uk_lefty

It explains why I didn't laugh... And why it felt like a student rip off of Ricky Gervais, much like the rest of James Corden's career

I'm not sure they're that bright

My wife caught that bit and agreed Ricky Gervais must have written it for him.

Hated: Hohner PJ. bought off eBay for next to nothing with a hard case. It was just a rubbish bass but think I made profit. I also got a Brice six string off Rondo music, that was completely characterless and a big heavy lump of woods that probably shouldn't be used in serious instrument making. I hold out hope that their SX brand is infinitely better. Not hated but didn't get on with a Warwick Steamer LX. I wish I had it now just to check it wasn't my lack of technique at the time. Also sold recently my Hohner B2A "cricket bat". I had the version with active EMG's and it sounded amazing, and had the sexiest of 80's vinyl semi hard cases that zipped up! Now my band are playing more and more 80's tracks I kinda wish the string spacing on that bass had been wider and I'd still have it. It was just too narrow for me, much prefer fender string spacing. Had I not recently fallen in love with and taken home a Stingray I'd probably be having a Status built to give me that headless fix.

Watched last night... Didn't think it was a deliberate send up but then again they did do a "comedy" car insurance ad or something a while back. There was a lot of David Brent in the singer, always searching to say something profound and coming out with bullocks. The drummer has massive sibling envy, talking in disbelief that Elton John's manager dropped him when the band split but kept on the singer... D'uhhhh!!! If it was a comedy it wasn't that funny and it mixed in too much of the real "tragedy" with their sister passing. But if it was a documentary they should have made more of the record label leaving them with nowt within days of it ending. The gig bit was very odd, and the whole set up with the session music's who weren't washed up 80's session players but the dad's of some of the forty plus year old women who still s team for the Goss brothers. All round odd.

I literally got plopped on. The in laws have an old cat who can be quite affectionate. He was curled up iny lap and when he get up to leave he left behind a nugget. On the music front we played 15th December and got asked if we were available for NYE. Guitarist is away so didn't get to discuss further sadly. Can't believe the venue was leaving it so late, they must have been plopped on.

Like I tell my staff, don't bring me a problem without a proposed solution!

Nope. Just bought a new USA three band. Big, full bottom end. Loads of punch and clarity. Particularly enjoy boasting the mids with the bass and treble flat. I played a Ray34 on a shop a few yrs back and didn't see/ hear anything distinctive about it, but the real thing is excellent IMO.

One of the reasons I bought my Sire was to see how I'd get on with active EQ. I had 2 band active basses in the past and always preferred them passive. With the Sire I spent a long time playing it straight through to the amp with the amp EQ off and no EQ from pedals. However, I tended to just have a tad of bass boost, a tad of treble boost and leave both the mid knobs flat. I'm looking for advice on how you guys get something from these mid knobs? I've tweaked around a lot and not found a sound I like, but then again I don't know well enough how they interact with each other and with the bass and treble EQ. Any tips gratefully received.

I know everyone wants a Helix but they're very expensive, so here's my thoughts on a pedal released in 2008 that you can find second hand. My last multi FX was bought in 2000 so I know tech has moved on. I took a punt on a Boss GT10B sold for a great price on this forum. For a multi FX idiot like me it's a bit overwhelming the sheer amount of stuff this can do in terms of programming and assigning pedals to do different tasks. However, it's well set out and there's Windows based software that can help. Also the 159 page manual (that doesn't include the four page list of presets) is very easy to follow. So, on reading reviews I head "the presets are unusable". That's not true. There are unusable presets, yes, but there are many EQ and amp SIM effects that are very useable. I played a five string jazz for some funky stuff at the opening of an ice rink using the "level 24 slap" preset, great. I played fretless on a gig the other night and used some "British pop fretless" preset and it was great. With each preset you can bring in two extra effects, e.g. add drive and or chorus by pressing the CTRL1 and CTRL2 pedals and also use the expression pedal as either a volume or wah. Very handy. You can have two parallel effects chains that you can switch between or blend. You can put the effects in any order in the chain. There's a lot going on and the display makes seeing what is happening where very easy. I've still not dedicated the full amount of time I need to yet but I feel comfortable with the unit. I've already programmed the tuner how I want it, so I have the tuner come on by tapping the pedal that denotes which patch I'm on for a second time and I get bypassed tuner, then I mute with the expression pedal. But you can programme the tuner in different ways if you don't think that's logical for you. Impressive that they have put in that kind of thought. What I need to learn next is creating my own effects. There's a few ways to do this: edit a preset, use "ez tone", create from scratch without ez tone, or download from an online resource. People say the synth effects are unusable. I agree. I've never had a pedal with a decent bass synth sound, to my liking anyway. The pedal is BIG. Very BIG. But it's a lot of tech in one place. It can do so much more than I will ever need but it's good to know that the options are there. It can do crazy stuff like make your single coil bass sound like a Stingray etc. Allegedly but I've never got in to it that deeply. Overall if you can't afford a Helix and you're not sold on the Zoom then these are an excellent option. I'm glad I got this over the ME250B. Like most of these things though the more time you put in to learning what it can do the more you will get from it. The tech may be ten years old but 10yrs old and Windows based is pretty much where I stopped learning about tech myself so it has a very familiar feel to it.

I guess to a certain generation their parents were teens when "I should be so lucky came out" and they were growing up through "can't get you out of my head" so legend... Not to the jazz/ rock/ funk crowd here but to many, many people probably. I saw Danni mime for twenty odd mins back in 2002. She was very, very unconvincing. I'm sure she'd be decent company over a cup of coffee, or even in a lapdancing bar if you believe tabloid stories from when she was a judge on X Factor, but I wouldn't watch a "performance" of hers if it was happening in my garden.

Well this was unexpected! A tax rebate, a few things going well and a quick trip to Denmark street led me to acquiring a brand new, 3 EQ USA stingray! it's a bass I'd always lusted after, but like so many you see your hero's play it but you don't know if it's going to be practical for yourself. I played a Sterling by Ernie Ball a few years ago and didn't think much of it. This USA Stingray has such a punchy and rounded sound, it's like a recorded and processed bass sound but coming from your fingers. As I said to the guys in the shop you can drive yourself mad looking at a plethora of options online, sometimes you just want to play something and go "yep! That's the one". I played a USA Jazz too and really enjoyed that, but felt the Stingray was better suited to playing live in my covers band which is leaning towards becoming an 80's cover band. So here it is. I also have to say the guys in Wunjo are superb. No pressure sales, gave me a good trade in on my old jazz bass too. Top marks for customer service!

Lots of con artists have big houses and material things. And I think it was he himself who said about film rights, a film company could easily make this story without him, his name or his permission. If it was a film about him, with his participation, I think it would have a similar audience to his gigs, there's just not enough drama in the story yet unless you really got creative with it. I bet it would star Jack Black too, which is another massive "No" from me!

Graceland. Love it. Different grooves, good to listen to if you find yourself repeating the same style of licks and fills and get you in to a new headspace.

But at least one of them made them pay a booking fee or such like by making them go to a cash machine and withdraw £400 or whatever it was? Surely these venues are a bit more sophisticated that working off the promise of sold tickets and they have a fallback to protect against this kind of thing, like a contractual obligation to pay a fee of some sort. I'm not saying they weren't treated shabbily, lying in any way is bad, but they won't have been out of pocket by more than their minimum booking fee, surely? Otherwise you'd get the local secondary school bands phoning up and booking all the time!

There was me thinking it was printed on the side of a bus a few years ago for a political campaign...

It's the kind of thing an angry teenager would dream up and then get bored and drop after the monotony of creating another fake Facebook account or another fake web page. I'm not impressed that it can be done, he didn't get himself booked on "top of the pops" he booked himself in to venues he had to pay for, something anyone can do. I've read in other threads about bands where the BL has decided to create fake reviews etc, this lad just took it too far. The hiding of phones around his house and so on... He's a complete fantasist. As the writer says, you still never know what's true or not. He may get as far as being on "celebrity" big brother with the offspring of a past-it soap star and whichever washed up former public figure can't afford their divorce and rehab bills, but he is not going to be a successful artist. Really if you wanted to do a stunt like this, and do it well, you should get yourself a good publicist and media company!

Gigged my "upside down" version of this last night. Really comfortable to play for long gigs, so flexible with the EQ. A great bass to have

I remember trying to buy an album by "the music" back in the early 2000s. Their single "take the long road and walk it" was great, I thought at the time, but there was no way in heck to find their album

That's a pretty awesome band name.

Friends of Dorothy.

I was about to audition for a band over ten years ago. I'd seen an ad on party sounds, I think. They talked a good game and said they'd done European tours, went on about welcoming people in and being open minded and accepting and so on... So I'm thinking that's great, they aren't expecting a session pro. So I look up the band name to try and find evidence of this European tour.... The only musically related online article I found was a blog by a musician. Long story short and unbeknownst to me, the band name was a coded way of asking a man you don't know if he is a homosexual. Being a younger and less open minded chap I politely declined the audition saying I don't think I'm the right fit for them. When they asked why I revealed I had just found out what the band name meant and I don't think I'd be comfortable being in that band and made some joke about being from a northern backwater town. I received back a lecture on my small mindedness and how places don't make people.... The whole thing was a very bizzare experience and left me feeling puzzled and slightly ashamed, though I was only ever polite to the person I interacted with.

I used to get this in an old band, usually "just play twelve bar blues" yeah thanks but when you're just blaring out a solo I don't know where you're going next to support it. Or it would be the farking Status Quo medley. I know it's only three chords but which three... Oh you're now in a new song, great. It's demoralising and not a constructive use of time if you're not bringing everyone along. Maybe you suggest that either you jam around a structure so everyone can competently join in, and solo, or you don't bother with unstructured jams. It may be the height of guitar-god look how great I am wankery but if they can't explain the structure they're just bluffing. If they're not willing to then they're not good band band mates. Maybe you need to say words to the effect "I can't support your self indulgent ego build exercise without the most basic instruction so you can either look like a tit with a full band behind you or look like a selfish tit who excludes their bandmates, your choice"