chriswareham

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.

I'm another one that has used them for computer parts going back longer than I can remember. Hadn't realised they now do music gear as well.

I suspect that sound engineers and their presumption of what a bass guitar should sound like is a big factor in what JJ sounds like at any given show. I wouldn't be surprised that even a band with the stature of The Stranglers don't have their own sound engineer these days and normally rely on the house engineer. For example, I'm used to house sound engineers scooping the mids on bass sounds. My sound and that of JJ's early era is the mids at full, a smidge of bass boost and a smidge of treble cut. That goes against what most sound engineers think is appropriate in all circumstances and often a source of argument. I hate it when engineers mic' the guitar amps, but only directly DI the bass before it's even reached the amp. My amp sound is deliberately part of the band's sound, and I have to insist on being mic'ed up or at least having the DI coming out of my amp's preamp. The show I did last Friday we were the last to soundcheck as things were as usual running late, and I set the (mic'ed up) bass amp to maxed out mids, flat bass and treble. I was amused to see the previous bands had left the amp settings untouched when we went on stage, despite the sound engineer's initial grumbling about the bass sound when I first soundchecked solo before we played as full band. Long story short, most sound engineers at small to medium venues have a very blinkered idea of what a bass guitar should sound like for certain bands. And don't get me started on sound engineers who still mix keyboards to be inaudible because most of them are guitar bigots.

There were quite a few on the London scene a few years ago, but most didn't reappear after the COVID lockdown. One band that is definitely still around and making a bit of a name for themselves are Black Doldrums. They have a friend of mine on bass - he's actually a lead guitarist normally but had made the transition to being a melodic bassist very well. I'd suggest checking them out on YouTube, although the studio recordings haven't quite captured the intensity of their live sound yet so if you get the chance I'd highly recommend seeing one of their concerts in person.

Just play it slow. Really slow - as slow as you need to in order to able to follow the tab in your head. Then start to speed it up until you reach the tempo of the original. After a while you'll just find your fingers doing the right thing without consciously thinking about it. This is a similar pattern to a lot of "industrial" or "electronic body music" patterns that I've had to play over the years that were originally written as a sequenced synthesiser parts.

Reverb started as a very US centric website, and in many ways it still is. What people outside the US often miss is that in the US people expect to be able to haggle and pay less than the listed price. That's true of things that would have no chance of being sold for less than the asking price in places like Europe. So a lot of the prices on Reverb reflect the starting point the seller expects to have to take offers below. People who do not understand this then think "wow, my <insert item> is worth <insert price>". The other problem, and one that is true of websites like eBay as well as Reverb is when researching prices sellers usually look at the current listings. They rarely look at the sold listings to see what people are actually likely to pay. When I'm looking to sell something I check the sold listings, and then price at the high end of what the item has sold at but with the option for people to make offers. Then of course you get the chancers saying "it's only worth half what you've listed it for mate", (and it always invariably has that "mate" at the end of a sentence like they're doing me a favour). I just ignore the chancers and hope they see the item's actual sold price when it invariably sells at the list price or just below.

Fairly similar experience to Paul S above, with the added bonus of the singer actually pointing out how Spinal Tap it all was. Asked at short notice by a promoter we'd done plenty of gigs for to support to a band playing in Camden. We arrived in time to find to find neither opening or headlining act had arrived. Nor had the sound engineer. The latter eventually appeared looking totally hungover, and he proceeded to explain that someone had stolen all the DI boxes the night before while he was too drunk to notice. Not good as we had a drum machine and several synths. No soundcheck for us, as the headline band finally appeared and had a major strop at being initially told they'd also have no soundcheck. As a result the venue opened late, and the opening act went straight on. Despite being told to cut their set from 45 to 30 minutes they played their full set and then leisurely packed up. So we go on stage without even a linecheck, set cut from 45 to 30 minutes. I press the start pedal for our drum machine and... no drums in the monitor plus a distorted mess from the front of house speakers. I proceeded to play by watching the blinking light on the drum machine to try and stay in time. That meant I missed the promoter frantically trying to get my attention. Turns out he wanted us to stop after 15 agonising minutes. The headline act wanted their full hour, which would have taken the venue over it's curfew. He ended up getting the soundman to cut us off mid song. I jumped off the stage, and walked through the audience only to find the door to the dressing rooms locked and I didn't know the code. So I kicked it down and proceeded to reduce the dressing room furniture to matchwood. The security guy was called by the panicking promoter, only to be told my reaction was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances (turns out the security guy had seen us several times before and realised something wasn't right with the sound).

I have a Trace Elliott BLX combo, which I actually like even though I get the impression they were not highly regarded when new. I'm planning on giving that a test at the next rehearsal with the Stingray and a Boss CE-3 chorus I've just picked up on fleaBay.

Absolutely. I knew someone who voluntarily agreed to being sectioned, but was close to being committed without their consent. It was a battle for them to get out once they felt better, since a lot of people soon relapse.

Did a rehearsal on Monday night, first one with the Stingray and also the first without our lead guitarist (who as I write is playing his first show in Barcelona fronting legendary US punk band Dead Boys, the lucky sod). The sound of the Stingray through a Boss flanger was immense, and on many of our songs actually made up for the sound of two guitars we've been used to. Then I check my email today to find that Jamie Stewart of The Cult had taken the time to reply to a message I sent him. He confirmed that the Stingray and a Boss chorus was key to the sound I was looking for, although he says he preferred the Ampeg amps he used later to the Trace Elliot ones he was using in the early Cult era.

The band Section 25 were named after one of the sections of the mental health act. I was also in a band called Section (3) that took similar inspiration. Both refer to conditions where individuals can be placed into secure facilities against their will.

That sounds familiar. The drummer wasn't known by the name "Belle" was he? A legend on the London alternative music scene who unexpectedly passed away in 2023.