Barking Spiders

Been having a bit of a Basement Jaxx binge. Not sure I'll find many other takers here but never mind. Here's a fave track

Eric Clapton - agreed. Can't stand Cream myself but I accept they were among the first at what they did. In Ginger Baker and Claptout there've been two of the most unpleasant men in the music biz and that's some feat. Claptout's other music ventures are dire from the uberboring Derek and the Dominoes to his yawn-inducing solo work. Whitney - I blame her for the myriad of vocal acrobats that came in her wake Music college - many of the best and most influential musicians never went to music college but were self-taught. Jaco - to a man the output of (many Berklee educated) guitar and bass virtuosi is uniformly self-indulgent, boring and confined to genres with only niche appeal.

That they sure are, and on a par with those in Rush and Asia where the writers were trying way too hard to be meaningful while trying to not to write about fast cars, doing drugs and s**gg**g and sh**gg**g in fast cars while doing drugs. No one learns owt from song lyrics surely? Do they?

I've never played in a band that does my fave type of music. The most recent one I've depped for on bass, as a favour to a mate in the band, plays a mix of Britpop/rock - Kasabian, Oasis, Blur etc along with covers of The Killers, KoL, Foos. This stuff's ok enough but not what I'd choose. I've played quite a lot of funk and disco which I enjoy playing but don't listen to much at home. My 'kind of music' is mostly electronica (from Bassment Jaxx and Groove Armada through to Aphex Twin and Amon Tobin). Not exactly easy stuff to cover!

three things I don't lend; my toothbrush, my pants and my basses

Mark King 'of bass' is great and slap is the best thing ever invented for bass playing 😊. I know for sure this is definitely an unpopular opinion on BC if not the wider bass and even music community

One of the most irksome sounds in all music is that of the keyboards in van Halen 'songs', especially from the utterly dismal van Hagar era, not that any improvement would've made them more tolerable. I'm not a fan of EVH's guitar playing but cutting that back in favour of the keys was a bad move

One of the godfathers of electronic music, especially with the sampling of parts of Bladerunner and many other tracks, by Boards of Canada, Air, UNKLE, Jay-Z, Kanye West, The Prodigy, Outkast, Enigma, a whole bunch of trance artists and many more. Most definitely a one-off.

But home come I aks? Is it because he wears a daft hat with shades and has Claudia Winkelman bangs?

+ 1 here. One band who are sure have me diving for the off button every time one of their cod-orchestral, twee bits of sub-Beatles pap comes on the radio. Truly 'kin awful load of old tosh. Think i've just come off the fence there. Just heard a truly dire effort on Planet Rock by the terrible Europe called Cherokee. This is one example why a. bands named after US states, cities, continents and countries are uniformly sh01te; b. bands with songs about native Americans are equally so and c. bands named after places that sing about Pawnees, Apaches, Huron etc are quadruply so. On the positive side, I think Coldplay have made some great music and are really great live; Stone Temple Pilots are not only the best of the Grunge era bands but one of the 5 best US bands full stop; I really enjoy 'Moves like Jagger' ; Pendulum were another great live band and their first two albums are 5 star drum n ' bass/rock crossovers; Saturday Night Fever is the best movie soundtrack ever. Finally, the 70s disco era not only produced some classic music but produced the largest number of great basslines of any genre.

I mean basically one could taken the first album and add the better tracks from the other five and these would fit onto a 70 minute CD or double vinyl I guess

You got no love for Bulgarian female voice choirs then?🙃 I lived in Croatia for 3 years and can categorically state their pop music is utter pants.

I'll raise you one CD. And Van Hagar couldn't even put all their good tracks onto an EP, no let's make that a '45.

Slash is most definitely not a guitar great. He's a capable rock guitar player no more, no less. He hasn't revolutionised guitar playing but has merely continued what many others were doing before him. And he doesn't even have a signature sound. Anyone who thinks he is a great is 100% wrong

It sure is! One thing in favour of NWoBHM is at least it wasn't what was going on the other side of the Atlantic, i.e. hair/glam metal and the FM/stadium rock of Boston, Journey etc. Iron Maiden started out quite well but rapidly went downhill after they got in Brue Dickinson and his cod-operatic warbling and at the same time swapping the punkier vibe for a proggier one.

That man might've been me. I'll happily defend FoS till the cows come home them having made 3 seminal pop singles of the 80s. An easy target for many but they had more memorable tunes than the entire NWOBHM scene which was around at the same time

Ay caramba. I should've known better but Ive just played that vid. Now it's gonna give me nightmares

I've heard all his stuff from Dirty Mind to Diamonds & Pearls, made during the before-he-got-really-weird phase. He was very good at what he did, up to a certain stage anyway. I just don't buy into the 'genius' claims, though that's more down to fawning and undiscriminating fans. BTW, I agree with you re the Stones. There are also a lot of anti-jazz comments here. Thing is, jazz is widely unappreciated/unloved so aren't any negative opinions about it, by default, popular?

I've recently come to the opinion that being a great guitarist and a good songwriter are mutually exclusive to whit Hendrix, Eddie van Halen, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, the entire 'shred' fraternity and all these 'new age' type acoustic virtuosos.

With you 100% re U2. I still really do like Boy but they started to lose it on October, although that does have a few good tunes. Underworld are probably my fave band but I get why they're not to everyone's taste

And by that measure Prince is certainly not a genius. Very good at what he did but that's it. Sometimes I read hyperbolic drivel about him being a modern day Mozart! The claim he's a guitar great rests on that live rendition of 'While my guitar...'. . Could he play acoustic guitar like John Williams or Tommy Emmanuel? Was he as good a drummist as Buddy Rich? Could he tinkle the ivories like Arthur Rubinstein? Nothing in his output suggests he could, much of which is pretty lightweight and insubstantial e.g. songs like Raspberry Beret.

Nowt wrong with quality pop. Give me Britney Speirs and Sigrid any day over any prog or most metal bands. I can't abide Metallica's first five albums and prefer some tracks off Load/ Reload. Other than his guitar playing the only good stuff from Hendrix were the covers. The Who and The Rolling Stones should've stuck to singles and split when the Beatles did. Cream and Credence should never have been allowed in a recording studio.

I generally don't care much for what most would term classic rock (60s, 70s and 80s) but like quite a bit of nu-metal particularly Limp Bizkit 🙃

At long last Moderat's fourth album is just out. My first new album purchase in 3 years

Erm no, I mean a metric for ' best bands of all time'