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Pictures please, when you can @peteb

I'd like to give Richard a 5* TripAdvisor review here. He gave me very similar advice, and it worked. I went into a new band earlier this year and got the jitters for the first time in years. I was overly self-conscious, scared of making mistakes, all that stuff. Following this very simple advice I managed to get into a mindset where it was just me playing along with the songs in the same way I do when practising. Good luck, cherish the experience and remember that there's so many people channeling good energy your way.

Nice one Pete, they are very good, look forward to hearing what you think

I wonder how many of the people here who have said that they'd just get on with it and play in the band, letting the other "-ist/-phobic" people have their opinions, tick any of the targets of "-ism/-phobia" boxes themselves? I cannot imagine that if they were gay, black, trans, or whatever that they would tolerate those bigoted people. For example, if you were gay, there's absolutely no way you're going to tolerate being in a band with a couple of openly homophobic musicians. I've been really lucky through the years generally and in my current main band you know you're in safe hands with zero tolerance for any of the -ist nonsense.

I’ve no idea about my band members views on political, religious or gender issues. Then again, they all seem to be a fairly educated, intelligent bunch. So if they came out with something offensive to me - I’d have to ask if it was a difference of opinion or if they were loony Roundabout painters… If someone is racist or bigoted - I call them out and then remove them from my life. So I’d either sack them from the band - or quit.

Getting the taste out of your mouth? There is no such thing as one polo mint. They hunt in bags.

So long as they aren't asking for me to correct their worldview I can work with them. I get you are more talking about the evangelical sharing kind of misfit though.

Another band I know well have been using a Stairville CLB5 for their gigs. What seems particularly neat about this unit (although my mate's band are not using it this way) is the ability to set one or two of the units to light up the stage area in white with a steady beam, but have the the remaining two or three units in colour to light up the dance floor with sound to light, and manage to do that all without DMX. I think I'm going to give it a spin as a relatively budget one-stop solution to enhance both the stage and audience lighting for the band. It's also a lot more compact than my Chauvet GigBar2 and therefore will be a lot easier to take to gigs and consequently likely to get more use!

I currently have lessons with Ian over the internet and they are great. Really good at diagnosing where you need to improve, and gives so much stuff to get on with between lessons, 1 a month is almost too much!

And a sound engineer who really knows his stuff. 👌

If anyone is interested, I've just pulled the trigger on a 2014 sunburst, r/n AVRI 63. I got it in the end for an offer of just over £1.5k

Calling it out just gets the response of being woke. Abhorrent behaviour and values have been normalised and justified by far right influencers, backed by some of the richest people in the world. My gf has one and I can tell you that anyone who has that little pride in themselves does not clean the car interior well 😂

The flat earth society has member all round the globe!

I draw the line at people who are being willfully ignorant of facts and move on from thoughts and the odd conversation to full on organising actions. It's like the flat earthers, I now don't believe any of the actually think the world is flat, they're just grifters who make money from it and are on some kind of power trip.

Making Your Mind Up - Bucks Fizz

It's a horrible position to be in. On the one hand, it isn't your job alone to talk people down from these extreme positions; on the other hand, if none of us challenge it then it just gets validated elsewhere and the problem grows. Even if you can't see the change from your own efforts, maybe it's enough to help them plant the first seed of doubt that might germinate further in the future, if enough people encourage them to actually think about the rhetoric they're repeating.

I've tried the SGT-DI pedal, and it definitely sounds the part, but not a Venture head. I've actually been avoiding them a bit, because I didn't want to end up really liking it and eventually being disappointed when it conks out. They do seem to be working out to be more reliable than Ampeg's previous Class D stuff though.

I don't think it's someone's views so much as how well they are able to express those views and explain them. I wouldn't dismiss someone for having opinions and a view of the world radically different to my own if they had a persuasive or coherent explanation of why they were that way. It just depends what they have to say and how convincingly they say it. That's what you'll be stuck in a transit van with. The bigger question is who gets to arbitrate which views are extreme? We live in a world full of extremities, and all too often the most powerful get to define their opponents as extremists as a way of undermining the truth. Besides which, are extreme views necessarily wrong? Your liberal views on certain subjects are considered extreme by a lot of people. It's all about context. Beyond all of that though, the older I get the more reluctant I am to condemn people for what they believe. I've come to realise that we all believe all sorts of crap at one time or another, mainly as a way of getting through life's difficulties. People who believe in the most unpalatable ideas are often the most vulnerable or most damaged in one way or another. If you like and/,or respect someone, you can easily be in a band with them even if you have differing views on things. If you don't like or tespect them, it doesn't really matter if they agree with you on everything