Barking Spiders

These days I frequently find myself wishing I could be back in the 80s on a loop. Best decade of my life. Here a couple of bangers from Simple Minds that take me right back...

Most of my fave bands are from the electronica genre but I feel a slight shudder if I read an article where it's said such and such was influenced by Pink Floyd or...gulp... Prog!!!. This heinous accusation is sometimes levelled at The Orb and at Banco de Gaia. Utter tosh though as both acts owe a much bigger debt to dub, Kraftwerk, other krautrock bands and Arabic music.

Thing is where do prog rock musicians figure on the sh@g-a-groupie scale and what is the hot babes:males in audience ratio? SAG scale: Go home alone to bedsit with Dominos pizza------------------------------------------------------------------> go back to hotel suite with at least half a dozen 20 year old groupies and a couple of sacks of charlie I'm thinking there are no prog musicians at the right end while if you're in Motley Crue you're probably likely to have fallen off it

I really like the original and I like that reggae version equally. As I see it what % of Dog & Duck punters would know a Weeknd tune if it smacked them in the kisser? From what I see of your average Dog & Duck patron, probably less than 10%. Now, if you were to play in a student bar/venue then you'd be quids in. Fraid I don't care for that Feuerschwanz cover though.

I'm with your drummer on this one 100%. There are certain bands whose music I wouldn't touch with several bargepoles end to end and so would never join any band that covered them. I've only ever played in bands that specialised in funk and soul as I don't strongly dislike any songs in those genres enough not to play them.

For me it's because since my 20s I've found so much more interesting music out there than plankspanking, fretw**ky rock guitar stuff that I've developed a hearty disdain for 99.999% of it. Once I started listening to flamenco virtuosos, bluegrass flatpickers, the great jazz guitarists, jaw dropping acoustic fingerstylists and top Nashville session players the so-called rock guitar heroes of my yoot appeared very pedestrian by comparison.

One of the very few rock bands I've any time for. I dislike the rather one dimensional The Real Thing but from thereafter it's gold all the way. It's their total unpredictability and eclecticism that makes them so much more interesting than other rock bands. After seeing your post I've just put on AOTY and here's my fave track....

Of course, everyone's assuming Bluewine's referring to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. You may all be totally misleading him because he actually means Newcastle-under-Lyme, home of Newcastle Town F.C., currently in the Northern Premier League West Division.

Yep, aged 16 to 19 I was heavily into Joe Satriani, Judas Priest, Van Halen etc 'proper musicians playing real instruments'. This kind of stuff accounted for 75% of my LP and cassette collection, but as an adult I came to consider how musically vacuous that stuff is. Nowadays, of my 900+ strong collection of CDs, 700+ are electronica ranging from S'Express and Deee-lite to Autechre and Monolake.

I guess it's taken as read we've all got a place in our hearts for a lot of the music that takes us back to happier times when we wuz young. And that we still enjoy listening to much of it. However, what about stuff you've done a 180 turn on i.e. +180 for bands and singers you'd give no room to back then but nowadays might count among your faves. And -180- for the stuff that formed part of your go-to listening but nowadays which has you running for the off button when it comes on the radio. +180 - as a teen in the 80s/early 90s I had no time for the soul/r n b music e.g. Luther Vandross, The Whispers, Shalamar etc. I thought that was music for girlies. I really only liked guitar music which featured loads of flashy techniques. Nowadays not only do a lot of 80s soul tunes remind me of great times, I actually enjoy a lot of the music in its own right. Loads of tasty basslines to be found too. -180 -back then I was a guitar obsessive and was into NWOBHM, the shred scene, Guns n' Roses and indie guitar bands like The Smiths. As a middle aged man I find all this unlistenable and consider The Smiths and G n R among the two most critically overrated bands ever. As for shred, while I used to worship at the shrines of Joe Satriani and Steve Vai I now consider that scene as an abomination and everything playing the guitar shouldn't be about.

The Frankie vid is fkin tip top. The singer does an excellent job, getting very close to Holly Johnson's tone. Great band and nice to see some of the original band there, Mark on bass, Paul on vocals. Can't tell if Ped and Nash are there. My only complaint....the audience are more static than a container load of showroom dummies. Dead from the neck down or what?

Yep, long-standing fan of KJ here, Pandemonium, Night Time and the 2003 self-titled being my faves. Have to admit I've never bothered learning the basslines being more focused on the drums. As a drummer I do rate Big Paul and Martin Atkins. However, the not-so secret weapon has always been Geordie's guitar. It was hearing him for the first time that taught me poxy pentatonic guitar solos aren't necessary to make a song. Much more important are tone, individuality and attack.

The problem with Later series 11 to 943 is that it followed a formula of octogenarian that never-was-much-in-the-first-place, 2 or 3 nerdy indie bands armed with four chords, a token soul chanteuse, some worthy 'world music' combo and a weirdo of the week. This has been topped off by Jools' brief and uninteresting wide-eyed fanboi interviews.

Carbon Based Lifeforms are the mutts nuts when it comes to ambient electronic soundscapes. Check this out 👇

I'm a mahoosive MM fan. Def among my 5 all time fave players. Saw him and his band live at Cheltenham Jazz festival a long way back. Great gig. I don't normally watch interviews with musicians but I made an exception for this and no regrets. He's a top dude. Nice one B5.

Watched this on catch-up. Bring back Andy Stewart's Hogmanay even if he is no more. At least that would still have more of a lively atmosphere than this dismal and joyless affair. A feast of cr@pitude from start to finish.

Ballcocks to bass stuff. I asked for just booze so got a nice bottle of Glen Scotia Campbeltown, 70cl bottle of cranberries and clementine peel gin from the excellent Sibling distillery, just up the road near Cheltenham, a 1 litre bottle of Kraken Black Spiced rum and a 70cl bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey Legacy Edition 2. Should see me through to new year's day.

The fantastic sophomore album from the very lovely Sigrid. It's a belter. She's by far the best female artist of the last 30 years...IMO that is!

Maxi wrote so many great lyrics that have remained stuck in my mind for decades especially this tune...

Since hearing the sad news about Maxi Jazz I've been playing the EP version of several of their classics. If I had to nominate a greatest dance track of all time Insomnia is very likely it. I've seen them twice, both times at Glastonbury, including the year below. I'm somewhere in that crowd, a bit stoned and dancing like a loon

roll on February when the new album drops. On the subject of new (to me) albums are the two excellent 2022 releases from Future Sound of London - Rituals and A Space of Partial Illumination. Here's the top lead track off the former

All sounds good to me as someone who's sold several guitars on EBay😁 for not far off what I paid new for 'em

My right thumb is my busiest digit being used for much despised techniques (on BC anyway 😁) as thumping (to borrow Larry Graham's word for it) and double thumbing. For regular fingering (oo'er missus) it kinda floats all over the place.

Ah but don't hoarders use that type of reasoning to explain why they never throw owt away? Speaking as the son of a man who was a chronic hoarder, the old line ' it might come in useful one day' is all too familiar. Also, my mum had a compulsion for buying antiques and general bric-a-brac and between them they had 60 years of accumulated stuff taking up space in the loft, the sheds, the garage, the fitted cupboards.... Largely because of this, I'm the opposite so much so I regularly review what I have in the hope I can either sell or give away anything I currently can't justify having. In the cold light of day I sometimes ask myself 'why have I got 5 basses, 4 guitars etc?', 'do I play them all much?', 'am I ever gonna use all these for gigging?', 'am I even inspired to learn more in addition to what I know?' etc. If the answers are all in the negative, onto EBay/Gumtree they go. Within the last 2 weeks I've sold off one bass and one acoustic.

Yep, that's a big pet peeve of mine. I state emphatically that I only do collection or personal delivery up to 20 miles. And yet...how many times have people asked 'can you post it to....'!