skankdelvar

So basically you're saying that a half-size steel-string acoustic is the way to go. God, it's like pulling teeth

Well, go on then. Not remotely patronising, old sport. Enigmatic? Yes. Veiled in mystery? Deffo. But not patronising. I'm just struggling to imagine what could be so controversial, so divisive or so likely to occasion heated debate as to require PM's of a confidential nature. Does your approach require that the student embrace an exotic regime of physical exercise or become a devotee of the Goddess Bhuvaneshvari? It'll all come out in the end so you might as well spill the beans.

You wouldn't know it down here in Wiltshire, the sky's too overcast.

Half size? Quarter size? Is that a thing? 'Fess up! This is just you promoting your Play Guitar In A Month with Lefty course (includes book and flexi-disc). Well, it pains me to say I'm not wholly convinced by a synopsis which requires starting with a kazoo, moving on to harpsichord, learning how to read a compass, developing a fluency in Sanskrit and only then looking at a picture of a guitar for two days without a break. Frankly, Bert Weedon would be spinning in his grave.

The worst thing you can do is lumber him with a guitar that's uncomfortable. So don't. First off, get him a 3/4 size guitar then if he 'takes' give him a while then take him to a shop and try him on a parlour or 0 body with a 24.9" scale. When his arms get longer buy him an OM with a 25.4" scale. When he gets to full size buy him a D18 or a J45 and spend your dotage living off his songwriting earnings. One thing's for sure; don't let his first guitar be a 'Spanish' with a wide, flat board and nylon strings. That's what I started on and it was torture. Don't worry about 'transitioning' from one size to another. Even if it's a problem (unlikely) you just cross that bridge once he's developed an abiding interest in the instrument. Happy days to you both

For a minute there I thought I was looking at a brown Paisley pickguard. Nice, I thought. Then realisation set in and the world was a slightly sadder place. Good that you were re-united with your old bass, though

That's pretty much the size of it. Plus some pretty serious selling-in of BC's heft and influence to retailers who might not want anything unforeseen to happen, shame if there was an accident and their business model got broken, like.

Off-Topic is staging a hostile take-over of General Discussion. Insurgent forces have seized control of government buildings and the TV station. Remain calm and stay in your homes. Further communiqués will follow. PFLOT (Popular Front for the Liberation of Off-Topic)

Amended.

An Open Letter To The Musical Equipment Industry Honoured Sirs and Madams The punning exchanges above are testament - were one required - to the pressing need to fully understand the mind of the Bass Player. BassChat enjoys the respect and affection of literally thousands of middle-aged men whose response to a sales pitch will either be 'Fvck off and die, shop boy' or 'Just take my money'. BassChat knows which buttons to press to elicit an almost Pavlovan response. You don't. The choice is yours: get slagged off by our members or do a deal with us. No threat intended, obvs. For more information contact: Mr Pedro Ped BassChat The Caravan C/O Burger King Clifton Moor Retail Park York YO30 4XZ

I think it could mackereal contribution to the forum's turnover .

It's like he's BassChatted but only ever skim-read the threads. As a result, the review lacks both heft and grunt. But let us not dwell upon the negatives for here is an opportunity for the forum to make some cash. BassChat should offer its services to retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers not only up and down the country but also on a global basis. I propose a two-tier programme: i) Proof-reading of reviews and press-releases with the intention of weeding out solecisms, cliches and egregious bull-poop ii) Regular industry seminars on 'How to Talk To Bass Players' emphasising - among other things - the importance of cheese puns The proof-reading would come in at £250 a pop for UK companies and £500 for multinationals. The seminars would cost £1500 per delegate inclusive of accommodation (shared room in local Travel Lodge). Supplementary payola deals whereby BC might shill worthless or sub-standard products would of course be both deniable and 'off the books' while running into the high four figures. Our integrity should never come cheap. There's no reward in merely mocking these businesses. We need to monetise our scorn. Let's slit them up like kippers. 'Thanks BC!' says a musical instrument retailer

The hum-cancelling split coil pickup provides a huge, full range tone.

The Anderton's review reads like they've copy-pasted a sequence of posts from a slightly tedious BassChat thread: What do we think about the Precision? Frankly, I think we should sue their tits off for plagiarism.

I've got a wooden reel of about 200' of lead solder that my Grandad liberated from EMI Ruislip when he retired in 1961. Not bragging, just saying.

Yes. Yes, you did. Wait till you see my invoice. It's in the post.

I am impressed. Do I detect the influence of the late Sir John Betjeman in your approach to meter?

Speak for yourself. My face is as straight as a ruler's edge. A ruler delineated in Imperial inches. None of that metric muck.

The management clearly made a huge mistake in appointing three attractive women. As everyone knows, I am militantly anti-sexist but we all know that pretty girls are usually lazy, high maintenance and don't stick around long. Secondly, three pretty girls in one office will inevitably fall out, usually in a 2 vs 1 psychodrama that drags everyone else into their vortex of madness. The bosses would have been much better off appointing just one middle-aged woman of homely appearance. They work harder, they're sensible and loyal and they don't come up to your desk at half-four in the afternoon whining 'Can I leave early to go the gym? Pleeeze?'

A certain light can be cast on the subject by The Simpsons episode Bart's Dog Gets an F where Lisa buys a girls' magazine entitled 'Non-Threatening Boys'. Since time immemorial magazines of this nature and pop music alike have shared the same target market, namely 10 to 15 year-old girls. For obvious reasons it is necessary for practitioners in both sectors to convey the suggestion that they are shy, sympathetic individuals whose reproductive organs are of a strictly non-functioning nature. Throw in the truth that 'arrested development' now means many people continue to have a mental age of twelve well into their thirties and the explanation becomes clear. There's no money to be made trying to flog rampant phallocentrism to today's young women, most of whom yearn for romance yet for abject fear of the red-nosed bacon bayonet find themselves alone at night, sobbing helplessly into their Peppa Pig pillowcases. Hence the tendency for white boy pop performers to espouse the 'wet blanket' approach to hawking their product. It entirely escapes these bastards that two generations of our young men have effectively been gelded, trussed up and served up by the music industry in supplication to the radical feminists as an hors d'oeuvre before their main course of generally tutting about 'men' and glass ceilings. Well might we revise a famous lyric to read: If there's a bustle in your hedgerow don't be very alarmed now! It's just actually a spring clean for the May Queen Here is a warning for us all. Shall we heed it?

I am fairly sure that's why Mr Blunt's friends called him that. The rest of us called him that for very different reasons, including but not limited to his espousal of the nostrum 'Man is born free but is everywhere a doormat'. Pah! If we time our pahs right we can create a stereo ping-pong effect and then someone will mention very old video games and the derail will be complete.

You may in the course of the next week or two be contacted by one of my people with details of an academic research project I am sponsoring. Your input at the scoping stage would be much appreciated. I return to my contention that Mr James Blunt and his ilk feigned their pathetic uselessness in an attempt to brainwash an entire generation of young men. For while Mr Blunt was shilling the notion that a state of complete and utter subservience was a condition to which all men should aspire it is also a matter of record that he was getting so much punani that his cronies referred to him informally as 'C**ty Blunty'. One rule for them; another rule for us. Don't do what I do; do what I say. Pah.

You have identified the tension which exists between the two competing impulses which sit at the core of what it means to be human. On the one hand, white boy pop: prissy, pursed-lipped self-repression and craven obeisance to artificial social constructs On the other, Metal: a priapic, uninhibited celebration of the animal instinct and all which flows therefrom Basically, Mr Ed Sheeran vs Mr Bon Scott; a contest with only one conceivable victor.

Me too. Quite so. It's all a question of attitude really. For argument's sake, let us put ourselves in the position of a young man of limited means and few prospects of advancement. * White boy pop instructs him to sit in a little puddle of depression and await his statutory püssy-whipping. * Metal invites him to Unleash The Thunder And Ride The Train To Insanity City Where All The Hot Chicks Are Who among us would not choose the latter course of action? Yet to do so nowadays is to invite obloquy from progressives everywhere. I say 'P'shaw'. I think this may all be an Anglo-Saxon thing; a casual scrutiny of the AC/DC music vid Live at River Plate shows tens of thousands of happy young Latin Americans of both sexes going crazy fücking apeshit, heaving back and forth like a tidal wave and clearly intent on some serious post-gig coitus. They haven't got a problem with the lyrics. You just wouldn't get that here which is a serious problem when you think about the birth rate and population replacement.

In my experience metal lyrics tend (though not always) to celebrate the protagonist's agency*. He is often about to do something; something possibly glorious, possibly evil, possibly involving a member of the opposite sex. On many occasions the metallist is in a state of open revolt the better to pursue his aim of enhancing his individuality. At other times the practitioner metallique invites like-minded people to join him in subsuming their individuality in a celebratory communal experience, possibly involving rituals of a bacchanalian or shamanistic or highly destructive nature. On rare occasions the metallista embraces melancholy but it doesn't usually last for long. Consider Mr John 'Ozzie' Osbourne's chef d'oeuvre Paranoid where he signs off with the encouragingly positive couplet: "I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could but it's too late" Even in his own personal pit of despair Ozzie exhorts the rest of us to enjoy ourselves. I think we can all learn from that By contrast, the white boy pop idols de nos jours mostly stink the place up with their whiny, self-pitying lyrics and their self-abasing paeans to unobtainable young women who in some way excite in the performer a sense of inferiority and general helplessness. Consider Mr James Blunt's hit You're beautiful. Some thirty four years separates the song from Paranoid and what a difference. The final couplet cosily embraces futility and failure: 'But it's time to face the truth I will never be with you' You're beautiful is now fifteen years old yet in many ways it set a template for so many young, white, male singer-songwriters. Depressed? Check. A failure? Check. Unshaggable? Check. Perhaps this is how young men today go about the business of soliciting a mercy fück? Perhaps these neo-pubescent milksops think that gaining access to the mossy bower requires fervent demonstrations of 'sensitivity' and 'consideration'? Or perhaps these simpering lads are simply resigned to the fact that 'they' (by whom they actually mean 'you, the listener' because these pop stars are prolly getting laid left, right and centre whereas I expect ordinary, healthy young chaps are lucky to get a sniff of it, 'Dark days for a cöcksman, dark days indeed', as Mr David Coverdale observed) are doomed to go their graves with their cherries un-popped. Frankly, were I to be forced to listen to a specific genre of lyrics I would choose metal over white boy pop any day of the week including Sundays. Proper Metal is a gourmand's dish of raw, bloody steak liberally dowsed with alcohol, mind-altering substances and tiger spünk. White boy pop lyrics are - by comparison - a sad little Tesco Basics egg sandwich. On a more specific point, the sword and sorcery sub-genre is nothing new in popular culture and plays into the general rampancy of 'metal as it should be'. My old pal and wing man Johnny Tolkien was wont to remark: 'What I really like on a Saturday night is a good old-fashioned goblin'. * Not his booking agency, obvs. I mean his capacity to act with autonomy, possibly in the furtherance of achieving his personal goals