EliasMooseblaster

Happy Jack made the very good point about the people who just mumble into the mic between songs - those cases may as well just be "dead air" between songs, for all the good they do! Whoever gets the job needs to lean into the role, become a bit of a circus ringmaster, if you like. Loud, clear voice, as if you're doing theatre (dahling!), and if you keep it short and punchy, you keep the audience engaged. Have some good lines planned ahead of time if it helps. If you can nail it, I can't imagine the band would sustain their objections. If you need inspiration, Pete Townshend did it very well around The Who's creative peak. Look up one of their (better) live recordings (Isle of Wight 1970 is a good starting place) and skip to the breaks between the songs. It's often daft, even a bit camp, but it helps to maintain the energy.

Sold an active PA speaker to Tim at the end of last week. Thoroughly nice bloke to do business with!

For me, it's The Who's live performance of Pinball Wizard from their IoW 1970 set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J03yCE15rg Listen to the buildup; it's only 20 seconds in. But that moment where The Ox's bass blasts in (filling in for the distorted guitar stings from the studio version) rarely fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. They also have an entertaining effect if you put it on for unsuspecting friends who usually looked shocked and exclaim, "holy s**t, is that the bass?!"

Ooh, I'll happily take that comparison - thank you most kindly!

So I popped a new single out today, and you can hear it here, if you're so inclined:

That's a proper earworm, that! Nice stuff - and as several said before me, that bass sounds lovely.

Similar situation with The 'Oo, from what I gather - Roger Daltrey has frequently admitted to any disputes descending into fisticuffs, especially in the early days. It sounds like there was some camaraderie between Moon and Entwistle, but otherwise they just learned to get along on tour and then went their separate ways until the job forced them back together.

I wonder if he got a nasty shock at the post office counter! Glad you weren't ripped off, in any case*. *sorry, no pun intended

I can see the sense in this. Unfortunately the oft-misunderstood adage that "wisdom comes with age" leads a lot of people to calcify their views and positions and expect people to respect their "wisdom" just because they're older. I much prefer Frank Zappa's adage that "your mind is like a parachute. It's no good if you don't open it."

This does seem to be the root cause of so many of these problems, doesn't it? As useful as I find YouTube for finding interesting music, I'm very aware that its programmers' main aim is to keep me on the site as long as possible. So many problems around dangerous conspiracy theories, misogyny, racism, and all the other -isms and -phobias seem to be accelerated by the way it keeps feeding its users more videos without any serious checks on the information they contain. I can very easily see how you could start by watching a balanced, well-argued video about downsides to immigration, and be only a few clicks away from a massive rabbit hole that leads you to believe there's a satanic child abuse cabal meeting in the basement of a New York pizza restaurant, and you absolutely must march in there with your gun, demanding answers. Point being: there's an awful lot of responsibility that could be arguably dropped at the feet of the companies who own and maintain these platforms. Of course they scream "censorship" whenever anyone suggests they should do more to regulate their content - it would cost them money! But like gambling or tobacco before them, there's surely got to come a point where they meet a serious reckoning regarding the number of lives their laissez-faire approach has derailed - or even cut short.

Find a pretext to message them asking for another photo of a certain detail. If they can provide it then at least you know the bass exists...

I'd be inclined to stick with out for now - I completely understand your discomfort, but you've also pointed out that, away from his poorly-researched politics, he's a nice person. As long as his views aren't tipping him over into acts of violence or harassment, you may even be able to work on his better nature and very-gently-and-ever-so-indirectly steer him towards questioning some of the crazier stuff that he's reposting. In theory, there's hope for everyone!

It's a horrible position to be in. On the one hand, it isn't your job alone to talk people down from these extreme positions; on the other hand, if none of us challenge it then it just gets validated elsewhere and the problem grows. Even if you can't see the change from your own efforts, maybe it's enough to help them plant the first seed of doubt that might germinate further in the future, if enough people encourage them to actually think about the rhetoric they're repeating.