Monkey Steve

before the fall of communism, a mate of mine, a then recent history graduate, wanted to visit Mongolia, which was Soviet controlled. He goes to the embassy to apply for a visa, and is shown through a hallway lined with busts of heroes of the Soviet Republic, into a grey room with extremely utilitarian furniture, and a very senior member of the staff asked him what the purpose of his visit was, explaining that they don't get many people wanting to go to their country. To which he replies "I've been studying eastern history from the middle ages and I'm really interested in Genghis Khan" The guy's eyes light up, he smiles, opens the door to check whether anybody is listening outside, and produces a load of information from a secret cabinet. It turns out that the Soviets were not fans of Genghis Khan because everybody in Mongolia loved him and he was seen as an anti-Soviet cult of personality. So in approving his visa the official made it very clear that he frowned upon people visiting his country for that reason, and that my mate should definitely not go to this list of towns in order to see the monuments and historic battlefields, and that the details of Genghis' achievements on the photocopied handout were not things to be proud of or to boast about

in general, next to the pedal board, but with a working knowledge of where the rest of the band have theirs. However, where my pedal board is (and whether it's a board or just a couple of pedals) depends on the band and the venue. Got a good tip ahead of a couple of dep gigs at Christmas from the band, that their fans can be a bit grabby if you leave the set list at the front of the stage, and a bit clumsy with drinks and generally animated, so it's far better to leave the pedals and set lists at the back of the stage and well out of reach...we then forgot to bring any set lists so the band shared one written on a pizza box for the first gig, and I think we did without for the second one (but it was the same set). Classy

Glad it's sorted, and if nothing else, you at least know where you stand. Funnily enough, I had a very similar situation not that long ago. A band had split up but I remained on good terms with the drummer, and we'd vaguely said that if ever we need the other half of a rhythm section we'd let each other know. Fast forward two years and he's become a father for the first time, and mentions how he'd like to get out of the house a bit more so if I need a drummer in any of the things I'd been doing or talking about putting together, give him a shout. So I asked what that actually meant in practice: Weekly rehearsals? Yes, well, mostly, probably, unless something comes up, and assuming that his wife isn't up to anything else that weekend because if she is he'll have to stay in to look after the baby. Maybe every other weekend would be fine, let's say once a month for certain, and maybe one extra in the month if he can manage it Weekend gigs? Yes, well, again, probably. If it's a gig then he's pretty sure that the wife will let him have first dibs and will not arrange to do anything else so that she can look after the baby, so as long as she hasn't already got something else arranged...if we could arrange them for the weekends that he's already bagsied for rehearsals... Weekday gigs? Unlikely, not a definite no but definitely not at short notice, and getting in late and disturbing the baby and wife will be frowned upon

Friday night - The Lounge Kittens at Bush Hall For those who don't know them, they're a three piece vocal harmony group (+ keyboards) doing covers of well known songs, usually the crassest pop punk, and the filthiest metal and RnB. Superb night, and when they did their (well established) Prodigy medley on the day of Keith Flint's funeral, there seemed to be a few people with something in their eyes. Always a great band to go and see, hugely talented, and make beautiful music. No bass player...although the support act was Grant Sharkey who plays double bass and sings.

Last night, Black Grape at Sub 89 in Reading. Or as they are now billed: Shaun Ryder's Black Grape. Seems to be just him and Kermit + a backing band. Much as I like Sub 89 - a small venue that gets some pretty big bands on - I usually have to leave at about 10.30 to get the train home. So it made a nice change that rather than keeping all the best known songs until the end, all the singles were scattered throughout the set and by 10.00 I'd heard all the songs that I'd be grumpy about missing if they were saved for the encore. Good band, great sound (if anything, a shade on the quiet side, but brilliant balance) and excellent interplay between the two front men. Also worked as a good advert for their last album, which had completely passed me by - apparently it came out a couple of years ago, and the songs they did from that fitted in just fine. I'm told that after I left I only missed one song, which was an extended instrumental jam (although my gig buddy may not have seen all the encores)

Back to the OP, it's difficult to answer without knowing exactly how it was put. Everybody has an opinion, and everybody thinks they're right...and often a lot of people get very upset with people having different opinions. If you can raise things constructively then great, but often people are bad at judging themselves - one man's clearly explaining things in a direct manner is another man's shouting bully. And as others have said, there's a time and a place and it may not be at the audition if you really want to join the band. And the trouble with being a reasonable, thoughtful person (which seems to be the default character setting for a lot of bass players) is that in general musicians tend to be spoilt, petulant children who scream and shout and stamp their feet and refuse to do anything they don't like (and yet they think they are winning the argument by being forceful and direct, not a shouting bully). I do think there is something that feels quite personal about being criticised for your playing, whether it's volume or timing or whatever, and people can take it to heart. I've certainly been in bands where issues have festered because nobody wanted to address it head on, and it's never ended well - by the time it's raised it's a huge issue, when it could have been easily sorted out with a quiet, constructive word when it first happened. The best bands I've ever been in, both personally and for playing standards, all musical matters were dealt with very straight forwardly - this is wrong/needs improving/isn't working, let's sort it out straight away.

makes you wonder about the systems thet the couriers put so much faith in... I had an Amazon delivery that was due on Saturday, which they gave to DPD. Great, there's a DPD app which gives me a delivery window, a map that shows me exactly where the van is and how many stops there are before it gets to me, and even a little bio of the driver. At the end of the delivery window the app updates to say the driver's running late but the delivery will be with me shortly. then it updates to say it'll be two hours late. Then after two hours it sticks on still being expected at that time despite it being in the past. When it was an hour past then I thought I'd ask what was going on. The app lets me chat to a customer service representative. I got through two of them and had to ask close to a dozen times before they would answer what I thought was a fairly straight forward question - what had changed from that morning when they could tell me exactly where the package was, and that afternoon when they just kept repeating that they couldn't tell me how much longer it was going to take? It seems that these cunning tracking systems all depend on the driver correctly logging what he's done with the parcels and the depot updating the systems, and when things go wrong, both of them answering their phones. So they couldn't tell me what was happening because nobody was answering their phones. DPD's best solution was that I sit tight for the rest of the day and hope that the driver arrives sooner rather than later. I suggested that DPD were severely under valuing my time in thinking that I had nothing better to be doing, and as a quid pro quo how about I pop out to do what I had planned to do and if the driver arrives in my absence he could sit tight and wait for me to get back? They didn't seem to like that idea. I get Amazon involved, and between them and DPD the message of "deliver it ASAP and if it can't happen today make sure it's first thing tomorrow" got interpreted by DPD as "Steve wants to rearrange the delivery for tomorrow". I didn't. An hour after being told not to deliver the package because it's not wanted until tomorrow, the driver marks it as "refused delivery" (I didn't, I'd love to have had the chance to refuse the delivery but I never actually saw the delivery driver) and having done so the process is now to return the item to Amazon, so they can't deliver it on Sunday. DPD's complaints process is laughably called "Make It Right". It does not live up to it's name. Their response was very much "well, it's all gone wrong, but we're not going to take any responsibility or try and fix it" On the plus side, it wasn't essential that I got any of the stuff this weekend, and despite none of this being their fault (other than having handed it over to DPD in the first place) Amazon have bent over backwards to sort it out. I've had £10 refunded and £10 as a voucher credit (more than a third of the original price in total). I'd have more sympathy if they paid higher taxes, but I assume that Amazon will have some sort of claw back from DPD for those costs.

D'Addarrio Pro Steels for me - seem to retain that brand new zinginess for longer (and in my experience D'Addarios have always stayed brighter for longer than other brands)

I always found the studio albums of the period a bit under cooked. I tried to love them, but (as per the point of the thread) but never liked them as much as the live album. For my "less than 25 years old" nomination, my favourite Beatsteaks album is Kanonen auf Spatzen which is one of my all time favourite albums full stop, although it's not that I don't also love the studio albums that the songs come from so it's probably not appropriate for the thread

yeah, I've certainly had some chunky necks on older Warwick 5's, but also some very slim ones

Have to disagree - they’ve had a choice of two neck profiles for years now and there are plenty of slim ones. Especially the thru necks

I'm a firm fan of Warwick, and they are ridiculously cheap second hand - massively under-priced for the original German instruments IMHO. If you can find a thru-neck version of any of their models in your price range it will be slim and fast, and in my experience handles the low B very well. That said, they have a lot of variety in neck profiles and pickup choices over the years, to say nothing of the different ranges that they have introduced in recent years so it can be quite difficult to keep track of what was made where and by which team of craftsmen. Even more so since they started badging their RockBass range as Warwick, although a mate of mine has one and swears by it so perhaps not to be dismissed Finding a bargain can be a bit of a task, trawling through eBay and small ads. But if you are having a trip to Andertons anyway it would be worth trying a few of the assorted ranges to see if you like them...and then off to the interweb to look for second hand ads

Whitesnake - Live In The Heart Of The City

I tend to think that any lost parcel shows a lack of "reasonable care" regardless of whether the courier admits to having put it down the wrong chute or not, and I'm not aware that this gives any more entitlement to the full value of the lost items. Good summary here: https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/advice/what-are-my-rights-if-a-parcel-i-sent-is-late-or-missing which seems to boil down to the sender having a contract with the courier that confirms the amount of compensation, which in turn depends on the level of insurance bought (if any) Possibly worth a try, but there's a key difference in that EU law confirms that the customer has a right to expect that goods will last for a reasonable period, which is not governed by the length of the guarantee. I suspect that you said the magic words that they were waiting to hear before they will roll over and pay up. No point fighting a claim that they know they will lose, and certainly not worth the PR disaster of trying. While it may be worth a try, I don't think that the OP has the same rights to fall back on. It's not like being the most complained about companies on the planet has made any noticeable difference to their performance to date...

Had similar issues, both with band members showing up when it suits them and cancelling (or just not showing up) when it didn't, and more frequently with nobody in the band wanting to bite the bullet and sort out a situation (or the BL not wanting to be the bad guy) For the former, we had to impose a similar rule to the one suggested above, that if you cancel within the 48 hour period then you have to pay the full costs. That sorted that one out to a degree, despite much "but the rest of you can still practice if I'm not there" whining from the guilty party. For the latter issue, in my experience a problem like this had never, ever got better on it's own , and trying to ignore it, or complaining about it to the rest of the band but saying nothing to the band member who is the problem, just makes everything feel much worse. Better to take the pain and get on with the sacking now - you will all sleep much better afterwards and can actually move forward. A couple of questions. Is there a specific issue that the drummer is dealing with that's behind this? If he can't make rehearsals because his wife's just died and he's got to look after the kids (and an array of things that may stop well short of that level of seriousness) then IMHO it's time for sympathy, understanding and as much of working round him as you can manage until he can sort things out or decides for himself that he can't do it any more. Maybe finding a second drummer who understands the position and is ready to play whenever drummer #1 can't, given that it's almost full time as things stand. Even if there is a good reason for things, that doesn't mean it'll get any better. Once had a guitarist who's lateness was legendary. He had plenty of valid excuses, but at the end of the day, the band would be sitting around for two thirds of rehearsals because he was running late again, and it doesn't matter how good the excuse was, the band was suffering and he was the problem that needed to be resolved. By sacking him. I'm not seeing why you would want to offer him a hiatus, unless the specific reason for his flakiness is time limited and will improve in due course. I did once have a band member who asked for one, for perfectly good reasons, that the rest of his life was going to be far too hectic for the next year or so and he didn't have time for the band. In fairness, he presented it as a resignation, but giving us the option to ask him back if we needed him after that year had elapsed. We could then recruit a replacement on the assumption that it would be permanent, who I then sacked a year later as he was nowhere near as good as the original guy who definitely wanted to come back (but presented it as "the original line up is getting back together" and he understood).

I did this for a band that I depped with at Christmas - the songs on their last album were in standard E, but everything prior to that was tuned down (on the guitars) to a C. I tried it with just my 5 string and just re-tuned up half a step for the songs in C, and back down again for the songs in E. Then after a while I brought a second bass, left that in E and left the fiver in C. I did also experiment with a capo, but by the time I'd checked the tuning it wasn't any easier than re-tuning properly or changing the bass. My preference for "drop" tuning on the guitars is simply to move to the low B on my 5 string, but if the whole guitar is up or down a semi tone or even a fourth, then from experience it's usually best to match that, especially where you want/need to use open strings

no, that's not the same as having a right to take photos. You would have to stop taking pictures if challenged, and you would have absolutely no rights to use the photos commercially. the fact that there is no law automatically forbidding photography until challenged is a very different thing to having a right to take photographs, because rights do not disappear when somebody asks you to stop. the truth here is that nobody cares enough to do anything about it, and they wouldn't get very far if they tried - certainly not at the level of a gig where nobody is paying to get in. But it might be very different if you tried to sell photos of a band who can afford to take you to court

you don't have to sign anything for Ts % Cs to apply. You are deemed to have consented to them by buying a ticket/appearing at the festival. It's what asterisks on websites were invented for

and you think that the festival makes a point of covering all these points when they sell the tickets, but doesn't mention the consent to being photographed in the artists contracts? If they were deemed to be in a public place then there would not be any need to have the Ts & Cs. And if you had read and understood the Ts & Cs you would have seen that you cannot do what you like with the pictures you've taken because you cannot use them for commercial purposes without authority, which you do not need if they were taken in a public place. So it is very, very different from photos you have taken in a public place. Are you genuinely not understanding this point? I'm done repeating myself

Here's what Glastonbury has to say: https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/tickets/#TCS Term 12 for the festival goers and Term 10 for the photographers, with an extra page to expand on that: https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/information/media/photography-at-glastonbury/ Here's Download - General Term f for festival goers, Banned Items d for photographers: https://downloadfestival.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DL-Ts-and-Cs-2019-v3-FINAL-.pdf British Summer Time at Hyde Park (terms 19 and 25, although interestingly they don't directly deal with amateur photography): https://www.bst-hydepark.com/terms-of-use Reading (and presumably Leeds) General terms e and g: https://www.readingfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2019-Reading-Weekend-Ticket-Terms-and-Conditions.pdf General Term H at Wilderness https://www.wirelessfestival.co.uk/terms-and-conditions shall I go on?

cough... But that's not what you've been arguing is it? You've been arguing that people have the right to take photos of you at festivals . They don't. There is a contractual agreement for people to have their photos taken, and to not use the photos for commercial reasons. A contractual agreement is not a right. And that is only really there because these days doing anything else is unenforceable. It wasn't that long ago that people with cameras were stopped at the entrance, and anybody caught taking photos was thrown out.

Yes, but that has got absolutely nothing to do with your right to take a photo. You only have a right to take photos if you are on pubic land, and even then there are restrictions. If you are not on public land you have no such right - the fact that this is largely a petty restriction that is not worth enforcing in the age of smartphones does not change the law and give you the right to take pictures when on private land.

Both completely wrong. a shopping centre is a private area. As you seem to recognise, they can ban photography, which they cannot do if it is a public area. However, most will choose not to ban photography, because, really, who cares? The same applies for shops, restaurants, anywhere you go where you do not have a legal right of access because it is not publicly owned property. frstivals are not public events. They are private events, on private land, and you have to pay to gain entry. Just because you sell tickets to members of the public does not make them a public event on public land. Included in the Ts & Cs for purchasing a ticket you will agree both to be photographed, and that you will not use any photographs taken for commercial purposes. So you can take photos and have your photo taken because those terms have been agreed to by all parties, not because it is a public area where the law allows it.

Yes. It is not a public place. I don’t understand what you are not getting here, it is not public land and you do not have any right of entry

One of my mates, who happens to be one of the best musicians I know, is another leftie who plays right handed guitars. He went to boarding school, and his only choice when learning was to use the right handed ones that the school had, so he consoled himself with the knowledge that Gary Moore was also left handed. they also made him write right handed, which led to him being regarded as "ambidextrous" within his family because when he wasn't at school he would write left handed Mind you, the guitarist in one of my first bands was also a leftie playing right handed and he was terrible. When asked why he didn't try playing left handed instead he conceded that he probably wouldn't be any better the other way round so what was the point in trying...