Barking Spiders

Ditto viz JMB. Several years ago I thought I'd give the strangers route a final go as no one I new played an instrument but was underwhelmed to see 80% + of ads were for metal and punk pop bands. I put up an ad to start/join a band along the lines of Transglobal Underground/Dreadzone/ Leftfield and after 3 weeks and hundreds of looks got one reply.

In my yoot I used to fantasise about making it biggish in a band (didn't most of us?) and so every week I bought Melody Maker for the musicians ads. Had auditions for several bands that went on to reasonable success but my fondness for slap n' pop put many off I think (this was the late 80s/early 90s and I was a bit of a Mark King obsessive). It soon dawned on me I didn't want to be in a band where it was like going to work and that band members were just colleagues. The social side (i.e. drinking, bantering and playing pool) was as important to me as trying to make music. The good thing about 'auditions' is they knocked my fantasies on the head and let me focus on getting a degree.

I remember going to try-outs (auditions is a high falutin word in these cases) with several bands and felt like I was interviewing for a post as graduate management trainee. Surprised they never asked me where I saw myself in 5 years time. From then on I only ever then joined bands with people I knew socially or through work. I need to have that connection first before any music starts happening

To my ears most metal bands sound pretty much like one another within whatever sub-genres they belong to whether metalcore, black metal, death metal etc. Gojira is one of the very few exceptions that have an individual sound. I also like their environmental stance which is a nice change from the usual subject matter and they're unusual in not being heavily tattooed. I agree that there's some tasty basswork going on but as with Lamb of God you have to focus your ears quite hard to appreciate it.

Totally agree. IMO the DP version is a bit flimsy

Today I felt like putting on some aggressive music in the car and went for Burn The Priest's Legion XX, which contains 10 covers of stuff recorded before they became Lamb of God. My fave track here is their take on Big Black's Kerosene as it has a really dirty growly bass sound

Recently bought a re-released version of Murmer by REM with extra tracks . For me they're one of those bands that peaked with their debut. I lost interest in them after the follow up. Many great tunes like Radio Free Europe, Talk About The Passion and this, possibly my fave

Just flipped through the 7 pages and no mention of Talking Heads take on Take Me To The River. The original's fine but IMO TH's version is the mutts nuts

Some other options not in the list i.e. Do you dep occasionally if a local function bad is kinda desperate? Do you jam with mates, in between bouts of drinking? Do you play at open mic nights, in between bouts of drinking? In my case, yes to all three

Like their countrymen Yello, Swiss band The Young Gods were way ahead of the curve back in the 80s and into the 90s for that matter. Probably bit off-kilter for most as they didn't have a standard line-up or methods of making music. Still, they were great. Check out L'eau Rouge, TV Sky and Only Heaven.

Who's this 'another awful punk band'?

Had a listen to several other of the album tracks on YT. Will definitely be buying it assuming it's out on CD. Kudos to Alex Lifeson for doing something totally different. Quite a few others from famous bands who'd have done well to do likewise.

I've never liked Rush but I like this very much indeed and will check out more. I get the Curve thing too. I've long been a big Curve fan . There's also a smidge of Cocteau Twins. I like the young lady's voice here and like Toni Halliday she's very easy on the eye too 😊. Great call, thanks for posting this 👍

Just been googling. Another one called Skald, one of their vids getting 35 million views. Guess this whole scene could get pretty big with The Northman likely to be one of this year's blockbusters

I've never been a fan of BC but my elder sister's copies of Scared to Dance and Days in Europa were main my intro to punk/new wave, albeit in hindsight as I was only 9 when they came out. And I still enjoy listening to them, esp as SA's guitar playing got me into taking it up. Another very sad suicide not long after that of another great of the Scottish music scene, Billy Mackenzie.

First time I've come across this group. I'd go and see them live. Anything different from the norm is good by me.

Is it this one by any chance? https://www.guitarworld.com/news/the-beast-a-mammoth-six-neck-guitar-goes-up-for-sale

yep agreed, another in a very long line of underwhelming 'super groups' that are less than the sum of their parts. For me the most disappointing is Audioslave, considering the members were in two of my fave rock bands

It's probably the age I'm now at that I've mostly been listening to fave sounds from my formative years in the 80s, post-punk and synth-pop/New Romantic era stuff. IMO there were several great bands who were better than the more acclaimed ones like The Smiths, The Cure, New Order etc (even though I like those). One of these was The Woodentops, whose debut album ' Giant' is a cracker and still sounds fresh. This one isn't on it but it was the first song of theirs I heard on John Peel. They were big Peel faves. Incidentally post-punk geeks, the bass player was the brother of the late Pete de Freitas, drummer with Echo and the Bunnymen.

I re-bought Boy only a few weeks ago having heard I Will Follow on the radio. One of my elder sisters had the LP and I nicked it when she moved onto other stuff after a couple of years. I too like the post-punk vibe of Boy and October but quickly lost interest from War onwards and actually still dislike Sunday Bloody Sunday, Two Hearts..and New Year's Day.

Kind of agree and I don't really think of AiC as grunge either and they're definitely not metal. I guess grunge was a useful label to differentiate them from all the terrible mainstream rock coming out of the US in the 70s-80s.

If anyone reading has seen the two Matrix sequels or is a gamer you might've have heard some Juno Reactor. This mad tune isn't on the soundtracks but has Steve Stevens (Billy Idol's guitarist) doing some great flamenco guitar

Though in the US Core is 8 x platinum, Purple 6 xm Tiny Music 2 x and total sales of around 40 million. Problem was critics used to bash them for supposedly jumping on the grunge bandwagon. Clearly those idiots were cloth-eared as many STP tunes are nothing like grunge.

Yep. Guess we don't hear of any prog bands suing for plagiarism

https://bassmagazine.com/artists/thomas-fiorini-and-robert-groslot-announce-concerto-for-bass-guitar-and-orchestra Dunno if I'm behind here and someone else may have posted but whaddya think?