NancyJohnson

OK, here goes. Quite a while back I was listening to LBC radio (Robert Elms) and caught the tail end of a discussion in which someone was talking about the north side of Oxford Street. The guy was saying that when the old Tyburn Road was being redeveloped into Oxford Street, there wasn't wholesale demolition of the old warren of streets on the north side as Tyburn Road was elevated, higher that the surrounding land. As a consequence, there was little effort to raise the grade and in particular the location of one of the buildings HMV were using (I'm assuming the original site, but not 100% certain which one) had been built over the old street, literally by driving steel piles over it and that some of the houses and the original street still existed under the shop in the basement. I found this yarn fascinating, it has to be said. A while later I heard another radio phone in where someone was describing the houses and they were used for storing stock. I've not been able to find anything online to verify this; old maps seem to support there were streets and hearing the same thing twice from different sources gives the story a little credence.

Did anyone here work in either of the Oxford Street locations? I'm curious about something...

The Rock Box used to be wonderful...haven't been in there for years and it's only about ten minutes from me. Just as a trivia point, Ken put Muse on in the shop at a midnight show the day their first album was released.

Me and the good lady just watched it. I'll say from the outset that I never found This Is Spinal Tap remotely amusing and to describe the Bros: After the Screaming Stops as being comedy gold is a bit fallacious. Sure there's some truly terrible dialogue, but this isn't the Troggs Tapes or a documentary peppered with observational Tufnelesques such as, 'These go to eleven.' I found it very uncomfortable viewing to be honest; have no idea how much of it was scripted/staged, but some of the rehearsal footage reminded me of situations I'd been in in the past ('Is this what it was like in the Johnsons?' Asked my wife at one point.) Matt Goss just comes over like a mousy-haired and less-astute version of Jamie Redknapp, whereas Luke seems to be a little more switched on. Both of them seemed to be prone to turning on the waterworks at the mention of family/money. Sadly, no mention of Camberley life or Ken Craig (hopefully the lad distanced himself from this, but he seems to have landed on his feet). One viewing is enough!

Nail bars and coffee shops aside, pretty much every generic High Street in the country is dying. I feel that where electrical retailing needs to go is having more of a showroom and delivery type thing going down; no actual saleable stock held on the premises, so a Sony showroom, a Samsung showroom, an LG showroom etc. Just somewhere you can go to look and test a product, quiz a salesman (although the likelihood would be that the salesman would be just as clueless as the customer), buy it and have it delivered same day (or at least within 24 hours). If Amazon can do next day with Prime, I see no reason why manufacturers couldn't either work with them to expedite product to the customer on a next day basis or at least get their shizz together to do it themselves.

There's a short/succinct piece about HMV on the Guardian website, which pretty much sums up the how we all seem to think. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/hmv-music-high-street-chains-record-shops

HMV, even back in the day, always seemed to be well behind the curve and it was never a go to location when I was still buying CDs or DVDs. They'd always seemed to be too mainstream and didn't really do that particularly well. While I should feel concerned about the death of the high street, insofar as HMV goes, I'm indifferent. There's nowt specialist about them; Amazon do the same product, for cheaper and with next day delivery. Why would I ever schlep into town to buy from them?

Bwahaha. I doubt I can justify a trip there for a sub-$600 bass! If I could source one here, I'd be over it like a tramp on chips.

American Music have a bass I'm very interested in and they won't ship internationally. Just looking for someone to help out. Thanks.

It's Christmas morning. 4.23am. I'm wide awake, listening to foxes howling somewhere close by. And an owl hooting. Woo-hooooooo. Woo-hooooooooo.

The point here is that he's only really been collecting/purchasing older basses; irrespective of what actually qualifies as 'vintage', there's a ton of pre-CBS Fenders and despite personally not being a Fender fan, it is fantastic, at the very least from a comparison perspective, to see all these basses in one edition. He doesn't seem that interested with more recent instruments. Interestingly, there's a recent interview with Geddy Lee on You Tube where he says that this book represents his entire collection as of June/July 2018 and that it's already swelled by another 30 since they finished photographing the collection, so expect a second book in a couple of years.

Just spent an enjoyable two hours going through this book. If Geddy Lee wasn't so damn nice, I could honestly hate the guy for snagging so many beautiful instruments. Have to say that after 200 pages of drooling content, it's just information overload. The content steers you round the ultimate question of, 'Whatever happened to that <insert manufacturer here> bass?' before drawing you in for the last few pages of the really important guitars. There's no envy here in the slightest; it's just a lengthy journal about vintage bass collecting. He's been a successful musician for donkey's years and now he's simply kicking back and reaping the rewards of that. It's a beautiful publication.

Days In Europa was the first album I bought in the 1980s.

Yep. The 'Bean. They were amazingly talented and raw. I find it a bit disconcerting what they actually turned into, but hey ho.

Oooh, now you've done it. I know it's all subjective, but I was lucky enough to see them several times before they became the immaculately groomed and coiffured playthings of Simon Napier-Bell and they were insanely good, brilliant even. Those first two albums (and the Live In Japan EP) are still in regular rotation in our house. I may listen to Obscure Alternatives again this evening now...

Big Country were in no way Skids v2; there was certainly provenance through Stuart Adamson, but this was a wholly new band. The Crossing was a great album, truly wonderful and I'd happily put on record it's a more complete record than anything Skids put out. Steeltown lacked the consistency of the first album, by the time The Seer came out I'd moved on.

I had a quick look when I got home. Well worth the sub-£20 I paid through Amazon's pre-order. The cover price is $75. Woop.

It's all about diminishing returns. I've always had these girlish crushes on bands and tended to lose interest when Teresa from the typing pool mentioned in passing that they liked <insert band here>. The one that really irks me? Japan. Man alive, they were incredible until they did the change of direction around the time Quiet Life came out and Sylvian commenced crooning in a lower register. There's dozens more that were better early on. Dozens. Difficult second album syndrome. Van Halen, Living Colour, Fishbone, Jane's Addiction, Live, Butch Walker, Queen, Cheap Trick. Nine Inch Nails. The first two Stereophonics albums were very strong, now the band are a joke. I could keep going. Interestingly, it would be easier to list bands that have been horribly consistent.

Anyone got theirs yet?

I really enjoyed a US bass perspective on things, but after a couple of the new reboot editions, it's not great. As I buy mine through a WH Smith subscription, next time I'm in town I'll be cancelling. Sad really.

I watched a couple, deleted the rest. I understand the format entirely and was genuinely engaged at the start, but as I watched it just didn't retain my interest; irrespective of the talent on show, I just don't have feel I have any connection with these delta blues players at all and it really dragged. There's a ton of great drummers out there, obviously I'm uncertain whether there was any coverage whatsoever of guys like Mike Portnoy, Neil Peart or William Calhoun. If you want to watch a great/entertaining drummer documentary, try the Clem Burke one. It's brilliant TV.

I saw the OP and thought to myself, nope, no new gear required for 2019, not even strings. Feeling happy at that, it dawned on me that I'd actually spent about £3k in 2018, but if you want to count deliveries in the last 365 days, my Lull arrived between Christmas/New Year 2017, that rises to nearly £9k. Feck.

Nah.

I stopped all that malarky November last year and don't miss it in the slightest. I just think of the £££s I was haemorrhaging in weekly (and frankly unnecessary) rehearsals and petrol running around southern England. This, combined with the fact that I was losing precious weekends trawling around with three unpleasant asshats, playing to crowds of less 25 people, with promoters not paying out, when I could be spending quality time with my wife and friends was a bit of a no-brainer. I'm enjoying just being part of a studio project. Might try and find a band at some stage, but now? Nah, not worried.

I'd honestly give Facebook a punt and drive things yourself. Start something new. There's plenty of musician groups on it. As an aside, JMB is a strange site; too many idiots, too many people bigging themselves up or bragging about albums already recorded and gigs waiting. It has potential to be brilliant, it's beautifully simple but for the idiots who use it. Interestingly, I found a very decent drummer through our little village FB page, I'd posted a desperate plea of, 'does anyone know a drummer?' and it went from there. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Good luck finding something.