Silvia Bluejay

Oh we've had threads about that. Originally, the stronger/most important hand was the picking one. Virtuoso stuff on the fretboard came later, when the concept of right-handed and left-handed instrument playing was already defined. I would not know where to start on a right-handed bass, and I felt exactly the same when I was a total beginner. Lefty made immediate sense. PS Thank you, Sir Paul McCartney, and Mr Jimi Hendrix - we would probably not have lefty instruments without you.* * Or at least, widely-available lefty instruments.

Um, try applying the same logic to playing right-handed then. Your right hand is the stronger hand, isn't it? So it should be on the fretboard, shouldn't it? So most guitar or bass players should play what we call left-handed instruments, shouldn't they?

Add to that the dreaded 3/ Oh you are left-handed? Nah, just learn right-handed, it's always difficult at the start anyway, and there are more right-handed models available on the market. [More or less the equivalent of: 'Oh, you are gay? Nah, only sleep with the opposite sex from now on, it'll make your life easier']

If one of the bandmates happens to be married to a professional social media manager, who will in any case always follow a code of conduct in the managing of any account, whether belonging to family or friends or simply to strangers, I believe that to be an even better idea.

In reply to the admin discussion: you can have multiple admins, all of whom have the same authority, on a normal FB page. If the page is part of a 'business' entity created by one of the admins - the 'owner' - before the page in question was tagged on to the business and other admins added, the business owner will always have the power to kick any of the admins off the page and block them, but not vice versa.

Many thanks guys! 🙏

The name is Damo And The Dynamites, as per the other page, it's the Facebook URL that's added the 'band' bit. It's this one. Many thanks!

And what's best for one person isn't what's best for another. Edit: cross-posted with Maude!

Many thanks to all of you who've liked the page. It now works better - FB makes everything harder when the page is new and has less than 10 likes, and always assumes you're a spammer and up to no good, no matter what you're trying to do. Hopefully it'll get easier in the next few days. Much obliged to you all.

You should get very little stuff appearing on your timeline if you like the page now, as I've re-uploaded most of the it before trying to re-build our following. But you can like the page and then set it so it gives you no notifications, so you don't get annoying little numbers at the top of your FB account every time we post something.

HAHA! Exactly. FWIW, I'm currently in control of all the Dynamites' social media, if we include the new FB page. But I'm technically not in the band, which I think is slightly safer for everybody.

Nah, doesn't work like that. The gentleman in question was the owner of the page, in that he created it before HJ and I met the band. Then he handed over its day to day running to me. I'm possibly the only person who hasn't explicitly fallen out with him, but he obviously can't have me around any more on whatever's left of the page (if anything). I'm working on the new page, but it's almost bedtime, so I'll continue tomorrow.

Yours truly will be spending some time re-creating events and posting photos of slightly less skeletal bandmembers tonight and tomorrow. We, and all the people who had liked the original band page but aren't in Xxxx's circle of friends, have been banned from seeing the page, so the only way for us to check out what's happening on it - if anything - would be to sign up to Facebook with a different identity, with a name Xxxx doesn't recognise, so he can't ban it from the page. Not sure it's worth the effort...

When Jack and I drove away from our local(-ish) Lidl having bought a couple of those extensions, we imagined Lidl warehouse managers all over the country scratching their heads, wondering why there had been a spike in sales of that particular item in the last couple of days, but no corresponding increase in sales of their Christmas lights... 😁

Sigh, I'm beginning to see why the mixing desk is usually a gated-off area at larger gigs! At least the tablet, being wireless, allows us to walk to the other end of the room when the punters in our corner are too drunk or stupid. 🙄

Christ, even when the band are standing literally three feet from their nose? And chatting and bantering with them between songs? Those must have been some powerful drinks they had... 😮

The Junkyard Dogs play 60s/70s/80s pub rock. Last night we played a small but welcoming pub where most of the audience were enjoying themselves and singing along. That included a group of women in their 30s drinking at the bar. During the third set, one of them comes to me, standing in a corner with the tablet and the setlist, and asks me to 'play' a song whose title now escapes me, but which had nothing to to with the Dogs' repertoire. My first answer in cases like this is always the standard 'sorry but it's not in the setlist', which usually does the trick. This time it didn't work. 'Oh, but I thought you were doing the music!' comes her disappointed reaction. So next time someone asks you at the interval if you like the band, and you are rather irritated to have to say you're actually in it, spare a thought for bands whose members, for some mysterious reason probably to do with punters' alcohol consumption, all actually disappear into thin air while they're playing. 🙄 😁

A few months ago I bought a fishing rod carry case for keeping our two (rarely-used) double bass bows, German and French. It seems to be far stronger and better padded than many of the 'real McCoys' for sale on music shop websites, and it's cheaper.

I think so too. While even simply 5-6 years ago the most likely thing our bands would be asked for was a signed poster, now you have punters coming to the band after the gig and asking for selfies. I have a far better camera than their mobile phones, and could get a much nicer picture of the person with the band, if asked, but I always choose not to offer. The actual experience of getting close to the band and gathering them to pose for the pic is an important part of getting that selfie for the punter. And obviously, they can post it to Facebook or Instagram straight away, without waiting for me to photoshop it so it looks gorgeous, but it's two days late! 😄 Great thread, by the way.

You're absolutely right, it's the Q2n I'm talking about, and the H1n for audio. Apologies, I'll edit my post.

We've got a Zoom Q2n and we're not impressed by the thin, shallow quality of the audio recording - our dedicated audio-only recorder Zoom H1n wipes the floor with it, and then some. Video in the Zoom Q2n is of high quality, though. It tends to be very, very dark when recording in low-light concert mode, but it can be brightened up on the computer if necessary. Video recording in good light, indoors or outdoors, is great. An advantage of the Zoom Q2n is its wide-angle lens, so you can place it on a shelf in a cramped rehearsal room and still be able to film the whole band, if the shelf is at the correct height. However, I recommend buying a clamp to attach the recorder to a convenient piece of furniture and tilt it appropriately - when it's simply sitting on a flat surface it needs to be really very near the edge, or it will show the horizontal surface in the bottom half of the scene. We use it as our backup video recorder when the viewing space is too limited for one of our proper recording cameras.

Please try not to inflate his ego too much... 😉😛😄

Doesn't need to be shared. In fact, ours aren't. Jack and I manage them; the band members text or email us their non available dates, and I enter them in the calendar. Job done.

We use Lemonrock for both The Junkyard Dogs and Damo And The Dynamites. We manage each calendar by asking all members to let us know their unavailable dates as soon as possible, and anything that's left, marked in green, is available for gigs on a first come first served basis. So far we've only needed a dep for one band once. The advantage of those calendars is that landlords and venue bookers can see them too, should they so wish, and know which dates the band can do even before making a call to offer us a gig.