Doctor J

https://moises.ai/

Deacon Blue - Raintown and When The World Knows Your Name Brilliant songwriting and fantastic performances from all involved. While I'm disappointed I didn't wake up to them sooner, there is a particular joy in finding a new back catalogue to explore. I recently got deep into Talking Heads too, for the first time, while reading Chris Frantz's book. Great fun was had.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BO9T5pQ6IeI Credit due to the "Hell bent for chiffon" comment 😂

That's the thing with genres, they're fine for organising the stock of music shops (look them up, kids) but generally not applicable in the real world when it comes to art. Bands tend to get labelled as something and struggle to shake off the label even when they're not playing whatever it is they're labelled as. We had this discussion recently with "thrash" which went from being used to describe a very specific style of music to the lazy bundling together of the output of a large and varied collection of bands, most of whom were not actually playing thrash. Genres belong in the bin with Peter Criss' cat makeup.

As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll. Mick Shrimpton R.I.P.

Unlike Leo Fender, Jamerson would actually get it right first time.

Dude, don't enter that as a search term on your work computer, seriously 😵

I built assembled a strat in Monaco yellow, it looks quite similar. The pickguard is good but I just love that colour. A transparent or slightly tinted one would show it off well.

Even better. Tonewood tonefloor toneboards.

That looks cool, though personally, I'd love to see more of that yellow (is that Monaco yellow?).

Bass avoids the war through intelligence and diplomacy.

I used to be in a band with my best mate at the time, a guitarist. He was well coordinated so could technically play but had no sense of timing whatsoever. He was a mate, though, so we set up a band. There was no point in writing songs, though, it would have been a mess so we improvised everything. The drummer and I would come up with something and guitarist would noodle aimlessly over it while another mate improvised vocals over that - usually chats about scams and such. It was a lot of fun, to be honest and, although we were usually unpopular with audiences we were surprisingly not universally so.

Best? Can't honestly remember. I've gone to so many great gigs since the 80's. The most recent one I came away from thinking "That was truly extraordinary" was Therapy? supported by Ondt Blod in Hamburg a few years ago. I had never heard Ondt Blod before and had sort of a Jake Blues in Church episode. Therapy? afterwards were just incredible. Worst? Either Ian Brown on his first solo tour or a recent package thing with Limp Bizkit and some other garbage. One of the other band's roadies walked around with a goblin mask on. Relentlessly and maliciously dreadful, both.

Rollins Band had Theo Van Rock, their sound engineer, listed as a member.

It was a joke.

At a Chic gig a few years ago, towards the end of their set somebody grabbed my shoulder and tried to pull me backwards to get past me. When I turned to see what was going on, a young lady in her early 20's (at most) was trying to force her way past me. I'm sure the expression on my face fully conveyed just what I thought of her stupidity and she pointed towards the stage and shrieked "BUT I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE HIMMMMMM!!!" I love going to gigs in Europe, the attendees tend to be far more respectful of space and I've never seen the kind of attitude where latecomers think they're entitled to barge their way towards the front. I don't go to big gigs anymore as the size of venue tends to be proportional to the amount of chocolate starfish you'll encounter. I also dislike watching gigs on a faraway screen with the sound bouncing off walls or, worse, stadium stands before it gets to my ears so I imposed a budget cap on how much I'll pay for a ticket. Small venues, close to the band, no event-junkies, just lovely.

Yeah, same for me with that song 😂

Punk sounds great shouted in German

Be patient. The retailer will do the right thing. Your contract is with them, they need to sort it out and will. Just keep in contact with them and ask what they're doing to sort it out. I didn't have the exact same experience, but did have a shipping nightmare before. Back in the early 00's, I ordered an Ibanez SR3006e from Music123 and paid by Western Union - I didn't have a credit card at the time. All good, until later in the day when I checked the order to make sure the payment had been received, the shipping address had changed to an address in Alabama. I freaked out, called them up, they checked it and admitted a "clerical error" on their part but assured me the bass would be shipped to me. All good until the next day, I received shipping notification and the bass was on its way... to Alabama. Same story, called them up, they assured me they would get UPS to bring the bass back, then send it to me. All good, then, it was delivered... to the address in Alabama. I called them up, they assured me UPS would collect the package, bring it back and send it on to me. No updates for a few days. I called them up, they said that the person they delivered the bass to "didn't want to return it" At that point, I asked to speak to someone much higher up the chain and had one of those calls where you know there are people listening to the call but are not announced on the call and not participating. I had to go to an international phone shop (remember them?) to make all these calls. I calmly went through the sequence of events, as asked, and explained that, at every point of the transaction, I had notified them of their error and they had done nothing. Now, my bass was gone. I wanted a replacement. If they got the original bass back, that was nothing to do with me. I wanted a new bass. After a long and awkward silence, they agreed they had messed up and I would receive a new bass, which I eventually did but it was an unpleasant few weeks thinking I had lost over a grand. Music123 did the right thing, eventually, but I had to sit on them to do it and swore I would never buy from them again. I fully expect your problem to be resolved, but it won't be a nice time waiting for that to happen.

There are few better than Ondt Blod at mixing hardcore punk, metal and melody and they do it in Norwegian too. They're from the far North of Norway and include influences from the Sámi culture. Their album Natur is 35 minutes of relentless bangers 😁

Kerry King and Beastie Boys

It looks great. What does the bass look like?