Barking Spiders

I was there Friday and felt very sorry for Mastodon, who I'd been particularly looking forward to. For around half a dozen numbers their sound was fooked by a mix of sound desk issues and strong gusts. The drums and bass drowned out the vocals and guitars. Not Mastodon's fault at all. The sound got somewhat better as the day went on. Five Finger Death Punch were fun but there were too many long gaps between songs. Best of the day were Prophets of Rage aka Rage Against The Machine with Chuck D from Public Enemy and B Real from Cypress Hill. Feckin excellent with Tom Morello on toppermost form. A big up to Sabaton, who I'd never heard of before but they left a very positive imprint.

People do ask me to play stuff on the acoustic guitar so I usually wing it by cobbling together lots of typical bluegrass, folky and classical riffs etc as i go along, so it sounds like summat familiar and pleasant. But when they say can you play 'xx' by The Beatles whoever etc I usually play dumb and ignorant . Thing is I mostly listen to funk, electronica and rap so it's quite hard to come up with Snoop Dogg or Orbital on the 6 or 4 string

I'm not a metalhead as such but I have a fair sprinkling of crunching guitar bands in my collection including System of A Down who are headlining Friday. Off there with me ladee who's a huge fan. Mastodon ought be pretty good too. But being the wusses we are we're not camping.

You've yet to meet me fellas! I'm an utter git

100% agree with Meddle's description of The XX. Now, these sorts of drippy late-to-the-party post punk bands are ten a penny but they've come in for an inordinate amount of praise from the media and fans alike. Why? The band members are grey, uncharismatic and ornery looking. The songs are all pretty much downtempo but dark and the use the same formula of flat male, thin female vocals on every track. Critics describe the music as spare or minimalist. More like barely competant. The woman on guitar uses the Edge's approach of very simple single note riffs fed through reverb / flange. The frontman makes Adam Clayton's playing look like Vic Wootten's. OK I'm not saying he should play slap 16ths all over the shop but surely he could've come up with better lines

The history of pop is one of crap songs with good to great basslines. Here's a godawful slice of rank cheese but listen to that bass!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=catKKJvf9zM

The Trombone Shorty band were a country mile ahead of the rest though Royal Blood weren't bad but I still don't get the hype. Likewisethe meejah's love for The xx is befuddling. They were mind numblingly dull and did the bloke on bass actually do much on it apart from a series of root 8ths? Haim's song was repetitive pants and bassface wasn't in full gurning mode either, which was disappointing. The country singer was just another anonymous guitar strummer you hear on Bob Harris's R2 show all the time

Mostly liking funk, soul, disco, reggae/dub, drum n'bass and hip hop this is all too true as far as I'm concerned though fans of downbeat piano plonking/guitar strumming with warbling might disagree

Of course there are much better WP numbers than MS (IMO) like Land of a 1,000 Dances and 634-5789 but I've yet to see any band cover these!

Later seems to avoid like rap, metal, prog and many dance/electronica styles like plagues unless a band is particularly big e.g. Metallica or a one-off token effort. There are also several acts wot have been on more than once too

I've never played Mustang Sally either and I'm a mahoosive Wilson Pickett fan. Ay caramba, I don't get how some posters haven't picked upon the light-hearted tongue-in-cheekiness of the OP .

I'm with the OP. By being proficient on several instruments you can kinda 'cross pollinate' so fr'instance if you play piano you're arguably more likely to be more dextrous than those who only play bass. Moreover your range of influences on a given instrument usually goes beyond other players of that instrument. The main influence on the great jazz guitarist Martin Taylor is piano jazzer Art Tatum, which gave rise to MT's left handed technique

Hah pretty much every indoor one I've ever played in and that's over 200. Low ceilings, stuck in a corner + half pissed half disinterested crowd+ crap beer+ underlying threats of random violence (often featuring a pool cue)+ heckling = the norm Nowadays I'd only ever play daytime, outdoor gigs e.g onion & other fayres celebrating different types of vegetable or summer fruit (we get a lot of these around Glos and Worcs ), Women's Institute jamborees, beer festivals and being at the arse end of the bill at summer festivals. I like to be in bed by midnight and don't want gigs to get in the way of watching re-runs of Law & Order UK and Midsomer Murders

And would you need either one of these http://www.stollguitars.de/en/files/2004_derlegend%C3%A4reAustibass_imEinsatz.jpg or one of these http://www.notreble.com/buzz/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/traveler-ultra-light-bass-620x179.jpg I would if it was an all women audience

I dont think he needs anything more than a couple of hours in the stocks. Sex on Fire on the other hand warrants a sound flogging with the cat

It's toss up between http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8Amv2QjE3M and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hktcsp9msBo

Nothing in either episode 7 or 8, as with the rest of the series, leaving me thinking that the future of music is in good hands. Soz people but IMO there's zilch coming out from anywhere now that wasn't done better 20, 30,40 + years ago whether funk, soul, rap, metal, folk, indie, electronica, dance, jazz...

Have a party attitude viz gigs. I dont want to be around showboaters and general egomaniacs with a 'look at me aren't i great' attitude. It should be all about putting on entertainment with an upbeat party vibe that gets the crowd involved. I don't like playing the sorts of 'us and them' gig with the crowd just watching and occasionally clapping. Will stand their round when it comes to getting the beers in. I can't stand tightwads, especially in pubs, the sort that hang back and offer to get the drinks in when everyone has gone onto halves and orange juice

For me the 80s was also when alternative rock peaked, when former punk bands started to get interesting and when' indie' really meant independent labels and not used as a euphemism for the types of dreary and earnest beardy guitar bands who crop up all the time on Later With.. The 90s also threw up a lot of good stuff so music was dead then as many would have you believe, not by a long chalk. For me the rot set in across the board from about 2003, not just rock but also dance/electronica, hip hop / rap, r n b and even chart pop.

As a teen in the 80s I have nothing but fond memories of the music even the cheese. It was the decade that spawned hip hop ( a very good thing IMO )when electronica took another quantum leap (another very good thing), when it was fun to go clubbing, when metal didn't take itself too seriously and when the general public realised the bass is a proper instrument requiring some talent to play.

Ah , happy days when yer pop stars didnt look like shop assistants or Eng lit students

I like this muchly and this guy has great technique, having seen a few of ihs other vids. That said i'm still not sure about these You Tube 'professionals' who seem like one step up from bedroom noodlers. As with guitar I really only like listening to bass when it meshes with other instruments.

Other than Chic it was really early-mid 80s electro, mainly Japan, Simple Minds, Level 42, Paul Young, Sade, Duran, Blow Monkeys, FGTH, Wham and Heaven 17 when the bass was mostly slap or fretless.

I quite enjoyed the first couple of minutes before he started to let rip and fill in any spaces with lots of notes. An Yngwie Malmsteen approach to bass methinks. I've seen tons of You Tube clips of session players like Bill Dickins doing similar stuff. While it impresses my brain it does nowt for my heart and gut. Bernard Edward's 2 note stabs in the opening bars of Le Freak do more for me than any hyper speed slap noodling.

I'm more likely to dress up as a nun than ever use a capo on a bass again. Tried it once but i cant see the point. For me capos are only for fingerstyle on 6 string acoustics