NancyJohnson

I just put some Fender flats on my old Aria Primary...50-100 set. The bass is a 1978 Precision clone, albeit customised...Delanos, one of those Badass II clones bridges. Pleasantly suprised tonally. I thought it would be a total wool-fest, but there's a bit of shizzle. They feel wonderful.

I think because it's marketed as leather dye, it's largely overlooked, but when I started investigating the product was mentioned on several forums. It really does work; do your pre-prep...use metholated spirit as a final degreaser and apply.

Years ago I had a Fender Precision which, in one of my moments, I wired the pickup straight into the output jack; it worked fine really, perhaps a bit brighter than going through the volume and tone pots. I'm wondering whether anyone has a wiring schematic that would allow me to put a small toggle switch on the scratchplate that would allow me to switch from a fully open circuit configuration to one that passes through the volume and tone pots.

Our local Indian (Kabirs, Crowthorne) is without doubt the best Indian restaurant I've eaten at, bar none. If it was nasty, we'd go elsewhere. It's funny, years ago after we moved the village, they were newish and open to suggestion; we'd go in and ask whether certain things would work, they'd cook us non-menu stuff, then they had the menus re-done and these odd mash ups would be on it*. They do a chickpea/paneer combo that is to die for and they'll also produce naan breads with any manner of content combination therein; garlic/chilli, spinach/paneer. *Incidentally, as an aside, we also have an Italian restaurant in the village and alongside all the Italianesque pizza names like Romana and Quattro Stagioni there's a pizza called Ken; a fantastic combination of mozzarella, Gorgonzola, salami and optional chilli and anchovies. I asked once why they had a pizza called Ken and they said they used to have a customer decades ago who would come in and always ask for this combo on a pizza. When he passed away, they thought it was a decent tribute to add this to the menu and name it after him. Nice touch! https://www.don-beni-restaurant.co.uk/menus/main-menu/

I stained the fingerboard on my Lull black using Fiebings Leather Dye. Not sure whether this would suit your purpose, but the board went from a mid-brown/tan to jet black in one application and has stayed black. Caveats should anyone want to try this; mask areas you don't want stained, do not over-apply, wipe off the excess after a minute or two and wear gloves!

Cough. £15.95. Cough.

When I worked for the company that did the wristbands, we (as a company) were offered a limited number of access passes for the weekend; there was generally a draw to see who got the passes and in the main it was a case that old Gladys in the post room had her name pulled first and she would give the passes to her grandchildren (grrr). In ten years, I bagged the passes just once...it was 1999. The irony being the misfortune that followed me that weekend. Friday, oh, I remember it well, around the time Reef were on, I was having a surgery on my left eyelid to remove a big infected lump of goop, so I didn't go. (Ironically, twenty years on, I still get the odd eye-infection and it always seems to emanate from the same part of the lid.) On the Saturday, I broke my glasses in the morning and my eye was too sore and weepy to get a contact lens in, so I didn't go. By the time Sunday came around, I was determined to go. We stood on the side of the stage and watched Lit (who replaced Orgy), Offspring and about half of the RHCP set. I spent a very happy hour in the Big Top watching Fountains Of Wayne. No memory whatsoever of Pitchshifter, or Sick Of It All (I suspect we may have been drinking in the guest area). In hindsight, I can't believe I didn't make the effort to catch Blink182 or Less Than Jake. Ho hum.

And your crack.

Vince Power...I used to have to deal with him about festival business years ago. Company I worked for did the wristtickets. He's actually a really nice bloke.

Well, this ^^^ Mods, you can close the thread now.

I don't like being in front of the camera at all. I always feel that I look bug-eyed and double-chinny, as a consequence a lot of our old band shots were more about me looking up and away. When we videoed stuff, I just asked the camera guy to keep away from me as I really wasn't interested.

Just skimmed through the Foo Fighters set on iPlayer. While I find Dave Grohl both charismatic and eminently likeable, I've never really connected with the band so much, just the singles and a few odd tracks. So. Even a minute or two in and it's pretty apparent that the chasm between The 1975 (sorry to keep picking on them) and the Foo Fighters is vast; we're not talking the top four versus Macclesfield vast, we're talking the top four versus Great Wakering Rovers (nope, me neither until a minute ago) vast. Yes, yes, I know Grohl & Co have been at it for decades, but would Healy & Co ever attain the level of the Foo Fighters in ten years? Twenty? No. Do they have a clutch of tunes that they could put up against Monkey Wrench, Everlong or Times Like These? Nah. Watching a band that I don't really like just knock it out of the park makes me wonder why I still bother; watching a band like The 1975 makes me just want to try harder.

Last night, over a late evening Indian takeaway, my wife asks whether I want to watch anything on TV. 'Nah, not really.' I reply. 'Reading Festival is on iPlayer,' she replies. I shrug and plough into my chicken tikka dhansak. TV goes on. Caught the end of the Royal Blood set. I'm familiar with the whole set up, it's well delivered, but man alive that drummer irritates the hell out of me. Drummers! Know your place and stay behind your kit, eh? Anyhow, moving along, The 1975. I couldn't do more than three songs before heading upstairs to peruse Basschat and Reverb until my wife came up to bed. Look, I listen to a lot of music across many genres (even more so now with a 3 hour roundtrip commute), experiencing a lot of both good and bad in my time, but how a band, with a combination of such limited musicianship and poorly written, arranged and executed material, could ascend to be the festival headliner at not one, but two nights, is beyond me. Surely the expression fooling some of the people, all of the time seems to apply here, or maybe The 1975 are just the best of a bad bunch. I honestly don't know. Maybe the musical landscape has shifted as well; yes, I have been known to bemoan the lack of investment these darn kids commit to compared to what we did pre-Spotify (other digital platforms are available), when music was delivered on tangible formats and choice was really an issue unless you worked in a record shop. Perhaps it's simply just too easy to just dial up The 1975 and put their highest played tracks into a playlist, put them on repeat and hope they play some of them at Reading. All I know is I found them distinctly unlistenable and a bit of me died. Ack, or maybe I'm just an old fart. Probably.

You know, until pretty recently I never really liked Yes at all. They were what I'd classify as my brothers music; he's about ten years older than me and while I was cutting my teeth on The Sweet, Sparks and Mott The Hoople singles and embracing punk, all I could hear from his room was ELP, Yes, Flash, Deep Purple, The Nice. While I wouldn't say I was a huge fan, I have listened to everything and the only album I go back to infrequently is Fragile and even then only the 2003 reissue with the ten minute cover of America on it. Incidentally, I'll throw in a bit of trivia here. Years ago - late 70s - someone I knew asked around to see whether anyone was interested in an ushering job at one of the Yes shows at Wembley. It was the one in the round, with the revolving stage. From memory, they did an early and late show (I saw both and the soundcheck in between). I had a horrific migraine and got horribly ill; we missed the last trains on account of having to ensure the venue was cleared and we managed to thumb a number of lifts to get home. I puked twice on the roadside en route. Happy days.

If you give a damn, Pete has just posted a new song. Just need a Chelsea win today and I'll afford myself a glass of wine this evening. http://petevuckovic.com/tracks?fbclid=IwAR3JO-f1wVl6cb9eRWWfszH9wHE_x_w9fZzzSUVGERwl293z8OPPRvGh1WI

I didn't like the first five or six albums at all, but I'd concur with a few posts that the early-middle period stuff (Out Of Time/Automatic For The People) was listenable. My dad died around the time Everybody Hurts came out and my mum took some comfort from that track, so I bought her Automatic For The People. Did a few long US road trips around the period these two came out and they were on the radio constantly, so you just bought them. Different times. I bought Monster and New Advertures In Hi-Fi but never listened to NAiHF all the way through, after this I left the party. I recently put together a Spotify playlist...my interest re-sparked for some reason or another. Never listened to it though.

There's a Banana.Boat.Song in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

On the subject of Jess Tinsley, wouldn't her phone have operated Google Maps without a signal? These phone thingies do have GPS circuitry under the cover...

Reading the OP, I think I was more staggered at the expectation for you to do a 90-120 minute set of original material! Christ on a bike, most of the venues I played only wanted a 40 minute set maximum. Concerning the arrangements, when I was doing the bulk of the writing (95%+), I was guilty of changing things around constantly until such a time as I was happy with how the material sounded, but this was only on new material, never what we were going to be rolling out live the following weekend. In the scheme of things, the singer has the least to worry about as he's not playing the actual music, drummer next. Sometimes a vocalist seems to think we can just read their mind and that it's easy to make changes and rememberthem. It isn't. Tell him that.

Could I make a little suggestion? If the numbers aren't so great this year, could we all just congregate in the main hall rather than the little side room and the one where me and Gary did the shoot out last year? Might just keep it a bit more tighter? Also on the next gear update, can someone just amend my entry...the Aguilars were sold a few months back. Thanks muchly. 07. @NancyJohnson Lull JAXT4 & Lull JAX/NRT5, Darkglass A/O Head, Barefaced Big One (the #000)

You'd think, eh? This is the UK mindset. Businesses know that prospective buyers are prepared to shell out more once the carrot has been dangled. If it's more than £1,800 they can kiss my dimpled arssssse and I'll put the swag towards a holiday.

That switch engages the anti-hornet circuit.

Didn't you see the hornet stuck in Rudy's barnet?

I think I'd like to see what I'm buying rather than photos. Andertons will have them soon enough. Possibly.