EliasMooseblaster

Yeah, I've had this a few times. First case was as early as 2001/2 - my sister and I went to see Mercury Rev and agreed it was a great show but the audience was an absolute pain in the proverbial. There was a bloke a few rows ahead of us who just put his feet up on the chairs in front and spent the night texting people. I guess this was still the era before cameras were so ubiquitous on phones, and approximately 50% of audiences felt compelled to film the entire gig on the damned things, so at that point the little backlight on a monochrome phone screen was still quite distracting! Ian Siegal was probably the first person I saw who challenged an audience. I think it was the Charlotte St Blues club, somewhere they had a sort of VIP area up on a balcony. It just seemed to be stuffed with people intent on talking over the band. "Sorry if the music's a bit loud for you, back there," he sniped in between songs, "you know, you come to a live music event, you expect a bit of peace and quiet, naturally..."

A few thoughts spring to mind: 1. Duff/no shielding - how easy are the controls to access? If you can get inside easily this can be fixed relatively easy. 2. Loose earth wire - typically in contact with the bridge, but can work loose. 3. Do you have separate tone controls for each pickup, or one master? I've had a capacitor fail on a P bass before, which led to a rather prominent buzz. Could be this problem if you've only got the one tone control...or both could have failed, but that's less likely!

One might even say they recorded some of them with[out] a little help from their friends... I'll get my coat.

Stacia? (Or "Lady Stacia" in some of the liner notes) The tale I've heard is that she approached Messrs Brock and Turner about joining the band, and just said "I dance." So at her first gig, both the band and audience were equally astonished when she took all her clothes off. I remain very glad that Bez didn't go that far with the Mondays...

I nearly chewed a finger off reading that one - what a missed opportunity! Perhaps the balance of available musicians was different back then, but drummers who can play with groove and taste seem to be like hen's teeth these days. Maybe I've just had to play with one too many drummers who aspired to play "just like Bonham," by which they essentially meant "going at the kit like a p***ed-off blacksmith," but I've come to find few things more satisfying than locking in with a genuinely good one.

I can see that being quite effective as a stage prop! (Which album would she have been touring then?) I can see that working for certain styles of music, but I can only imagine it would have a horrible effect on more "old-school" rock or blues groups...that said, I've definitely worked with a few drummers in those genres who would have benefitted from a bit more practice with a click! (Or from paying more attention to their bass player...)

I think you might have answered your own question there - I'm sure it'll generate a separate thread in and of itself, but the sight of a clip-on tuner visibly poking out of your guitar's headstock during a song seems to be about as polarising as having a music stand on-stage!

Not from the pedal, no. I tend to use the volume on the guitars for that!

...indeed, indeed, and that's assuming we can agree on what those signature sounds are! I know some people like a Jazz best when both pickups are matched, or with the balance skewed towards the bridge; personally I think they sound best with the neck on full and the bridge backed off a little. Ditto the 'bird. Even with the simplicity of a P, it's probably only a matter of time before the rounds/flats debate rears its head...!

I've been using a Pitchblack+ for a few years now: http://www.korg.com/us/products/tuners/pitchblack_plus/index.php Granted, it's about twice the size of a regular pitchblack, but having your A/B and tuner combined in the same pedal is really quite convenient! (Plus it has an option to daisy chain power out to other pedals - I only use an overdrive and a fuzz on stage, so it's more than adequate for these purposes.)

There's no harm in doing it back-to-front....I started on bass, and then took a more active interest in guitar a year or two later. Being able to "read" a rhythm guitarist's fretting hand has proven to be a boon at a lot of open mics, jams, and those nightmare scenarios where your clueless mate has asked you to play bass at his gig and starts playing songs he's never even shown you before. But aside from those situations, it isn't strictly necessary. I think the guitar just naturally piqued my curiosity as I became a bit more confident with its larger brother.

Chronic bender and dusty-ender, me...

^ This. I can't stand the group's music, but there's no denying he used to be a bit of a genius in terms of self-marketing. I use the past tense, because the last time I saw him making headlines was because he'd used an interview to make a crass and (likely deliberately) offensive comment about people with mental health issues. Sure, it worked, it got people talking about him, but it seemed like a really cheap shot from a guy who used to be ahead of the curve in terms of marketing his band.

Probably Paul Stanley, based on the stories our drummer has told us in the past (he's a huge fan and seems to know far more about them than one might consider healthy). I do wonder why this rumour hasn't become stadium rock's equivalent to the digs about David Gilmour playing most of the Pink Floyd basslines towards the end of the Roger Waters era.

Likewise, I was very pleased that the "two years' free service" they always talk about at the till is always properly honoured. They were really helpful when the preamp was on the blink in my Corvette a couple of years ago - sadly, compared to some other retailers (not just of guitars), it seemed like a nice touch that they phoned me up to apologise for a bit of a delay because they'd had to order in a replacement part! Unfortunately I think I might have been in there too often - I phoned ahead last time to see about part-exchanging a bass, and I think the guy recognised my voice...

So very true - I haven't had the pleasure of trying a JHS/Vintage bass, but I do have one of their SG guitar copies. About ten years ago the shoulder strap on its gig bag failed and it fell, face-first, onto a tube platform. Obviously I was upset at the time, but I'd have been mortified if it had been a real Gibson, or a high-end bass. But apart from cosmetic damage, the only thing that actually broke was the pickup switch. Easily replaced, and I've since been into shops to try Epi and Gibson versions and come away slightly nonplussed. If the £600+ version doesn't make me feel that much more inspired than my beaten-up sub-£200 version, I'll keep playing the Vintage and hang on to my money! (You never know when I might get bad GAS for a Sandberg again, after all...)

Oh, that really is quite lovely.

You're quite correct, but if I may just plug in my hair-splitting device, it's not individual groups sounding like their heroes that I object to. It's more the fact that so many rock groups seem to be emerging now who all seem to think that there's space for yet another Led Zeppelin soundalike, and I worry that none of them are trying to doing anything new with that format. I still enjoy that kind of music, I just worry that if all these groups can aspire to is "an authentic-sounding revival of that '70s sound" (for example), the genre is going to lapse into a coma after fifty years of staring back into its own navel.

I'm not sure when we started doing it, but for the longest time we've always had a mic and a laptop to hand. Typically our guitarist or I write a song alone, and email a demo 'round. Then we'll get together and have a few attempts at the song; once everybody's happy we'll plug the mic in and do a shonky recording of it as an aide memoir. It's particularly useful for our singer to have something to take away so she can work on the melody, phrasing, etc, and it allows us to review our own parts, and pick up on any bits that, away from the visceral thrill of the jam, do or don't really work!

I had this at a gig recently. It wasn't a deliberate act, just an unfortunate error that the guitarist put the capo on the 2nd fret rather than the 3rd. I was used to singing this particular song in Bb, and something didn't sound right...a quick look down at the guitar neck confirmed my suspicions, and I spent the next three minutes trying to shift the vocal line down a semitone whilst still trying to capture the gentle, summery wistfulness that this song is supposed to evoke. I wouldn't have minded so much except that I was also the guitarist in this situation...

"Well, Edmund, it's just that while Baldrick and I were searching through the bass guitars, we found one...pfft! ...shaped almost exactly like...a thingy!" "I trust you have removed this hilarious item?" "No, my lord, I had a cunning plan to put it up for sale on ye internet, where all the world might marvel at it from the comfort of their electronic terminals."

Not quite sure why that's reminded me, but one of the most parochial examples I've come across: any David Byrne fans here? I couldn't help but notice the radio edit of Like Human Do (known to everybody who ever installed a copy of Windows XP) replaces the line "I never watch TV, except when I'm stoned," with the rather more banal "we're eating off plates and we kiss with our tongues." Just seems like needless censorship to me, but then I guess Weezer had to similarly censor Hash Pipe to get it played on the wireless...

If memory serves, I think it was Messrs Barker and Corbett who got away with "A sol, a sol, a soldier I would be, Two pis, two pis, two pistols at my knee, For cu, for cu, for curiosity, To fight for the old count, fight for the old count, fight for the old country..."

I had this same sinking feeling at the first Ramblin' Man festival. I saw a couple of excellent new bands that weekend, but I also saw a glut of new rock bands who just seemed to be playing rock for the sake of rock. There's only so many times you can watch a guitarist walk up to the wedges, to open a song by belting out a crunchy pentatonic riff as a predictably turgid 4/4 beat starts up, before you get bored stiff. I'm not saying music needs to get to Scott Walker levels of abstract to be interesting, but some of these bands need to draw on some other inspiration than Led Zeppelins I through IV or I'll be scared off tuning into Planet Rock for good.

Certainly the *right* budget mics will stand you in good stead. The cheap small-diaphragm condenser I bought from Maplins showed its limitations pretty quickly. On the other hand, the Behringer C-1 (a large diaphragm condenser) sounds excellent. It won't compete with a Neumann, but nor will anything else that only cost 40-odd quid. (It was good enough to do an acoustic solo EP, in any case...)