NickD

Ditto for London!☺️

It is, and it's pretty intelligent too. Work out how far you're happy for it to go and set that as your max limit.

And regarding that Nikon, turn the Active D-Lighting thing off (or it's lowest setting at least - I forget). You don't really want to recover detail from the shadow, it will be noisy and distracting anyway. Embrace the contrast. Look at the best concert pics, and they're often a kind of chiaroscuro style.

Had the D7000 way back, the 50mm 1.8D works beautifully on it, really snappy focus, but you would need to be close. I was never hugely impressed with its high ISO performance though, so I'd be looking to keep it as low as possible. Obviously you can clean images up later if you're shooting RAW

I don't often go full manual for gigs. I tend to go for shutter priority. Given the lack of light and keeping my ISO low, the aperture is always forced wide, so I can judge what's needed just based on movement. Always spot metering too. If I'm after full stage shots I'll go manual, and matrix metering but generally I'm after portraits. How far away will you be, what kit etc?

I learned everything I know by reading musician autobiographies. I took a great deal of information from George, the bass player from the Artful Badgers. 😂

Unless something comes up between now and then it's Mike Stern at the Venue in November. Jimmy Haslip on bass, happy days!

I skipped the Bass Show this year, but caught Eric Gales' trio with Cody and Nick Hayes at Nells in Kensington a couple of years ago. Honestly the best 3 piece you could imagine. I was gutted when he came back this year with a different line-up, they were a phenomenal blend

True!

Never someone I would deliberately set out to see, I caught him twice accidentally at festivals two weeks apart a couple of years ago and he was blinding. Dumb trivia - How long must be one of the very few songs written about a bass player!

They do say that getting a record banned is very lucrative.... I look forward to releasing our new single 'Doing the Queen up the 'arris, while the ghost of Princess Di tickles my plums with a phantom feather' next week.

Mike Read mostly. Which considering he wrote and released (to limited success, obviously) the 'UKIP Calypso', is a bit of a cheek!

Sid Vicious couldn't play bass for stinky poo... That could have been me. ... Except I was about 7. 🤣

I was lucky enough to catch Uli Roth, completely by accident in a scratch band with Jack Bruce and Clive Bunker (It was billed as the Scorpions ). The set consisted of early Scorpions stuff, Cream tunes and his solo stuff. He's a phenomenal guitarist.

They're tools, but I know if I look after my tools they'll look after me.

Another shout for TransferWise. Paid for my last Maruszcyck with it, I think it cost me about 4 quid to do it IIRC.

It's your lucky day!😊 There's now a pretty long 'This is Tool' playlist that went up at the weekend.

Oooh... Caught him guesting with Gong a couple of years before Daevid Allen returned to the mothership. He, and they, were brilliant!

Got to be John Paul Jones. Classic tone, classic lines, classic songs!

Beautiful... That's how a P Bass should look.

It's not just good for the price, the quality is excellent at less than half the cost of the usual suspects. Put it this way, my Sei now lives in it, and that's a bass I wouldn't take any chances with

I think a lot of it is practice. I realised that if I put anywhere near the same effort into it as I do to my bass playing in terms of reading, analysing the work of lyricists I like, and looking critically at what I write, it would improve a lot. I don't think people approach it with the same seriousness as they do their instrument, I certainly didn't... Hey I can talk, been doing it for years, I must be able to write... Lol... Nope! Throw things down though, then go back to it. There'll be parts where you like what you're saying, but not how you're saying it, just think of another way to say it. Then there'll be parts where what you're saying sounds flowery, patronising, preachy or just stupid, again just try to rethink it. Be prepared to change things again when you hold them up to a song. I've had to make changes because some words, or combinations thereof, don't sound good when sung. Don't be too hard on yourself though, remember that there are some really great, successful songs out there with some awful lyrics ... Stupid words, terrible rhymes, but for some reason they strike a chord with people. That's probably another thread though.🤣

I love their strings. When my Jake arrived I emailed Adrian to ask what it was wearing and ordered some more, they worked out great value compared to my usual sets. Bass Direct stock them now so it's even more straightforward. I've got a bit of a backlog now though, as they keep their tone for ages, so I'm not changing them very often.