Doctor J

That looks cool, though personally, I'd love to see more of that yellow (is that Monaco yellow?).

Bass avoids the war through intelligence and diplomacy.

I used to be in a band with my best mate at the time, a guitarist. He was well coordinated so could technically play but had no sense of timing whatsoever. He was a mate, though, so we set up a band. There was no point in writing songs, though, it would have been a mess so we improvised everything. The drummer and I would come up with something and guitarist would noodle aimlessly over it while another mate improvised vocals over that - usually chats about scams and such. It was a lot of fun, to be honest and, although we were usually unpopular with audiences we were surprisingly not universally so.

Best? Can't honestly remember. I've gone to so many great gigs since the 80's. The most recent one I came away from thinking "That was truly extraordinary" was Therapy? supported by Ondt Blod in Hamburg a few years ago. I had never heard Ondt Blod before and had sort of a Jake Blues in Church episode. Therapy? afterwards were just incredible. Worst? Either Ian Brown on his first solo tour or a recent package thing with Limp Bizkit and some other garbage. One of the other band's roadies walked around with a goblin mask on. Relentlessly and maliciously dreadful, both.

Rollins Band had Theo Van Rock, their sound engineer, listed as a member.

It was a joke.

At a Chic gig a few years ago, towards the end of their set somebody grabbed my shoulder and tried to pull me backwards to get past me. When I turned to see what was going on, a young lady in her early 20's (at most) was trying to force her way past me. I'm sure the expression on my face fully conveyed just what I thought of her stupidity and she pointed towards the stage and shrieked "BUT I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE HIMMMMMM!!!" I love going to gigs in Europe, the attendees tend to be far more respectful of space and I've never seen the kind of attitude where latecomers think they're entitled to barge their way towards the front. I don't go to big gigs anymore as the size of venue tends to be proportional to the amount of chocolate starfish you'll encounter. I also dislike watching gigs on a faraway screen with the sound bouncing off walls or, worse, stadium stands before it gets to my ears so I imposed a budget cap on how much I'll pay for a ticket. Small venues, close to the band, no event-junkies, just lovely.

Yeah, same for me with that song 😂

Punk sounds great shouted in German

Be patient. The retailer will do the right thing. Your contract is with them, they need to sort it out and will. Just keep in contact with them and ask what they're doing to sort it out. I didn't have the exact same experience, but did have a shipping nightmare before. Back in the early 00's, I ordered an Ibanez SR3006e from Music123 and paid by Western Union - I didn't have a credit card at the time. All good, until later in the day when I checked the order to make sure the payment had been received, the shipping address had changed to an address in Alabama. I freaked out, called them up, they checked it and admitted a "clerical error" on their part but assured me the bass would be shipped to me. All good until the next day, I received shipping notification and the bass was on its way... to Alabama. Same story, called them up, they assured me they would get UPS to bring the bass back, then send it to me. All good, then, it was delivered... to the address in Alabama. I called them up, they assured me UPS would collect the package, bring it back and send it on to me. No updates for a few days. I called them up, they said that the person they delivered the bass to "didn't want to return it" At that point, I asked to speak to someone much higher up the chain and had one of those calls where you know there are people listening to the call but are not announced on the call and not participating. I had to go to an international phone shop (remember them?) to make all these calls. I calmly went through the sequence of events, as asked, and explained that, at every point of the transaction, I had notified them of their error and they had done nothing. Now, my bass was gone. I wanted a replacement. If they got the original bass back, that was nothing to do with me. I wanted a new bass. After a long and awkward silence, they agreed they had messed up and I would receive a new bass, which I eventually did but it was an unpleasant few weeks thinking I had lost over a grand. Music123 did the right thing, eventually, but I had to sit on them to do it and swore I would never buy from them again. I fully expect your problem to be resolved, but it won't be a nice time waiting for that to happen.

There are few better than Ondt Blod at mixing hardcore punk, metal and melody and they do it in Norwegian too. They're from the far North of Norway and include influences from the Sámi culture. Their album Natur is 35 minutes of relentless bangers 😁

Kerry King and Beastie Boys

It looks great. What does the bass look like?

No competition

I do it as 3123 2132 1321 3213 2132 1321 etc, every bar a different finger is on the one but the right hand pattern doesn't change. It takes a bit of practice but soon just becomes a muscle memory thing where your right hand takes care of itself. It's great for faster playing too, much less likely to fatigue as you spread the workload out. Getting your ring finger to sound the same as the other fingers is the challenge, though, you should never be able to distinguish by ear which finger is hitting the string.

For three-finger technique, practice AC/DC stuff, just regular eighths. It'll develop your right hand in no time. It's all about consistency note-to-note and breaking out of the habit of your index finger always being on the one. AC/DC is great to develop that as you don't need to stress too hard about what your left hand is doing and can focus on getting the right in shape.

I've been playing metal for a long time, among other things. Current favourites are this Blade B4 and Hamer Chaparral. The amp, since the early 2000's, has been an ABM with a compact 2x10 and 1x15.

One of these and make some wood covers to house the P coils in 🙂

That was his second appearance on a Manowar album. He featured on Dark Avenger several years earlier

Elton does a sterling job on Black Gives Way to Blue by Alice in Chains