NancyJohnson

Just reading some of the comments here about dynamic ticket prices and people having hotel bookings cancelled (only for the same bookings to reappear at three times the original price), is pretty abhorrent. While I love tech and the general ease of purchasing pretty much anything online now, I do pine for the old days where you could just rock up to the Odeon or Rainbow and choose your seat the day the tickets went on sale. Worst case, buy from a tout for a few quid more on the night. It just all seems so quaint. Christ, I lost count if the gigs I attended where we got front two rows because we made some effort. I just don't get how Ticketmaster seems to have the monopoly on tickets and even then their online service in unable to cope, even at three times the price. Bands like Pearl Jam went up against them and now they're cozy bedfellows. Much as people abhor Amazon, they seem to have their 💩 together, so maybe they should get into the ticket racket.

After a couple more abortive attempts, you'll be pleased to know that I've passed everything over to Julian Mullen in Reading. I've given up on installing the bloody thing.

Said mate from earlier gets his live Smiths fix via The Smyths. If Morrissey came a knocking for a backing band, what would y'do?

As musicians and music fans, we just want to cling onto and experience something akin to how we felt back then, be this watching Japan at Dingwalls in 1978/79 or The Heartbreakers at the Roxy. Love or hate Oasis, you know that if they can keep it together it's going to be off the scale and good luck to them. I'm not a big fan per se (admittedly they do have a decent back catalogue), but I'm quite interested in how it's going to pan out. I'd rather this reunion than the unending stuff like Kiss, Motley Crue etc. These bands are well past their sell by date.

I don't follow Morrissey in any respect so I haven't got clue what's been said historically. Certainly from my mate, old Stephen is a bit acerbic, but by and large, if there's a photo of him and narrative I generally scroll past it...beyond the legal/royalty case everything related to The Smiths is somewhat of a grey area for me. Even from what I do know, I'd concur working with him would be difficult at best.

A bit of a curio...perhaps something a builder could utilise. The Charlie Hunter instrument is stunning. https://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/original-novax-8-string-neck-un-used-un-fretted-3-bass-and-5-guitar-charlie-hunter/1210287594?&utm_source=Chrome&utm_campaign=socialbuttons&utm_content=app_android&utm_medium=Social

Never a Smiths/Morrissey fan, so much so that if I was on Pointless I'd only be able to name one song (Panic) from the entire output. I've got a mate though, big fan; literally lives and breathes them. When people say they know every word of every song, this is the guy. (Believe me, we tested it over dinner one night.). He knows of Morrissey's alleged political alignment(s) but the overriding thing is the music, that trumps everything and is more disappointed that they just don't lick their wounds and do it for their fanbase. While there may be bad blood between them, because someone is the polar opposite of your political ideology doesn't necessarily make them a bad person, does it?

Inevitably it's happening and honestly, good luck to them. The thing is, knowing when to stop. Keep it civil, do the tour, put out a live album/DVD and quit again before it gets too old. Closure.

The seller has had some really nice stuff previously, some very tasty Hamers, vintage Yamaha and Ibanez.

I stripped an Ibanez Roadster a few years back, no idea what the wood is... used black Fiebings leather dye. Didn't have any real issues with the application; I did a couple of coats, applied with a clean rag, and lightly sanded between these as the fluid lifted the grain. Like you, it was the finishing over that that was the issue; there was a bit of rubbing back. There were a couple of patches where it seemed to be a real struggle to get the dye to take on the body, so rub back, reapply. Eventually I just clear coated it several times without knocking it back between coats. I let it dry for a few days, spray again. After several coats, orange peel was minimal, sanded back and applied a final coat. Used some Crimson compound to try and bring out a shine (suspect T-cut might have been cheaper!!).

I'm not going to post links, just search on Gumtree. Hounslow.

Sun is out, I'm prepping for dinner tonight. I have a 30-track Mariachi collection on shuffle. Planets aligning etc. Beautiful.

Me and the wife.

It was my late mother who took me up to Denmark Street for the first time, one of the infrequent trips up to her old stomping grounds with me in tow; she obviously felt it was important for me to experience this place as well as as much as possible within the Oxford St, Charing Cross Road, Shaftesbury Ave, Park Lane and Piccadilly pentangle. I reckon I was 13 tops and going into one of the guitar shops (along with Desolation Boulevard) was probably the reason I wanted to play.

I'm listening to a soundboard recording of David Sylvian at Hammersmith Odeon, 1988. A friend of a friend worked on the tour and knowing I was a bit of a Japan fan, procured this for me years ago. I've never listened to it until today. Pretty spectacular, I've heard worse live albums.

Years ago I went to a photography exhibition and in one of the photos saw the name Nancy Johnson plastered all over some prescription pill-pots in one of the photos, I just thought, 'Ooh, cool name,' and wrote it down. As part of a small project for coding websites, I purchased the co.uk and set about all manner of goofery about a fake band called Nancy Johnson and their ridiculous escapades touring Europe and the USA (I think you can still go to the internet archive and pull up most of it). Roll forward a couple of years and by jingo, I'm in a band, we decide to adopt the name Nancy Johnson and off we go. Where things get stupid are that promoters are reading the website and think we're something we're not AND once in a while promoters seem to thing Nancy is a real person and actually ask us where our singer is. Inevitably, the line up changed (much like Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees) but I was the constant throughout until I bailed because of personality/musical differences. During the interim period, the new singer decides that we need a new name and adopts Who Killed Nancy Johnson?, which somehow reflects a change in musical styling from a fun pop/punk band to something a little more aggressive. If I'm brutally honest I wasn't really a fan of the WKNJ? rebrand. At the point of my departure, they carried on playing material I'd written/co-written and went through three bassists until calling it quits last year. Of the name Nancy Johnson, I don't know whether ownership comes into it to be honest, it's just a name, but in my little world I suppose that name came through me and I was the main driving force; I'd have preferred if the rebrand had been under a different name entirely and not including the original name.

Nope. The heel joint is like 1/2" thick, the article is nonsense from that perspective.

Truth is, shims are a little like snake oil. I'd wager that there's many guys on Basschat, that for one reason or another have needed to shim a neck; better playability/action, saddles too high/low. In most cases you can probably just use a (single) piece of a cardboard cornflake box or maybe just a playing card between the screws and end of the neck pocket, although some would undoubtedly advocate that a full size shim will improve tone/sustain and so forth. Reality? There's absolutely no necessity to line StewMac's pockets for the sake of a plywood/wood shim. Reckon there's loads of you out there with bolt-on neck basses that haven't got a clue what's lurking inside the neck pocket. The neck wood isn't going to flex or bend if there's a playing card in there and it's not going to make the slightest difference tonally Remember also that Fender experimented with a tilt adjustment on their 70s Jazz basses; that was just a three screw neck plate...loosen off one of the screws, make an tilt adjustment (a bolt goes against a circular plate attached to the heel) and tighten everything up. These are probably viewed as vintage classics now. .

Haven't tried is a bit of a loose term. I mean, there's hundreds I haven't tried for one reason or another; from memory the one popular bass I've never played is a Stingray. I played a Status maybe 30 years ago (didn't own it, it was at Kingfisher in Fleet) and I had a noodle on a mate's NS Radius a couple of years back. These two experiences, despite being many moons apart, were validation enough for me that I don't like headless basses in the slightest.

Never had an issue, never knew that it was a thing, either. In hindsight, I genuinely adored the bass; I loved how quirky it was. Honestly wish I'd spent a bit more time under the hood. It was way too hot.

I think Lee Voss does this in spades - he's incredibly fluid in what he does.

I used to love the Anderton videos back when it was Lee and Nathan King; there was genuine chemistry and banter from a pair of exceptional players and I really miss that. Now it's all a bit meh. By observation, CiCi (well, if You Tube videos are anything to go by), appears to have decentish chops, but there's really very little evidence of this in any of the current bass-centric Anderton output.

Need to get a new soldering iron. FFS.

At present, it's just a bit of soldering. The tiny size of the tabs on the pot is a bit of a ballache; god knows why I can't find something that isn't Hornby sized.