BigRedX

If you mean Bennerley Viaduct from the "Not Noticing" video, then unless he made the video very soon after ours the answer will be no, since last year a temporary deck was constructed across it as part of the long term plan to turn it into a permanent footpath/cycleway. Besides I'm sure it would been in the news if Sting had made a video there. We couldn't avoid on-lookers even by filming at 5 in the morning just after the sunrise!

The idea that a song can be defined as a series of simple chord changes is a relatively new concept that only really found popularity with the rise of Rock 'n' Roll in the 50s. If you look at any of the classic songs from earlier in the century the "rhythm guitar" part would by massively complicated, with a chord change on every beat (if nor more often) rather than every bar or two.

For a long time a "song" was simply the lyrics and the tune they were sung to. It's only with the advent of those new-fangled "beat groups" that the contribution of the instruments has been considered even remotely important.

If I was going for a long scale set for a bass tuned E-E I'd be looking at getting Newtone to make me a 34" version of the Axion Bass VI strings. The gauges are .024 .034 .044 .056 .080 .100 which IMO is a good balance and gives a bit of additional weight to the higher strings, which can have a tendency to sound like bad jazz guitar with some of the more "conventional" sets.

Thanks for the info. Someone has missed a trick, unless the actual PRS registrations are simply credited to "Ian Anderson".

A very nice humorous story (and probably has made a good interview at some point) except: 1. It's not true. On the record label it's credited to both Ian Anderson and Gerald Bostock. 2. Unless he was very stupid/lazy Ian Anderson would have registered "Gerald Bostock" as a pseudonym with the PRS thereby getting his full share of the performance royalties. Even for a relative songwriting non-entity like myself it is simple to do. I'm registered with the PRS under my full name (which was required when I joined in the early 80s) my usual abbreviated name (which most of the songs I have written are credited to) and my Terrortones stage name (which all Dïck Venom & The Terrortones songs are credited to). Each name has its own unique CAE number, but royalties for all three names get paid to me.

Since the mid 1980s, all the bands that I have been in have shared the songwriting credits equally between the band members at the time of writing the song. The only exceptions to this were: 1. Towards the end of The Terrortones when we are going through numerous guitarists and drummers (and essentially the songs were being written entirely by Mr Venom and myself), we insisted that PRS membership was a requirement for receiving a songwriting credit. Not every new member took up this offer although by my estimation all would have made back their £100 PRS joining fee by now. 2. A band I was in during the 90s where our original singer (and lyricist) quit just before we released our debut single. The rest of the band bought out her songwriting contributions. We had a proper legal contract drawn up stating that she relinquished any claim to any of the songs we had written while she was in the band and any money that was made from those songs. We paid her a fairly substantial amount of money for this. As it happened her replacement re-wrote most of the lyrics, and ultimately the band didn't make a massive amount of money from performance royalties (although over the past 25 years we probably all earned our "investment" back), but at the time we decided it was best to play it safe.

IIRC the arrangement with Queen regarding splitting the royalties equally between all of them was so that the best songs got released as single irrespective of who wrote them.

I assume you need to do something to the wood to kill the bacteria responsible for the salting otherwise they'll eventually consume the whole slab?

Most colour names are ridiculous. My favourite useless colour name is Sonic Blue. I can't think of a colour less "sonic" than that insipid pastel shade.

I probably couldn't. I mean I'm sure that I would hear 3 different bass sounds, but if they were recordings where the artist(s) in question weren't known for playing one of those particular basses, I doubt I could tell you which is which. I also think that unless they were recorded in such a way to emphasise a particular unique characteristic of the bass a decent mix engineer could get them all to sound much the same in the context of a band recording.

Several years ago I was in the market for an acoustic guitar for recording. I spent a whole afternoon at a big name musical instrument retailer trying out all their acoustic guitars from the cheapest to the most expensive. It was quickly obvious to even a technically poor player like myself that I would need to spend at a minimum £1k to get an instrument that I would be happy with from a sound and playability PoV. In the end I couldn't justify spending that much and with the knowledge that I would never really be able to make do with any of the cheaper offerings now I knew what was actually possible at the upper end of the market, I left without spending anything other than an enjoyable 4 hours of playing.

And on the subject of U2 as a band, I saw them for the first time in 1980 at The Boat Club in Nottingham, just after the "Boy" album had been released. A friend of mine had seen them a couple of times previously (supporting The Only Ones, IIRC) had been most impressed, and insisted that I come to the gig. Other than having heard the name I knew nothing about the band and I don't think I had even heard any of their songs. I was completely blown away by the sound and the performance, particularly The Edge's guitar playing/sound. TBH I don't recall anything about the bass, which means that it was probably perfectly competent, and anyway, back then I was still mostly playing guitar. I do recall that there wasn't a particularly big audience turn-out, about 50 people there, and because we were also with someone who knew them from when they first start playing in Dublin, I got to meet the band after the gig (not that it counted for much at the time). I went out and bought "Boy" and all the non-album singles I could find the following day. A year later I saw them for the second time Rock City for tour to promote the "October" album. This time they were deadly dull and completely outclassed by the support band The Comsat Angels. It turned that apart form the first two singles I didn't much like the new album either. Since then U2's musical direction and mine have gone our separate ways. Occasionally they will release something that I like, but those songs are few and far between. I think the last thing they did that I liked was the cover of "Pop Music".

TBH anything that isn't a 4 string, long scale bass with either Fender or Squier on the headstock is a niche instrument.