Newfoundfreedom

Three bottles of vodka and hopefully a blackout until all the b@ll@cks is over with for another year.

I can't even do that after 6 months rehearsing with the same band. 😂

I've had this discussion with my guitarist several times. His theory is, he sees himself as an average guitarist, so throwing loads of money at gear will make him sound better. My arguement is, that it would be imperceptible to 99 percent of the people listening. However, if he perceives himself as sounding better, then he will play better. Therefore, yes, expensive gear can make you sound / play better. But in my opinion it's mostly a placebo effect.

Sadly not. We never really got to the stage where we had any specific tracks down. We were only a few rehersals in and none of us had played for years. Also it was one of those putting the house up for sale to "test the market" kind of things and it sold within a week. So one week it was all systems go. The next week he was packing up his kit.

Sounds like a pretty good arrangement to me.

Strangely that's not a problem. We have one of those rare beasts, a shy guitarist. We spend most of our time trying to get him to turn up. 😂

I'm sure one of the lads mentioned having a drum machine. That could help if things get desperate, but I honestly think it'll do us good to go without for a while.

Is it the worst thing in the world? We've just found out our drummer is moving away so will no longer be in the band. I'm pretty sad he's going because we're just a bunch of mates who play together, and it was the drummer and I, who have known each other for several years who started the whole thing off. We're nowhere near gig ready anyway, but things were just starting to come together and sound like music. So here's the thing. The social side of the band is much more important as far as I'm concerned than going out gigging. None of us are professional musos and it's never going to be about money or how many gigs we can get in. It's far more important that we get along as mates, the music is almost secondary. So basically, I don't want to put out an add for another drummer and bring a random stranger into the band. This isn't helped by the fact that we're all English people living in rural Bulgaria, so that fact that we met each other, got along, and all happened to play instruments was a one in a million chance anyway. So amazingly, I have another couple of English friends moving to the area in 4 or 5 months time, one is a guitarist and the other a drummer. Problem solved, both from a social and a band point of view. Our lead guitarist is absolutely dismayed at having to manage the next few months without a drummer, even though we're not a gigging band, have no gigs arranged, or any kind of pressure or timescale. I just don't get it. I actually think that it will be a really good opportunity to get ourselves playing well together. To be able to hear one another without competing with the volume of a drummer, and generally tighten things up. So to the voices of experience, is it all going to fall apart without a drummer? Or, as I believe, could it give us a kick up the @rse and help us to tighten up our own timing and playing and help us to hear one another better, therefore to play better as a unit?

I always find the hating on Bugera / Behringer utterly pointless. Is it a copy of another amp? Probably. Most of Behringers stuff is a copy of something else. Would I pay (in this example) £250 for the amp? Absofeckinglutely! Would I pay the best part of a grand for the amp it's based on? Not in a million years. I'm a weekend warrior not a professional musician. I simply don't have that much cash, or even the desire to spend that much cash on gear even if I had it. So are the companies who make the original amp losing out to the cheaper copy? Absolutely not. If the copy didn't exist then I still wouldn't be buying the original amp, and the people who want the original amp wouldn't buy the cheaper version. What Behringer do is supply decent quality gear at an unbelievable price for those of us who can't afford to spend thousands on top end brands. As well as supplying tons of gear to schools and academies who buy it for the same reason, and introduce whole new generations of people to playing music. Long live Behringer!

I may have been in the company of several famous people in my life and I probably wouldn't realize. Honestly, I doubt I'd even recognise Brian May if his hair was in my soup. Famous People belong on telly or on stage. They have no business existing in the real world. 😋

Usually a wadded up section at the bottom of whatever t-shirt I'm wearing.

Never heard of it. In other news, nowt wrong with Wetherspoons. I used to be a mobile worker, working in different places all over the UK from one week to the next, which meant eating out every night. We would always head for the closest Whethies whenever possible. A meal and a pint for 5 or 6 quid and no loud music or screaming kids area. Can't beat that!

I saw him live at a local theatre a few years ago. Having absolutely no interest having being dragged along by the wife, and thinking I wouldn't even know any of the songs. I have to say I had a thoroughly good evening and knew many more of the songs than I thought I would.

That's the Mail's top tier journalism in action. A none story which has no relation to all the sh#t that's going on in the world. Often quoting an unnamed source (i.e invented) then five paragraphs of Ethel from Tyneside said on Twitter, "I blame all the immigrants" Edit: Other news providers are available, but they're all pretty much as bad as each other. They just blame different parties or social groups.

Only if you're Spiderman. 😋

Does that come with a free house to put it in? Bargain!

The best thing about it was Happy Jack's little Spiderman avatar dancing along in time. 😂

First of all it's the Daily Fail. I wouldn't wipe my @rse on that disgusting rag. Secondly, you have to feel for the guy. To try and reclaim some sort of normal life after being in a band reaching that level of fame has to be a nightmare. I can't say I blame the guy for shutting himself off from the world. I do the same wherever possible, and I don't even get recognised by my own Mum half the time.

Now I have to visit the Daily Moron website to view the article. Must remember to clear my browser history afterwards. If anyone looks I don't want them seeing that there amongst my other perfectly acceptable foot fetish and midget porn websites. Could you imagine the embarrassment?

Maybe it would help if you posted a snippet or a link to some of the songs on your first album, so people have some idea of what they're buying into?

Meh!

My Sub Zero (Gear4Music own brand) semi. I picked it up as B stock from gear4music's eBay page for an absolute steal at £100. When it turned up it was brand new, still in the packaging, and I can't for the life of me figure out why they sold it as B stock, but who am I to complain. It's an absolute dream to play and, to me at least, looks and sounds amazing considering the price point (around £200). If anything happened to it I'd happily pay the full price for another.

I'll be honest. Until I couple of months ago when I came across Scotts bass lessons on YouTube, I'd never heard of Jacko. I had to Google the name just to find out who everyone was talking about. Even now I've never heard him play and wouldn't know who he was if I fell over him.

So is this something that comes from experience, or is it some kind of natural talent? I'm a born again bass player having played many years ago in a school band, and recently having taken up playing again in my 40's. Now back then we didn't have forums like this (we didn't even have the internet) I just learned to play using tab books or following the guitarist. Now many years on, reading this forum you constantly hear phrases such as ' that's a classic P bass sound" or that's definitely a jazz bass, or music Man, or Rickenbacker, it whatever. Or, I use this amp because it gives me this tone, and I use this cab because it gives me that tone. I'll be honest. Listening to songs and in " the mix " the vast majority of time I can't tell the difference. Bass is just bass. Now obviously, there's a difference between sounding good and sounding bad (playing ability aside) but apart from that, it all sounds much the same to me. Am I missing certain brain cells? To me, (inexperienced though I might be) timing and "groove" are far more important factors then the ever elusive "tone", which seems to be very much subjective anyway. Or am I just missing something?