mikel

Aye, my first ever live band gig. Have to say they were a great blues band, Jacka could make a blues harp sing.

I was at the church hall in 1968 when Downtown Faction played a Blues gig. Not long after they met up with Alan Hull and the rest is history. I was at the Mayfair when The Police gigged their first album to a fairly small crowd. They were late coming on cos they had been watching Dire Straights at the city Hall.

There is probably a law of diminishing returns regarding basses. Could a £1200 bass be 6 times better than a £200 instrument? If we are talking about sound and playability I very much doubt it, given the subjective nature of the beast. I have a two basses, one about £300 and one just over £700. Is the more expensive one twice as good? No its not, no where near. It wasnt supposed to be, it simply has a different sound.

Saw Focus in December. Pierre van der Linden was superb. One of the most accurate, skillful and hard hitting drummers I have seen, and I always liked hard driving music. They played for 2 hours 20 minutes and were superb. He never missed a beat and did a 10 minute full on solo. He is 74.

When I was mainly drumming I answered an add for a startup/jam session at my local rehearsal studio with two guys I had never met, It was all done by email and text. I pitched up early as I know its a pain waiting for the drummer to set his kit up and I like to make full use of the time slot. Set up and had a coffee in prep for the guitarist and bassist to arrive. It got to 15 mins past the agreed time so I decided to make use of the time and do some practice. Half an hour went by, then 45 mins and I thought something must be wrong. Checked the messages on my phone. Yep, got the right date, time and place so where are they? Texted the guitarist. Nothing. Bassist, nothing. After using up the 2 hour slot practicing I packed up and went home. The guitarist got back to me the next day asking where I had been. He insisted they had been to the studio and there was no one there. Bolloc*s. The front door was open, my car was right outside and I was thrashing away on a drum kit. I still have no idea why they decided not to turn up, surely If they had second thoughts they could have called it off. And not answering texts on the night was downright poor form.

Personally i am not impressed by heavily figured timber, it often looks like a fablon coating when lacquered. As for "tonewoods", its a bit like pixie dust to me. I had a Strat copy that everyone raved about the tone and sustain. It had a plywood body.

I dont even bother. I worked out a long time ago that its the player not instrument. Obviously if there is a fault with the instrument then that is a different matter. Get the verybest out of what you have.

Or not. I come from a household that had Jazz playing in the 50s and 60s a lot of the time. Big band, swing, trad etc etc, and I liked a lot of it. But for me music is music, one genre does not have it all for me, or even most of it. We have been to the Marciac Jazz Festival a number of times and mostly it was the Trad or melody based stuff that entertained me the most, a lot of the more "modern" stuff was simply musicians showing how much they can play, and boy can they play, but as for entertaining me, no, not really. Music is music, the genre, age, gender or nationality of the musician or source material is, well, immaterial to me.

I loved the early Genesis, the Peter Gabriel fronted stuff. The only later album I liked as a whole was Invisible Touch. It spoils the legacy for me, a little, when old bands decide for whatever reason to re form and tour, usually simply for the money. I have very fond memories of late 60s and 70s bands pushing the boundaries and being the backdrop to my earlier years and it disappoints me to see them as old men, and women, going through the motions with mainly hired hands filling in the blanks. Dont get me started on the sky high prices they also charge for what amounts to a karaoke night.

I do both, and drums. I have an old Squier Tele and its great for noodling and singing along. Drumming and bass playing help with the understanding of each instrument and how the components of the rhythm fit.

That all sounds like bad form to me, except the free drinks bit. Never been offered free drinks by a venue or promoter, and never expected them. No such thing as a free drink.

I could understand if MC had been anything other than a Circus act.

Pity the stage crew had not been more professional, or the piano tech.

You really paid extra to have a reliced instrument, so it looked old, and it ended up like that, after only a year? It simply makes me even more bemused re the relicing thing.

Vulfpeck. That's white South African for Woolf pack I believe.

Just shows the differences in our personal likes and dislikes. With due deference to John Peel I always thought Teenage Kicks was a rubbish song. So I would never cover it anyway.

It does nothing for me. Creativity is key. So they can copy anything that's been done before, well that's wonderful, but isn't breaking any new ground.

Well hardly. I doubt you would get a redundancy payment if your input into music was no longer required. I have done both and music is a far more tenuous way to earn a living, more so if you depend on your creativity and the public buying into what you have created. Working 9 to 5 for the man is far from ideal but is infinitely more secure than the music business. I would also class anything that does not involve writing, recording and playing music as a day job. Being in bands, creating and gigging is I believe what the op was on about.

Great story. Music making as a way of life is for the young, really. You can take a chance with your life as you have plenty of time to put things right if it goes sideways, as most attempts at a career in music do. I admire anyone who has talent and wants to find out how far they can push it. He has plenty of time to get a "proper job".Rock and Roll.

Lived the dream for two years back in the early 70s. In a band with my mates, writing our own stuff, another mate with a transit and another who just loved to play with amps and the PA. Recorded a demo and hawked it round the record companies in London. Didnt get signed but played lots of gigs and had a great time. After starving for two years I met a girl who became my wife and I went back to the proper paying job. I would not have missed that two years for anything.

Agreed, its not always or even often about facts, it often simply perception. If agents think it will be awkward or more expensive then that will be enough to stop the booking British acts. Mere perception is what brought us to the huge hole we are now in as a nation.

The first Yes album, sometimes called the Yes talk bubble. It was great going back to this recording after a long, long hiatus. It was recorded in 1969 and could be a window into the change in decades from the Beatles, flower power, and 60s pop, to the rock, fusion prog 70s. You can hear them pushing the boundaries, sometimes its working and sometimes its obviously not. They even do a cover of the Beatles "Every Little Thing" that seems to link the past with what would be the future musicaly. Pure early Prog nostalgia.

The members of Pink Floyd managed the trick of being a megga group, and remaining largely faceless to the general public. Nice if you can pull it off.

Double post. Doh.

The Beatles. Do I need to tell anyone why. Pink Floyd. For constantly surprising me. The Police. Re ignited my love of music and drumming in particular. So exciting.