chriswareham

And playing with a pick as god Lemmy intended.

I think it was still open as a pub up to the fire. There was a covers band called something like "Metalworks" who played there every Sunday evening. Unfortunately the fire was an opportunity for more gentrification of the area - Camden council don't seem to have a clue when it comes to what makes the area special, which is the non-chain store shops and the market.

The Hawley Arms burned down in 2008 along with a bunch of other nearby buildings - not sure how similar the rebuilt place is to the one that Amy Winehouse hung out in. I've not been near The Good Mixer since the late 1990s, but glad to hear it's got a decent crowd in it now as the regulars back then had a very seedy vibe to them.

She would most often be in the Hawley Arms, Camden. Which reminds me of another Camden pub, The Good Mixer. For a large part of the 1990s it was a popular haunt for bands from the NME and Melody Maker invented genres such as the "scene that celebrated itself", "new wave of new wave" and "Britpop". A lot of the bands that finally made it big with Britpop, such as Blur and Elastica, were part of that mileu. On the occasions I was dragged there by mates I could never understand the appeal of the place, since it was a grotty dive with toilets most often ankle deep in overflow from the urinal. Then I discovered it was where a lot of people from those bands could easily score smack. Why the police never raided it I don't know, but I spotted a fair few people there from bands that were feted by the music press.

Never had a problem with Dell equipment, either servers or laptops. However, Vista was a complete fustercluck by MicroSoft. They released the minimum and recommended specs for the upcoming release of Vista, but the specs turned out to be completely inadequate to run it in a reasonably productive manner. There were lawsuits over that, as well as the claim that any machine made since 2005 would run it well.

What I value about the local music shop (Kingfisher Music, Fleet, Hants) of my youth is that the World Wide Web killed them off. No more having to put up with the smug, sneering staff who would belittle me every time I went there to buy something. Regardless of whether it was picks, strings or an actual big ticket item like a bass cabinet they'd always find some way to have a dig, such as: "Oh, you play with a pick, so you're not a real bass player then". "I wondered who was still using crap like Rotosound strings". "Well it's not much of a bass cabinet, doesn't even have a Speakon connector". That last one about a behemoth Peavey 1820 cabinet I had special ordered from the US, which I then "accidentally" dropped on the twerp of a shop assistant's foot.

Careful, if you say that three times while looking at your computer something bad happens.

It's Spungen's Fifth Law of the Internet - any forum discussion that goes on long enough will eventually descend into a flame war about the finer points of networking.

Some people think the scams are deliberately bad - using poor grammar in phishing emails or technobabble in call scripts for example - because it means only the most likely marks will engage with the scammer. Personally I think it's just a reflection of the kind of people involved in these scams being unable to find anything more lucrative to do legally. I did have a more professional sounding than normal scam call last week though. It was from a "personal investment company", on behalf of a "hedge fund in Mayfair, London". The quality of the spoken English was a cut above average, and the script was quite well put together. I was on my lunch break, so happily wasted half an hour of the caller's time when they could be scamming someone more gullible. When asked if I made investments, I said I work in importation and put some of my money back into stocks and shares. As the call went on I started dropping more and more obvious hints that my importation involved chemicals of a "recreational pharmaceutical" nature, and that I had to be careful how I "washed, sorry invested" my profits. The penny finally dropped when I asked the caller if he was based in northern India, and if so whether he wanted to make some extra income bringing certain items from Myanmar into the UK via his back passage.

Well a couple of years industry experience might educate you on why IP blocking is a bloody stupid idea. Even more so "many years ago" when you were a forum mod, if it was in the dial up era. Most people are on residential broadband, which means they get assigned an IP address for a certain period and when that period expires - or they reconnect - they get a different one. That period may be as long as a couple of weeks, but is often as short as one day. Then there's the issue that a lot of people on business connections are sharing one or a handful of IP addresses with the rest of the people at the same site via Network Address Translation. So blocking an IP will block multiple users (and these days, even a residential user will typically have a bunch of devices with multiple users connected to the Internet via their router). (I have worked at places where entire ranges of IP addresses are blocked, based on the geographic assignment of those ranges. It's an imperfect means of blocking all traffic from Russia or China for example, but in my experience the people implementing that policy are at least aware it's a blunt instrument and often have to whitelist addresses as the demand arises).

Studio related "brush with greatness": A band I briefly played in were recording at Assault & Battery Studios (now just Battery Studios) in Willesden. The guitarist's friend was an engineer there, and we got to use the studio dirt cheap when no one had booked a graveyard slot. First off was the mixing desk, which had belonged to Trent Reznor, although I think we only used a a few channels on it as a preamp and to monitor mixes in Pro Tools. Then one evening I was in the kitchen and had a brief chat with a guy who was working in the programming suite, which was stuffed full with cool synths and samplers. I mentioned this on returning to the studio we were in, only to be told it was one of the owners. A chap called Mark Ellis, or more widely known as mega producer Flood.

Well appropriately for this thread, I went to sixth form college with John and was good friends with Sid from Inter until I moved away from the area.

Since someone has mentioned being told to eff off by Lemmy, I guess I'll mention my encounter with the great man. Twenty years ago, the singer of the band I was in had a friend at Metalhammer magazine who got us VIP tickets to their annual awards at the Kentish Town Forum. At one point I went to the bar, where I ordered a drink while stood next to my childhood hero Gary Numan and was then excitedly making a bee line for my singer to tell him about it. This meant crossing the central area of the balcony, where I was stopped by an enormous bouncer and asked for my pass. I showed him my VIP wristband only to told I needed a "VVIP" one to enter that area. As I was about to turn away and take the long route round, a gravelly voice said "It's alright mate, he's with me". I looked to see who had said this, and saw Lemmy motioning me to sit in his booth. He had a beautiful woman sat each side of him (I later discovered they had been paid to escort him all evening), and a bottle of JD on the table. I sat down, he offered me a drink and then he said "I love your jacket man". Said jacket was an army surplus East German thing I'd bought the week before at Camden Market. I ended up having a shot of his JD, before thanking him and making it over to my singer and regaling him with what had happened. The night got a bit hazy after that, but I ended up at the after party along with acquaintances who were also in attendance since we had a mutual friend who was playing in Cradle of Filth. That proved embarrassing, since the singer of CoF decided to pick a fight with the members of Murderdolls. Since they were all at least a good foot taller than the rather short Mr Filth, he got kicked down a set of stairs and a slagging off in the next issue of Metalhammer.

Two of my keyboard playing friends, one of whom I have played in a band with, have been touring members of Killing Joke. The brush with greatness is not mine though, but that of one of the keyboard players. When Tool did their first big stadium tour of the US after resolving their long running legal problems, they asked Killing Joke to support them. They were so impressed with my friend's keyboard playing that they actually had him play the synth parts on Descending:

Kicking myself that I passed on the chance to buy a black Alembic Spoiler about twelve years ago. Seller wanted £500 for it, and it was in very good condition. I'd been interested in one as Peter Steele of Type O Negative used one as his main recording bass (and live in pre Type O band Carnivore). I decided against it because I was lead to believe Alembics are medium scale and I prefer a standard scale length.

And another Turkish list. The most important instrument in Turkey is the baglama, or saz as it's more often known in the English speaking world. It's an instrument that can be found with slight variations spanning the Balkans to the Caucasus and Iran, typically featuring three courses of strings. My favourite version is the Albanian sharki, which I find easier to play than the baglama and quite an easy transition for a bass player. The most famous artist in the modern era is probably Neşet Ertaş, and this is possibly his most famous composition, Ah Yalan Dünya. What he lacked in technical perfection he more than made up with the emotion of his playing: Possibly the most famous baglama player during the era of recorded music is Aşık Veysel. He lost hos sight at an early age, and it was not unusual for blind children to become folk musicians. His songs are invariably very melancholic, and Kara Toprak is a personal favourite: Arif Sağ is someone who often uses techniques such as double tapping on the baglama. His Kirpiğin Kaşına is more traditional though, and in the traditional introspective style: Hopefully that's whetted your appetite for this instrument. Even if it hasn't, and I have included a very personal choice of songs here, I'd strongly recommend the fantastic documentary "Saz, The key of Trust" where the incredibly talented Petra Nachtmanova takes a road trip across the Balkans and Asia Minor to find the roots of the baglama. The full documentary is up on YouTube and for me it's the best musical documentary I've ever seen.

Anatolian rock. This was a genre that appeared in Turkey during the late 1960s, mixing the sounds of psychedelic rock with traditional Anatolian rhthyms and melodies. Baris Manco - Egri Egri Dogru Dogru (this could be a list of three of his songs, as he was the absolute king of this scene) Cem Karaca - Tamirci Ciragi Adimiz Miskindir Bizim · Mazhar Ve Fuat

Gothic rock: The Sisters of Mercy - Temple Of Love Fields of the Nephilim - Moonchild And a less obvious one, Altered States - Drowning Children:

They had what was claimed to be Gary "Mani" Mounfield's Rickenbacker 4005 in Hank's Guitar Shop a few years ago, priced at a *cough* reasonable £12,995 if memory serves. I asked to try it out, since I love a semi-acoustic bass and at the time I owned a Shaftesbury which was supposed to be a clone of the 4005. After a lot of bad tempered huffing and puffing from the staff (standard for most of the shops in London's Tin Pan Alley), they finally considered me worthy of playing said bass. It actually looked like it had been a great instrument at some point, but by then it was in a terrible state with an action you could drive a bus under. The neck was like a Rick 4001 or 4003, very wide and flat, so very much an acquired taste and totally unlike the skinny neck of my Shaftesbury. The sound though, even with pickups way too far from the rusty strings, was very much what I'd want from a semi-acoustic. if RIC under Ben Hall's control are going to be a bit more customer friendly, then I hope they also reissue the 400 series guitars - a six string in the shape of a 4000 series bass, and possibly the only thing that could tempt me to the dark side.

The Japanese made Hondo's were very decent instruments, probably made in the same factories as many of the Ibanez ones. For some reason their Rick copy was farmed out to a Korean factory before they had upped their game to match the quality of the Japanese ones. From what I've read, Hondo was actually a brand dreamt up by an importer from the US, something similar to the Univox brand. And a music shop local to me have just acquired a Japanese made Rick copy from an estate sale. It's minus its truss rod cover, but it looks like was most likely branded as an Ibanez or similar. They want somewhere in the region of £800 for it, which given what similar copies are going on eBay or Reverb doesn't strike me as unreasonable.

I've still got an old SparcStation 5 in the loft. If you come across that card then I'd love to have it to see if it I can get it up and running - I seem to recall it was essentially a single board computer with a 386 or 486 processor on it.

I honestly think that if there had to be only one model of bass guitar then it should be a Fender Jazz neck on a Fender Precision body. Probably why I like the Sterling RAY4 so much, as it's pretty much a Jazz neck on the body of something descended from Leo's attempt at a "better Precision than a Precision". I even prefer the RAY4 to the more upmarket RAY34, which definitely felt like a better quality bass (and on a par with the US made Stingrays I've owned) but with a neck that wasn't so easy to move around on.

I just posted in another thread about my time as a contract programmer for a big press agency (there seems to be a surprising number of IT related threads on Basschat this week). One of the agency's permanent staff was an utter bodger, and bizarrely proud of it, who went off to do PHP programming on the bit of that NHS system developed by British Telecom. Made me fear for the health of the nation.

Because I play in a Joy Division tribute act, so it's expected that I play something that resembles a Rickenbacker 4001. Peter Hook played a Korean made Hondo copy, and I did the same for about five years until the neck snapped near the heel. I now play a genuine Rickenbacker, and the Hondo was a far better instrument to play even if it was made from plywood.

When I first saw that thread I thought it was about the bass playing in rather excellent Anglo-Australian band The Church.