skankdelvar

How true. The Academy of Ancient Music are bad enough with their baroque re-treads (shudder) but the London Mozart Players take the absolute biscuit for nonsensical sadness.

Bedroom: Lovely, bass-rich, slightly mid-scooped tone with a hint of top-end 'air' (sniffs cork, quaffs, spits) Live band: Mids-boosted clank, leave everything under 100hz to the kick drum

Outstanding work, Sir!

I was wondering when someone would come along and - in an excess of feeling - step firmly upon on the tribute band landmine. It's always fun when that happens. The thing about tribute bands is that they are merely a variation on the time-honoured practice of musicians playing other peoples' songs. Indeed, until the Rutles came along pretty much the entire industry was predicated on the idea that songwriters wrote songs and musicians performed them and seldom the twain did meet. To my uncertain recollection the greatest popular singer of all time (Frank Sinatra) wrote (and subsequently performed) only one song in his career. If it was good enough for Francis Albert, it's good enough for me. In any event, the point is moot when it comes to bass players; apart from ten or so household names nearly all bassists have to dutifully play what they're given by The Talent, even when - as in the case of most 'originals' hobby bands - The Talent is a technically incompetent dullard with an Epiphone Lester and Himmler's way with a tune. All of which is is to say that my ranked musical preferences for a local Friday night out would be: 1. A tribute band 2. A covers band 3. Red hot needles in the eyes 4. An 'originals' band

... and another thing. Lots of people seem to like certain retailers to whom I would not give the steam off my p1ss let alone good money. OTOH, there are other retailers where I've had good experiences but which seem to have incurred the wrath of others here. Usually it's pretty minor stuff that sets people off; so these days I don't bother posting about iffy service unless the shop boy was egregiously rude or hilariously stupid: see Chandlers, PMT Birmingham, Wunjos (when it was down the other end of Denmark St) and Andy's. For this reason dullards like the bloke in Frome who kept insisting that 'Martin owns Sigma' don't usually rate a mention.

A quick look at the Guitar Village web site reveals that every bass amp they have in stock is a combo. Not a head to be seen. Of course, just because they actually didn't have a head doesn't mean they gave a sh!t either.

There is a middle way which avoids confusion and visual incongruity: The Heartfakers - A Tribute to the Music of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

In terms perhaps more easily understood: A working man's' club is a bit like a New York Mafia social club without the Mafia but with bingo, meat raffles and dodgy live acts. In terms of atmosphere, layout and audience it might resemble an American Legion club. WMC: A possibly unrepresentatively young and diverse gaggle of punters WMC: That's more like it

I have seen many advertisements of this nature over the decades and they really have absolutely nothing at all to do with forming a working band. A cursory analysis of the content reveals that the advertiser's true (if unconscious) purpose is to find some friends with a common taste in music and politics, and a desire to 'have a laugh together'. And - as in a lonely hearts ad - he'd like to see a picture of the respondent. Really, all that stuff about "dare to dream and believe in what their (sic) doing and would want to stay in the band" is the 19 yr-old male guitard's equivalent of "cosy evenings by the fire and looking for a long-term relationship". IMO, a band of this nature "rehearses" often but without direction, talks a lot, has loads of hissy fits about who likes who better and seldom if ever performs in front of an audience.

The late, great Keith Ferguson's elegant solution to the lefty problem: flip a load of righties until you find a good 'un.

Oh yes. Deffo a rock star.

Good point well made

I suppose it's a bit early in the game to tell them to go fück themselves with a traffic cone

... he said, looking like a like a total rock star

Google Translate est mon ami. For me, it's the circa $1.5m on cases that's spooky. That and all the timber.

If PG Wodehouse had ever auditioned drummers this ^ is how he'd have written it up. Sterling work, Sir

While we exult (or bewail) Gibson's Chap. 11 bankruptcy, spare a thought for Hank's creditors. Will they be paid? Will they only get a few cents on the dollars they're owed? Here's a list of who's owed what, with guitar-related creditors broken out at the top and electronics, logistics, prof services at the bottom. Funnily enough, the largest single creditor is a China-based speaker supplier, presumably for Juskiewicz's tattered dream of being a big playa in the home electronics market. Apart from the hundreds of millions owed to the banks, there's $11.5mn owed to companies which have provided goods and services in good faith. Timber for the bodies, tuners, strings, cases, metalwork. These debts could amount to a serious problem for the luckless suppliers and their employees. So, not content with having tanked his own company, the stupid, stupid little man is wreaking havoc on the wider guitar industry.

Huis Clos - un drame de JP Sartre (Scène: une chambre en enfer. Entrez John et Henry). John: Regarde! Une guitare basse qui intègre des fonctionnalités de marque déposées par Rickenbacker! Où est mon avocat? Je veux menacer quelqu'un! (Henry inspecte la basse) Henry: Est-il possible de fabriquer cette guitare basse mais beaucoup plus bon marché? Et de le fournir dans une couleur que personne ne veut? Avec des potentiomètres qui ne fonctionnent pas parce qu'ils n'ont pas été soudés correctement? Les deux ensemble: L'enfer c'est les autres! Fin

Delighted to be of service

Despite suggestions that Mr Henry Juskiewicz may continue as CEO one hopes that whoever assumes control will sideline Hapless Hank into a powerless 'continuity' role, wrap him up tight in an NDO and pay him for a year to keep his mouth shut, at the end of which period they fire him out of a howitzer into a barbed-wire factory. It's a tragedy in the truest sense of the word. A man sets out to do good, succeeds for a while then succumbs to hubris and madness. Fate beckons. The cannon roars. Curtain. One of the most piquant details of this sad drama: having tried - and signally failed - to thrust auto-tuning upon guitarists, Gibson now finds itself being sued by Tronical Systems, the license-holder for the much-despised digital Min-e-tuners. Indeed, so loathed are these excrescences that there is actually a land-fill the size of Wolverhampton comprised exclusively of Robo-tuners removed from Gibsons. It remains to be seen why the Hamburg-based Fritzes at Tronical have it in for Hank but being sued for $50m can't have helped Gibson in the last week or so. Juskiewicz: victim of circumstance? Or just a hopeless tw4t?

Many years ago the good lady wife and I holidayed in Venezuela. Having bounced around various heritage sites we fetched up in the Venezuelan capital and discovered that our hotel was overflowing with tubby, middle-aged male Brits, these being industry delegates on a 'fact-finding trip' organised by the British Meat Processors' Association - the trade body for UK slaughterhouse owners. That evening the hotel mounted a 'cultural celebration of music and dance' in the main bar and it soon became clear that the British abbatoir chaps were far more interested in the free aguardiente (a local rum) than upon the folkloric aspect of the night's entertainment. Eventually a handful of them invaded the stage, seizing from the outraged performers various items of percussion the better to accompany their chant of 'I'd rather be a Turk than Venezuelan'. Fisticuffs ensued, the police arrived etc. Next day the English-language newspaper Correo del Orinoco carried the headline: 'Knackers With Maraccas Cause a Fracas In Caracas'.