BassTractor

I feel your pain. In fact, for me it was two of each, so I feel your pain twice. 😁 The Bongos were Dargie Delights, one a 4-HH of gen. 1 ('06-'07) and one a 4-HS of gen. 2 ('09) The Rays were a Neptune Blue 4-H PDN from '14 and a '95 5-H fretless. I loved the Bongos to bits with their looks, ergonomics and 4-band EQ, but it's the Rays I miss mostly, especially the fretless one. Other MMs I sold aren't missed - in part coz they went for getting the above ones.

A sensibly balanced double neck, and not that heavy either. I call it the A2-B2.

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Great album cover though ...

No, that's the 'Vibrachelle' (TM).

Ah! Solved then: two kayak cockpit rims glassed in the holes you made into the lid, two tight neoprene skirts, and two helmets. Kids will have the time of their life!

Bah. Vid maker must've been one of those obsessed heterosexual women. Roughly 51% of the vid shows well-dressed gentlemen, and only 49% are half-naked girls. 😐 Thanks for posting, @musicbassman. Cardiacs = wonderful

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Fauré, Penderecki, Xenakis, the Zombies ... and of course: Kaempfert and Mantovani!

LOL. Let's not crawl down that particular can ... 😄

Of course it is, and I hope you understood the tune of my post, and the concept I jokingly introduced 😃 (but with a serious undertune: it's just how one decides to look at it; I've played baroque organs where the whole orchestra had to retune to the organ - a daunting task with some of the instruments).

I hate all these tunist comments, you bloody keyists! No, the guitar player kept it in E all the time, but changed from the recording's Handel tuning (at roughly 415 Hz) to the band's modern tuning (440 Hz). 😉 😃

Lovely man indeed, and indeed he did - after a short What The Heck hesitation.

Essentially this, with caveats and notable exceptions.

Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir, aka Lilja, works in a JazzTradWorld kinda setting. This one, "Bagamoyo" from 2020, has a lot of African vibe. Sweet!

Valkyrien Allstars, an artfolkrockpopband from Oslo: They started out as a folk / folkrock band, but quickly put in such diverse elements as surprise. Surprise and .. er ... This song from 2020 is called "Slutte og byne" despite what the band try to tell you. The title means "Finishing and starting" in English. It starts out very soft, and then gains volume as the song continues.

Oh, I hate you so much right now, Frank Blank! This is gonna cost me money! Luvverly.

Norse pop singer Dagny (Dagny Norvoll Sandvik) to me is one of several people standing well apart from yer everyday pop dreck. Here a 7yo song that has matured nicely, IMHO. "Backbeat"

The OP is right, and I have the scientific evidence - through testing that you can repeat and/or peer review: Buy a Galton board and use it 1024 times. You won't even need to write down the results, as you'll easily see that, these days, the distribution of the beads is strongly skewed to the left side of the board. When I grew up, the beads still were "normally" distributed, as in: approximating the Gaussian distribution. No longer so ... Similarly, in the old days, average music was just average and I hated it. These days, however, average music is crap and I hate it. 😉 ... and no, it's not about me having become a grumpy old git. It's the Galton board, I tells ya! 😁

Strictly speaking off-topic, but still: another one about fandom: Gentle Giant members were having a nice weekend with fans in 2002 when one 50yo fan approached drummer John Weathers asking him to autograph some albums, and to dedicate as well. - "OK", says John, "what's your name?" - "It's Paul van Daal, but could you please write 'to my dear friend Paul van Daal '?"

Well ... it does keep the aliens away from our planet, so ...

As you mention B.B. King, I remember him having an IMO healthy approach to levels of musicianship and what individuals get inspired by. I've told it before (and sorry for my struggling with the English here), but: Answering the question what music he listened to, he said something along the lines of "blues, but not blues that my fans recognise as blues. My fans get inspired by me. I can't get inspired by musicians on my level, but get inspired by people on a higher level" ... etc. To me, that's a good way of thinking, and thus I can't for the life of me understand some people's need to drag down stuff they don't get. I hastily add that I'm not at all thinking of this thread, but in general, like the "just noise; everybody can do that!" comments on say Arne Nordheim's music.

Two stories: 1) Yes, as a 17yo or so, and by classmates. They'd made a fan club dedicated to me, and asked for my autograph. I axed them the question: "WHY? You don't know my music and probably wouldn't like it. So WHY?" Answer: "But you're gonna be a famous musician, and then WE will have the low club member numbers!..." That taught me all I need to know about fandom. 2) No, not asked, but still funny: When some famous jazz dudes visited our city, I was allowed to play with them as part of my training ... but was warned beforehand: "Don't behave like a fanboi; they don't like that." So I meticulously ripped some dirty pieces of paper into particularly rough shapes, and equipped those with my autograph. Handed them out the moment I entered the room where these folks were, and just waited for the obvious question: "What's this?" Me, innocently: "Oh, that's my autograph; I thought you probably were dying to get yer hands on it." Laughter broke out, ice was broken, and no awkwardness ensued. That taught me something about jazz musicians.

@miles'tone, how about if you test a few works and report back here? Seeing the vastness of eight centuries of music, it might be an idea to narrow it down, and I'd guess we could manage to adapt our advice to what you happen to like. In the mean time, I'd like to draw your attention to, and possibly to hear your comments on, stuff like: - Stravinsky: Firebird Suite and/or The Rite of Spring. Part of the Firebird has been used by Yes as intro music to their gigs, so may be known, - the Bartok mentioned earlier. Bartok had an immense impact on Keith Emerson, - Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, - Satie: Gymnopédies or similar piano music, as played by Aldo Ciccolini or Reinbert de Leeuw (very, very different). If you do like Zappa's later work like Civilisation Phase 3 (yes, I've translated it for you ☺️ ), then please tell, and I'll try and find 20th century music that might fit.

Nice call. That pedal part should also interest bass players. Me, I stupidly played it with two feet. Very hard work. (This was before I saw the wisdom in opting for a 34'' scale thingie in a bass case rather than carrying around an organ with 32ft. pipes.)

@miles'tone, do you happen to know Dalbello's song "Black on Black"? It starts with a looped phrase from Gregorio Allegri's "Miserere mei, Deus", a wonderfully beautiful late Renaissance / early Baroque piece. (To me this is late Renaissance music, but I'm aware modern scholars have better opinions.) Here's a hastily found version I haven't compared to other versions, but it sounds alright at first impression: