lozkerr

Fantastic night last night at Edinburgh's Wee Red Bar with the 80s covers band. We were doing a two-hander with a 90s band and the place was packed - we came within 27 tickets of selling out! No, the venue, not the band 😉 People were dancing from the first song, which is always good to see and loudly singing along to the last few numbers. We hadn't gigged since June, because reasons, so it was great to blow away the cobwebs. Bass was my Sterling Stingray V into the venue's Peavey amp - I still don't know the model number. Maybe I'll look when I'm back there next week, if I remember. In the meantime, here's me grinning like a gargoyle while belting out Love Shack:

Bought a new Mono M80 from the Gallery a few years ago. When I got it home, I found a padded Mono strap and a 10-metre cable inside. Bonus!

Bought an EHX Freeze off Ben. Great guy to deal with, excellent comms and pedal exactly as described and very well packed. Dead chuffed with it!

This is both the best and the worst. Found for a song on fleabay but the full refurbishment cost was not so much a song as a double album. But I'd wanted one of these for ages and it sounds fantastic! I'm pondering getting an Electro-Harmonix Freeze and a decent expression pedal before the end of the year so I can try the 2026 abstinence thread.

Aye. Until you get some perv trying to upskirt you.

For the now-defunct punk band, a lurid pink jacket too big for me was my outfit of choice...

Me too. I'd have thought bringing back the WTP heads would have been more in keeping with the Eden brand. Looks like they're aiming at lower price points. I'll be interested to see what you think. I doubt if I'll be trying one just yet, though, as I've just had this fully refurbished. Jeezo, I thought my Metro had some grunt but this thing's a bloody monster!

I received a couple of these in the run-up to our last gig and thought no more of it - they were trapped as spam and a quick look through the source code uncovered quite a few red flags. I thought it might have been a one-off, but I've had another one today from some more supposedly big-shot US lawyers. This one's a bit cruder than the earlier supposed missive I had from Cravaith, Swaine and Moore, but it's still a scam. It's a nasty one, though. For one thing, both those companies really exist and they genuinely are large legal firms. Everything apart from the alleged 'infringing video' link resolves to real URLs and email addresses. I've been on the Internet for 37 years now and thought I was wise to this sort of crap but it still gave me a jolt. It is designed to do one thing and one thing only - panic the recipient into clicking that supposed Facebook link. It looks like it's been shortened just to fit nicely on the page, but in this case it really has been shortened. Here's what it looks like under the bonnet: <p style="margin:0 0 8px 0;font-size:15px"><strong>Infringing Link:</strong> <a style="color:#0b5b7a;text-decoration:none">https://www.facebook.com/<wbr>108692607419559/videos/...</a></p> In this case, it's dead - clumsy work on the scammer's part - but in the earlier one, it led to a shortened URL. Hovering over it displayed the actual link - bit.ly/something_or_other. Expanding the shortened URL - you can find plenty of sites that will do that for you - showed it led to a page stating that 'Unexpected traffic has been detected from your computer' with a link to click. Click on that link and you'll be asked to log into 'Facebook' - it's actually a fake login page. If you take the bait, bam - these scumbags have your login credentials. And just to add insult to injury, Faceache took the post down and restricted my account when I uploaded these annotated screenshots. Let's be careful out there!

Hm, I see what you mean. It's a moot point now though as the band's broken up ☹️

We have a winner!

We all adopted stage names for the punk band - Annie Hilation, Jude Struction, Laura van Detta and Sara Macarra ('macarra' is a Spanish word for a thug). Fitted the vibe very nicely.

Tanita Tikaram at an instore performance at Assai Records Edinburgh on Saturday. I loved her early stuff, went right off her for a while and recently discovered her again.

We're primarily an 80s band, but we don't enforce a cut-off date of 31st December 1989 or ignore anything released before 1st January 1980. The earliest song in our repertoire is Suffragette City (1972) and the most recent is Take Me Out (2004). But they're mainly 80s - here's our full list: Another Girl Another Planet Baby I Love You (Ramones cover) Back On The Chain Gang Bohemian Like You Call Me Cars and Girls Chance China Girl Crash (the Primitives song) Dakota Dignity Disco 2000 Don’t You Forget About Me Don’t You Want Me Echo Beach Everybody Wants To Rule The World German Film Star Going Underground Hanging On The Telephone Happy Birthday (the Altered Images song) Heart of Glass I Don’t Want A Lover I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Joan Jett rather than the Arrows) In Between Days Just Like Heaven Killing Moon Little Bird Long Train Running Losing My Religion Love Like Blood Love Shack Love Will Tear Us Apart Mandinka New Year's Day Perfect Skin Pretty In Pink Pride (In The Name Of Love) Psycho Killer Purple Rain Reward Rip It Up Running Up That Hill She Sells Sanctuary Should I Stay Or Should I Go Slippery People Somewhere In My Heart Suedehead Suffragette City Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This Tainted Love Take Me Out Teenage Kicks The Honeythief The One I Love There Is A Light That Never Goes Out There She Goes This Charming Man Town Called Malice White Wedding Whole Of The Moon

I used to be a railway modeller and I'd heard of the Growler Group long before now. Sorry!

Nor me, even though I have one. And I suspect female membership of this is a bit thin on the ground: http://thegrowlergroup.org.uk/ Quite SFW, in case you were wondering.

I'm nicking that for the next time a colleague thinks it's funny to ask if they can play tambourine in my band!

I'd played several different instruments in the past - piano, violin, marching drums, bugle, trumpet. If it hadn't been for a particularly vicious dental abscess, I might now be quite a reasonable trad jazz musician. But pain of that nature put me off in a big way. I tried guitar when I was a student, but found it really difficult to play chords as my thick stubby fingers kept getting tangled up with each other. I should really have gone for an acoustic, but I wanted an electric because, y'know, guitar. I suppose some lessons would have helped, but the grant (it was that long ago) wouldn't stretch to that. At the time, I was knocking about with the original bassist from the Dogs D'Amour. He tried to get me to take up bass, but me being me and Knowing It All, decided I was meant to be a guitard. Which it turned out I wasn't. I think a seed might have been planted, though. Fast-forward a few years and I was chatting to a friend on Facebook. She was making noises about learning some Thin Lizzy songs and I said I'd be up for learning bass. Don't ask me why - it just seemed a logical step, albeit one fuelled by rather a lot of home-brewed wine. The next day, I wandered into Dawson's Music and mumbled something about bass guitars. Shortly afterwards, I left with my first bass - an Ibanez GSR200. It just felt like it dropped into my hands and it instinctively felt right; I knew there and then that I'd discovered 'my' instrument. The Ibanez has since moved on - it went back in its case when I switched to a five-string Fender Jazz Deluxe. I still have it, although a five-string Sterling Stingray is my weapon of choice at the moment. I wish I'd listened to my friend's advice years ago. And I'm still rubbish on the guitar.