Monkey Steve

I've always played in bands that are somewhere within the very large venn diagram of musical styles that I will listen to, but I'd say that few of them have been the sort of music that would feature on my Desert Island Discs list. All sorts of rock/punk/metal, which I do like, but even when doing originals in bands that I've formed, I can only think of two that were exactly to my favourite tastes. The last lot I played with were a very technical death metal band, not a genre I have played before, and I joked that there might not be very many transferable skills to help with my UEB playing, and got a semi-serious lecture from the drummer about how you should be able to learn from playing all different types of music, and be able to apply different techniques even if it doesn't seem like an obvious fit at the outset. He had a very good point. Then last week someone asked me if i wanted to join his reggae band... I politely declined. Not because I hate reggae (although it would be on the very outer reaches of my venn diagram...I have a few Bob Marley albums and UB40's first LP, and i only really like one track from that) but because white men playing reggae badly is one of the worst musical crimes on the planet In fairness, he only asked me because he wants to form a reggae band and doesn't know any other musicians

another punter and performer at the Star over the years, and pleased this has turned out with the right decision Always reminds me of an article in a Chelsea programme from then chairman Ken Bates, joyously pointing and laughing at the local residents who had objected to the latest rebuilding of Stamford Bridge because they said that the increased capacity would cause excessive noise and congestion on match days. He repeated the planning committee's comments that if you buy a house that is next door to a very well known football ground you have to expect noise and crowds on matchday Picking up on another comment, me and the ex once bought a house that was over the road from a church - didn't really think about any issues that this may cause. No noise issues, but on Sunday morning we often couldn't get our car out of the driveway because Christians park like c#nts

I depped with a band last year who rehearse three times a week. They're a semi pro name band (in their field) doing originals, releasing albums, playing festivals and doing tours In practice "three times a week" tended to be two times most weeks, and sometimes just once. But it was a good discipline for them - two week nights after work to run through a set and work in tightening up their playing, one longer, more relaxed rehearsal at the weekend to work on stuff, whether new songs, teaching me the stuff in the set that I wasn't up to speed on, etc. If nothing else, it's fun playing music - far better use of an evening than snoozing on the sofa in front of the TV. The lead guitarist would happily rehearse every day of the week, and when there isn't a practice he will play guitar on his own at home

completely agree For some forms of music having a loose arrangement can work, but for a lot it doesn't. I once went to a rehearsal for a mate's covers band who had asked me to dep for a gig. They went through exactly that "we all started and stopped at the same time so it's fine" routine for all the songs and he was astonished when at the end I told him that I thought they actually needed to work on playing the songs better and that i was happy to help out for a gig but I wasn't interested in joining (as he had hoped) I actually quite enjoy playing the songs just to work on getting the playing tighter...well, I enjoy playing the bass so playing songs is always fun

The point about how much work you expect to get out of a rehearsal is a good one. It is art/fun after all and musicians aren't typically known for their sense of responsibility, but there is a point to it For anything up to two hours i would expect a bit of d#cking around/catching up for the first half hour, setting up, jamming a song to get up to speed, etc, but then pretty much solidly playing or working on stuff for the rest of the practice. For three hours or more I'd expect a fairly chilled session, and usually with a beer/fag/whatever break half way through, but certainly at least 2/3rds of the practice to be actually playing/working

or for repeat offenders I've certainly suffered from one band member making it impossible for the band to make progress, and there does come a point where there is actually no point rehearsing that night because the band isn't going to achieve what it has set out to do. I wouldn't do it for a first offence, but my enjoyment of a couple of bands would have been a lot greater if somebody had cancelled one or two of those pointless rehearsals and made the person at fault realise that they are letting everybody else down and costing the band money each time they can't be #rsed Never managed that, but did successfully instigate a policy whereby if you cancelled on the day, or didn't show up for practice then you have to pay the full cost when the studio asked for it the next time. Funny how the amount of cancellations went down...

It's going to vary from band to band depending on what the priorities are, but the key to me is agreeing in advance what is going to happen at the practice so that everybody knows and can do their homework accordingly, whether it's learning a new song, running through the set to sharpen up the playing, or just coming in with bits and pieces to have a jam and see if any new songs emerge. Emphasis on "agreeing" - and sometimes reminding certain band members what has been agreed so that they actually do their homework in time. One passive/aggressive lead guitarist in an old band was very good at seeming to agree what song we'd be preparing for the next rehearsal, and then turning up to say that he hadn't had time to work on that one so why don't we all play the song that he wanted to do instead? Beyond that, arriving on time. While I'm OK with singists timing their arrival until after the lead guitarist has finished assembling his gear and widdling away for ten minutes, and the normal five or ten minute delays that life throws at all of us, I've been in a couple of bands where one member would routinely turn up over an hour late. If that's normally you, I can guarantee you that the rest of the band has spent that hour calling you a c#nt and discussing how and when to sack you

Another fan of Download here, and another non-camper. Get a room in Derby and there's a bus that will take you to and from the festival each day. Mud in the arena was restricted to a few muddy puddles, and with my trousers tucked into my DMs my boots just needed a hose down at the end of the day and I was clean again. A lot of spots of rain for a few minutes, then sun, then overcast, but only two significant bits of rain over the weekend. The camp site was different, but the stories of people leaving on the Thursday night seems to have been from tweets by the two people who actually did that, which were picked up and run with by the media. I've certainly been to much muddier and wetter Downloads. As somebody else has said there's a definite sense of camaraderie, and while people will disagree about whether they like some of the bands, it's rarely a cause of any aggro (this year Die Antword were the one that really split the crowd "what are they doing on the bill?" etc). Saw a lot of bands that I wouldn't have paid for in isolation (and some that I would have paid to see on their own) and if you're not too fussed about the band on stage at the moment there will be three others to choose from, or a bar you can hang out and drink at with your mates. No problem getting down the front when I wanted to, no problem with the sound, and no glasses full of pish being thrown...perhaps because there was a £2.00 deposit on the plastic glasses, but I don't recall this as a regular feature, certainly not compared to the old Monsters of Rock or Reading festivals from 20 years ago the only two complaints this year were delays in opening the gates each day, and the strength of the beer that was available. Oh, and the weirdly polite but very long queues that formed everywhere, worst on the Friday which is usually the quietest day. A combination of those factors explains why my credit card bill shows a lot of cocktails having been purchased from bars that didn't have huge queues Next up - Bloodstock...Download's little cousin, like a village fete with extreme metal bands playing

as far as I recall (being told this many, many moons ago) the wraps are there to stop the string unwinding. Or were originally. It may be something that's been solved for decades but Rotosound still like the look of them... what stops the wraps unwinding remains unanswered Like you I'm a D'addario player, and they seem to have solved the unwinding string issue quite effectively. Can't say I play them specifically because they don't have wraps, but I'm not a big fan

Didn't go to this one, but having seen Metallica at a lot of festivals over the last decade or so, they've always put on a great show (and I'm not a fan of anything they've recorded after And Justice) Been to two gigs at Twickenham, both about a decade or so ago. First Iron Maiden - had tickets on the pitch, sounded excellent. Then the Police, in the stand at the opposite end of the stadium. Again, the sound was brilliant, although we heard similar reports of it being less good if you were off to one side. Main problem that night was Sting constantly trying to sing a different tune to the one that he'd recorded in the first place

So for the benefit of @Graham 🤘😂🤘 On my way home from Fen at the Underworld. Didn’t get to see Pete, sorry, Havenless play drums because he’s on holiday in the Lake District. Rock n roll isn’t what it was so drinking with them ahead of the show we decided that the dep deserved a Fen stage name and picked one from the. Brewdog beer menu so he shall forevermore be known as Origami Orangutan. possibly because of having a dep drummer the set was quite straight ahead death metal, and not too heavy in their usual atmospherics. A lot in the crowd who hadn’t seen them Before were very impressed, as was I. Only one new song (well, only one song that they announced as new...honestly I couldn’t tell you otherwise). Again, fast and quite direct, it I don’t know whether that’s a reflection of the new album or just the easiest one for the drummer to pick up at short notice. i then popped outside as I had a missed call from my parents - best to check that nobody has died. Nobody dead, it trains are knackered so I said goodbye to the band and headed off without seeing Vltimas. 😤

I’ll typically cut my strings so that I only have a couple of winds on them, and all my basses are long scale. I’ll bend them to a right angle and cut after the bend...no idea why,I must have read it like 30 years ago as being something to do if you’re cutting the end off strings. Anyway, works fine if you need to shorten the strings

Pete is apparently Havenless Adz is Grungyn Frank is The Watcher - doesn't seem to have entered into the spirit of it does he?

Bit of googling shows that new Aliens come with the Warwick Red bronze strings, and that they only really come in 45 - 105, so I'm puzzled that yours was correctly set up for 40 - 100, as that's quite a bit of work to do to change the intonation on an acoustic - essentially moving the bridge. No matter, however it's happened, if you want to put 40's on it you can simply use long scale ones. There's no intrinsic difference beyond the amount of extra metal you'll have to deal with at the head end

I've had a 1975 4001 for about 30 years and was my main, usually only bass for the first ten of those, but until recently it had been in semi retirement because it's four strings and I'm now firmly a five string player, and my main basses for the last decade or so have been Warwicks. I can sympathise with the OP because on the odd occasion that I've used the Ricky over the last 20 years it's sounded a bit thin and harsh, with my ears now being used to the much more tonally balanced sound of the Warwick (always with MEC $$ and active eq). The pickups in the Rickenbacker were mid-90's replacements (long story) so probably the same as reasonably modern 4003s. Listening back to old recordings, those seemed much fuller but also a little flatter/duller, and the key change is going from playing with a pick through an old valve Marshall Super Bass II to playing with a really aggressive Entwistle style finger technique through an Ampeg SVT (or pedals doing a close impression thereof). I did a couple of dep gigs at the end of last year where I needed to use both, and a couple of unexpected things happened. The first thing of note was that whereas previously I'd always balanced both pickups with the neck rolled off a little, this time the sound was much better when just using the bridge pickup. This may have a lot to do with the rest of the band - a two guitar death metal outfit, so I was looking for a very aggressive sound, though not using distortion. I would say that this is the closest it's ever been to the Rickenbacker sound that I have in my head, and I reckon that the change is mostly down to the amp Next, the output from the passive Ricky was far, far louder than from the active Warwick. I tried to balance this by dropping the volume of the Ricky with an eq pedal, but in retrospect I should probably have boosted the Warwick. Finally, at the shows, the soundmen much preferred the Rickenbacker - found it far easier to get to sit in the mix. I've used the Ricky a few times since, for less extreme music, and find that the aggression of the depping set up can be a bit much for more standard classic rock/metal type stuff, but actually there's a lot that can be done for the eq by varying my playing technique, not hitting the strings as hard, switching between picks and finger style, etc

I always thought Dean were taking the mickey with their Dean V, especially the heavy marketing of the Michael Schenker models, a man famous for playing the Gibson version But isn't this a bit late? I thought that John Hall's furious reaction to any whiff of a Ricky copy was because the company has to be seen to do this in order to maintain their copyright on the designs, or else the Courts will view it that they knew about it, didn't make a fuss, and so have accepted that people can take their designs

I feel quite bad that I haven’t seen them since Pete joined on drums as he’s quite a good mate...maybe I need to google what his Fen band name is before tomorrow night

been offered a spot on the guest list for the Vltimas gig at the Underworld tomorrow night (a mate's band is the main support). Don't know much about them so intrigued to see what they're like (and probably wouldn't be going if I wasn't getting in for free) Also in the middle of a week long train strike on my line so not tempted to stay late, but it's a 10.00 curfew so I should be OK to see some of them and get home...famous last words...

I tend not to go in and browse unless I'm specifically looking to buy a new bass. And I tend not to go to a shop unless I know that it'll have the bass that I'm interested in trying. So if I'm in the shop to get strings/whatever then I'll just go in and buy them, maybe a quick bit of window shopping around the bass selection, but I won't ask for a go on any of them Partly it's to resist temptation, but probably more that I don't want to waste the shops time by having a free go on their stuff when I have no intention of buying

Back from Download over the weekend. Didn't see the "biblical levels of mud" that the media was reporting, and while some of my mates that were camping reported that it was much worse there than in the arena itself, the reports of the crowds all leaving on Thursday night seemed to be the media taking a couple of tweets and running with them (in the wrong direction). As ever with Download, organisation was patchy: having arranged to meet at the Real Ale Bar, we arrived to find that the Real Ale Bar had in fact been relocated into a different field, and the map hadn't been updated. And wasn't opening until 3.00. And as ever had a pretty poor selection of beer when you got to the front of the massively long queue that rapidly formed on the first day. Highlights were Me First & The Gimme Gimme's, Beartooth and Slayer, with honourable mentions for Power Trip, Slash, Deadland Ritual and Last In Line. But my favourite band of the weekend was Elvana - a band doing a mix of Elvis and Nirvana songs, just a joyous celebration of the music that turned into a huge sing-a-long. I'm not sure it would work nearly as well outside of a festival. Became a bit of a guilty confession amongst people we spoke to, as soon as you said you'd loved their set they felt a weight being lifted and could agree just how good they were.

yes, talent and ability aside, this more than anything - are you all on the same page as regards what you all mean by "commitment"? It's a major bugbear of mine, that you think "really committed" is one practice a week and as many gigs as you can get, somebody else is annoyed because they think it means three practices a week and doing tours, and somebody else thinks it means showing up whenever they don't have anything better to do

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the "when the original maker dies/retires" - hasn't dented the desirability or price of Wals Just being old seems to be the main reason that an instrument is worth money - I've seen some terrible '70s Fender guitars that are almost unplayable going for huge amounts of money, just because they are old

I suggest that you give some helpful, positive feedback to contestant A, let him know the areas you think he can improve on... ...although I did once do that to a singer who had a great voice but clearly wasn't a good fit for the band's music. Didn't go down very well, and I got a huffy "well if you don't think I'm right what's the point in me wasting my time coming back" response. So be gentle and encouraging, and maybe not too blunt about their shortcomings

My band experiences have been largely the same - mates, or mates of mates, getting together to form a band. I've never auditioned, I've always either put the band together or have been asked to join by people who have played with me in a previous band The one downside is that you can sometimes get stuck with a band member who really isn't pulling their weight but nobody wants to sack them because they're a mate

A couple of times I've invited singers back for a second go, where there was certainly promise and to see if they could improve, or on one occasion where the band was split with half thinking a particular singer was a great bloke who would fit right in and the other half thinking he was a talentless oaf who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket (the second half were right, as the tape of the second audition proved) so might be worth asking A back to see if he can improve and give a better impression of his singing. Or possibly both of them, to see if B reverts to type and fails to turn up