SteveXFR

This year is starting to look good already. Starting with Frome punk festival with Discharge headlining and excellent local legends Far Cue it'll be a good one. Next will be Dub Pistols, also in Frome for a bit of solid dub. After that is Oi punks from Isle Of Wight, Grade 2 in Bristol. Then in summer is ArcTangent festival near Cheddar in Somerset with an awesome lineup including DeafHeavan, Russian Circles, Pigs x7, Converge and loads of other great doom, post metal and prog metal bands.

Today I've been enjoying Elephant Tree. Absolutely superb stoner metal, kind of spacey at times and very heavy at others. No idea how low that bass is tunes but it's very low.

The Long Road North - Cult Of Luna The title track of the best, most brutal metal album of the last decade

This alone should get anyone fired

Thong song - Kyuss

Stinkfist - Tool

Cheesy feet don't fail me now - Queens Of The Stone Age

Zombie eater - Faith No More

Motionless - Alpines

Innovative 💡 I worked for a company for a short while called Etavoni. I asked the MD what the name means, thinking it was maybe Italian or something. He told me it was innovate backwards. I always thought innovate backwards and misspelled suited them.

Fender have a design department? Have they done anything in the last 60 years?

Running Wild - Airborne

There's a few but they're not exactly common.

Last spring I had a play of a bass belonging to a member of a very successful rock band. I won't name them because they don't know their tech let me play it. It was set up horrible. It was a 60's P bass, looked beautiful but the action was about a foot high at the 12th fret. I couldn't play it be he does pretty well with it. A guitarist I used to play with had a play of an old Ronnie Wood guitar and said that was awful with a really high action. Maybe it's us amateurs who have got it all wrong with our low action

I just found Rusty Cage to be an endurance test. It's fast and doesn't give you a rest

Now I see. Weird rhythms. Something I need to get better at, it'll be a good exercise.

One inch man - Kyuss

Not sure what you mean there. The Pre chorus sounds like there's a couple tricky little bits but nothing too unreasonable.

That's some nice equipment. That'll explain the great sound

Diamond Eyes - Deftones

I really enjoyed learning Losing My Religion by REM so thought I'd try another of their songs. What's the Frequency Kenneth was an alt rock classic from my youth. Turns out it's not as easy as I expected. It's a good one though

There's very few metal bands using a 6 string basses. Dingwall aren't just a metal brand, they're just very good at it

I can't imagine Jackson or Charvel making a 6 string either. Their customers are generally rock and metal players rather than jazz or gospel.

Very nice. That's a great bass sound, what gear are you using?

It doesn't really seem to fit their business model of making lots of very slightly different versions of the same models they've made for 60 years. It's a model that seems to work very well for them. If they made a 6 string it would probably only be a £6000 custom shop job