Eyes tribute night or something, but it's been a bit intensive learning all the music plus co-bandleading really. I auditioned on keys for a Foos tribute a couple of years back but my heart wasn't really in it even though the money would be better and the material significantly easier. I sometimes see other tributes post audition lists and then go away and learn them just as an exercise (Slade and Blink 182 recently) but I don't think I'd connect with them quite like WAND.

The old short scale PJ Jaguars were great - borrowing mine persuaded a friend of mine to retire his vintage (very tired) Musicmaster from live shows in favour of one. Only thing I didn't like was the unfinished or barely finished neck which got grubby after a lot of shows. I'd have preferred a gloss like the CV or VM series necks, but you can't expect too much at that price point and would have been a low effort project to remedy. Definitely deserves a heavier E string than shipped too.

The steep drop in quality after Pinkerton is nearly vertical. I just pretend that they broke up in '97 and the occasional single of note after that (Hash Pipe, Keep Fishing, not much else) was just scavenged from unreleased Blue sessions.

The full-size Spark booster is excellent for pushing a driven amp over the edge without altering your tone too much. If you wanted something with more 'character' to it's drive perhaps the EHX Hot Wax would appeal - has a variety of interesting pushed tones plus a clean blend and master EQ, and you can stack both of the drives for three different sounds on top of your basic clean.

Again, having worked festivals for ten years or so, there was a massive and obvious change when Leeds/Reading started introducing late night entertainment. After the move to Bramham initially everything shut off at 11 every night and there were some real rough nights. 2006 was an especially bad year - the crowd burned down the campsite beer tent, raided and emptied the Carling lorry parked behind it, and it all ended with security heavies suiting up and doing full crowd-control charges with batons to try and clear the area, which just got people even more riled up. I was actually walking through the site off-shift and got slapped into the mud by a heavy who thought he was a cop in hot pursuit. By dawn you had the bad optics of hungover teenagers cable-tied to fencing under 'arrest'. Nasty business all round. Next year there was a 'come to god' chat between festival management, security, and police and they brought in the Silent Disco and other entertainment that went on till 2-3am. They also changed the security meatheads out for a firm with a bit less inclination to start cracking heads. Both aggro and property damage dropped significantly over the next few years until the Sunday Riots became a bit of an old-school meme like the Wave of Bollocks or Pop-Up Pirate. Melvin at FR runs a lot of festivals and knows what he's doing. Wonder if the resurgence this year had anything to do with Rage getting replaced by 1975 and people leaving the arena early for a last night rager instead. Not as popular a choice as they anticipated!

Not a camping kind of demographic, Rebellion. We're all getting to the age where you don't want to get dressed and booted up just to nip to the bathroom three times a night...

If you herd 100,000 drunk teenagers into a field and then cut all the entertainment off at midnight then they're going to end up finding mischief. Leeds/Reading has always been a smash up on the last evening and now it has a rep there's some people go expecting it. That said, I worked festivals for ten years and there's not been a single one without some level trouble or substance abuse. Latitude is about the most middle-class, arty, Tarquin and Kate festival you've ever seen but I still got threatened with violence on a number of occasions!

We were booked for BlueDot in 2020 but sadly didn't make the reschedule - shame as it looked brilliant. We've played with Henge before and they're a great party.

I use both the VTDI and the Leeds and can report you're not missing a huge amount just with the DI. Don't get me wrong, the Leeds is by far my favourite drive for both guitar and bass, but pushing Character and dropping Mids and Treble on the VT will get you just as close to the Glover thing as the Leeds will and it will also do all the other stuff as well. I use the VT as my 'rig' at the end of a chain and then the Leeds works as my 'gain' channel. I'm definitely interested in checking out the new dual Leeds with the Muff circuit they're releasing so I can run a wet/dry dirt setup though.