Cato

I had wondered if he might be playing with Kendrick Lamar at Glastonbury over the weekend. I don't suppose he mentioned anything?

Rod Liddle is a professional joy vampire so I'd be more shocked if he actually admitted looking forwards to something. Taking a straight average age of attendees is deceptive because, although some people do take young kids the numbers of under 18s attending is tiny. So the average gets dragged up by the those attendees who continue to go in their 40s, 50s and 60s with almost no under 18s to balance it in the other direction. What it doesn't mean is that most attendees are over 40. It would be more informative to look at the median statistics for attendees, or just by numbers from each age group. I suspect the single biggest demographic of attendees would be in the 18 to 30 range.

Bloody hell. I was listening to most of those headliners 30 years ago during my teenage metal years. I'd heard that no bands had come through to join the big boys for a long time, but that really brings it home.

One year some of my uni friends were scouting the perimeter fence, looking for a good place to climb over or burrow under when they bumped into Michael Eavis on a tractor. Who proceeded to to load them into his trailer and drove them into the festival for free. I think back in the day once his costs were covered by ticket sales he didn't really care if people were getting in free. It was only when it started to get dangerously over crowded in front of the big stages that he put up the mega fence around 2000.

Personally I think the big change at Glastonbury happened with Britpop, The festivàl was still mainly showcasing 'alternative' and 'indie' bands just as it had been doing since the mid 80s, but mainstream music tastes shifted so that for a while some of the those bands were were amongst the best selling acts in the UK, so Glastonbury, which on any given year would feature most of the biggest indie bands suddenly started getting a lot more attention from the mainstream media It also didn't hurt that Glastonbury was also quick to embrace the exploding EDM/rave scene with acts like Orbital starting to headline the Pyramid stage. It was almost a case of the mainstream moving to embrace Glastonbury rather than the other way round. Once that happened the festival started to attract more and more acts who were outside that 'indie' clique it which eventually led to headliners like Beyonce and Kanye. As I said before I went every year it was on during the 90s and even though it's a very different beast now and my camping in a sweaty tent days are long gone, I still get pangs of almost homesickness when it's on now.

But most of those 90s bands, certainly on the indie scene were drawing their influence from 60s stuff, especially the Beatles, and punk from the 70s, maybe with a bit of Bowie thrown in. So isn't that just a case of 'the more things change...'?

I do think we're showing our age a bit. Billy Eilish is probably the biggest act in the world right now. Kendrick Lamarr is one of the biggest names in hip hop. Olivia Rodriguez is massive. Those three could easily sell out stadium tours in their own right. Then on the Other stage there's Foals and Idles who are among the biggest 'indie'bands in the UK. AJ Tracey, probably currently the biggest UK hip hop act barring Stormzy and Burna Boy who's just breaking through into the UK mainstream but is pretty much the biggest star in Africa. And that's before you start looking at the various lesser known gems performing on all the other stages. It may not be appealing to middle age Basschatters (and I include myself in that demographic) but doubt there'll be a stronger line up at any other European festival this year. I may even tune in myself to catch Herbie Hancock.

There's enough there for me that I could have a busy time flitting between stages. Glastonbury has changed a lot since I used to go every year in the 90s. It's bigger, by all accounts it's safer and it's evolved from being mainly aimed at indie kids and aging hippies into something that embraces a far wider range of music past and present. I don't necessarily think it's better or worse but it's definitely different.

I think you may have been a bit unlucky there, or quality has improved. I've been very impressed with a pack of Next trainer socks I bought early last year. I mainly wear them down the gym and most of my gym socks have a pretty short life span before they get worn through but these have just kept on going despite my corrosive sweat.

Brand snobbery is an intrinsic part of capitalism. Is a US Fender really 2 or 3 times beter than Mexican? Is a 4x4 Porche really 3 or 4 times better than a Skoda Yeti? The answer is only 'yes' as long as people believe in the added value from the prestige of the brand. Otherwise it's almost impossible to account for the mark up just from the 'higher quality' components used in the prestige brands.

I've got a lot of time for Charles. I watched a 'how I got here' video of his a while back and he's seriously paid his dues. I'm glad his Youtube channel seems to be going from strength to strength.

I avoided Statocasters for the best part of 30 years because I always found them a bit boring and associated them with music I found a bit boring. Finally got one a couple of years ago and was blown away by the playability and the sounds, I'm still not hugely keen on the aesthetics though.

The UK entry has been getting a fair bit of rotation on Radio 1, so unusually for me, I've actually heard it this year and, even more unusually it's rather grown on me. (The video takes about 20 secs before the music starts) I reckon it's well above the admittedly low bar for UK entries, probably becausebit's not trying to do the europop thing, it's just a fairly typically British pop song. I'll be astonished if anyone but Ukraine wins this year, but it'll be interesting to see how the UK gets on. I haven't heard all the other entries but surely at a minimum this song deserves to be top half of the final table.

JPJ's little breaks in Good Times Bad Times. Short, sweet and actually enhance the song.

Finally got round to listening to Wet Leg's debut. There's so much more going on here than break out hit 'Chaise Longue', which much as that's the song that drew me in isn't remotely representative of the rest of the album. Reminds me of pre Brit Pop 90s indie in the best possible way while still having a quirky modern edge.

That's a lovely looking bass.

I think it's a really nice looking instrument, spoilt somewhat by the logo on the pickguard, although I imagine that pickguard could be swapped out fairly easily

Nikki Sixx sig apparently. The ones I can see on Reverb have been advertised at around £450-500 mark. So this one is setting the alarm bells ringing a little bit, makes me wonder whether the neck 'shave' mentioned in the ad has seriously messed it up.

I only had my Washburn Status for years, then Basschat happened and I added Precision Deluxe, modded VM Jazz and a fretless Sire V7. I could easily just get by with the Precision and the fretless. But I don't want to.

Not played one but they look very interesting Given the frequent requests for suggestions and discussions re lightweight basses on BC I suspect the honey comb chambering thing could garner a lot of interest here.

I think the problem with things like richlite, ebanol and presumably Blackwood is that bassists (and guitarists for that matter) tend to be deeply traditional. Personally I'd take, say richlite over pau ferro because I'm not keen on the orangeyness of a lot of pau ferro boards, but then I don't believe in tonewood (not looking for a debate here) and I already have a bass with a graphite board. I think for a lot of players anything that isn't traditional wood, preferably ebony, rosewood or maple, is a deal breaker.

I'm pretty sure Dave Grohl had already told Kurt he was leaving Nirvana to do his own thing before Kurt's death. I seem to recall reading an interview with him where he said he felt guilty about it for years.

I suspect that Hendix's career would have followed a similar trajectory to Claptons. Ie. Innovative guitar god to middle of the road AOR by the mid 80s.

Sheerhan's done an interview for Newsnight about this and other claims against him, I think it's being shown tonight. The clips I've heard are quite interesting apparently he's had so many plagiarism claims made against him that now when he's writing songs he films the whole process, presumably to show that it's an organic process and he's not trawling through spotify looking for songs to rip off. Whether that protects him in future, I have my doubts because there's always 'you're still consciously or subconsciously copying something you heard elsewhere' argument, but it's slightly depressing that he feels he can't just write spontaneously when the inspiration hits anymore without at least trying to protect himself from future litigation.

Dodgy as hell. Less than half price and in one of the most popular modern finishes that Fender have produced for a while? Even used it would be worth considerably more money, but brand new? If something sounds too good to be true...