Doctor J

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

Kim Deal from The Breeders Jimmy Chamberlin from Smashing Pumpkins Jimmy Flemion from The Frogs ok so far... Sebastian Bach from Skid Row... wtf?

Great colour, very nice bass.

Noaudience either

Pete Wentz laughing all the way to the bank. I was expecting to see an early Japanese JV, they're getting posted around this price now. An Indonesian Squier though, I was not expecting that at all. The cult of personality sells, that's just how it goes and why so many manufacturers can't seem to pump out enough "signature" models these days.

This. If you forget to unplug the lead you'll probably forget to pull the knob, flick the switch, do the secret handshake, flood the tanks, batten down the hatches and whatever other solutions which require manual intervention. You've just gotten into a habit and are looking for a technical solution for it which, to me, seems like the wrong way to go and destined to fail regardless which way you choose to get around it. Just change the habit. Regardless of the bass, get into the habit of unplugging when you have finished. You don't have to do anything else, leave the lead hooked in the strap so it's right there when you want to play again. Just get into the habit of unplugging the bass when you stop playing, whether it's active or passive. It'll become second nature in no time at all.

Mint > Tort > White

I've been on a big 80's and early 90's rock buzz. This is the kind of great stuff you just can't release anymore 😂