skankdelvar

Banned Bands List - Russian Premier Spells It Out As the Kremlin's kleptocrat-in-chief I'm often asked: 'What did you do in the KGB, Mr Putin?' Until now my response has been to stab the questioner in the eye and get my chaps to finish the job, possibly in a deserted warehouse on the outskirts of Minsk. Or is it Pinsk? It doesn't really matter. Minsk, Pinsk, Omsk, Tomsk, they're all of a one. Nevertheless, the recent emergence of a list of baned (sic) bands prompts me to lift a tiny corner of the veil. Yes, it was me back then in 1985 with a Baikal transistor radio, a pencil and a sheet of paper. But please don't ask me why certain bands were on the blacklist. It was all so long ago and for the life of me I can't recall why - for example - Canned Heat drew my opprobium. Perhaps it was the maundering, rudimentary sitar that suffused 'On The Road Again' or - perhaps - the annoyingly diffident quality of Mr Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson's vocals. Tant pis. One thing I can tell you: there was a band that didn't make my official sh*t list. And that was Dollar, the peppy pop combo fronted by Mr David Van Day and the frankly toothsome Miss Therese Bazar. You ask me why. Well, back in those grim Cold War years when we were only a tiny mis-step away from nuclear annihilation I would return each morning to my simple KGB apartment, frazzled from a hard night's work torturing dissidents. Flopping across the threshold I would change into something more comfortable (a sheer négligée and a pair of adorable kitten-heeled grey suede mules), drop the tone-arm on my copy of Dollar's debut album Shooting Stars and - instantly reinvigorated - I would jig around the living room to the strains of that unsurpassed slice of pop brilliance 'Who Were You With In the Moonlight?' (a question I have probably put to many, many people over the years, ha ha!). In fact, such was my appreciation of Dollar that over the years I must have acquired over 200 billion of them ($$, geddit?). So when I heard that Mr David Van Day was standing for election to local government it was the work of a second to pick up the phone and instruct my people to launch a covert, supportive campaign comprised in equal parts of kompromat, bot farms and plain old-fashioned ballot box stuffing. It was the least I could do for one of my heroes and I hope that Mr Van Day's elevation to Thurrock Council will in some way recompense him for those fallow years during which he was reduced to touring with Bucks Fizz and flipping burgers in his van on Brighton seafront. Now, if he can just send me Therese Bazar's number he won't need to employ a food taster for the rest of his life. Hah! Just kidding! Ciao, Vlad.

"You'd never know it's a vig, Keptin" says Star Trek's Mr Chekhov as he points wiolently at his new Armstrong Siddeley Mk II hairpiece.

Banned by the BBC in 1943:

KGB: Who is UB40? Is nice Ukrainian girl sing songs about tractor factory number 40? Russian Music Bloke: Is revolutionary socialist peoples playing songs of oppressed Caribbean plantation workers in style of Irish Republican Comrade Val Doonican KGB: Approve.

Well spotted. KGB: Ban Klesh. He punk and violent. Russian Music Bloke: Klesh not him. Klesh is Clash. Is band. KGB: You go Gulag, build log hut, not come back.

One assumes that 'Stodges' is a typo for 'Stooges'. Surprised they didn't have Iggy Poop on that list. We shouldn't laugh at the Russians, though. In 1978 the BBC refused to play Down In The Tube Station At Midnight because it was 'Disturbing'.

It pains me to inform my Honourable Friend that I had no direct involvement in the malefactor's disappearance. There is more than one deserted warehouse within driving distance of the forum and I am not the only dispenser of hard justice to be found among our number. If it were anyone, it might have been a chap here who styles himself The Crimson Wasp. He's got a warehouse similar to my own but uses a meat tenderiser rather than a sawn-off Rizzini .410

Only one time I ever saw some seriously dubious stuff: There was a guy here who was pretty active in the marketplace. One time he put something up for sale which I'd very recently seen on eBay. Checked it out, same item, sold to this guy 24 hrs or so before he put it up for sale here. Problem was, the item was in the USA and no way it would have been over the pond and in his hands by the time he advertised it here as 'the pride of his collection'. Anyway, he's gone now.

Disappointed there's no poll option for France

Marvellous chap, won't hear a word said against him.

Why Me? asks washed up Radio DJ Simon Mayo pondering Teebs' nipples yesterday

Fact.

The JMB poster may be commended for their brevity if nothing else. Frankly, it looks a bit weird without the usual lengthy list of entirely incompatible influences: (Aerosmith, Jimmy Shand, Stockhausen, The Macc Lads, Englebert Humperdinck, Bootsy Collins).

It's not opinionated to ask a drummer to rein himself in nor to suggest a reduction in room volume. It's entirely normal. Given that many of us here are middle-aged, life is too short to stand in the corner and smile weakly. Get it out. Give it to 'em straight, though always politely. If they can't handle it, that's their problem, though one may find oneself hooshed out of the band. Well, what's the alternative? Stand there and put up with a drummer who plays too fast, and / or lose one's hearing? Fact is 90% of bands are utter numpties. We just have to work our way through them until we find the right combination of people then stick to them like glue.

Homer: "Grand Funk? The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer? Oh, man!"

I think I've got one of those up in the attic. I'll have check. Edit for: No laser but I found my old command Zeppelin. Any use? Ah, dear, lovable, conceited Ernst: never an employee of mine, more of a supplier of peripherals. It all went tïts-up for Ernst when he developed a cat allergy. Sitting in his high-backed, leather chair stroking a goldfish didn't really inspire his minions to put on a hard hat, pick up a Schmeisser and do battle with Tiger Tanaka's ninja commandos as they abseiled into the dormant volcano. So they all came to work for me, apart from the excitable little Chinese scientist feller who went off to Camber Sands and bought an ice-cream van.

In the interests of accuracy I am prepared to disclose certain pertinent facts: * I am not Dr No. In point of fact my former associate Julius No worked for me between 1957-1961 but we parted on difficult terms, mainly because he complained that I 'expected him to be a Yes-man'. Nothing could have been further from the truth; I always welcome constructive discussion. Nevertheless, Julius became far too wedded to the whole Caribbean Island thing at a time when super-villainry was trending more towards space stations and / or lairs in dormant volcanoes. I was all about the volcano. Julius wanted an island. We parted ways. C'est tout. * My affinity with the game Cluedo dates from 1944 when I lent my chum the pianist Tony Pratt the not inconsiderable sum of fifty guineas towards the development costs of his idea for a board game. I'd known Tony from his days playing the piano on cruise ships; he tickled the ivories while I plied my trade as a gigolo / lounge lizard among the ladies of a certain age travelling first class. (That Barbara Cartland? Had her). So when Tony needed some cash for a working presentation to Messrs Waddington it was I to whom he turned. * I do not live on the South Coast, rather in South Central Wiltshire. My bungalow (decorated in a tasteful, un-ostentatious Louis XIV stylee) forms part of a more extensive compound including a small airstrip, weapons testing bunkers, a communications centre and a compact but efficient miniature nuclear reactor. I've given up on shark tanks. IMO, they're both passé and de trop.

I have a Cluedo board game and I am currently living in a bungalow. My 18 year-old self would never have envisaged such an outcome.

Colonel Mustard with the revolver in the library. True story.

An interesting approach to decoupling the tank from stage vibration...

Note the low E string wound the 'wrong' way round the tuner, all other strings as normal. WTAF?

FWIW, some pix and descriptions here of Dale's rig at a club gig in 2016. Outboard reverb into two original Showman amps into a 2x15 and a 1x15 loaded with JBL's Ferocious.

On the one hand we have the scary FBLDFM and on the other we have a demonstrable weirdo who lives with a chimpanzee in an amusement park but his name's Michael Jackson and he's special so according to some parents that was alright.

Well, its an approach that might work. Easier, though, you could hang the transmitter off your bass (as it was designed to be used), stick the receiver unit at the start of your pedal chain and run a cable from the last pedal on the board to your amp. Or you could run two wireless units, one into the board and one off the board but that might be considered by some to be a tad excessive. Good luck with your project

Even before these most recent allegations I would have demanded a handsome slab of cash to perform any of Mr Jackson's choons. Not because he may have been 'evil' but because I didn't much enjoy his oeuvre. Too perfectly patinated, don'cherknow. In any event, it was - for decades - as plain as the nose on his face that Wacko Jacko was off the map at 90mph. It was all very sad but when rumours about his 'play dates' began to circulate it was no great leap of the imagination to conclude there was something nasty in the woodshed. Nevertheless the crazier elements of his fan base were keen to look the other way while the rest of us (and the radio stations) said a perfunctory 'Ho hum' and went about our business unburdened by any great concern. Now someone has made a film about unsavoury events the nature of which almost everyone was tangentially aware at least ten years ago and some are saying 'OMFG! I must immediately retrieve my Jacko albums from the attic and throw them in the cleansing flames lest by osmosis I contract paedophilia or - worse - my impeccable credentials be laid open to question'. Frankly, it's a bit late to be beating one's breast about Michael Jackson and in the event that someone were to be offended by a live, cover performance of Bad (and on purely aesthetic grounds who wouldn't be?) I'd have to ask them if they'd been living under a rock during the 25 years since Jackson paid off the Chandler family to the extent of - er - $23 million and the Los Angeles cops unaccountably closed their investigation. The victim's father, Evan Chandler, committed suicide in 2009 some months after Jackson himself crossed over but nobody gave a sh*t then so I'm not quite sure why they're bothered ten years later.