chriswareham

Billy Humble Bragg The Educationally Challenged Minds The Psychedelic Faux Furs

The thing is, it's not "AI", at least not what the originators of that term envisioned back in the 1960s. That's why the actual name of this thing we're talking about is Generative AI. It just consumes huge amounts of existing data and basically rewords it. It's not sentient. It's not intelligent. It's the equivalent of a traditional search that instead of listing the actual source of the results just produces a single summary of the most common results. That's why it's so susceptible to poisoning - get it to ingest enough dodgy source material and you can make it spout any old b*llocks you want it to.

Read that as "strap ons" at first, and got a bit confused.

The problem I had as a seller on Reverb is the US centric nature of it. For instance, I sold a Yamaha drum machine on there. The US buyer complained about the import taxes and then opened a return as the machine had a UK mains plug (there was a voltage selector on the unit and that was clearly stated in the description). That was just one example of a few similar selling experiences. As a buyer, a synthesiser I bought arrived in a sack. Let me reiterate that, shipped internationally in a cloth bag. Unsurprisingly it arrived in bits, but the seller even had the gall to dispute my claim of a refund.

Very true. My local grocery emporium were out of stock of my usual brand name choice, so I took a chance on their own brand. On opening the bottle I missed the woody notes of my favourite Domestos, and whrn decanting I noticed a lack of body. It went down well enough after I'd let it breathe for a while, but the afterburn was shocking.

We're X Ray Love, and the concert is next Sunday, 27th April. If you do get to the show then please come and say hello, it's always great to meet fellow basschatters! https://youtu.be/Yx_Sqq6jooI?si=dJtdOxsrnDR5eWYx

Thanks for the stairs warning - I've not played there before! I definitely prefer gigging the amp I'd like to use, no matter how impractical to transport, and plan to do so as long as my back and knees let me. I do have the 136 combo as a backup, although that's quite an awkward lump as well.

While we've veered off onto the subject of John Entwistle... My current band briefly used a rehearsal space earlier this year that had one of John Entwistle's old bass rigs - the guy who owned the space bought it when a lot of stuff was auctioned off after Entwistle's death. It was separate Ashown pre and power amps in a rack case going into a big Ashdown cabinet (6x10" I think). It sounded absolutely sh*t. I was not entirely surprised as I've always found Ashdown gear to be woolly and underpowered crap, but was suprised someone like John Entwistle would have played it. Turns out the missing ingredient was the big stack of effects units that sat between the pre-amp and power amp (or in the effects loop when he was using a combined pre and power model of amp).

I've been on the hunt for a big Acoustic rig for a long time, something like a 360 or 370 head into the matching cabinet with an 18" speaker in the weird, back facing configuration. They seem to be as rare as hen's teeth in Europe, so I've been using an Acoustic 136 combo as my main amp for a while now. Then the successor to those two big Acoustic rigs popped up on this forum. So now I'm the proud owner of a massive, impractical but wonderful sounding Acoustic 320/408 combo thanks to @Skinner. The 408 has four 15" speakers, and it's another of Acoustic's unusual configurations - two conventionally mounted, forward facing speakers, plus two mounted horizontally to face each other in the middle portion of the cab. The beast had it's first full rehearsal this week, and the most interesting thing is how much bottom end the cabinet chucks out. It seems to generate some unusually low frequencies that are audible and sit perfectly under the two lead guitar sounds in our post punk/new wave influenced outfit. Meanwhile, it also puts out the middly clank sound of a Rickenbacker that sits in a tonal gap that the lead guitars also don't occupy. First gig with it at London's Lexington next week - all I have to do is work out how on earth I'm going to transport it to the venue!

That's a common technique used by the kind of composers who have to write songs to order, but it's skating very close to plagiarism. It reminds me of a bassist I knew when I we were both teenagers. Unlike me he came from a very well off family, had a top of the range bass, Hartke amp stack when that was considered the gear to aspire to, and had attended the Bass Institute in LA. Could play Living Colour and Red Hot Chili Pepper bass parts flawlessly. But by his own admission he couldn't write an original bass part, let alone an actual song. Giacomo isn't even on that guy's level, as the few videos of him unquestionably playing live are mediocre at best and several are downright terrible.

Probably best to do a web search, as he has (or at least had, maybe he's finally managed to alienate them) a fanatical bunch of followers and I wouldn't want them spilling onto Basschat to defend him.

You could have warned us that was a Rob Chapman video. I and many others thoroughly detest the man, and I resent giving one of his videos even the briefest of engagement.

"Milk & Two Shuggahs". The band name alone deserves an award.

It can be bad. The former owner of the company I work for would maximise profit so he could then pay himself the biggest dividend possible and pay the least tax, sacrificing the ability to invest and grow the business. As the majority shareholder he did this against the wishes of the other shareholders (who were also founders and worked at the business). Thankfully he wanted to sell the business at the end of the COVID shutdown and our new owners are much more pragmatic.

MC4 were our local heroes when I was a teenager and I used to drink in one of the pubs the band frequented, the brilliant Tumbledown Dick that was was a haven for punky, gothy, crusty or otherwise alternative folks in what was otherwise a very violent town. The first gig I ever attended was MC4 and the equally brilliant Senseless Things at Camberley Town football club. Went on to see both bands countless times, especially at the West End Centre in Aldershot. Sadly Wiz of MC4 and Mark of Senseless Things were taken from us far too early, and the historic Tumbledown Dick pub - a rare example of a 17th century "posting inn" - was turned into a f*cking McDonalds.

There was a Dead Boys tribute in the US, and when Cheetah Chrome was persuaded to restart the band he recruited the tribute act's singer to replace the late Stiv Bators. That guy rage quit last year, and now my band's lead guitarist is fronting them on their current world tour. Cheetah is the only original member, although I think the original drummer was involved at one point.

The lady I described in my comment is an objectively awful musician. Her guitar is out of tune and looks like it desperately needs new strings, while her "singing" is even more out of tune than her guitar. The volume she plays at is loud enough to make me wince and even more focused than it would be outdoors as she's in a long connecting corridor between two tube lines.

When I had to commute daily in the pre COVID times, there was a lady busker at Bond Street Underground station. She was absolutely terrible, which surprised me as you have to pass an audition to get a busking license on TfL property. I only had to endure a few minutes each day of her, but I shudder to think what her amplified caterwauling was doing to the station staff.

I didn't see them in the early days either, a little before my time. I did see Patricia Morrison in Wokingham of all places when she briefly fronted her own band. I had high hopes, since I was familiar with her pre-Sisters activity in bands like The Bags and Gun Club. Sadly it turned out she was doing what a lot of other formerly quite distinctive bands and musicians were doing at the time, which was trying to go mainstream by playing heavy metal. Appropriately enough, this was also when Eldritch tried to do the same thing with the execrable "Vision Thing" album.

There's the "Sisters of Murphy" who have been doing the rounds for years as a Sisters tribute. The version of the Sisters currently fronted by Eldritch sound like a third rate techno outfit, so I'd definitely prefer to see a tribute if they can capture the intensity of the pre-Floodland band.

A quick Google (other search engines are available), and there is a "Not the Hoople". They look to young to be the guys we were on the same bill with, as they were a bunch of guys who looked and sounded like they had quite a bit of history. They were very polished, but it seemed like a fairly niche band to be a tribute act for.

I was on the same bill as a Mott The Hoople tribute a few years ago. They had a right strop when they found out they were support, and in the end we let them headline. Sadly for them everyone was there to see us, a Joy Division tribute, and the audience promptly scarpered as soon as we finished. To their credit, they proceeded to play for what seemed an eternity until the sound engineer finally pulled the plug on them ... which was before they'd even got to the Bowie penned track that the original band is remembered for.

White Coats by New Model Army. It's been a few years so perhaps I should give it another go, plus a quick search on the intertubes has this cover that will probably help with the bits I couldn't get:

If they do a "flat pack administration" then it will be like DV247 (formerly Digital Village and more recently rebranded as Music Store) all over again. The business was shut down and "sold" to the same owners overnight, on a Sunday, with all stock whisked off to Germany to avoid creditors or suppliers getting their hands on it. The whole process should be outlawed, as it just screws over the suppliers, customers and all of us who pay tax since any debts owed to HMRC are also avoided.

As noted earlier in the thread, despite the .co.uk domain, Bax are not based in the UK. I ordered from them once only. A synth, that arrived with what's known as a "deathdaptor" to convert a two pin power supply to fit a UK plug socket. Totally illegal, highly dangerous.