Cato

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.

Be interested to hear how you get on with it after the set up. I watched an Anderton's vid on these at the weekend and the fretless version was absolutely singing in Lee's ( not 100% sure that's his name, damn fine bass player though) hands. Edit: thought I may as well post the clip.

He turned up on my instagram feed complaining about Davie 504 faking something or other. Calling out the transgressions of other influencers seems to have become his 'thing'.

I like that a lot. Takes me back to when the cool kids at school were playing Nephilim/Sisters stuff in the common room

Maybe he doesn't have the skills to write his own? In the same way I can learn a reasonably complex guitar solo note by note but I don't really have the chops to write an original guitar solo myself that's any more complex or interesting than a basic blues improv.

I think I'm creative. I definitely think describing myself as an 'artist' would be to raise people's expectations way too high though.

I quite like it, but then I like a lot of those odd looking Soviet Union era guitars and basses. This looks like it could be a Danelectro Longhorn copy made in Yugoslavia circa 1974.

I've recently finished 2 weeks of jury service in a different county. Slightly different because it was Crown Court, but suffice to say very little happened at the time and date it was orginally scheduled for during my stint.

I generally like the more avant-garde designs but I'm struggling a bit with that one.

The fact that it's at Magistrates rather than Crown Court suggests that , should he be found guilty, a serious prison sentence is probably not on the cards.

I'm not a huge fan but a while ago I read an interview with Alex Lifeson where he was talking about how him & Geddy still hang out as friends and play music together on a regular basis. If they still love playing and they have an audience that wants to see it then it makes perfect sense for them to tour again.

I was skeptical when Sire broke the £1k barrier with the V/P 10 range a few years back, but not only are they still in production, Sire have actually moved upwards in price bracket again with some of the new F series range. So it's apparently possible for a brand that was once perceived as budget (I think my series 1 V7 fretless was less than £400 brand new) to successfully move upmarket.

When Fender bought Jackson/Charvel one of the first things they did was discontinue the Surfcaster line because they considered it direct competition for their own Jaguars andJazzmasters Fender's other brands all cover different markets. Charvel for modern rock players, Jackson for the heavy stuff, Gretsch covers a lot of the same ground as Gibson , none of them are in direct competition with Fender. I think the problem G&L may have is that, L Series aside, a lot of G&L models are based directly on Fender models and have been marketed as upgrades on those original designs for a long time. I can't see Fender selling Fender clones (albeit upgraded ones) under a different brand.

At the very least I'd expect Fender to discontinue all the Fender clone models, which is a substantial chunk of the G&l skinny stringer range. Hopefully the L series basses will stay on account being substantially different from anything Fender are currently offering, but I wouldn't be totally suprised if Fender stopped continous production of all G&L models in favour of doing limited runs of specific Leo Fender designed models. As mentioned by @Jean-Luc Pickguard above, if the rumours are true, I suspect Fender probably see more value in the company's heritage and assets than they do in the actual brand. They may even just be motivated by the desire to stop another company buying G & L & acquiring their rights to use Leos name in conjunction with their products.

Their UK suppliers never seem to last long, every now and then someone like Andertons will get a few bits and pieces in but when those are gone that seems to be it. I was very interested in trying an ASAT bass a few years ago and couldn't find one, new or used, being advertised anywhere in the UK. I always assumed the US made stuff was fairy low production numbers so most of it stays in the States. It'll be a shame if they do go, a lot of their stuff, both bass and skinny strings, guitars are an interesting twist on Leo's original designs. I'd be sorry to see some of those designs go.

I reckon there's a big difference between calling out other social media influencers on youtube as opposed to inserting yourself into a situation that involves alleged criminals, the police, lawyers and at least one ongoing court case. I can't imagine he'd go anywhere near it.