NancyJohnson

I listened to this (off Spotify) yesterday and it's on now. Of the studio content, I'll be honest and say that I'm very familiar with the first four tracks and the final one (Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, YYZ, Limelight and Vital Signs), less so The Camera Eye or Witch Hunt, which I always skipped over. Have to say I haven't listened to this album in over 20 years and the five tracks I mentioned still sound great, my opinion of the other two hasn't changed. With The Camera Eye I always felt a bit short-changed that they'd lifted whole sequences from Permanent Waves' 'Freewill'. Moving along, as this is an expanded release, the live in Toronto 1981 content (Camera Eye aside!) is blindingly good. I'd forgotten how decent they were live in the early 80s. The live production is pretty lively, way better than Exit...Stage Left; interestingly, sides 2-4 of E...SL was recorded in Montreal on 27/3/81, just two days after the new content on the Moving Pictures live content was recorded.

My dad used to go fishing on Sundays. Different rods, different reels, different lines, different bait. All that really mattered was the little hook at the end of the line with the maggot on it. He could have used a bit of copper pipe or an extending umbrella, garden string or a bit of cheese. . What is Fenderish tone? Geddy? Lynott? Harris? Kaye? Deacon? Flea? Hoppus? JPJ? JM-J? Wire, Simonon, Sting, Jameson, Jacko or Duff?

There does seem to be this obsession with sustain. Aside from tuning, ask yourself this question, what is the longest you'd let a note ring out for in any of the songs you're playing? I'd say the longest for me is probably an open A for a couple of bars in a 140bpm song. Seconds, if that. This whole sustain argument is a nonsense.

Just being subjective here, this is simply a query about a Hipshot bridge over the stock Fender BBOT; it shouldn't really matter what it's installed on. Overall, the bridge contributes a small percentage to how you sound; two guys playing the same bass can make it sound totally different. Yes, I've got a Kickass installed on one of my basses; as the BBOT was incomplete when I bought the bass replacement was necessary and I chose the Kickass. Would I say it altered my tone? I'd answer that by stating not discernibly (or if it did, the change was so tiny it didn't make a difference). I'd say categorically that the Kickass is better by design, looks nicer than the BBOT, feels more comfortable when palm-muting, feels generally more solid (and reliable?) than the BBOT (although in truth any bass I've had with a Fender-style bridge rarely needed adjusting). It certainly doesn't make me a better player or revolutionise anything. Conclusion? It looks nicer than a BBOT. That's it. Shiny.

Saw these yesterday. Hideous. Look like toys.

I don't mind those...although yes, the HB is clearly a copy of the Aria, it's nice to see something that isn't a clone of a Precision/Jazz/Stingray with a different headstock. Maybe Thomann/HB just feel they're at the point where they feel they can start introducing different models - perhaps original designs - rather than leaning heavily on the saturated copy market; a business model that Ibanez adopted to their advantage following the *cough* lawsuit *cough* issues back in the 1970s. Generally, before we've even heard a single note, we're all drawn to the actual shape of instruments initially, this being before we see it in our chosen colour/specifications.

Being a child of the 60s, I used to get Sounds and NME weekly. Sounds became my go-to weekly and you kind of knew that if Geoff Barton wrote that it was decent, that was kind of OK with me. That matter that most of the actual (demo/promo) copies he listened to or reviewed, ended up in a little bargain box at Record Scene in Staines, was neither here nor there. You could say with pretty much 100% certainty that if it was in Sounds by the next week it would be in the bargain bin. I never really felt that radio delivered enough of what I liked. It was different times back then, probably more exciting to be honest (this isn't an old man shouts at cloud thing), the not knowing thing was 99% of the fun, rather than having everything delivered to you on a plate as it is now. I would latch on to the smallest bits of editorial and that would be enough to ignite the spark. Whereas in the mid-late 70s it was all about UK punk and what passed for north-American metal (Kiss/ Rush/Starz/Styx/Angel/Cheap Trick), just seeing a little paragraph about Jane's Addiction was enough for me to schlep up to London and get the Triple-X live album, same goes NIN, Living Colour etc.. I used to go to a great record shop about 100m from Hammersmith Odeon (Broadway Records?) that used to do loads of Japanese and US imports...you'd just go up there and browse.

For me, The Alarm will forever be Peters, McDonald, Sharp and Twist. Just find it odd that it was Mike Peters who called time on The Alarm at Brixton Academy (trust me here, it wasn't staged, the other three knew nothing of what was going on) and while a less than dynamic solo career followed, he's the one who keeps The Alarm just limping along, constantly rerecording and unnecessarily tweaking stuff. So he didn't want it and now he really needs it. I mean, he's a nice guy, I've met him a lot of times and also had a very long chat with him on a flight from New York a couple of years ago (he recognised me, which was nice), but I fear this career path is a little misguided. I've witnessed him playing with backing tracks and it wasn't pretty, so I have no doubt he'd be happy to go out sans bassist.

Well, not me. I've already taken one for the team with the book.

I had a Gretsch Electromatic baritone. Odd thing. Drawn to it out of a 50/50 mix of curiousity and a desire of ownership. Found it to be neither guitar or bass, on the one side I suppose I wanted to do some odd/dirty drop-B stuff without going the 7-string route, or some kind of twangy Glen Campbell stuff. Not succeeding with either, I went the bass-six route and that didn't really pan out either, so I sold it on. Sometimes, it's not the having it's the getting that drives these purchases. Desire satiated, experiment was over.

What happened to the old thread?

That's my photo! 🤣

Like this? It's made by a company called RTX, I got mine from Amazon, but it's available elsewhere (https://www.bax-shop.co.uk/amp-stand/rtx-trt-smx-monitor-guitar-amp-stand?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=surfaces&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhumU_Kil9wIVzdvVCh1Y2QofEAQYAyABEgJEDfD_BwE)

Novelty singles aside, back when all this was fields I remember as a kid hearing two singles that were distinctly Sweet-sounding and it was a delight to rediscover these a year or two ago. If you're a fan of Sweet F4nny Adams/Desolation Boulevard era Sweet, check out 'Good Time F4nny' by Angel (not the Punky Meadows Angel) on Spotify and Interplanetary Twist by Screemer; the latter was on Spotify, but disappeared, then came up on a podcast of some kind. Screemer were fronted by Zaine Griff, who seemed to be somewhere on pretty much every gig I went to in the mid-80s.

If nothing, we British used to be suckers for a novelty single. Clive Dunn, St Winifreds, Blobby. I have a single at home that I bought in Spain when I was about ten, called 'Couac Couac' (or 'Quack-Quack')...I found this photo off eBay. It was everywhere when we were on holiday there, I'm amazed it never charted here. Awful. 1/10.

With the buzzing, I'm always tempted to ask whether it's only there when you play a bee.

That white one was lovely. I only let it go to fund one of the Lulls. I hope whoever has it is making good use of it.

I've owned several signature basses, but they weren't purchased because they had anyone's name on them. The Geddy Jazz was OK, not really my thing, the Lakland DJ5 was just a lovely thing and I'd have been drawn to it irrespective of whether (or not) it had had Darryl Jones' name on it. I've still got a Lull Jeff Ament model; again I was drawn to it visually not because it has his name on it; now that is a lovely bass.

Gene Simmons, live earlier this week, in Chile. Signature model just out of shot. Or not even in the country.

Scott Dasson (inventor of the Badbird bridge) posted this earlier.

People have been swapping out the three-pointer for years. What's odd is why they went with the Hipshot and not the Babicz bridge they went with a few years back. As terrible as the three-pointer is (and what an improvement the Hipshot is over that), the Babicz replacement is a country mile better than the Hipshot (by comfort, design and functionality).

Nope. Just nope. This is just wrong on so many levels; aside from a brief dalliance with a black bi-centennial Thunderbird in the 1970s, nothing in his legacy says he deserves a signature model of this. A Grabber/Ripper would have been more appropriate. Bad Gibson. Bad, bad Gibson.

I'd always say that if you're using a stomp (or anything with bass/mids/treble knobbage), then you need push that through the effects return (or just use a power amp) and allow that to shape your sound. This way, you're not layering the fundamental core (B/M/T) on top of what the pre-stage is already delivering.

I've been doing some heavy lifting work today and I've been spinning this back to back with Curve's Doppelganger. Marvelous.

I am loving Alex Lifeson's new post-Rush project. If nothing it more than proves that old guys know how to make decent pop music, because that's what this is. It's a bit of a departure for all you Rush diehards, reminds me of Curve. A bit of Missing Persons.