Dankology

If my Squire VI is anything to go by, a new socket will end up being the tiniest and most trivial on a long list of mods and fixes. Love mine BTW.

Aside from the potential rights and wrongs of the recruitment criteria (and the seemingly random use of capital letters), that sounds like a band I'd really enjoy not being a member of.

Yours is also presented the most prettily... Really appreciate the time you put into this. These are my thoughts exactly. I really like the way the run sounds and as much as any flurry of quiet, low end notes might have done the trick, it was really bothering me that I couldn't identify what was being played. I've always had a thing about wantng to get my fingers (and ears) around tricky passages, even if it's a song I don't particularly like - just to have another tool in the toolbox, as it were. I was pretty far off as it happens. In my defence, while I was fighting with it I did think that it reminded me of Neil Young's Old Man - and it turns out that it is the same guy on bass. So I may be tone deaf but not entirely cloth-eared 😀

Thank you all for your sterling efforts. I'm looking forward to working my way through these latest versions tomorrow. Fascinating how much variation there is here, latter-day rearrangement aside... 😉

Second gig with our new band on Friday night! The sorry tale of how we were reduced from a 5-piece to a renamed trio is recounted in another thread but the new band is shaping up very nicely indeed now. The gig was a free-in in the bar at a small local theatre. We all know virtually everyone involved in some way so the preparations were very relaxed and informal. The guitarist had been in touch with the venue engineer a few days before to sort out the set up and had explained we were 2 x vox and wanted at least some of the kit in the mix so we could use some effects on it. All was ok'd and it was arranged to meet him on the afternoon of the gig - no show... As we loaded in we were greeted by what I can only assume was a volunteer/work experience bod and the "desk" photographed below. (In case the photo doesn't attach properly, imagine something you might give to child who wanted to pretend they were doing a podcast.) We resigned ourselves to just putting the vocals through the PA but soon realized that there wasn't even a basic built in reverb so rushed back to the rehearsal room to grab the XR18, modem, tablet etc. Amazingly, it all went well from there on: really decent crowd by the end, many of whom seemed to be happily bopping along. All our giveaway cds were nabbed and we even had a girl come up at the end to ask for a setlist - although I wonder if she had anticipated something like the very pretty one that our guitarist had shared on Facebook rather than the crumpled, beerstained plain A4 printout I was standing on. Oh, how I have missed playing live. (a free live EP from our first gig is available here: https://deadtenantmusic.bandcamp.com/releases )

I'm not sure I said that. But as an outsider he perhaps had a degree of perspective (and freedom to speak his mind?) that others that others did not but he chose to bullishly pursue his own agenda.

I'll have to agree to disagree on this one as I reckon his tenacity almost certainly contributed to the toxic atmosphere. But I suppose that's an eternal conundrum: how much does the observer change events merely by observing them? Or by continually punting daft ideas, of course.

In this context I think so. The editing here admitedly emphasises it but I think his insistence on pushing the live show aspect when the band were clearly in the midst of an existential crisis shows a complete lack of emotional intelligence. I'm not sure he comes across at all like a benign or even helpful influence. And that's not to mention his utterly outlandish ideas for the show itself or his pointless desire to use codenames for the individual Beatles.

So true. The proof of the pudding being that, once they removed the self-imposed time and creative restrictions, they crafted Abbey Road out of essentially the same pool of material. I do feel they were just short of one person pointing out how needlessly destructive the whole idea was but between the dead Epstein, apparently disillusioned George Martin, clearly star-struck Glyn Johns and the imbecile Lindsay-Hogg there was no-one to state the obvious and gently guide them right. Complete aside: I absolutely love the fact that history's very first "shut up, Yoko" jibe seems to have been cracked by McCartney himself, aimed at Linda

I suspect it's actually a hymn.

This was exactly the example I had in mind. Seems bonkers to me that such an iconic part could be considered not to be an integral part of the song.

I reckon it's horses for courses with the key being to get a solid agreement in place *before* the millions start rolling in... I always liked what Madness did: for each song the main songwriter got 50% and everyone got a 1/7 share of the other half. Somewhat smooths over that disconnect between a contribution (that could subjectively be large or small) and what might traditionally be seen as "songwriting". Although that does seem generous in a seven-piece band. I truly hate the situation that frequently exists in which the writer of an absolutely key part/riff/etc gets no recompense as it doesn't form part of the traditional top-line/lyrics view of a song. Then again, I'm sure what appears in brackets after a song title and how the income is actually split can be two very different things. My last band fell apart largely because one person wanted to do (and be seen to do) all the writing. Current band is very much a whole-band credit - which I'm slightly uncomfortable about as the singer contributes all the words and main melody even though the backings are fairly equally contributed to.

Apologies for a slight thread-jack but are there any pointers on a surround set up that won't break the bank and/or give the living room an unfortunate air of singleton's masturbation dungeon? I seem to have amassed loads of 5.1 discs in boxsets and I never get to listen to listen to them.

We've just put this up as a free Bandcamp download ahead of an imminent small local gig and to have something to send promoters while we mix our recent studio tracks. I'm quite happy with the mix and I hope I earn brownie points for not correcting a couple of clangers I played on the bass 😜 https://deadtenantmusic.bandcamp.com/releases

It might be interesting to read "The Inner Game of Music" by Barry Green which is aimed at getting over the sort of psychological blocks that get in the way of performance. I've only read the first few chapters so far but there are definite references to the sort of issues you mention above, including the ability to play a part flawlessly when not concentrating on it. I have to say though that the book is quite irritating in places - I've owned it for about three years and can only bear to read a few pages at a time... https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/848522.The_Inner_Game_of_Music

No experience to contribute here but happy to be a follower if we need to experiment and see what happens when you go significantly over 100...

I saw PJH on that tour and I think the same song had to be restarted because Eric Drew Feldman seemed to start it in the wrong key. Makes me wonder if it was part of some ongoing in-joke, although the facial expressions in this clip would suggest not. I think the bvs are the most egregious element of this performance though.

You are presuming a degree of common sense that may not be justified here. I can't quite remember the sequence of events but I suspect my LP came with Dunlop buttons and my Ric with Schallers, which I then adopted for my Fender basses (or did they just arrive with compatible buttons?) plus there are the various instruments that have neither - and enjoy various bottle washers and cheap plastic locks. One day I'll get them all the same. Or maybe not, now that I've learned this wonderful life hack.

Genius. Why have I never thought of this before? All that time spent messing around stretching eyelets around straplocks, not to mention the chaos of needing a quick swap and discovering a strap/button incompatibility.

I'm so glad I'm not alone in being unsure of this...

Ah, so easily said...

My band doesn't do many covers but this one came up in rehearsal and that intro/verse figure is driving me mad. I can do a sort of fumbled approximation of it but it (E F# G A A B C# D) but this is pretty far away from the tabs I've seen online (https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/j-j-cale/after-midnight-bass-2751288) and I'm now pretty sure that neither I nor the tabs have it right. This feels like the sort of tasteful, musical bass playing that should be getting my head and fingers around - can anyone give me some pointers, please?

I'm 42 and started buying music when I was about 8 so I was just on the cusp of CDs coming of age but because of the cost of players (and discs back in the day!) I did most of my listening on a mono tape recorder and a series of boot sale/hand me down/budget turntables. I picked up most of my vinyl from secondhand shops, charity shops and car boot sales and did so primarily becuase it was cheap and secondarily because the covers looked better that big and I also genuinely enjoyed the process and ritual of putting a record on. Fast-forward a couple of decades and my continued miserly ways have been thwarted by the vinyl resurgence: unremarkable pressings that I spent £3 or £4 pounds on routinely sell on Ebay for anything between £30 and £80 and the days of hitting the Vinyl Exchange and coming out with a stash of stuff that I just fancied the look of are long gone. I still love vinyl for the other reasons mentioned above but I'm finding it harder and harder nowadays as the quality of new records has entirely gone to pot: indeed the last three new records I bought (Stephen Fretwell, Arlo Parks and Jesca Hoop) all sounded like complete sh!t - clearly the quailty control people are aware of how many of these new releases are being used solely as objets d'art. (And yes, I have a reasonable turntable with an upgraded and properly aligned cart). I suspect my days of buying *new* records are now over but I'll always love the format for many of the reasons others have cited above and hopefully we'll see a return to sensible secondhand prices once the current, inexplicable, penchant for cassettes fully takes hold... (DOI: currently own two turntables and am actively looking to replace one of them)

I'm sure someone will help put me straight here but I'd have thought that the properties desirable of a turntable plinth (ideally deadening all vibrations) would be rather different to those of a guitar's body (t*ne w**ds and all).

After the mid-lockdown collapse of my last band (whole sorry tale recounted elsewhere on here), the three of us left behind have been working hard. We've got our first gig this Saturday supporting friends at a small bar close to home. Here's one of our works-in-progress: https://www.mediafire.com/file/45nwkqhivxuck1a/Dead_Tenant_-_82_%5Bnew_vox-rough_mix%5D.mp3/file If anyone is near Rawtenstall on Saturday night do pop in to the Whip and Kitten and say hello 😀 https://www.facebook.com/deadtenant