Barking Spiders

All my electric basses and guitars cost me less than £500 new the basses being a Peavey Cirrus BXP, Cort B4FL, Cort GB74, Aria Pro II Integra and a Sub Ray 4. The build quality on all is excellent, the electronics are just fine, all are very playable and produce great sounds. Now we can all argue to the toss about Cort's labour practices but we'd all be walking around naked if we were all really that principled.

Good to see differences of opinion. I guess a lot depends on how stuff's being sampled, whether the 'artist' is a crate digger or just using digital techniques. Back in them dark days of the 1990s before it all went digital summat like DJ Shadow's Entroducing and The Avalanches Since I Met You were put together using 1,000s of micro samples from largely obscure LPs. Not easy to do well by any stretch, and these albums have been done very well

The thread on Radiohead vs Lana del Ray got me thinking about sampling in general and where you peeps stand on this. At one end of the spectrum you've got wholesale unimaginative steals e.g. that krap P Diddy lifting of Every Breath You Take. Even if this was approved by Sting the track shows hip hop at it's least creative and most commercially cynical. On the other hand there are the likes of DJ Shadow and the Bomb Squad (early Public Enemy and Ice Cube albums) who use samples but in such a way you can't identify the sources. To me this is every bit as creative as putting together tunes using guitars, etc. Others say sampling is still lazy, talent free etc way of making music.

There are a finite number of combinations of chord and note progressions, time signatures, timbres etc etc and with the zillions of tunes that have been knocking around the planet over the centuries it's inevitable many of them will sound similar to eachother at least in part. Unless there are clear cases of one act lifting a sample from another's song without permission I dunno why bands waste time and money pursuing copyright infringement cases. In this case as Radiohead admitted to copying some of the Hollies tune they've got no case

Check out Stop The Panic, an album he did with Luke Vibert (aka Wagon Christ), well that's if you've any time for off kilter electronica

Just come across this website . Anyone else seen it? https://www.bigbasstabs.com Looks quite good but being a US site the selection of songs by UK bands who never cracked the US can be limited

..ha ha well, as a big fan of slap bass I partly agree i.e. if octaves are the only notes being popped in a bassline but otherwise I think they're pretty necessary in funk bass

not sure as they can be a cliche in celtic folk anymore than electric guitars are a cliche in rock

sure thing, plus the fact that 90% of people at these gigs are over 45... by the look of them anyway. I know as I'm over 45 and I've been to see a few of those bands Also look at the main acts at big rock festivals like Download. This year, Guns n Roses? 50s, Ozzy 107, Avenged 7fold whippersnappers in their 40s. And last year, 'new' band Prophets of Rage ( at least two in their 50s - Tom M and Chuck D), Aerosmith (combined age 570), and System of Down which has Serj with a very grey beard.

+1 for the uilleann pipes. Wish I could have started learning them yonks ago but my parents aren't Irish curse them. Fiddles and accordians also work for me in celtic folk but elsewhere? No thanks. Saxes? yup, great in funk brass sections (yeah technically I know they're wind instruments) but feckin terrible in 80s pop, mainly cos the standard of playing is pretty entry level.

I started out on bass with a short scale EB copy but have been playing long scale ever since. I had a good go at a couple of Chowny's recently because of their looks. However, it felt like going from my Martin jumbo acoustic to a uke and just didnt feel like a proper bass. Just my take on it.

Aye, the appeal of opera on recordings totally passes me by though I sort of get the appeal of live performance. And strummed chords on an acoustic drives me nuts, me being a fingerstyle player.

Yes read a bit about him,. The bloke in the clip is an actor miming while the whistling was done by one Noel Walker who was a record producer at Decca

Just wondrin' if Whistling Jack Smith ever gigged, just him and his lips? There could be a revival of this sort of thing

+1. there's nowhere for new, young guitar bands to go anymore and it's been that way for many years. Plus, the mainstream doesn't have much appetite for artists with radical approaches, who mash up disparate genres to come up up with unique sounds, have unconventional lineups etc blah. Otherwise the likes of Autechre, Sunn O))) or The Young Gods would be shifting shedloads.

But saleswise, unfortunately none of them will be bothering the likes of Ed Sheeran, Adele and Sam Smith etc any time soon looking at BPI sales stats for 2017. In the top 40 sellers the highest positions by rock bands were Foo Fighters at 32 and Royal Blood at 39. Seems there's not much love in the UK mainstream for rock which makes it a tad tough for any new band trying to break through

Be accepted back into civilised society

+1 here . Lamb of God's Chris Adler is an exception as his double bass drum work isn't merely high speed Duracell bunny stuff but he throws in all sorts of off beats Banjo -I'm ok with the occasional bit of Scruggs type of bluegrass playing but all that strumming jug band stuff, no way Oh and I forgot to mention the noises made by community samba bands in the UK. In Brazil samba works great when there are several hundred drummers all in tight unison. A dozen, 20 or so Brits clomping along to fairly basic rhythms on a dank July day at your local carnival doesn't have the same magic.

Over crimble I got myself a £500 dobro, summat I've been hankering after for a fair while. While it's not a top of the range model it still has the classic sound you here on better bluegrass and country albums. For me there are few better sounds in all music than someone of Jerry Douglas's class letting rip. At the other end of the speed scale I find the sound of haunting acoustic slide playing a la Ry Cooder equally hard to beat which leads me to the sound of sustained notes on a fretless bass, as played by Pino P on No Parlez. But then there are certain instrumental sounds that have me diving through the nearest window in a desperate attempt at escape, number one possibly being neverending Hammond organ soloing to whit on Argent's Hold Your Head Up. Other irks...the overuse of pinch harmonics in metal lead solos, 80s drum sounds (syn drums and gated), the weedy 'snare' sounds you often hear on r n b songs, ukelele bands (apologies to anyone here who plays in one). Over to you...

17 Seconds for me is their best followed by Faith but after that I lost interest.

I'd like to get a Stingray, Fender Jazz and Aria SB1000 all in natural finishes but I can't really justify shelling out that sort of wonga to myself when I'm only a hobby player and so need to kill off my lust for these this year. Other than that I think I'm all out of GAS for basses in general as I admit to myself what I have is more than fine. Over the holiday period I barely touched any bass spending any spare time I had playing my new dobro.

hmm are a bit I'm afraid. i've already got two electric fretless basses. Thing is people at this pub just pick up guitars, bongos, whatever is around and just get on with it. No faffing around with tuning up, counting in etc. I 'd just wanna be able to whip out a bass and join in. Might just stick with bringing along my banjo instead.

Sulk by the Associates - not every track has bass but each one that does is a peach Penthouse and Pavement by Heaven 17 - just 4 tracks on the Pavement side but each with some great funky chops + 2 for Rattus Norvegicus - every bass line a gem Now Do You Wanta Dance by Graham Central Station - arguably the heaviest grooves from Larry Graham esp Earthquake Lexicon of Love by ABC - chock full of tasteful funky lines esp 4 Ever 2 Gether, Valentin'es Day Show Me. Songs in the Key of Life -this has Sir Duke and I Wish. What more do you need? Graceland - I b ought this mainly for the bass on Boy in the Bubble, You Can Call Me Al and Diamonds..

I'm a youthful stripling of 47 and don't want to ever stop playing bass, though others might want me to. Only problem is that potential audiences and the number of venues continue to shrink so by the time I'm 60 the only gigs available will be at Shady Pines Rest Home, seeing as there probably wont be any proper pubs left as staying in will be the new errm..staying in.

Hmm, now thinking it's praps not such a good idea to get one. If these need amplification then I'm not sure what the point of them is