NancyJohnson

I'd sooner have an Overend Watts signature to be honest!

Just picking up from your opening few words, it's obviously lucrative to the band, but the demand is more a rites of passage thing for many, like a gap year or going to Ibiza. Remember that it sells out way before many of the acts are even announced. I work with a lady in her early-mid 50s; credit where due she travels the length and breadth of the country going to gigs and festivals. She was distraught at missing out on Glastonbury this year. The musical landscape has changed significantly since I were a lad; we've moved from being precious about purchases, buying an album (or two a month, maybe) that you'd listen to constantly eventually through osmosis knowing every note from start to finish. Now the culture is pretty much everything available to everyone and people generally cherry-picking popular tracks by hundreds of artists and too many albums just full of filler. I'd still maintain a good chunk of the tickets are bought by people (the Spotify Generation as a mate succinctly put it) who have little or no deep-interest in music, but know all the words to a couple of Lewis Capaldi tracks.

As these are largely non-production line instruments, surely they're going to vary from one unit to another? Even more so than the differences you'd get from mass produced ones.

Having a trawl on various socials and reading threads about some of the older bands/artistes playing this year...lot of posts about Debbie Harry (voice gone/just stop), Generation Sex (shambolic), Sparks (just play the hits), GnR (is that Ian Beale/Mick Hucknall?). There's also a huge trend of responses trying to shutdown negative opinion, along the lines of 'My mother used to say if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all.' I do wonder whether many of the respondees were actually around when these [older] acts were at their peak, rather than just using Glastonbury as a box ticking exercise. I also question whether many who went have something wrong with their ears. On the positive side, while I'm not particularly a fan of Manic Street Preachers, their set was clearly well rehearsed, on point and hugely enjoyable. Queens of the Stone Age, likewise. Same goes the Foo Fighters (even though I can't stand them). It's all well and good posting positive comments about these, but people posting negatives about Debbie Harry are just hit with a barrage of retorts about her being 77, how fantastic she is for that age and how she's doing her best. Honestly, who cares about how old anyone is? If you can't do it, then don't do it. Just because you're classified as a legend, does not equate to your performance being legendary. Someone needs to have a frank conversation with Debbie Harry and say, 'You know, love. It's over. Retire gracefully. You can't hit the notes any more and surrounding yourself with a couple of guitarists who are young enough to be your grandchildren just looks creepy. It's embarrassing.'

He's a lovely bloke. Very engaging and incredibly funny. He's known Eddie for decades, so that made things easier. He arrived at the H&A on a pushbike!

Gadzooks, yes! Spector!

Played The Hope & Anchor in Islington yesterday with The Adjacent Kings; it was one of those punk lunch things that seem to be happening more and more frequently nowadays. It's a really decent (basement) venue, far from the sh*thole it was pre-facelift. If you are playing there, take your own gear if you can; basswise there's a very tired Ashdown combo available. Happy to have run into @cheddatom who was playing drums for headliners, Headsticks. While I saw their soundcheck and had a very brief chat, I didn't catch their set. We'd literally finished, broke down our gear, went upstairs to try and cool down and our singer/designated driver was ready for the off as he had a 3 hour plus drive ahead of him. [Edit] Just as a side note, Spizz was on the bill as well. You may remember him from his single Where's Captain Kirk?. It seems we may be doing some dates with him in the Autumn off the back of this one, so all good.

Apparently there's 'furore and anger' about the Pyramid Stage having all-male headliners and also about having an American band headlining Saturday night. Isn't it all supposed to be about the music or is this just the tabloids spinning and whipping up something out of nothing? Probably the latter. What a fecking world we live in.

I'm not a fan of festivals in general and I wouldn't go to Glastonbury even if it was free and had all-access passes. My wife has been dipping in (and mainly out) since early afternoon. She asked who Generation Sex were. I didn't actually know they were playing. Bejeebus. Words fail me. There's a Guns 'n Roses tribute band on at the moment. The bloke playing Axl looks like an overweight accountant. The Slash bloke looks nothing like Slash bloke I remember.

But it didn't really go under as such, more shut down, restructure, relaunch. Although the LA store shut and they're pretty much a mailorder outlet (no storefront as such), selling their own Bass Collection basses, Brian May stuff, NS Design kit, plus peripherals.

I bought a Gibson Grabber (G3) for peanuts somewhere over in Romford, early 80s, maybe it was this place. When it worked properly (intermittently), it was dreamy, but a lot of time it just kept cutting out and despite it only being a few years old the pots were very crackly. I wasn't even out of my teens, but there was a level of kudos because I had a real Gibson. It was rubbish. One summer day in the mid-80s, I stripped the thing and spray painted the body with a couple of coats of a deep-burgundy VW rattle can over the original natural finish (which started to come off almost immediately). I used it for a bit more and traded it for some camera equipment in a junk shop in Windsor. Amazingly I saw it online a few years back, someone selling it at an inflated price as 'one-off custom colour'; the finish - some 30 years on - way worse that when I had it, but recognisable.

Or to none at all. We were mid-bill about ten years ago. Tuesday night in Bracknell. Nobody in. Zero. We were kind of looking around and going, 'Well, shall we or shan't we boys?' and then did 45 minutes to the sound guy and four mates who were under us on the card. It was kind of funny. The headliners were up in the bar, so we broke down our kit, put it in our cars and all went to the same bar while they were on. Rumour has it they played a couple of songs to nobody and just gave up.

I'm mid-bill on an afternoon thing at The Hope & Anchor this coming Sunday. Making up numbers more than anything else. We're supporting a band called Headsticks, so no pressure. Spizz ('Where's Captain Kirk?') is also on the bill. Alarmingly, while the capacity is only 70 ticket sales are pretty terrible, but hey, it's not our gig so I'm not concerned so much. I'll be on the train home before the headliners will be done.

I used to frequent the Wapping shop. Bass Centre is just down the road from me (in Bagshot), but it's not a retail location as such. I got my NS EUB from there. It was nice to catch up with Barry again after over 20 years.

With the Geddy/Rickenbacker thing, I'm sure that while the public persona of the guy was all 4001/4003 through an Ampeg some of the bass playing ilk were horrified when he was pictured with the Jazz bass onMoving Pictures (I think). I've been doing the bass stuff for over 35 years, if nothing I think that - string numbers aside - I've just become a bit jaded at the lack of real innovation with how everything sounds more or less the same and that nothing really stands head and shoulders over anything else. This prompted a blind sound test with 15 basses at one of the Bass Bashes a few years ago (video below). I don't think anyone recognised more than two or three basses, lots of people didn't even recognise their own basses!

I'm not looking to go down the route that all basses sound the same and that the different nuances get lost in the mix (that's been covered lots of times), but isn't there an inevitability that if you're emulating/copying a pickup configuration used elsewhere that there will be a degree of similarity with the source tone? I've owned four Spector basses and they all had different guts; of the last two, the Euro LT had Barts and a Darkglass circuit, the current Euro X has EMGs and a Spector Tone Pump. Tonally I'd take the Euro X over the LT every day of the week, but they didn't sound much different (the X just seems to have more attack). They've made a lot of basses and switch around the electrics at will. I'm sure players will be able to say there's a distinct Spector tone (much as you have a distinct Precision/Jazz/Rickenbacker/Stingray/Thunderbird tone), but with Spector there's just too many levels of switcheroonie to be able to say, 'Yep, that's a Spector.'

I have a distinct image in my head of this being explained to me by a sound tech when we were doing a gig at my college, early 80s. Strodes College, Egham. I recall him drawing out a reasonably simple wiring diagram explaining exactly this, explaining part of the effect down to things being partially out of phase with either side of the stereo output. There were four of us sagely nodding our heads, all the while clearly not understanding a thing he was saying. Must have born fruit somewhere along the line, all four of us ran studios at some point and two of the number run an extremely successful mastering business to this day.

Soundman: 'I say, you two, yes you, the bass player and the guitarist. Yes you. Would you be so kind as to turn your amps up a smidgen? The stage sound is a bit quiet.'

Possibly not...it's 10gb.

Didn't I send that one to you?

Moooorning kids Just wondering whether anyone has embraced multi-channel audio (I'll refer to it as surround from now on) in any capacity and - if the original tapes are available - what they'd like to see moving forward. My particular take. While I wasn't a fan of the first album, I really embraced Tears for Fears from Songs From The Big Chair onward. XTC? Loved the singles, wasn't really a big fan as such until about 15 years ago. Both these bands have undergone the Steven Wilson effect, with the first three albums and The Tipping Point from Tears for Fears albums released in surround and by my count there's seven XTC albums. While a lot of people are backsliding furiously to embrace vinyl (and I have no issue with that), I just feel that the surround releases just (literally) expand the listening experience and credit to Steven Wilson for releasing new material in this format at the same time he releases music in a stereo format. I'll admit that playback is a bit of a faff if I'm actually putting the discs in a Blu-Ray machine, but the discs are easy enough to rip and stream from a NAS. The Seeds Of Love album is mentally good. Moving forward, what would I like to see? Selfishly these would be based around personal choice. Something from early Japan (Quiet Life, probably), Extreme Pornograffiti, maybe Jane's Addiction Nothing's Shocking! or Vivid by Living Colour. Jellyfish. Man alive, the format would just live for both the original Jellyfish albums. Just for the craic some of Danny Elfman's whimsical soundtracks for his Tim Burton projects (there's a 17CD Box of stuff, loads of extra material, that's mind-blowing in it's scope, so it would lead you to believe that there has to be content to allow a surround mix.)