Kitsto

Are you "Tom"? If so, very impressed with the look (the hat and hair) and the 8 string bass. Big CT fan - met them when they played Nottingham Rock City 15+ years ago and have all their albums. Two things: (1) I'm not surprised you didn't manage to fill a 200 venue in Edinburgh because (2) I feel they've always been held back by their cartoon image caused in large part by Rick. Rammstein manage to muck around but be "serious". But CT have never had that serious tag. Yet even from their brilliant first 4 studio albums this was a band with serious musical chops. If your band has a more serious image then you're doing the original CT a big favour.

Same. I learnt the major and minor scales. They tell me where to put my fingers next. I can tell you immediately the names of the frets (i.e. the notes) on each string up to the seventh fret. Anything else I can work out. But I knew where to put my fingers long before I knew the names of the notes.

Don't stop playing. There is life after being in a band. I left the band I was in because of increasing irritations (including volume at which we played). Now I play to downloaded backing tracks.

I agree it's not great, but mitigating circs: last Lemmy vocal with 'Wind; nothing else sounded like that in the charts at the time (I thought it was great and the rest of the chart not); it made me (introverted teenager) feel cool listening to it - it gave me something to dance to at parties. Do I listen to it now? Er, no.

Bands are very peculiar. The best ones start off as friends first (U2 realised this when they almost came apart while recording Achtung Baby - it was Brian Eno who intervened and made them see the light). Springsteen in his excellent autobio discusses how he ended up being dad, friend, boss and banker to members of the E Street Band and what a nightmare it was (he had an altercation with one member who wanted more pay to which Bruce said: "You want to see the highest paid musician on the planet who does what you do? Go look in the mirror - it's already you!"). It's funny how bad at life a lot of pro musicians are. A friend of mine (gtr) runs his band with the singist - and they regularly chuck out the others. He asked me to join. Er, no thanks. A happy co-op is so hard to achieve that maybe being like Bruce or my mate is the only way to do it. If you do stumble into a happy band then cherish it.

Springsteen - Glory Days. Dreadful twaddle.

Sorry, what I'm about to say is SO basic, but: 1) whether you play sitting down or standing up makes a huge difference to everything else - the comment above about looking at every aspect (e.g. strap length) is spot on 2) whether you use pic or fingers 3) if fingers, whether you alternate index and middle or (like Jack Bruce and Ged Lee) just the index The best advice I got from a teacher was actually about my left hand. It didn't look right to me. He said, "That's because you play guitar, right? And you're fretting as you would on a guitar. Wrong - play it like a double bass or cello - use two or three fingers, not one." That made a huge difference to me - I started to adopt a much sloppier way of fretting and kept my whole hand much closer to the strings, always hooking my thumb over the top of the neck - all the opposite of what I'd done on guitar (which by now I'd abandoned). Nick Beggs has a fascinating way of fretting, essentially placing his fingers flat across the strings (not when he's playing stick). My RH I deploy as I did when I was taught classical guitar - floating thumb, alternating fingers - except when I don't. This may sound counter-intuitive, but I position my RH for playing with a pic and try to maintain that wrist and arm position when using fingers. There are no rules. Do what works for you.

It depends on whether you've lost any bone. When I was a kid I cut the end of my left index finger off with an axe (it was an accident; I didn't do it because I wondered what it would be like!). All that was left was a crescent of the bottom bit of the nail. I missed the bone but you could see it. My brother looked for the finger tip but couldn't find it. The hospital wanted to do a skin graft from my bum to my finger but I told my mum no. She agreed. The skin and nail grew back and within about 18 months you couldn't tell. The pad of skin at the finger tip was still a bit thin. But I started playing classical guitar a couple of years later and I don't remember that being affected in any way. From what you said (stitching the tip back on) it sounds as if you missed the bone. In which case the tip should grow back. This may take a while. But there's hope yet. I always assumed Tony Iommi took off some of the bone too, hence the need for plastic fingertips and detuned strings. Still, he got a new type of heavy metal music out of it and a career.

Thank you for posting these. I knew MK was in Japan but knew nothing else about him. What an intelligent, articulate fellow! I knew he had played with Bill Nelson (a favourite of mine) who'd also played on the Rain Tree Crow album. I also knew he'd died young - I think aged just 53. Prompted by the interviews I discovered online an absolutely brilliant live track called Sleepers Awake from 1996 with Richard Barbieri and Steve Jansen plus MK on bass and Steve Wilson on guitar - what a quartet (Japanese Porcupine!?). Worth checking out (below). But I wouldn't have found this without your posting the interviews. Thank you!

When I played in a covers band I needed to get up to speed quickly so it was a combination of (a) by ear (b) locating the root note and (c) watching my favourite covers players on YouTube. The band wasn't slavish to the originals so provided my part was OK it didn't have to be exact. Now that I just play for myself (using backing tracks) I like to take time to develop a bass part. I experiment a lot more, feeling my way. I sometimes go back to the songs in the band's set list and try to improve the parts I played back then. It's a lot of fun. I do write the parts out using tabs or just writing down the notes.

When I was in a band we got a number of gigs at charity festivals. Obviously they weren't paid, so they were easy to get on, but it was a good way of getting exposure (and used to playing to a crowd open air). That may be a way to getting paid gigs at 'proper' festivals.

Saw RT last week. I've seen him a few times before but this time he was on fire - hugely energetic and certainly not playing like a 79-year old (my son was with me and I said to him: "Trower is torturing that guitar!"). I'm a big fan of Richard Watts who sings like Jim Dewar and learnt to play the bass so he could be in Trower's band (Watts is a multi-instrumentalist). I really hope this isn't the last we've seen of Trower. He said recently he had another album lined up. But he says the operation is a big one and recuperation will take time. It's a 30-date US tour he's cancelled. Quite apart from the fact that having a big op at that age is no joke, he may not have the energy to tour again even if he does make a full recovery - since by then he could be 80 or even 81. Really sorry for him and the band - Chris Taggart on drums was excellent too.

OK there's a lot of space around the contents. But they were just trying to provide plenty of air on a G string.

I am so glad to see Wheels Of Confusion mentioned (I thought I was the only one who liked it). But funnily enough I think the best bit of the song is the 'pedal' where Geez plays a repeated single note and Iommi does his riffing over it (where you get the mystical howling over the top) - it starts at 2:50. I think it's magnificent.

Goth Tbird with flying skull strap