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I'm going to miss the Bristol store, what else will I do when the family are hitting the shops. I'll miss Mansons in Exeter more though. It's been inevitable for some time that these stores would be in trouble. If we all trot off to Thomann and the like for our needs then they are bound to suffer. It's not as if the rest of the high street isn't in the middle of a huge upheaval also. I don't think the situation has been helped by the likes of Gibson and Fender forcing them to carry huge stocks either. The other reality is that the guitar has probably lost it's dominance in music and 'peak guitar' was actually back in the early 80's with perhaps it's own indy revival. On the bright side I'm seeing a couple of independent shops benefitting. Often by offering other services. In Chard (a small Somerset market town) we have The Somerset Music Academy, it's a guitar shop which also offers guitar and other music tuition combined with a repair and set up service. It combines a steady turnover of used gear with a range of um... lesser known brands. Even this has a twist, they are careful what they stock and every instrument gets a set up before they sell it. There are some very playable, nice sounding instruments at reasonable prices. Something you can't get from the warehouses. The tuition gives them a stream of customers for starter instruments and the kids get something decent to start their journey with. I believe they plan on running a rehearsal room too. There's so little competition out there that people will travel to go somewhere you can try before you buy.

Paul Carrack and his band at Scarborough Spa theatre last night. Capacity crowd in this old venue on a balmy evening. Paul was fabulous, and despite having maybe a cold (or hay fever?) his voice was still as amazing as ever. A superb band too, including his son Jack on drums and wonderful bassist Jeremy Meek playing a sunburst Precision with what sounded like flats. We were at the rear of the stalls in front of the sound engineer and apart from maybe being a touch on the quiet side the sound was spot on with the bass sounding exactly like a Precision should. They played all the songs associated with Paul from his long career, including ‘How long’, ’Over my shoulder’ ‘Tempted’ ‘Love will keep us alive’ and the inevitable ‘The living years’, along with some good covers - Springsteen’s ‘If I should fall behind’ being the standout for me. A great evening with one of my favourite singers.

I'm 38 and need to lose a 3 or 4 stone. It's hard when you have a young family. I'm mainly just walking to/from work and nursery. Oh, and working on the gun show by pushing my daughter on the swing 😅 I made a rod for my own back there by pushing her higher and higher and now no-one else pushes hard enough! I used to do a lot of road cycling and I quite liked the gym if it was quiet when I lived closer to one. Bit of weights followed by 20/30 minutes of cardio three times a week and I was pretty darn fit. Strength training can have a massive effect as you age too. There was an article in the Guardian a while ago about a group of care home residents in the 80s, most of whom required help doing things like standing up from a chair or going to the toilet. They did some strength training, built muscle mass and were then able to do most of those things that they previously required help for. It's never too late to do a bit more exercise. https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/mar/11/older-adults-strength-training I think I'm going to get some kettle bells now 😂

I had this problem with E strings many years ago and stopped buying Rotosounds. That solved it.

Rehursing with the metal group in a south facing building that is all glass down one side, I am glad I brought a fan, it didn't do much but it did something! The music went well, but the heat wasn't that much fun!

The question I have in these circumstances is if PMT still owed money to their suppliers, does some of that stock still belong to the supplier?

Okay cool. I never once referred to a scale however. Your GPT post starts by saying it's in C Minor and the OP found it helpful.

Bodies - The Sex Pistols

Rehearsed last night with a band in which I'm depping as bassist on Saturday. I always wonder what tunes will be in the set following the assurance that 'it's all standard pub rock stuff'. In this case it was 'all standard rock stuff' - apart from 'YMCA', 'Living Next Door to Alice' and 'My Girl'. And having spent extra time on YMCA to get the disco octave thing going, it turns out they play it as straight rock. But it was a good and productive evening, no messing but not taken too seriously either. We rehearsed in the director's suite of the local rugby/cricket club and I was stood in the panoramic west facing window as the sun went down. So most of the evening was spent with little beads of sweat trickling down my back. I'll be using my Sterling 34HH and, for the first time in ages, backline consisting of 2x TE 1x10 cabs and a Peavey Minimax 600, bypassing the front end in favour of an Ampeg SCR DI.

I think a lot of it is mental, make a rehearsal as much like a gig as you can. Standing during rehearsal before a gig helps. Don’t face each other, throw a coat in the corner and say that’s your audience. If you’ve never done it, you’ll cut down on gaps between the songs, play with more energy, carry more confidence into the gig.

That'll sort it. Probably double the cost of the pickups but...

Bear Necessities - Jungle Book

erm.....

I do this a lot at work! Though for me it's bags of compost; I often have to carry bags to customer's cars so it's 50m with a 50l bag in each hand. Finding a good grip on the plastic bag makes it into a grip strength double exercise. And the hardest of all is once a month we get 2 15kg bags of dog food delivered to work. I try every time to carry both to the car 200m away - so far I've not got past 120m without having to put 'em down!

It’s a Motown style track, so C minor wouldn’t really fit the “vibe”. People don’t think in terms of scales when compositing. You can try playing C minor fills over this but it’s not going to sound good! Anyway, we’ve got all the right notes for the OP to play it. Which is much more important!