Cato

Went to see the Horne Section last night at Warwick Arts. I'm not familiar with Alex Horne's comedy outside of Taskmaster so I wasn't sure what to expect but it certainly wasn't this. The show is basically an eclectic mix of bad puns, comedy songs and surrealism, at various points I was a bit baffled as to what was going on but on the whole it was an entertaining evening, at times very funny and never boring, the 2 hours (with interval) flew past. The musicianship on show was of a very high standard, the bass player was outstanding and sounded really good. 90% sure he was using a Wilcock, a Mullarkey in something like Aztec Gold (though might have been natural with the stage lights giving it a glow) it definitely looked like one only it didn't look short scale, though that may have been relative to the size of the guy playing it, difficult to tell from where we were sitting.

I love the look of these early P basses but at the end of the day I'm also sure there are sound reasons why Leo Fender tweaked the design and stuck with those changes for the rest of his time at Fender. Ergonomics and quieter pickups being 2 of the obvious ones.

I've never tried using an adhesive to secure a pickguard but I have changed a few and I would say that they don't always sit flush to the body prior to being screwed down. It may need to be fairly strong adhesive to stop the edges rising up over time.

I'm not generally a fan of fancy wood tops but that's an absolute stunner.

Get a multi fx with multiple built in amp sims as well numerous distortion effects and see what works. I use an HX Stomp which would definitely do the job, but there are probably other more recent units available that will give the same plethora of options, some of them are probably cheaper too.

Streaming music has led me down some great rabbit holes. Last year I started researching the earliest recorded guitar music, which led me to some great stuff like Charlie Christian and Django Rheinhart and led eventually to me 'discovering' semi forgotten gems like Lonnie Johnson and Charlie Patton. I get that it's not great for current artists trying to make a living, but it's also an absolute treasure trove for older music that may otherwise only be obtainable through years of browsing old vinyl at record fairs looking for 1960s reissues of the original 1920s and 30s recordings

Yamaha may not be the first brand most people think of when they think of guitars, but when they do come up in discussion they always seem to be very highly thought of. I came close to getting a BB1024 a few years ago when I was looking for PJ, ultimately the only reason I didn't was because I've never been keen on sunburst and that seemed to be the only colour scheme anyone had in stock at that particular moment. Yes I am that shallow. I'd have a Revstar skinny stringer or a vintage SG in a flash if funds/space allowed.

I would confidently guess that for every band/solo performer that the Tik Tok algorithm gods smile on there are tens of thousands worldwide posting up clips that struggle to get 'likes' into double figures. But even if a band does get a few thousand likes the bottom line is that the people giving the likes are scrolling on their phones, watching new content every few seconds, it may well not translate into building into a fan base that's actually going to make the effort to stream more music by that band, let alone make the effort to go to a live show.

There's going ro be an absolute deluge of these from people hoping that if they churn out enough AI slop they might get a few hits that make money. It's already happening on social media, every 3rd Instagram clip seems to be an AI fake and it's getting really hard to spot them. There's got to be a gap in the market for a streaming service that can guarantee no AI content.

Seems odd that despite the takeover apparently being a done deal some weeks ago that there's doesn't seem to have been any official announcement by Fender either about aquiring the company or what their future plans for the brand and it's various models are.

Given their actions so far, I'm not sure that Fender will have much interest in putting the workshop Leo used to design non Fender branded instruments on display. I don't think they necessarily want that part of his history memorialised.

I guess Fender decided it was more cost effective to chuck the stuff they had no intention of using rather than pay to store it while it could be sold off? I can kind of see the logic for the bridges and pick ups which probably have limited demand and might take a long time to sell on if they had a lot of stock but you'd think they could shift the pedals and other electronic items fairly quickly in a fire sale scenario.

Diifficult to avoid politics on this one, but basically the British right wing press would have a total meltdown if anyone in government ever mentioned the idea. It'd be wall to wall headlines about 'woke handouts' and 'feckless scroungers'. To be fair I'm pretty confident that there would be huge resistance from the same people to any kind of universal income, even in the face of mass AI induced unemployment, let alone anything aimed at subsidising creatives. Which has a certain irony, given that journalism is one of those creative sectors that's already taking a hammering from AI.

The judge isn't going to take into consideration anything which the defendant hasn't actually been previously convicted of. There is a possibility however that they may take a very dim view of an ongoing court case of which they have charge being discussed on a public forum. Having just completed a period of jury service and received multiple warnings of recent cases where jurors and others have been charged with contempt of court for interfering with cases through online activity, I thnk it's worth pointing out that judges take these things very seriously. Contempt_of_court_-_fact_sheet.pdf https://share.google/orohkD0SDpbkrbQjC

Spent £80 on a couple of tickets to see Maximo Park at the Birmingham Academy early next year. 20 years ago tickets for the same venue were generally around £20. Suprisingly, according to the BofE inflation calculator that's roughly in line with inflation with £20 in 2005 being worth around £35 today. Booking fees, on the hand, would have been around £1.50-£2.00 a ticket in 2005 if memory serves, whereas for these particular tickets it works out at £7.50 a ticket, considerably higher than the same rate of inflation.