Rich

If you start with a blank canvas, you still need to be a bloody good artist to end up with a decent copy of the Mona Lisa.

Likewise. I was pretty 'meh' about music till then. In fact I can pinpoint my precise "whoa, wtF is THIS??" moment... The Specials doing Gangsters on Top Of The Pops.

Now there's a band that doesn't get nearly enough love. What a superb outfit.

The first songs to make me really sit up and take notice: 3. On My Radio -- The Selecter 2. One Step Beyond - Madness and the daddy: 1. Gangsters - The Specials

Yes, I was trying not to take it personally.

We do a few reggae tunes amongst the ska, my favourite of them is Bob Marley "Is This Love". It's a lovely bassline, and I just adore the message... 'I've got absolutely nothing but I'll share it all with you, we'll manage somehow'. And it only mentions Jah once. Lovely.

Yes indeed dusty but fun

Remember how utterly gorgeous your Smith sounded through my Eden amp? That was a tone to die for.

I've been 'involved in the covers scene' for many many years. Here is an exhaustive list of all** the violence I have witnessed at my gigs in that time: ** There were a couple of skirmishes after one gig last year, as we were clearing the stage. One was in the car park and consisted of two blokes shoving each other going "Yeah? come on then", "no, you come on then", "no, YOU come on then" (etc.), the other was inside the pub and consisted of two blokes on opposite sides of the pub both shouting "C**T!" as loudly as possible at each other whilst being feebly restrained by their mates. Blindingly obvious that none of them actually wanted to fight.

Elixirs. Expensive but sooooooo silky.

npi?

TL;DR -- we had a power cut but managed it anyway. As per my status update, I was in the studio with Train To Skaville this weekend. Set-up on Saturday afternoon, recording Sat evening and all day yesterday. Or at least, that was the plan. The idea was to record 3 takes of each song 'live' as a band and patch up or cut/paste any hiccups after. We put 3 songs in the can on Saturday evening and had another 12 planned for Sunday. All was going well and we were blasting through take 2 of Rancid's "Time Bomb" when Ciara put the lights out... We waited for a while -- "anyone want tea while we w... oh boIIocks" -- until a google revealed that half of Wiltshire was fecked and we were looking at probably a 6 hour wait. Hold on, says Gil the keys, I know a bloke who hires generators... could we make that work? A quick scout around the control room and some fag packet work and yeah, if we just plug in the bare bones of what we need and forget most of the rack gear then why not? Jim from Powerline turns up with his trailer genny and ten miles of electric spaghetti, and much plugging and trailing and swearing and we're back in business. We finished all the songs as planned, a bit later than planned but with a sense of triumph in the face of adversity. What a TOTALLY BRILLIANT weekend. Here's engineer-producer Steve in the moodily-lit control room. The live room wasn't much brighter

A friendless pedant writes: Whilst I in no way seek to lessen the overall effect of Mr Del Var's most amusing piece, I feel it only fair to point out that a steamroller has rollers. It is of course possible that Mr Del Var was referring to the steering method rather than the motion transmission devices; however the distinction was not made in the original prose, so I feel it only fair that I (cont'd p.94)

I know one Carl and one Karl. Karl is a nice bloke I'm on nodding acquaintance with at work. Carl is a lovely man and a superb singer/frontman. I have no problem with 'Carl' being used as code for 'creepy hanger-on', as I can easily make the disconnect.

Fixed.

I bet @Bilbo will be dying to see this. He loves tribute bands.

Very tempted to message the seller to ask if it's a prototype.

So did I. Buddy of mine who is a music teacher (and therefore a pro musician).

Currently looking a bit like this. I run a home-made cable snake from this to my Pod XT live floor unit, with the Pod's power supply mounted inside the rack case. As some point in the near future, the trusty Shuttle 6.0 will be making way for something else. Watch this space.

Mark King. Sings over some of his most fearsomely fiddly fingerstyle lines and quite frankly I don't know how he does it.