skankdelvar

With vintage mojo.

After Mr George Orwell and his essay The Moon Under Water: My favourite public-house, the Frog and Fakkit is only two minutes from the central car park, but it is on a side-street, and polite little families and well-dressed couples never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday lunchtimes. Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of ‘regulars’ who spend much of their day in a recumbent position in the nearby park and go to the Frog and Fakkit for the drugs available from a weasel-featured man named Danny as much as for the beer. If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the drugs first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Frog and Fakkit is what people call its ‘ambience’. To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly 1970’s. It has a mixed bag of formica-topped tables and cast-iron tractor-seat chairs, plastic panels masquerading as oak and peeling, Paisley wallpaper. The sticky carpet, the gouged bar top, the fake horse brasses adorning the walls and the ceiling stained dark brown by tobacco-smoke, the nudie-picture calendar behind the bar — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the mid-twentieth century. In winter there is generally a good fire burning in the skip outside the front door, and the ‘last century’ lay-out of the place encourages those fleeting collisions which lead so gratifyingly to flare-ups of savage violence. There are a public bar, a saloon bar, a dealers’ bar, an off-sales counter for underage drinkers and – upstairs – a large, empty room in which on Tuesdays Fridays and Saturdays live bands perform to the utter indifference of the patrons below. In the Frog and Fakkit it is never quiet enough to talk. There is a radio behind the bar tuned to Heart FM, a ‘digital’ juke box, two fruit machines, Sky Television and piped-in music. All are playing simultaneously and the only time they cannot be heard is when a band of hopelessly incompetent hobbyist ‘musicians’ is upstairs performing Sex On Fire. The barmaids know their customers by name, having at some time taken most of them upstairs there to conjoin on a soiled mattress under the ‘stage’ . They are all middle-aged women—two of them have no teeth—and they call everyone ‘yew fakkin kant’ irrespective of age or sex. You cannot get lunch at the Frog and Fakkit but there is - beside the plywood lavatory door - a snack counter where you can purchase expired pickled eggs or pork luncheon meat fried in batter (cold). They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Frog and Fakkit, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a glass. Apart a selection of ‘pewter’ mugs screwed to the canopy which overhangs the bar every receptacle is made of plastic, a wide and vivid scar on the landlord’s jaw perhaps testifying to the matter. The great surprise of the Frog and Fakkit is its lavatory. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are old car tyres, broken bottles and the remains of a tramp who expired there a few years ago. Up at one end of the garden there is a roofless garden shed wherein the customer in search of relief will discover a spreading pool of urine, a stained plastic bucket containing a noisome admixture, and a pile of newspapers, mostly editions of the Daily Mail from the period when said organ was edited by Mr Paul Dacre. On summer evenings there are ritual human sacrifices, and you sit under the plane trees injecting skag to the tune of delighted squeals from feral children prodding the burnt offering with sticks. The Frog and Fakkit is my ideal of what a pub should be—at any rate, in a metropolitan area. (The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.) But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Frog and Fakkit. That is to say, there may well be a pub of that name, but I don’t know of it, nor do I know any pub with just that combination of qualities. So if anyone knows of a pub that has junkies of every persuasion, food poisoning, brutal violence, insanitary facilities, deafening noise, regular visits by Plod, a reeking midden in the garden and prostitute barmaids I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or Wetherspoons.

I've just now remembered that a woman I used to work with went off to Wetherspoons to be a 'secret shopper', going round branches pretending to be a customer, trying the food and drinks and generally giving everything the once over. Two things I recall from when I next saw her. She said that Tim Martin was a good boss, hard but fair, and that she'd put on so much weight her backside was now the size of a planet. She offered to show me but I made my excuses and left.

At this point people usually suggest sitting down with the drummer and talking things through or having a 'band discussion' or helpfully reconfiguring your FOH so that the drummer gets 'his sound' and everyone's happy. Well, that never works, so wait until the next time you see him and then punch him in the nuts as hard as you can. No preamble, no 'Can we talk about your bass drum amp, Tarquin?' Just an overwhelming pre-emptive strike on his testicles. He'll probably leave the band on the spot, which is fine. If he doesn't leave, keep pulverising his gonads until he does then find another drummer and carry on.

I suppose the number of people whom it will be necessary to treat as social pariahs all depends on how one defines 'regularly'. Would regularly be: i) More than once a week? ii) More than once a month? iii) More than once a year? Also, one needs to define 'read'. Would this mean: i) Just one article? ii) More than one article but less than ten? iii) Just the sports pages? iv) The whole edition from cover to cover? One would probably need to draw up a grid indicating - for example - whether reading just the sports pages once a month is more or less likely to invoke pariah status compared to reading just one article but doing it on a weekly basis. This having been determined we can create a social pariah 'tariff of sanctions' which might range from making hypothetical, aggressive threats of 'othering' up to putting groups of social pariahs in trucks where the exhaust is vented into a sealed passenger compartment. Frankly, the sooner we get rid of the social pariahs the cleaner and better our society will be.

Never use the Daily Mail as a liner for a cat's litter tray because evil. Instead, go to the newsagents and ask them for their leftover copies of The Guardian, The Daily Mirror or The Washington Post because not evil. Interleave a page from each (because diversity is strength) and lay them in the tray. Alternatively, here's my recipe for DIY ethical granulated cat litter using the newspapers mentioned above: 1. Shred newspaper in a paper shredder and collect it in an unused plastic litter tray. 2. Soak the paper in warm water mixed with a few squirts gentle, biodegradable dish soap. The shredded paper takes on a cooked oatmeal consistency. The paper won’t come completely clean, but the water will turn grey. 3. Drain the water (an old colander works wonders) and repeat the soaking process minus the soap. 4. Sprinkle baking soda liberally on the wet paper. Knead it in to the mixture (you might want to wear gloves to avoid getting ink on your hands). 5. Squeeze the remaining moisture out until it’s as dry as you can get it. 6. Crumble over a medium-fine mesh and leave to dry for a few days. 7. Once it’s dry, put about an inch and a half to two inches of the paper crumbles in the litter box. Scoop solids daily and change it once a week. It takes about a half an hour to 45 minutes to make a 2-3 week supply , Enjoy!

Possibly because of the 2nd Viscount's association with Lloyd George, a man who also liked Hitler (for a while). The real Hitler fan was the 1st Viscount, whereas the 3rd Viscount was firmly against the Austrian Corporal. The 4th Viscount has yet to express an opinion in respect of Der Fuhrer but acquiesced in the appointment of Mr Geordie Grieg as the Mail's new editor, allegedly at the insistence of his wife the Viscountess Claudia who - it has been reported - was alienated by Paul Dacre's trenchant Europhobia and remorselessly lower middle-class values. Geordie's an Old Etonian, an unshakeable Remainer and his sister was one of Princess Di's ladies-in-waiting, don'cher know, and that makes all the difference at dinner parties. Jonathan Harmsworth's a lovely chap, modest and unassuming but apt to bear the impression of the last person who sat on him. One cannot imagine his illustrious and rather more thrusting forebears selling off the Evening Standard to a sweaty-palmed Russian shop-boy but there you go. Then again, perhaps Jonty had it right. Under George Osborne's editorship the ES continues to lose money (£10m last year) and rumours abound in respect of suspect sales figures and secret pulping of undistributed copies.

If I ever happened to read the Daily Mail - even if by accident and only for a few seconds - I'd be so ashamed I'd literally have to apologise in writing to everyone I know. Then I'd go into town and buy a box of matches and a gallon of petrol and set myself on fire. The Daily Mail supported Hitler, you know.

Interesting article. Thanks to the OP for the heads-up

Hank to camera: "Introducing the new 2011 Firebird X. I like it and - er - so does Ped".

You are - of course - entitled to your opinion but I would in all friendship counsel you against expressing it in public. The consequences would be insupportable.

True dat. But one might speculate that the new team's historic connections with hedge fund and Gibson majority shareholder KKR means it's primarily there to rampage through the place like mad axemen turn things around with a view to shopping a gutted Gibson out to new investors. It's a shame that suggestions a Japanese guitar manufacturer was eyeing up Gibson proved only to be rumours. Someone like Yamaha might have been more interested in the Guitary side of Gibson than in its future saleability. Mind you, a not insignificant slab of Gibson's US customers would probably have started banging on about Pearl Harbour.

New Gibson Management Team Unveiled L-R: Kim Matoon (CFO), James Curleigh (CEO), Cesar Gueikian (Chief Merchant Officer). Not Shown: Nat Zilka (Chairman), Christian Schmitz (Production) Numerous sources are reporting the installation of Gibson's new management team. As one might expect, the air is thick with assertions of 'fresh start with a strong financial foundation ... strong team dynamic ... proven heritage and iconic status'. Indeed, some of the new team are naturally keen to highlight their credentials as (amateur) guitarists and long-time Gibson fans. Which is all very nice, but what conclusions might one infer from the career histories of the '2018 model' top honchos? New CEO James Curleigh (centre above wearing mid-life crisis biker jacket) is the former boss at Levi Strauss brands. Bean counter Kim Matoon comes from Richemont (owner of luxury brands Cartier, Dunhill, Mont Blanc and Piaget among many others) and is therefore accustomed to unloading eye-wateringly expensive tat. While Curleigh and Matoon have branding credentials, what do Zilka, Guekian and Christian Schmitz bring to the party? Well, they've spent most of their time working for hedge funds and financiers, moving towering piles of money hither and yon, which makes sense for the chairman and the merchandising spod though not so much for the role of production director as now embodied in the German Christian Schmitz . In fairness to Schmitz he spent a couple of years working on the sales side of Germany's equivalent of ATS tyres (only better, as obvs befits a German company). But one questions the relevance of Schmitz's spells at places like McKinsey and notes with a slightly raised eyebrow that he has been part of the transition team at Gibson over the course of the last year. Fanbois everywhere will hope that prolonged exposure to Hank's - shall we say - cavalier attitude to production has not eroded Herr Schmitz's genetically ingrained Teutonic efficiency. Like it or not, there's a very hedge-fundy feel to the team which might send a chill up the spine of those of us familiar with the recent personnel cull at hedge-fund owned Heritage Guitars of Kalamazoo (the old Gibson plant and staff), this allegedly because managers and workers were vocally critical of cost-cutting measures impacting on QC. On reflection, there is perhaps a further slight cause for concern: The CEO's last gig was as a brand chief. The CFO's last gig was as a CEO. The chairman and the merchandising chief have only ever worked as money men and the production guy's only non-money role was in sales. Is there a risk that some of these people are playing out of position? And though they all have tons of finance and branding experience, it would seem that not one of them has ever worked in guitar manufacture before their involvement with Gibson. But some of them own Les Pauls so I'm sure everything will be just fine and dandy.

The Eddie Cochran hit C'mon Everybody featured his manager Jerry Capehart playing 'drums' on a cardboard box. A cardboard box: prob not the one used in the C'mon Everybody session

The ne plus ultra of whistling songs must be 'I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman' performed by Mr Whistling Jack Smith. The clue - as ever - is in his name:

Yeah, that's about right.

Not all of us. In fact I think you've done the OP a great service in correctly pointing out that 96% of amateur bands are populated (at least in part) by treacherous, incompetent morons. That's not to say that the OP shouldn't give it a go, playing in a band. But it's best to go into these things with one's eyes wide open and on the qui-vive for the customary shenanigans. As for Br*xit: it's something we tend to steer clear of round here for fear of inflammatory divisiveness, particularly if someone were to say that we're not telling the whole of Europe to f**k off, just those select few in charge of the supranational administrative framework.

... and holding steady at number five in the official BassChat Top Ten Topics Chart - 'Those f**kers lied to me'. The Nav's on fire, here

I'd estimate that 57% of BC threads are about: * One or more of my band mates are idiots and I hate them. Should (i) I talk to them about it (ii) leave the band (iii) kill them with a chainsaw? * There's no money in gigging anymore and even if there were my stupid front man keeps signing us up for charity gigs 200 miles away * Last time we played no one turned up and even if they do turn up they just ignore us * Look at this Musicians Wanted ad: the snarky little bastards are specifying 'must be under 30'. *Anyone else feel like selling all their bass gear and building a model railway in the shed? I rest my case. The thing I like about Mr Navigator is that despite being Canadian (and therefore by nationality a sunny optimist) its only taken him 14 days on BassChat to succumb to the British disease of gloomy defeatism and ingrained negativity. IMO, he's fitting right in: The thistle, shamrock, rose entwined, the Maple Leaf Forever.

StringNavigator dropping truth like bombs. He's totally nailed it.

Fixée.

Generally speaking I tend not to heed other peoples' opinions but in both instances I was outvoted and killing these dullards where they stood wasn't really an option.

You'd probably like Reba. Unless you don't like country music in which case you probably wouldn't. That's the thing, see. Country is huge in the States and women are very much at the forefront compared to Rock, always have been - but we've never heard of any of them over here.

Reba McEntire's been around since 70's (the only living country artist to have had hits in all four decades) and recorded 28 albums all of which achieved gold, platinum or multi-platinum. 16 albums went to #1. She's also had 32 #1 singles and 56 top ten hits, surpassing Dolly Parton's record in 2009. She's also an actress and had her own sit-com on the WB network for 6 seasons, and performed in Broadway musicals, starring in South Pacific at the Carnegie Hall. In movies she appeared in cult classic Tremors with Kevin Bacon and voiced the cow in Charlotte's Web. This year she fronted KFC's US national ad campaign as the brand's first female 'Colonel Sanders'. So, fairly low profile, then

Maybe. It's just she was one of the best drummers I'd ever encountered either as a player or a punter. Tony Thompson's sense of groove married to Simon Philips technique, yet, when asked, laid down a totally convincing Tommy Ramone. But on the two occasions I could have worked with her she got knocked back by stupid, less talented people because she was a woman. Which would be bad enough except that she was rejected by a couple of SJW's and another woman - who you would think should know better. The only other thing that pi55es me off quite as much was when a 48 year-old, mediocre, munting covers band drummer rejected a brilliant guitarist because he was 60 and supposedly 'too old'. So, would I like to choke the living sh*t out of feeble hypocrites who stop me working with and learning from talented musicians? Damn right I would.