NancyJohnson

Sometimes you just have to take a direct route and be the voice of reason; the thread has been viewed 350 times, I'm sure there's many who probably went, 'Really?' when they read it. Perhaps it's just the way I'm wired, but there's little point in skirting around things, always be as direct as possible.

I honestly don't get these type of what's-your-favourite-colour? type threads. OP has used a pick previously, but is asking for plectrum recommendations and how to use them. What follows will inevitably be dozens on well-intended posts suggesting plectrums of various makes/thicknesses etc. Come on! The OP purports to have been born in 1972. They're 52-ish. It's like riding a bike or tying your shoelaces. If you've used one previously, you know what you've used, whether you were happy with it and you simply don't forget. Please.

It wasn't huge by any stretch; dedicated Gibson/Fender/Rickenbacker, plus the usual areas. There were a few regulars; the guy that came up with the Badbird bridge for old Thunderbirds, a German guy that had a phenomenal amount of Gibson basses

There's probably a handful of members here dip into The Last Bass Outpost once in a while. Seems like the site is in trouble or it's the end. Database errors for the last few days. Anyone know what's happening?

I'll admit that lack of appropriate band drew me along the same lines; it gets about a half hour use a week I reckon - I'll just fire it up when dinner is on the make or when someone says, 'Ooh, what the hell is that?'

Interestingly(?), for the last three hours or so, we've been listening to a combination of the deluxe version and the 30th Anniversary editions of Definitely, Maybe. All in all, about 70 tracks. This is the first listen in 20/25 years, but obviously some of the material is burnt into my psyche. It's odd, there's posts just about everywhere effectively deriding the band as talentless oiks with a whining vocalist; that's as maybe, but honestly the album (and bonus stuff) is pretty rocking...ok sure, inevitably there's tracks that don't work for me, but it's much better than I remember it at the time. There's so many hooks going on.

Dependent on the number of holes in the body, John East kit is by far the most flexible.

I know businesses are in business to make £££, but the handling fee element is bonkers. Handling fees, facilities fees, booking fees etc. When all this was fields, I remember my dad driving me up to Hammersmith Odeon to get Rush tickets for their first tour here. From memory, centre stalls, ten rows back, £3.50 or something. You just paid the face value to the lady behind the window. Didn't it used to be that when a band planned a tour, they set the ticket price based on venue hire/size, transport, crew wages, hire etc.? Now there's just a whole other element where jackals like Ticketmaster/etc are just creaming off even more from ticket buyers; for what? There's very little human interaction involved. The sad thing is that buyers just suck it up and you know it's going to get worse. It's not exclusively Oasis, every band (even my band were subject to this on advance sales).

I used to have a bit of a reputation in my immediate group of mates as being the go-to guy for, 'Have you heard anything new recently?' Like millions of other people I'd trawl Napster/Easynews trying to find stuff. Gigs, little record shops, obscure snippets in Alternative Press etc. You might find an album on Dischord with two decent tracks on it, but the hunt was half the fun. Even now, I favour US indie station W-EQX as my preferred listening; as recently as two days ago heard two great bands (Wishy and Bella's Bartock).

Just reading some of the comments here about dynamic ticket prices and people having hotel bookings cancelled (only for the same bookings to reappear at three times the original price), is pretty abhorrent. While I love tech and the general ease of purchasing pretty much anything online now, I do pine for the old days where you could just rock up to the Odeon or Rainbow and choose your seat the day the tickets went on sale. Worst case, buy from a tout for a few quid more on the night. It just all seems so quaint. Christ, I lost count if the gigs I attended where we got front two rows because we made some effort. I just don't get how Ticketmaster seems to have the monopoly on tickets and even then their online service in unable to cope, even at three times the price. Bands like Pearl Jam went up against them and now they're cozy bedfellows. Much as people abhor Amazon, they seem to have their 💩 together, so maybe they should get into the ticket racket.

After a couple more abortive attempts, you'll be pleased to know that I've passed everything over to Julian Mullen in Reading. I've given up on installing the bloody thing.

Said mate from earlier gets his live Smiths fix via The Smyths. If Morrissey came a knocking for a backing band, what would y'do?

As musicians and music fans, we just want to cling onto and experience something akin to how we felt back then, be this watching Japan at Dingwalls in 1978/79 or The Heartbreakers at the Roxy. Love or hate Oasis, you know that if they can keep it together it's going to be off the scale and good luck to them. I'm not a big fan per se (admittedly they do have a decent back catalogue), but I'm quite interested in how it's going to pan out. I'd rather this reunion than the unending stuff like Kiss, Motley Crue etc. These bands are well past their sell by date.

I don't follow Morrissey in any respect so I haven't got clue what's been said historically. Certainly from my mate, old Stephen is a bit acerbic, but by and large, if there's a photo of him and narrative I generally scroll past it...beyond the legal/royalty case everything related to The Smiths is somewhat of a grey area for me. Even from what I do know, I'd concur working with him would be difficult at best.

A bit of a curio...perhaps something a builder could utilise. The Charlie Hunter instrument is stunning. https://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/original-novax-8-string-neck-un-used-un-fretted-3-bass-and-5-guitar-charlie-hunter/1210287594?&utm_source=Chrome&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_content=app_android&utm_medium=Social

Never a Smiths/Morrissey fan, so much so that if I was on Pointless I'd only be able to name one song (Panic) from the entire output. I've got a mate though, big fan; literally lives and breathes them. When people say they know every word of every song, this is the guy. (Believe me, we tested it over dinner one night.). He knows of Morrissey's alleged political alignment(s) but the overriding thing is the music, that trumps everything and is more disappointed that they just don't lick their wounds and do it for their fanbase. While there may be bad blood between them, because someone is the polar opposite of your political ideology doesn't necessarily make them a bad person, does it?

Inevitably it's happening and honestly, good luck to them. The thing is, knowing when to stop. Keep it civil, do the tour, put out a live album/DVD and quit again before it gets too old. Closure.

The seller has had some really nice stuff previously, some very tasty Hamers, vintage Yamaha and Ibanez.

I stripped an Ibanez Roadster a few years back, no idea what the wood is... used black Fiebings leather dye. Didn't have any real issues with the application; I did a couple of coats, applied with a clean rag, and lightly sanded between these as the fluid lifted the grain. Like you, it was the finishing over that that was the issue; there was a bit of rubbing back. There were a couple of patches where it seemed to be a real struggle to get the dye to take on the body, so rub back, reapply. Eventually I just clear coated it several times without knocking it back between coats. I let it dry for a few days, spray again. After several coats, orange peel was minimal, sanded back and applied a final coat. Used some Crimson compound to try and bring out a shine (suspect T-cut might have been cheaper!!).

I'm not going to post links, just search on Gumtree. Hounslow.

Sun is out, I'm prepping for dinner tonight. I have a 30-track Mariachi collection on shuffle. Planets aligning etc. Beautiful.

Me and the wife.

It was my late mother who took me up to Denmark Street for the first time, one of the infrequent trips up to her old stomping grounds with me in tow; she obviously felt it was important for me to experience this place as well as as much as possible within the Oxford St, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Ave, Park Lane and Piccadilly pentangle. I reckon I was 13 tops and going into one of the guitar shops (along with Desolation Boulevard) was probably the reason I wanted to play.

I'm listening to a soundboard recording of David Sylvian at Hammersmith Odeon, 1988. A friend of a friend worked on the tour and knowing I was a bit of a Japan fan, procured this for me years ago. I've never listened to it until today. Pretty spectacular, I've heard worse live albums.

Years ago I went to a photography exhibition and in one of the photos saw the name Nancy Johnson plastered all over some prescription pill-pots in one of the photos, I just thought, 'Ooh, cool name,' and wrote it down. As part of a small project for coding websites, I purchased the co.uk and set about all manner of goofery about a fake band called Nancy Johnson and their ridiculous escapades touring Europe and the USA (I think you can still go to the internet archive and pull up most of it). Roll forward a couple of years and by jingo, I'm in a band, we decide to adopt the name Nancy Johnson and off we go. Where things get stupid are that promoters are reading the website and think we're something we're not AND once in a while promoters seem to thing Nancy is a real person and actually ask us where our singer is. Inevitably, the line up changed (much like Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees) but I was the constant throughout until I bailed because of personality/musical differences. During the interim period, the new singer decides that we need a new name and adopts Who Killed Nancy Johnson?, which somehow reflects a change in musical styling from a fun pop/punk band to something a little more aggressive. If I'm brutally honest I wasn't really a fan of the WKNJ? rebrand. At the point of my departure, they carried on playing material I'd written/co-written and went through three bassists until calling it quits last year. Of the name Nancy Johnson, I don't know whether ownership comes into it to be honest, it's just a name, but in my little world I suppose that name came through me and I was the main driving force; I'd have preferred if the rebrand had been under a different name entirely and not including the original name.