Barking Spiders

........while their fans tended to moan about them selling out. While working this morning I've been listening to 90125 by Yes which I like, in contrast to their earlier proggish stuff. IMO 'Owner' is one of the best singles of the 80s. Similarly I never cared much for Metallica until the black album. Over to you👉

And usually while the shredding was all fancy-schmancy with legato phrasing, sweep picking, double-handing tapping yadda blah, the accompaniment was pretty mundane

Hmm, I appreciate her instrumental skills but the songs aren't my bag. Ditto Tal Wilkenfield.

I confirm I am a slob with no taste and yep, they are also completely mental 😁

'Bassman' my Babylon Zoo, frequently misheard as 'Spaceman'

If I hear a song on the radio containing lines like - 'rock ('n roll) all night long', 'I wanna rock', 'fantasy .... reality' , 'cuts like a knife' , 'down on my knees... beggin' you please', 'learning to fly' , 'can't you see..' , 'gonna rock you baby' , ' mama I'm comin' home' , 'fire in your eyes' , ' could be right, could be wrong' , 'doesn't matter if you're black or if you're white' '... workin man ' etc etc I take my lump hammer to it. It's impossible for me to like any song containing these lines and many more.

Rammstein vids are often good for a crack and humourous too

Frankie are pretty much the band of my teen years and any time I play their tunes it takes me right back. Still sounds fresh and exciting. As it happens I watched several of their TOTP appearances on YT a few days ago and it all came rushing back. Great band. Happy times.

In a nutshell all performers, from mime artists busking outside M & S to A list thesps etc, are putting themselves out there knowing that there'll be haters. I'm sure we've all done gigs where a certain % of the crowd thought we sucked and even told us so in no uncertain terms. They can even throw stuff at the stage a long as they're pleasantly edible

hmmm not sure maybe some rap/hip hop vid featuring lots of twerking 😉 like Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back. I won't put up a link as it might get taken down. The rhymes are funny with tongue firmly embedded in cheek

People are own stating their own opinions, like on every single discussion forum on the internet and in every pub up and down the land, not telling others what's right/good and what's wrong/bad. I've not read any posts here ridiculing the YT vid just making a judgement as every person on the planet does

For me, while a fantastic voice isn't the be all and end of of what makes a great song, I often hear tunes with great melody, instrumentation and production let down by a vocal which grates. Fr'instance I think I'd have a lot more time for Led Zeppelin were it not for Plant's frequent shrieks and wailing. Closer to home I'm big into 90s-early 00s trance. However, often there were great club bangers that were let down by thin girly vocals warbling repetitive cliches. Kinda the same for trip hop . A lot of acts that came after Massive Attack and Portishead had some good ideas and execution only to be marred by mostly weak or nondescript vocals, usually female

In hindsight I should've put 'family members' rather than 'siblings'. I've not been aware of people playing in bands with their dads/mums. That would never have happened in my family in a zillion light years.

Well, I've never liked the song to start with, I hate jazzy type noodling so....

Take a cue from the Dusty Springfield post I'm partial to some Petula Clark's classics. She had a great voice which made some great songs into great pop classics. This one's really evocative On a similar 60s inner urban vibe check out the lead and harmony vocals on this gem. As with Downtown there's something about the production on these tunes which makes them sound superior to most songs.

If so is/was your relationship more like the Corrs, Nolans or more the Davies and the Gallaghers? I've three older sisters and a slightly younger brother and once was in band for a short while with bro who was the drummist. It wasn't our band which was just as well otherwise there could've been fists a'flyin' if it had been such was our relationship back then. Now, there'd be a much mellower vibe. Would've liked to've played in a band with a couple of the sistren as they had nice pipes and one was a dab hand on the keys. Main thing is they had lots of male admirers which I always played to my advantage and a couple of the boyfriends were well connected in the musical/entertainment world.

I've mostly played in dance music bands covering funk, disco and house tunes. When on bass I had to be bang on the money as most of them had well-known basslines so I wouldn't be doing the rest of the band any favours if I went off just approximating them. However, when playing guitar I didn't really stick that closely to the originals not that I shredded during a cover of Lost In Music.

I kinda get where you're coming from but in my case it's soy boy bands and singists. If someone has the look of a soy boy my automatic assumption is the music they make is as soft as sh1t3. And it always is so my instinct is bang on 👌 As for acoustic music, for me the musicianship has got to be top notch otherwise any c@ck in the songs is laid bare. This is why musicians of modest skills (e.g. Nirvana) sound pants unplugged.

I'm a sucker for the soul vocal groups of the 70s on the likes of the Philly roster. The harmonies, the suits and the moves 👌.Here are two classics hard to beat for tunage, moves and the vocal performances. Oh and the bass lines ain't bad either.

Yep I didn't notice when scrolling through so have amended the post. Anyway. I just 'kin love this tune and that's mainly due to the vocal by Sharon Musgrave. It gets me every time. Another all time fave is this debut by The Christians . Why they never got to be big still flummoxes. Maybe because it's they could sing? Ditto this beaut from Londonbeat

Rolling Stone have a 100 greatest vocalists where Karen C is down at 94 which is utterly ludicrous, below the likes of Morrissey, Thom Yorke and Joe Strummer. And Art Garfunkel at 86! In a poll of sensible people that don't have cloth in their ears, those two are all time top 10. Have a butchers at this list. It's even more nuts than best guitar player polls https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-147019/mary-j-blige-4-35089/

+ 1 for Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates. Sounds of Silence and Bridge Over are classic examples of S & G's harmonies being bang on the money. Viz H & O, tracks like Out of Touch and She's Gone are have equally great vocal performances. Then there are the classic soul singers like Marvin Gaye. No question there which leads me to this, which even tops Otis Redding.. In rock for my money no one can touch Mike Patton, especially in Faith No More. His range and versatility are something else Finally my fave pop cutie, Sigrid. She's just great. End of.

While I tend to gravitate towards groups that are a bit edgy or quirky from time to time I find myself really liking something that doesn't fit the mold usually a pop song. I remember watching Later With.. and being totally captivated by a 22 year old Norwegian singer Sigrid's performance and the two songs she did. She doesn't fit in with my usual stuff but she was different to all the US and British pop clones

Being weak minded and easily influenced I'll like whatever's on the radio, playing over the supermarket tannoy, anything Amazon suggest and whatever the popular kids like.

Today as I work it's been Call of the West by Wall of Voodoo , Slow to Fade by the Red Guitars and Hunters & Collectors comp Natural Selection. These tunes got quite a lot of air time on Peel's show and they still sound fresh and original