Misdee

Just now, Supernaut said:

How to sound ancient in one sentence. 

I'm as old as I am and I'm not trying to hide it from anyone.

The point is that Glastonbury trades on it's history as a counterculture event despite the reality that it's now a bastion of the establishment. It's the Wimbledon of rock festivals.

On 29/06/2022 at 09:24, Nail Soup said:

Really enjoyed Amyl and the Sniffers. Great band - in particular Amy is a great lyricist.

Now there a band who know to drop the "C" word in true Aussie style! It features a lot in Amy's lyrics and between song banter. The bass player pitched in with a few in a heartfelt attack on the US supreme court too.

 

 The U.S Supreme Court is probably reconsidering it's judgment right now.

I watched this lot. All I can say is whatever they have been sniffing, they  have either been sniffing too much of it or not enough.

What I like most about this band is their referencing of the Sharpie subculture (skinheads with mullets- a wonderfully Aussie combination!) of early- mid Seventies Australia. The music fits that era perfectly, too.

On 28/06/2022 at 18:20, FinnDave said:

When I went to the free festivals in the 70s, I hitch hiked there from Stockport - small world.

 

That's when festivals were festivals. None of this Instagram glamping nonsense back then. I remember folks coming back from festivals looking like they had been on the Somme! 

No wonder they have cash machines at Glastonbury nowadays if it costs £6 for a pint of beer or cider and £11.50 for a cheese toastie.(!)  Drugs used to be a problem at festivals, but nowadays festival goers could adopt a cocaine habit  out of  necessity as a way of saving money.  For those prices price I would be expecting Paul McCartney to serve me my food in bed and call me "sir". 

43 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

Is this not the modern world? Everything is the best thing ever. Everything is so crammed full of profound moments you'll run out of skin once you start getting tattoos about the iconic memories you simply need to trigger. Make sure you let everyone know, too, with an array of carefully taken selfies to show how in the moment you were, living your best life out loud! Hey, PREMIER LEAGUE will be back soon, don't miss a second of it! YOLO!

You've just hit the nail on the head.

The BBC do exactly the same thing with the FA Cup, which they have also paid way over the odds to broadcast. Every year they can't wait to get Dan Walker to tell you how native tribes in the Amazon will be getting out of their hammocks at 4am to tune their shortwave radio into The Greatest Knockout Cup Competition in the World Ever. At the end of two weeks of trailers, preambles, interviews and endless punditry you get to watch  an understrength Leicester City eke out a 2-1 victory over Dagenham and Redbridge. If that doesn't make you proud to be British I don't know what will!

(If the BBC was really interested in reporting about football matters they would be investigating the Deep State conspiracy intent on destroying Leeds United. Lizard people living in tunnels under Whitehall are trying to sell  LUFC's best players for peanuts and are using invisible magnetic rays to help opposing teams score against them. You read it here first!)

Regardless of what  actually transpires in reality, the BBC are going to push the party line that Glastonbury is a national event that enjoys an overwhelming consensus of approval.  It isn't and it doesn't.

It's five years now since Jeremy Corbyn addressed the crowds at Glastonbury and tantalised them with his vision for a fairer Britain. The gathered throng lapped it up and went back to constituencies to prepare for government. Instead of revolution we have had more Tories,more Glastonbury, more football and more misery, most of which but not all of which has been self- inflicted. That is the gap between the rhetoric and reality.

Malcolm McLaren was right when he said that it is better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success. Glastonbury is a benign success.

10 minutes ago, Sibob said:

So you liked it then?

 

Si

Already looking forward to next year. Apparently I've got to. It's going to be even more amazing.

Individual performances aside, is it just me who is sick of the " Glastonbury fascism" instigated by the BBC that seems to be getting more total with each event?

The endless hyperbole about how "amazing","historic""incredible" ect the festival is getting to be more than I can bear. "The Greatest Party On Earth" ran the headline on the BBC website yesterday. 

The naked truth is that Glastonbury is a triumph of mediocrity. It's a propaganda event, not, as we are being bullied into believing, a cause for  compulsory celebration. The BBC pay an absolute fortune for the rights to broadcast the festival and they are desperate to justify this questionable expenditure at every opportunity.

Anyhow, I thought the BBC were supposed to be impartial and represent differing perspectives and opinions. But not when it comes to Glastonbury, it seems. The only disparity allowed is  just what degree of life- changing awe and amazement we are experiencing by vicarious participation.

No wonder the Quentin's running the BBC are nervous if this is the best they can come up with to try and stave off their seemingly inevitable emasculation at the hands of Nadine Dorries and her vengeful Tory masters. 

Sadly, Glasto has become bread and circuses for post-post whatever-it-is Britain and it's not likely to lose its totemic stature in any forseeable future. Judging by what I have sat through over the weekend, if this is all that British people have got to look forward to then would it really be so terrible if a hostile foreign power were to subjugate this country once and for all?

The BBC would have been far better occupied commissioning an extended series of Antiques Roadshow and undertaking a brutal purge of everybody associated with Match of The Day.

And yes, Diana Ross was abysmal.

4 minutes ago, dclaassen said:

During that same time frame, out on the plains of Nebraska, we also had an abundance of really good bands and great venues. I that experience must have been pretty wide-spread. It was wonderful!

By strange coincidence, I've spent a fair bit of time out on the plains of Nebraska ( McCook, not that far from the Colorado/ Kansas borders respectively) and I've got some good memories of seeing  a few really interesting local bands ( early 1990s grunge era). It's also probably the friendliest place I have ever been. All my life I will never forget how  kind and welcoming the local people were.

It has to be said though, my abiding memory is of being shocked at how prevalent country music was with younger people. Most teens were much more interested in and excited by Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton than anything from the rock world. At first I thought they were joking!

58 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Late 70's were just a magical time IMO. So many great local bands / talent about. Almost every pub had live music of some kind and you could go between venues in Glasgow listening to all the different bands. Great times.

Dave

Couldn't agree more. So much great music in so many genres.

Glasgow has always been a very musical city, and I expect the local music scene in 1979 reflected the times.

Funnily enough just the other day I spent the afternoon looking at an awe - inspiring collection of photos taken in Glasgow in 1979/1980 by a French photographer (Raymond Depardon, in case you are interested) and they really captured the mood of those times. Even though they are very much about Glasgow, the pictures are evocative of urban life throughout the North during that era ( I grew up in West Yorkshire). When I listen to music from that time I like to remember the wider context and those pictures nail it perfectly.

On 30/04/2022 at 15:58, BCH said:

The Wallace ( https://reverb.com/uk/item/3600212-wallace-xt-mk-1-rare-late-60s-amp-head-superb-sound ) wish I had kept it! I purchased from Supertramp, who were recording "Crime of the century" in Scorpio studio when we were there. They were poor and became rich we had money and were a flop...ha....I also purchased from them a Harmony H75, which I sold in 2010, when someone made me an offer I could not XXXXX

 

Nice bass and even better outfit. Those might be the best flares I have ever seen. I am betting that they are hiding an equally dapper pair of platform soles. You were a stylish man!

11 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

Unhappily, the guitarist in my first (college) band has recently joined the drummer in the great band in the sky. Both were my age (although the drummer had suffered with MND for many years).

 

Someone has just posted some pictures from 1979 on Facebook. Here I am showing my earliest attempt at reproducing John Deacons rig. I have an 18 and two 4x12s (they're even Sound City). The bass was my first Precision - where are you now S749320?

 

The perm earned me the nickname Phyllis.

You could have been playing in midfield for Liverpool with that perm! Grow a moustache and you could have been scouted by Bayern Munich.😀

1979 was a  wonderful year for music and a magnificent time to be young. Nice photos and some great memories I expect.

Credit where credit is due, David Gilmore's hair looks very good in this clip.

Regarding Tony Franklin's bass playing, many watching this performance today may accuse him of overplaying. Not me, though.  Everyone was trying to play like that in the '80s! It was the zeitgeist of the day. No bearded hipsters with flatwound strings in on a P Bass played through a valve- powered radiogram intent on lecturing you about "authenticity."

I had a mullet for a good while during this era , and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Looking back now, I looked like an Australian car mechanic in the midst of some kind of a mental breakdown. I had a custom Jaydee too, and a Trace Eliot amp. Perhaps I could send some old pictures of myself to Tony Franklin and he could critique me?

Tony Franklin's hair is indeed epic in this snippet. In medical terms, it is what I believe to be a Super Mullet. That's where the hairstyle develops to such an extent that it stops being a fashion statement and instead becomes a way of life. No wonder Tony had to move to America. 

They are indeed murdering Kate's song, albeit in a very proficient manner. But let's face it, most of Kate's music doesn't really lend itself to live performance for a variety of reasons. Kate's not daft; that's why she performs live so infrequently, and successfully keeps her legend intact.

That Jaydee looks like it has got walnut for the lions share of the neck lamination. The rest looks like mahogany with an ebony centre strip. Not too shabby!

The walnut neck is how they did it on the earlier Jaydee basses. If I understand correctly, later on John kind of reversed the lamination so it was predominantly maple with walnut stringers rather than walnut with maple stringers, with the aim of making the neck a bit stiffer. However, after he adopted a new truss rod system sometime in the 1990s he was able to offer the predominantly walnut neck again.

I always have to remind myself that Jaydee basses are not neck thru body. The neck is actually glued to a matching laminate in the body just to give the appearance of a neck thru. I suppose that makes it a set neck design.

16 minutes ago, White Cloud said:

Hm, have done both but probably best to abstain for me. 

 

Interestingly, I met Allan Holdsworth before a gig and he was putting them away. Apparently helped him with his stage fright. 

 

When show time arrived he was staggeringly good...

Allan was a bit of a connoisseur when it came to beer. If he was back in the UK he liked to take full advantage of the draft beers available. It was one of the things he missed the most after moving to California.

It also probably helped that he was a true virtuoso who could play better in his sleep than most other big name guitarists could ever aspire to at their 

best.🙂

Not only do I play better after a few drinks but I am also funnier and much more charming. Certainly seems that way to me, anyway.😕

Sometimes a slight misalignment can be remedied by.taking the neck off and screwing it back on again in a truer position. I'm not saying it will necessarily work in this case, but it's easy enough to try.

I've got a made in Indonesia Skyline 44-02 Deluxe fretless and it's a fantastic bass. No dots on the fingerboard, so I really couldn't comment on that. I really cannot fault it as  for anything else, though.

As for the routing on the pickup and the headstock, that would annoy me more than the misalignment because it is much harder to fix.

If you still fancy a new Lakland  then what you need to establish is whether this is a rogue bass or are all the Skylines like this nowadays. I would contact Lakland and see what they say about it.

I think the MK3 Wal is potentially a bit lighter than the  MK1/ MK2 designs.

I had a custom Jaydee back in the day, but I was much younger and weight wasn't an issue in those days. Back in the 1980s if I had gone a shop and tried to discuss the relative weight of  a bass they would have considered me a bit weird.  I know that Jaydee can substitute the mahogany body wings for lighter ash if weight is an issue for the customer.

Generally speaking, the obsession with weight is a more recent phenomenon. I don't like heavy basses either, but some basses are inherently heavy, and vintage Wals are definitely one of them. I don't entertain any bass over 9 1/2 pounds and all the older Wals I've got to play were probably a bit more than that.  Just like with a Series 1 and Series 2 Alembic, the weight is a compromise you have to make if you want to play one.

 Is it just me or is "vintage Wal" a bit of an uncomfortable phrase in so much as it's a bass that embodied an era of modernity in all things bass? Probably just me getting old.☹️

Nice bass but I'm not keen on those block markers. Dots would look better to me.

1 hour ago, joe_geezer said:

When you say 

Can you be more descriptive and break down exactly what aspects of a modern Wal attain your 'level' status, thanks.

 

Have you had the opportunity to play a modern Wal and & compare it to an original Wal? 

Well, the first thing I noticed was the new basses were lighter than any older Wal basses I've ever played. That is not a quality issue as such, but it is a thing. 

The quality of the woodworking was better on Paul's basses in so much as everything was neat and symmetrical, often not the case on the old Wals.

 Attention to detail and overall fit and finish was much better.  By that I mean things like that the nut on Paul's basses is cut so there the same amount of space from the edge of the outer strings to the edge of the fingerboard. On vintage Wals that metric is fairly hit and miss.

 However, the most significant difference for the chap who owns the basses in question ( fretted and fretless respectively) is that Paul has guaranteed  him that on the new basses the truss rod is anchored more securely inside the channel. He previously owned three MK1 Wals made between 1985 and 1988 and two of them developed the same problem with the truss rod coming loose within the neck and rattling sympathetically with certain notes. This is a documented problem on a fair few older Wal basses and it can be very tricky to fix.

9 hours ago, 4000 said:

I’ve also played many original Wals - and owned 2 - and none of them have been particularly outstanding in terms of build quality or playability IMO. In fact they were bordering on agricultural compared to the Alembics I’ve owned. But they have all had variations on a distinctive tone and if that’s what you want, then that’s what you want.
 

I haven’t played any of Paul’s so can’t comment on them. 

Exactly this.

When I played a couple of Paul Herman era Wals I was really struck by how much attention to detail had gone into them. The old basses were good but Paul has made his basses to be on the same level as the other money is no object bass builders.

 By contrast  original Wal basses were professional quality instruments equal to any of their fellow British bass builders of that era, but they weren't the unobtainable holy relics which they have become to some folks nowadays. You could walk into a shop and buy one off the rack for a bit more money than a Music Man Stingray, a bit less money than a Status Series 2 and about the same price as a Jaydee Mark King. And they were always more popular down south than up north, for some reason.

I like Wal basses, but they were always an idiosyncratic design. To my sensibilities they have their strengths and their weaknesses. They certainly sound unique, and I love the fact that they have such a pedigree. I would hate it if they went down the Sadowky route.

Regarding Wal pricing, to put things in perspective, I remember that in 1987 a new standard MK1 Wal 4 string cost £790 and the case was an extra £90. That's the equivalent of £2055 in today's money.

Well, as far as I recall, in their heyday Wal had maybe four or five people working directly on the basses,  by the 1990s one of whom was Paul Herman.

I've played the new Paul Herman era basses and I suspect one reason they are so back ordered is because they are much better made nowadays. Back in the day Wals were a bit inconsistent when it came to some of the finer points of fit and finish compared with what folks expect from companies like Alembic or Fodera.  In comparison the basses Paul is making now are absolutely meticulous and easily compare to the very best basses  made anywhere.

Before I get piled on by vintage Wal owners, let me just clarify that the older Wals were top quality basses but they sold at a much lower price point and were made in larger numbers. They were hand made basses, but I think the amount of hours spent making each one was probably less than now . The approach to making them in those days was a practical one, I think it would be fair to say.

Paul Herman comes from a sightly different background in so much as he studied instrument making at the Guildhall and is much more methodical in his approach. You can really tell that when you compare the newer basses with the vintage ones.

I wouldn't want Paul to compromise on the quality of his basses, but then again, I'm not desperate to buy one. A lot of folks are. 

1 hour ago, Maude said:

Well I watched episodes 1 & 2 last night and enjoyed it. 

When viewed as a stylised drama based on real events, rather than a documentary, I think it works. 

Yes it's all a little theatrical and might not portray events as they actually occurred, but it's Danny Boyle's version of Steve Jones' version of events, and everyone in and around that band has a different version of events to suit their agender. 

I've seen Quadrophenia and The Kinks story at the theatre and see this in a similar theatrical kind of way. 

It's entertainment not education. 

That's a fair point, but the reality is that a sizable swath of viewers will see it as an accurate representation of events. And what is most unforgivable is the way in which the characters speak in headlines to sign post a narrative for the hard-of-understanding. " We're gonna kick this country awake if it kills us!" How prophetic, how tragic, how prescient.

I suppose why all this makes me so hot under the collar is twofold.

Firstly, it's yet another example of how, encouraged by broad sheet music journalists intent on rewriting history to serve their own ends, rock music has developed an execrable tendency towards self mythologising.

Secondly,I know only too well how this  series will be seen by many as conclusive evidence that punk rock saved us from an economic and cultural abyss brought about by a mixture of inbreeding, indolence and Harold Wilson's Labour government. 

It's a post Britpop version of history made by a Britpop film director. Give it a few more years and Danny Boyle will be making a series about how Britpop saved British culture from being swallowed by American grunge music, how Oasis were the new Beatles and Rolling Stones all at once and singlehandedly got Tony Blair elected and Trainspotting was a landmark film which laid bare the lives of Britain's underclass.

17 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Punk was great, I’m a major Pistols fan (was 11 in 1977) and to be honest the behaviour & yobbishness wasn’t what excited me, it was the sounds and the look. I’m pretty sure if I’d been 5 years older I’d have been a major Bowie fan.

To my ears Never Mind The Bollocks is a terrific rock and roll album. If folks want to call it punk and hail it as revolutionary that is up to them. Chris Thomas's production work makes the most of the Sex Pistols strengths and hides their weaknesses. 

I'm going to watch some more tonight so I can be even more annoyed tomorrow.

I would cheerfully watch the whole series if I had the time as a guilty pleasure. But it's a complete fiction on every level.

What irks me about it is the way this show presents itself as a serious historical dissection of the 1970s. It also perpetuates the same old lazy falsehoods that punk rock and the Sex Pistols in particular arrived in the nick of time revive pop music and popular culture in general.

Contrary to this propagated version of British history, in reality the 1970s was a pretty good time to live in this country. And most people were perfectly happy to with the music they were listening to pre-1977.   That's not surprising because there was so much great music in the 1970s. Punk rock was a novelty because of its shock value. Nothing more than that. It was not the salvation of Western Civilization as some would try have you believe nowadays.

I can certainly see why John Lydon is upset about it. It really is a Disney version of reality.