skankdelvar

There's the thing, y'see. What's a band to do now that pretty much everyone dresses casual all the time, even - or especially - if they work in an office? One either looks the same as the audience or one must wear a dress made out of bacon, just to stand out. True story: One time we were on a multi-band bill with an originals outfit whose set was based on their self-recorded concept album about the ghastliness of society in general and capitalism in particular. To emphasise the oppressive uniformity inherent in the system these guys all dressed up in M&S suits and ties and lace-up black shoes. As the band went onstage a wag in the audience cried out 'Have you come here straight from work?' and the landlord sidled up to me and said 'Christ, you'd think they'd put in a effort and make a show. They look like a bunch of f**king accountants'. Which was, of course, the band's aim but which ran aground on the reef of popular incomprehension. As these things do.

Among a cornucopia of excellent points you draw attention to a relatively obscure but nevertheless interesting tribe, notable for their devotion to British artists such as Dickie Valentine, Johnny Gently, Adam Faith and others of that ilk. Some of these adherents consider The Shadows to be dangerously radical while viewing artists such as Mr Eddie Cochran and Mr Gene Vincent as threats to public safety. This is what they need. Bohemian apparel, I mean. Most UK popsters de nos jours look like nothing so much as code monkeys on their way to a strategy meeting.

Public Service Announcement Please note that the preceding post was uploaded at around 09:47 local time in China where the poster would almost certainly have been on his seventh can of Special Brew since breakfast. That is all. Carry on.

I rather think you'll find that Dec 19th 1993 is the generally agreed date when popular music went completely to sh*t, this being the day when Mr Blobby went to #1 in the UK charts and stayed there for three weeks (leans over and pukes into wastebasket). Were such a disaster not enough, the nails were driven remorselessly into pop's coffin when on May 29th of that year the single Love is All Around by Wet Wet Wet commenced a 15-week run at the top of the charts. There was no coming back from this. The End of Pop Music - Oil on canvas by Morgana Del Var R.A. (1935-2008)

That's a tasty bit of Weltanschauung there, Chief

Given Mr Weller's state of advanced decrepitude, 'going through the motions' probably requires industrial quantities of Ex-Lax. I know whereof I speak.

Mr DoubleOhStephen places his finger very much upon the core of the matter. Back in the 70's when sundry outraged Dads exclaimed 'That's not music and what does he look like!' they were simply reacting to the fact that the music they were hearing was not the same as that which they believed to be music, i.e. the music of their youth, namely Big Band music like - I don't know, Pennsylvania 6-5000 or Moonlight Becomes You. The impelling factor in our Dads' minds was the shocking difference between their music and ours. The impelling factor in ours is the shocking similarity. Fast-forward 40 years and one beholds a popular music scene which resembles one of those re-enactment things where people dress up as Roundheads and Cavaliers. Or a Living History Museum where you give a big old copper penny to someone pretending to be a Victorian shopkeeper and they give you a quarter-pound of licorice. Put it like this. If we'd been doing back in the 70's what they're doing now we'd all have been playing trombones and dressing in tuxedos like the f**king Glenn Miller Orchestra. That this situation pertains is testament to an utter failure of imagination and proof - were it needed - of the creative bankruptcy of contemporary popular music. I don't blame the young people, of course. It's entirely the fault of: * Record companies and their craven fear of financial loss, ditto media companies hawking shows like 'Later' * A dilution of music criticism away from the underground and onto the Lifestyle pages of The Guardian * Hand-wringing pinkos who have brought about a widespread cultural rejection of substance and alcohol abuse * Helicopter parents who fear to point out their offsprings' abject shortcomings for fear of causing 'anxiety' If the music scene is to revive itself its youthful practitioners must first learn to tell their elders to f**k off. Their next move should be to indulge in bacchanalian orgies of drink and drugs. Only then should they pick up an instrument and start composing. The rest of us have our part to play too. Rather than continue to venerate the artists of our youth we should jeer them in the street and lob rotten eggs at them. Dibs on Paul Weller, the sad, irrelevant old codger.

Good point, well made.

Quick search on Thomann reveals that most of the small, all-valve combos around £500 or less come from the usual suspects. Strip out the Bugeras, the Marshalls, the Blackstars (because they either sound like Marshalls or a bit generic) and the Voxes and you're left with: Cornell Traveller 5 (5w) Fender Bassbreaker (7w) Fender Bassbreaker 15* Fender Blues Junior IV (15w)* Fender Pro Junior IV (15w) Fender Superchamp X2 (15w)* Ibanez TSATV5R (5w)* Laney Cub 10 (10w) Laney Cub 15R* Supro Blues King 8 (1w - yes, that's 1 watt) * = On-board reverb. All digital except BJ which is a tank reverb. Thoughts Ibanez TSATV5R * The Ibanez is the cutest little thing you ever did see but the image isn't - er - good for metal. The wife might like it, though. IIRC Kiwi here touts a brace of Ibanezs and likes them. * The Cornell's probably the closest thing to an affordable 'boutique' combo, the maker's got a good rep and the amp steps down from 7w in increments down to 0.5w. But will an 8" speaker sound a bit boxy? Have to try it. * Nobody apart from Tony Iommi ever got excited about Laney amps but I've played a couple of Cubs and they're actually not that bad. The Cub 15 has a reverb but it's digital (as you'd expect at this price). * The Supro is only 1w (12AU7 power valve) with a 'boost' switch which could mean anything from nasty diodes to pulling the tone knob out of the circuit. I don't know. And so to the Fenders: The Juniors Industry standard small combos with big rep. The new Mk IV iterations of the PJ and the BJ claim to address the perennial complaint of low headroom before everything goes 'groarrgh'. This doesn't fix the problem of price headroom as both amps hover around the £500 mark. Older s/h models go for £300-400 depending on the usual stuff and there have been entire websites built just on the subject of PJ and BJ mods (speakers, tubes, circuit, re-cabbing). Just a thought. Bassbreakers Fender's attempt to expand their tonal palette into Marshall / Blackstar territory. EL84's and a Celestion speaker. Never played one. Don't hugely like what I've heard on the web - a generic 'hard rock' sound - but what do I know? Superchamp X2 As Mr Stephen Morrissey once opined: 'You're the one for me, Fatty'. Two channel 15w 1x10" combo on its second iteration. People seem to like them. I played one and it was nice. Loads of reviews of this and its predecessor the XD on YT. Channel 1 is a traditional-ish straight-through 1x 12AX7 > 2x 6V6 circuit (with digital effects if desired) for something close (IMO) to a Blackface sound. So there's your clean-ish Fender thing sorted. You could always dip the digital FX and stick some pedals in front of the input if you like Channel 2 is yer bells and whistles digital amp modelling / fx stuff shoved out through the valve power stage so you can dial up a Mesa Boogie sound and stick it through some entirely inappropriate effects if you want. Slightly gimmicky but fun. USB and line out for recording; software for direct recording and creating / modding digital pre-sets. One criticism is the stock speaker is a bit toppy / ice-picky (common complaint with smaller Fenders) but the X2 comes in at about £360 (Thomann) which leaves room to lash out £50-100 on a replacement Fender-type speaker (e.g. Eminence, WGS). It's a shame they stopped making the Vibrochamp XD which was basically a 5w version of this with a single 6V6 output tube but without the pre-amp valve and all-valve path. Vibrochamp XDs can turn up secondhand for around £200 or less. Conclusion What would I buy? I'd try everything in the list with the specific guitar I'd be playing through the amp. But on paper if I were Lefty I'd go for either: * The Cornell (five watts is still bastard loud) and buy a nice reverb pedal * The Superchamp XD for its flexibility and features. Maybe get a new speaker if I couldn't live with the stock item * A s/h Peavey Bandit and a nice 'amp in a box' pedal, e.g. Wampler Black '65

You are - of course - entitled to your opinion. I find myself at variance but that's OK because we all have different views and perspectives.

To be fair to Van (whom I don't much like), he's not the music world's only - er - difficult interviewee. Our brother BC-er Mickeyboro often relates his disappointment on interviewing one of his musical heroes, Mr Warren Zevon. Likewise, I remember George Thorogood giving an interviewer a hard time. 'Why all these questions about guitars? Why can't we talk about baseball?' 'Er - because this is an interview for Guitar World, George' Thing is, some journos expect personal stuff from the interviewee because that's what many of them want to talk about, being rampant narcissists and all. As a result, journos expect everyone to open up about the deep stuff. So, in this instance we have to ask ourself if the journo might be overly pre-occupied with the Inner Artist? Here are Laura Barton's most recent Guardian artist interviews over the last year with headline and sub-head: Carrie Underwood: 'I'd put on a happy face, then go home and fall apart' As she prepares to take Glastonbury by storm, the country star opens a bottle of red wine and talks about the personal tragedy that coloured her new songs Lazarus: the Malawian busker overturning prejudice about albinism Madonna called him ‘a powerful voice of a new generation’ – but musician Lazarus Chigwandali is still coming to terms with hearing himself on record for the first time Sharon Van Etten: ‘The more I let go, the more I progress as a human being’ Known for complex songs about the dark side of love, the acclaimed singer-songwriter is back with a fifth album that explores synths, rock anthems, mental health and motherhood Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on addiction, obsession and politics: 'White men are very fragile' Over 30 years, Tweedy has battled drugs, alcohol and in-fighting to become one of the US’s most revered musicians. Now he has turned his experiences into a memoir and a solo album Beth Ditto: 'I don't think I can act. I'm just really good at talking' The Gossip frontwoman has started acting, and her first role is a ‘redneck loud woman’ in the new Gus Van Sant film. She talks about the real women behind the southern stereotypes. Case closed.

Contractual obligations? Record company / management pressure? Doesn't really matter. Van Morrison interviews are always like pulling teeth and I suspect that the journo went in there without having read many of his previous encounters with the media. If she'd troubled to prepare herself she'd have known what to expect and planned accordingly. Instead, she fell into the same trap that most journos do, which is to assume that he's going to be impressed by their assumed 'understanding' of his work and will therefore open up to them where he hasn't with anyone else.

Having read the article it's clear that the journo went in there demanding lots of revelatory detail and philosophical musings from The Great Man. When she didn't get it she threw a strop. Let's look at just one of those exchanges. Journo asks Morrison why the band played Moondance and Brown Eyed Girl the previous night: I'm no fan of either Morrison or his music but it seems pretty clear to me that the journo didn't get what she wanted so she's turned the interview into a hatchet job. The most revealing bit's here: What the journo exemplifies here is the notion of 'fan ownership' - the idea that because one is a fan the artist owes you something in return - in fatal combination with the commonplace but entirely idiotic idea that an artist's music must by default be motivated by analysable philosophical principles. In other words, the fool's notion that everything has to have a meaning. Morrison's position is that he just does what he does. Frankly, I think most of us here would agree with this position and if some journo insisted on viewing us through the prism of their own expectations and kept telling us that 'there must be more to it' then I think we'd probably be even less accommodating than the old curmudgeon. Perhaps this is why Van's got the permanent hump. I'd be the same.

While I agree that the backing band plumb new lows of munterdom my immediate reaction was to assume that the former Home Secretary Ms Amber Rudd MP (Ind) had been on her way to a fancy dress ball and stopped at several pubs en route.

Best wishes and good luck

Well, good for him. I can hardly walk and play bass at the same time

Hi Mike - welcome to BassChat Members basses for sale here Members feedback here so you can check out who you're dealing with. As this is a voluntary system some members may not yet have feedback threads but may still be perfectly trustworthy. Commercial sellers (i.e. Guitar shops, etc) here Good luck with your search for an American Standard Jazz and I hope you enjoy the forum

If this is for insurance purposes then some vintage guitar / bass dealers offer a certificated valuation service for which they will charge, obvs. If it's just for selling here then a trawl through the BassChat 'for sale' section supplemented by a search of completed sales on eBay will get you in the ball park.

Given that OVWHF was hauling out his credit card as I departed one must assume they either demo'd it at shop volume or never bothered with that part of the transaction. Very similar thing happened a few years later in Banbury when I cruelly steered another OVWHF into buying his sprog a Martin D18.

Some years ago I was in a guitar shop where a young lad was explaining to his Obviously Very Well-Heeled Father that the Marshall DSL full-stack on display was the ideal home practice amp. To his eternal credit, the salesman tried to dissuade OVWHF from this course of action, suggesting a smaller and less expensive option. 'No, if that's what he wants then that's what he'll have,' harrumphed OVWHF, oblivious to the hideous fate that awaited him.

That really is very sound advice Sorry for being such a complete and utter bastard earlier but I just couldn't stop myself.