BigRedX

I'm actually performing on a Kraftwerk bootleg CD (IIRC it's called "Computers In Love"). It's made up of recordings from their 1981 tour including the one I attended at Rock City in Nottingham. For the second encore "Pocket Calculator" the band came down to the front of the stage playing various portable devices, and after the line "By pressing down a special key, It plays a little melody" they held out one the keyboards to the audience to allow them to press the keys. Being down the front and in the right place at the right time, one of these tunes is being played by me.

One other thing I forgot to mention. You will need some form of digital version to go with a vinyl-only release. Either a CD included in the packaging or a link to free download. You'll find that very few people actually play the records they buy but simply add the digital version to their computer or phone. These days the free download is the way to go. If you sell your record through Bandcamp they will give you 200 download codes for free and you can buy more at starting at 100 codes for $3. Edit: and get your EP on all the streaming and download services using an Aggregator. Some take a very low percentage of your sales and streaming income but require you to pay a yearly subscription in order to keep your music available on line. Others charge a one-off fee for your music to be available for ever but also take a higher proportion of any income generated. Have a look at what the various services charge and pick the one that you think will shut your band the best. I have music available on-line through CD Baby, Catapult and Distrokid. However unless you have a video that goes viral to go with the release don't expect to make much money from on-line sales. Ultimately The Terrortones made less than 5% of the total sales value of our music from on-line (both physical mail order and streaming/downloads). The other 95% came from selling actual records and CDs at gigs (remember them?). In fact none of my music available for download/streaming has yet recouped it's initial Aggregator set-up fees. However as a promotional tool it is pretty much required.

I had both, but always preferred Blow Your Face Out.

The Terrortones had our SpiderQueen EP pressed through Media Hut and the SnakeOil For Snakes Album by Mobineko, and unless they have changed the cutting and pressing plants they use to rubbish ones since we had ours done I can recommend either. The reality of the record manufacturing process these days is that very few of the brokers advertising vinyl production actually do their own pressing and nearly all of it is sub-contracted out to pressing plants in Europe (Czech Republic and France in our cases). However given Brexit and the various customs delays and additional charges associated with it this may no longer be the situation. Certainly before the beginning of 2021 all the UK pressing plants were vastly more expensive than the places we used. That may not longer be the case. From an actual production PoV there are a couple of things to be aware of. There is a trade-off between audio quality and running time on vinyl and also the closer you get to the label on a record the lower the quality of the audio. IIRC the recommendations we got for our pressing were not to exceed 4 minutes per side for 7" and 12 minutes for 12" (both at 45rpm) if we wanted the best quality audio signal on our records. In practice one side of our 7" EP was 5' 30" and each side of the album was 18 minutes and the audio hasn't suffered significantly within the limitations of the medium. Don't bother with the extra expense of "heavy-weight" pressings, it's for vinyl snobs only. Besides compared with the typical records of the late 70s and 80s the current standard of 120 gram vinyl is already a massive improvement. The big problem you will have with producing vinyl as opposed to CDs is how long it takes. SpiderQueen took just over 4 weeks from submitting the audio and sleeve artwork to receiving our records, but by the time we did the album that had increased to 12 weeks turn-around. There are places offering quicker lead times , but all charge a premium. Also if your are looking at getting your record produced anytime during the run up to "Record Shop Day" forget it. The pressing plants are all booked solid with limited edition releases form the major record labels and one-off pressings won't get a look in. When it comes to packaging you absolutely need to have a well-designed and eye-catching sleeve. This is one of things that you use to persuade people to buy the physical product rather than just stream it or get a digital download. These days short run printing is cheap, so there's no excise for not having a picture sleeve for your record so you don't have to act like the Desperate Bicycles when it comes to producing your record. Most definitely the days of ordering records in just plain paper sleeves and then wrapping them in a photocopied sheet are long over (unless you are specifically trying to recreate that late 70s DIY vibe). If you can do/afford something more than just an ordinary printed picture sleeve, that will help your record to stand out - The Terrortones had an 8-page comic with SpiderQueen and SnakeOil For Snakes comes in a clear plastic cover with the band and album name printed on it and then with 5 double-sided insert sheets to give a variety of alternative front covers depending on your mood. While you don't need a graphic designer to do your sleeve design it is worth showing the final artwork to someone who is a packaging design professional to make sure that you don't get any unpleasant surprises when your design is printed. Don't put any cover versions on the record, you'll need to pay for a MCPS licence before you can get the records pressed for any if you do, and get all the songwriters of the tracks on the record to join the PRS. Any more questions just ask away.

In the days before "Greatest Hits" or "The Best Of" became more commonplace the live album was often the only source of all of a band's best songs collected together in one place, and very often performed with a bit more "verve" than the studio recordings. And being composed of two or more discs were often better value for money. Having had another look through my iTunes library and there are lot of live albums that I owned in my early days of record buying that I had forgotten about because they don't get a massive amount of plays these days, but would have been staples of my listening when I was in my teens. So as well as the two I mentioned in my original post I would also have to submit the following: Runaways Live In Japan Steppenwolf Live Yessongs Blow Your Face Out by The J Geils Band Frampton Come Alive (of course) However it did occur to me that two of my most listened two live recordings have AFAIK never been officially released, and have exited for me on cassette only. Firstly The Baker Gurvitz Army recorded off the TV around the time of the release of their first album, and secondly Freur from a Radio One "In Concert" broadcast from early 1986 IIRC which featured songs from their yet to be released (and when it was almost impossible to get hold of) second album.

You are aware that it's a short scale bass? Not everyone gets on with less than 34" scale.

Also on Fender basses the maple board is part of the neck whilst the rosewood board is obviously a completely separate piece glued on.

A lot of them included Elton John in the band playing the songs. It was to get around the licensing requirements and the fact that some record labels and artists (where they had enough control over how their music was used) didn't want their recordings appearing elsewhere - remember these were in the days when the record was the product. The producers of these albums would still have to pay the MCPS fees in the same way that a band putting a cover version on their album would, but these would have been a fraction of the costs of licensing the recordings by the original artists. It wasn't until first of all Arcade and K-Tel started doing compilations with the original recordings and then in the 80s the "Now" series - although those were very much biased towards artists that were signed to EMI (IIRC) who produced the Now albums.

Did your copy come with the booklet as well?

As I said in the live album thread when you only had enough money for an album a month at the most, the design of the cover and any extras (double album/gatefold sleeve/printed inner sleeve etc.) went a long way to deciding what to buy when spending Saturday afternoon browsing at castle Records in Loughborough. However this was bought entirely because I thought the cover was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Luckily the music didn't disappoint.

It will be harder. The current vaccination card is the work of an hour by someone with a page layout program and a decent printer.

And thinking some more on the subject the other massively loud gig I have been to, was one a band I was in played. In the late 90s we'd been booked as support to a minor indie band (whose name escapes me) at the Coventry Student's Union Christmas Party in the newly finished Union Building. We'd arrived late to find the headliners already set up and sound checking. The wave of sound hit me in the chest as I can through the doors into the room where they were playing and I had to retreat back outside until they had finished it was so loud. Because of the design of the venue, on stage the sound was completely disconnected from the FoH, so if you couldn't hear something in the foldback, your couldn't hear it all on the stage. I have no idea if my band were as painfully loud as the headliners were during the soundcheck, but AFAICS the most of the audience had left to check out the entertainment in the other rooms in the venue, and those that were left were stood a long way back from the stage.

My most listened to live albums by a long way are: "Pictures At An Exhibition" by ELP and "In Flight" by Alvin Lee Both bought in the days when I didn't have a lot of money to spend on records so factors such as being cheap or a double album in a gatefold sleeve played a big part in my choice of what to buy that month, and because when I first got them I didn't have very many albums they got played A LOT. Since everything got put on my computer, according to my iTunes stats my most listened to live album is "Show And Tell" by The Birthday Massacre.

Polysics at the Islington O2 Bar - not the main venue, the BAR! It was their UK debut gig and having no idea if they would ever come a play this country again I was desperate to see them. Didn't realise quite how loud it was at the time until I discovered I could barely hear anything once they had stopped playing. Also no idea why it was so loud. I've been to other gigs at the same venue and seen Polysics on numerous occasions since then and not once have I had the same feeling of complete disorientation and inability to hear as I did after that gig.

Unless you've seen them before with the same line up, you have no idea if a band is going to be any good until you go and see them. I try to avoid disappointment by mostly going to see bands that I like the music of. Have it still is no guarantee. I had enjoyed the albums by both Fleet Foxes and propaganda, but both bands were terrible live (although for different reasons).

In the days when I was still using a traditional bass rig I had my Thumpinator in the effects look of my amp after everything else, the idea being that if any of the other devices were boost unwanted frequencies that was the best place to have it. Also IMO all effects loops should be serial, or switchable. Parallel is only for effects the require a clean portion of the signal to be present, and plenty of effects need to process the whole signal.

That bit of paper makes all the difference to the sound don't you know?

Reading through this, you are hoping to achieve pitch-to-MIDI for you bass somehow? IME pitch to MIDI for bass is all but useless. The laws of physics are against you. The very best pitch to MIDI converters require a minimum of 1 1/2 cycles of the waveform in order to be able to identify the pitch you are playing and most of the time they will require more for warble-free note generation. On top of that you will almost certainly have to modify your technique to produce clean and accurate notes, as well as work extra hard on silent damping to prevent ghost notes and glitches. I gave up on pitch to MIDI a long time ago and taught myself some rudimentary keyboard technique. The great thing is that for most synth bass lines you don't need to be brilliant keyboard player. For me it was a much quicker route to getting the sounds I wanted, and I didn't have to worry about whether it was the technology or my playing technique that was letting me down. If you are absolutely set on using a bass guitar as a controller there's always the Industrial Radio MIDI bass, which uses fret sensing to get around the latency involved with pitch to MIDI.

Is the top "Foto Flame"?

IME plectrums and drumsticks given out to the audience during gigs are promotional tools that usually bear little resemblance to the ones actually used by the musicians in question.

My own. By which I mean a rapidly diminishing box of Herco Flex 75s.

I saw Furniture at Nottingham Trent in the late 80s (promoting Food, Sex & Paranoia album) knowing nothing but "Brilliant Mind" and was utterly blown away by both the music and the performance.

Fantastic work as always!

Apart for some events where there was a band (generally covers) on amongst all the stuff that I had actually gone to see, and few multi-band events/festivals where I wondered off to do something more interesting while the bands that I didn't like were playing I don't think I have ever left a gig early. I've been disappointed by performances in several occasions - most notably Propaganda at Rock City in the mid-80s, and Fleet Foxes at Trent University more recently - but I've always stayed to the bitter end in the vain hope that they would improve at least for the encore.

I find it stranger when people 20/30/40 years younger than me like the same sort of music that I do. Having said that, IMO "popular music" has changed less in each decade since the 50s then it did before that. The music my parents listened to was completely and utterly incomprehensible to me, as was the music I liked was to them.