SteveXFR

I can never understand why people choose to film gigs on their phone. It looks rubbish and sounds worse. I prefer to leave my phone at home or in the car and enjoy the show while I'm there. I've seen people trying to video gigs with their phone get angry with people who dare to mosh or dance and ruin their video.

Phones at gigs do suck. One of the good things about a really lively mosh pit is no one can hold up their phone. I suspect tonight's Discharge gig will be a phone free experience.

I'm using black beauties on my P bass. Standard tuning. Tension feels fairly similar to the Ernie Ball slinky's I had before. I love the sound of black beauties, nice deep sound

I really wanted to see Tool live until a mate saw them live last year and said Maynard kept stopping to complain about people taking photos. The flashes may be annoying but most bands manage to keep playing through it

From what I've seen, they both put on a great show. The Darkness are one of those bands who I never listen to but I think I'd really enjoy live

Frome punk festival tomorrow night. A great lineup as usual. Local band Far Que will be playing, I think they organise it. They're a band who deserved to have had more success. Hellbastard second from last for a bit of thrash crossover then thrash punk pioneers Discharge headlining. Discharge are proper legends, named as a major influence by Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax and many others.

Jerry Only of Misfits would sound better with anything but the bass he uses. Maybe the older Ibanez SR800 with PJ pickups would work for him

We light up - Black Light Burns

I think quite a few use the DI out from the preamp pedal and don't use an amp on stage. My Le Bass even has a cab simulation on the DI out. I use it for home practice and it sounds awesome. Our band is recording a demo next week and I'll just use the DI output to record the bass

1996 didn't seem right to me so I googled it. Depending which source is correct it was released either 96, 97 or 98

None at the moment but I used to get pretty close with a chorus and EQ pedal

Vibrator - Motorhead

Love his playing style plus he always looks like he's having so much fun on stage. I'd buy him a pint if I ever get the chance.

Charlie says ' Prodigy

I did meet a non music hero once. I used to do downhill mountain bike racing and somehow ended up in the national championships. After taking my usual pre race nerve poo, I whacked current world champion Gee Atherton with the portaloo door, almost knocking him off his crutches. He wished me good luck in the race. Nice bloke.

The Rolf Harris autograph reminded me an old bloke I used to work with had a Garry Glitter signed photo proudly displayed on his office wall. This was in the days before his crimes were known. I don't know what happened to the picture.

No. I wasn't 100% positive it was him as he wasn't wearing a Les Paul so I said "ere, you play a bit of guitar don't you" to which he replied with a chuckle "yeah I've been known to play a bit now and then". Robert Plant lives local but I didn't like to ask about reunion potential, he's probably sick of that question.

We both walk dogs on the grounds of an estate owned by an actual cult (not The Cult) and my dog is a d**khead who likes annoying aging rock legends.

Closest I got was a guitar hero when Jimmy Page stroked my lurcher. Nice bloke, slightly eccentric, likes dogs.

Jazz just puts people off. It's only really enjoyed by a small minority. If rules are what you need then metal has loads of them! Most of them came straight out of blues. It doesn't just have to be based around learning songs. I tried the SBL Players path which seems to be purely around learning little tunes that they've composed for the lesson so that's pretty much just learning songs anyway. Anyway, I found very little interest in the SBL lessons, they felt like a chore and mostly ended up using talkingbass instead.

That still doesn't explain why everything but blues jazz and soul should be ignored. Why ignore anything else just because their roots go back to these styles? I found it extremely difficult going from SBL lessons in blues and soul to playing something like Slayer which requires a very different style of playing. There was nothing that prepared me for the speed of punk and the super fast fills in it. I'm not saying don't teach those fundamental styles, just offer a bit of something else as well to keep it interesting. I gave up with SBL because it was boring and didn't prepare me for what I wanted to play.

Anyone starting out in learning an instrument is doing it for enjoyment. If you're already a professional musician then you need 1 to 1 tuition not Scott's Bass Lessons which is aimed purely at amateur musicians. The biggest drawback of online learning is there's no one to point out when you've got the details wrong or answer questions and those are the sort of thing you need at a higher level but it doesn't matter to the amateur as much.

Playing an instrument is something you do for enjoyment. If lessons are six months of playing styles you have no interest in you'll soon get bored and give up. You can learn those basic skills from any genre so why stick to just a few? There's punk and ska songs full of arpeggios, tricky rhythms in all forms of rock. Chord tones in metal. Iron Maiden just has everything. Sabbath is just blues tuned down and distorted.

I agree but that diversity is missing from Scotts bass lessons. There's little if anything to cover anything but the most mainstream styles plus jazz. There's no punk, metal, reggae, hip hop or other less mainstream styles.

I tried his lessons and didn't like them. The instruction is good but as with any online lessons there's no feedback on how you're doing and no one to answer questions. What really killed it for me was the lack of variety in the music. I didn't play anything I enjoyed. There's a few metalish tunes in the higher difficulties but no punk at all. It's just all jazz and soul music. How about a few ska bass lines or some Matt Freeman style lines? Or some heavy riffs?