Cato

Cheesecake.

Generally my reaction to Coldplay ranges from indifference to irritation, but this is a fantastic bit of songwriting, one of my favourite tunes of the last 20 years.

I think they look great. Agree about the neck dive though.

Forget Blood Sugar.... Mother's Milk is where the Chili Peppers peaked. They were almost a different band after that, still an excellent one, but they were never that raw and funky again.

I think they'll be worth less unless guitar based music comes back in a big way because there will be less nostalgia for them, but I think that will be after Gen X is gone rather than the Baby Boomers.

No idea if he's in a band at the moment. There's a video of his online where he talks about his 'journey' In a nutshell he started playing at school, went on to spend several years studying at a prestigous US music college at which point he was also gigging seven days a week in multiple bands in different genres. When he eventually returned to the UK he found himself unable to successfully monetise his skills until he got a lucky break when Davey504 featured him in one of his vids. Since then Youtube has been his main musical focus. Fairplay to him for finding a way to make a living doing what he loves.

About 30 years ago a lad I knew got himself what was at the time a pretty high end keyboard/synth. That was the first time I heard programmed bass patches that sounded pretty much indistinguishable from a real bass gutair and I wondered then if bass guitar had a future. 30 years on and we're all still here. I do think playing 'real' stringed instruments in a pop music context has become a lot more niche over the years, a growing number of big box office acts seem happy to play to partial or full backing tracks live rather than taking a full band out. There will always be a place for old fashioned bands though, although they'll probably be more prevalent in some genres rather than others.

It'll make learning a part by watching someone else a lot more challenging. Likewise those those YouTube tutorials that concentrate on visually demonstrating the fretting hand movements whilst describing notes as "second string 5th fret".

The tort and the sonic blue set each other off perfectly. The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

I've never been able to draw. I just don't have any natural artistic talent in that direction. If I took drawing lessons and put in 10, 000 hours of practice I would hope that my drawing ability would improve to some extent, but would I have achieved 'mastery'? I seriously doubt it because if I had the spark of genius that artistic mastery requires then surely I'd have been able to draw reasonably well in the first place.

I'm suprised at how sad I am to read this. It feels like the end of an era, there was a moment around when I first started playing in the late 80s when Status basses seemed to be everywhere , everyone from Mark King to Rhino Edwards was playing them.

It was actually not a bad instrument, yes the action was high, but being a complete newbie in the pre internet era I never realised I could have adjusted the BBOT bridge until many years later, so it was largely self inflicted.

'3 Lions' raised the bar for football songs, not because it's the best song ever, although I do like it, but because it was adopted by fans and has been an unofficial England anthem for the last 25 years. I think that's why the FA stopped releasing England pop songs for the big tournaments. After '3 Lions' any song that wasn't being sung in the stands was deemed a flop I imagine a new national anthem woukd be judged by the same criteria, if people aren't spontaneously singing it at events then it's not really working.

It's good for them. My second bass felt so easy to play after learning on an 'Axe' bass that had an action higher than that. I've never had that feeling on an instrument since, pure bloss. I had forearms like Popeye too.

I think the Suicidal Tendencies gig was always going to be temporary for the Bruner brothers. They're both part of 'The West Coast Get Down', which is a collective of jazz musicians who have been playing together since they were teenagers and have in the last few years been making big waves in the jazz world, as well as becoming some of the most in demand session musicians for genres from pop to hip hop. I like Thundercat's solo stuff, but I can see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

There's a guitar shop near me that's 'by appointment only.' Looking online they do stock a couple of fairly niche makes I'm interested in, but I think I'd feel like a time waster if I made the appointment to try them out and ended up not buying anything. To fair I've only heard good things about the place, but I'd be far more likely to visit if I could just casually drop in and have a browse.

I had wondered if he might be playing with Kendrick Lamar at Glastonbury over the weekend. I don't suppose he mentioned anything?

Rod Liddle is a professional joy vampire so I'd be more shocked if he actually admitted looking forwards to something. Taking a straight average age of attendees is deceptive because, although some people do take young kids the numbers of under 18s attending is tiny. So the average gets dragged up by the those attendees who continue to go in their 40s, 50s and 60s with almost no under 18s to balance it in the other direction. What it doesn't mean is that most attendees are over 40. It would be more informative to look at the median statistics for attendees, or just by numbers from each age group. I suspect the single biggest demographic of attendees would be in the 18 to 30 range.

Bloody hell. I was listening to most of those headliners 30 years ago during my teenage metal years. I'd heard that no bands had come through to join the big boys for a long time, but that really brings it home.

One year some of my uni friends were scouting the perimeter fence, looking for a good place to climb over or burrow under when they bumped into Michael Eavis on a tractor. Who proceeded to to load them into his trailer and drove them into the festival for free. I think back in the day once his costs were covered by ticket sales he didn't really care if people were getting in free. It was only when it started to get dangerously over crowded in front of the big stages that he put up the mega fence around 2000.

Personally I think the big change at Glastonbury happened with Britpop, The festivàl was still mainly showcasing 'alternative' and 'indie' bands just as it had been doing since the mid 80s, but mainstream music tastes shifted so that for a while some of the those bands were were amongst the best selling acts in the UK, so Glastonbury, which on any given year would feature most of the biggest indie bands suddenly started getting a lot more attention from the mainstream media It also didn't hurt that Glastonbury was also quick to embrace the exploding EDM/rave scene with acts like Orbital starting to headline the Pyramid stage. It was almost a case of the mainstream moving to embrace Glastonbury rather than the other way round. Once that happened the festival started to attract more and more acts who were outside that 'indie' clique it which eventually led to headliners like Beyonce and Kanye. As I said before I went every year it was on during the 90s and even though it's a very different beast now and my camping in a sweaty tent days are long gone, I still get pangs of almost homesickness when it's on now.

But most of those 90s bands, certainly on the indie scene were drawing their influence from 60s stuff, especially the Beatles, and punk from the 70s, maybe with a bit of Bowie thrown in. So isn't that just a case of 'the more things change...'?

I do think we're showing our age a bit. Billy Eilish is probably the biggest act in the world right now. Kendrick Lamarr is one of the biggest names in hip hop. Olivia Rodriguez is massive. Those three could easily sell out stadium tours in their own right. Then on the Other stage there's Foals and Idles who are among the biggest 'indie'bands in the UK. AJ Tracey, probably currently the biggest UK hip hop act barring Stormzy and Burna Boy who's just breaking through into the UK mainstream but is pretty much the biggest star in Africa. And that's before you start looking at the various lesser known gems performing on all the other stages. It may not be appealing to middle age Basschatters (and I include myself in that demographic) but doubt there'll be a stronger line up at any other European festival this year. I may even tune in myself to catch Herbie Hancock.

There's enough there for me that I could have a busy time flitting between stages. Glastonbury has changed a lot since I used to go every year in the 90s. It's bigger, by all accounts it's safer and it's evolved from being mainly aimed at indie kids and aging hippies into something that embraces a far wider range of music past and present. I don't necessarily think it's better or worse but it's definitely different.

I think you may have been a bit unlucky there, or quality has improved. I've been very impressed with a pack of Next trainer socks I bought early last year. I mainly wear them down the gym and most of my gym socks have a pretty short life span before they get worn through but these have just kept on going despite my corrosive sweat.