Barking Spiders

On 31/01/2023 at 16:20, miles'tone said:

Opinions are like bum-holes...

Not quite.... there is such a thing called imperforate anus where the hole is missing or blocked! So the number of opinions > number of ani.. Judging by the above vid of Tina Weymouth it looks like either she might have one herself or she's celebrating its treatment

On 31/01/2023 at 15:17, MacDaddy said:

As not to derail another thread, I'm putting forth the notion that music is a competition.

Or rather music that is commercially released, is competitive, and it is the results of this which feed your Spotify and YouTube algorithms. 

If music was not competitive we would not have The Hit Parade. 

Thoughts?

 

 

Guitar/bass shredding's definitely a competition. I mean there's no musicality, nowt you can whistle, no song structure, no feeling, no soul, nothing that bears any resemblance to music as most peeps understand it etc so by default competitiveness is all that's left. I rest my case m'lud.

Go through your Motown collection and isolate the bass parts, not just the James Jamerson tracks but also those featuring Bob Babbitt and Nate Watts (specifically Stevie Wonder albums). Another great player used by SW was Scott Edwards, who also played on loads of classic disco/soul tunes by the likes of Tavares, Hall & Oates, Aretha Franklin, Bozz Scaggs and hundreds more. Two other players I 100% recommend are Bernard Edwards (obvious but essential) and Leon Sylvers III who produces and plays bass on  Solar albums by e.g  Shalamar, The Whispers etc. My personal #1 is Louis Johnson. Just check him out on any Brothers Johnson stuff but also Jacko's Off the Wall and Thriller.

No steps close to any bass players I quite like. I've been living in around the Costwolds region for a long time now. A decade plus ago me and my then missus got lost while out walking and nearing a house we approached a lady who looked vaguely familiar and asked for directions back to our starting point. Seems we'd inadvertently ended up trespassing on her land but she was very pleasant about it and didn't threaten us with a 12-bore either, which was nice. It were Sade no less. Also shared a urinal with Keith Allen in a pub...kinda, there were two vacant ones between us though!

On 13/01/2023 at 17:33, lowdown said:

Tom Scott - APPLE JUICE:

 

Tom Scott - Saxes and Lyricon

Eric Gale - Electric and Acoutic Guitar

Hugh McCracken - Electric Guitar

Marcus Miller - Bass

Richard Tee - Keyboards

Ralph MacDonald - Percussion

Steve Gadd - Drums

Dr.John - Vocal on "So White and Funky"

(1981 CBS)

 

 

Not heard this before but seeing MM is on bass sold it to me. Good stuff👍

More great lost tunes from the 80s...

First up, this which features a cracking bassline from no less than Mark King

 And on the subject of bass players, here's a long lost funky dance number from 1984 by Brilliant which featured Youth from Killing Joke and a pre-KLF Jimmy Cauty

Finishing off with the vastly underrated Fashion whose great album Fabrique has some tasty bass sounds..

19 minutes ago, Bunion said:

 Thanks but I've seen this too. Pre-sale  means first dabs to members/subscribers etc rather than the general public. Nowhere mentions day tickets on sale to the general public

My missus wants to see Metallica and would be going with others as I'm not interested. However, because I bailed out of Sonisphere 2014 and she missed them then I said I'd pay for her to go and see them at Download. I've checked Ticketmaster, Eventim, LiveNation etc websites but there's no mention of day ticket sales. Anyone got any idea?

Much modern  / current mainstream stuff is dire mainly because most of it's made to a formula using certain well worn chord progressions,very limited dynamics, computerised instrumentation, excessive use of Autotune. etc etc. That said even in our formative years most contemporary stuff we'd have heard on the radio was disposable toot while a lot of non-mainstream /underground stuff was dire...or so you came to realise as fully matured adults. I'm now 52 so the 80s was my era. I still enjoy listening to a fair bit of post-punk and synth/electronica bands while the stuff I couldn't stand back then I still can't and some bands whose music I thought was great then I now avoid like a dose of botulism e.g. The Smiths, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Wedding Present, The Cure..... Some modern stuff is OK which I often find through Rick Beato's YT channel when he goes through what's in the Spotify/iTunes top 10 etc. It mostly seems to be music rooted in country and not Cardi B 🤬I do own both Sigrid albums, which are terrific slices of electro pop. Also have Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa which is also great and the Weeknd's last two albums.

On an 80s post punk ting this weekend. Here are three belters from three very underrated bands IMO..

If I were still playing in bands it'd 100% have to be the -ocracy model. I've been in several bands 'led' by 'it's my band' types who only wanted me to play simple root notes sh**.  I never stayed around long enough 

I'm down to just a Sterling By Music Man StingRay Ray4HH Bass Candy Apple Red and a Cort GB64JJ in natural finish. Other than a bit of bridge adjustment to cut out a bit of fret buzz past the 15th fret viz the Ray, I'm 100% happy with what I've got. If I was minted I might go for US-made StingRay and a Fender Jazz of some vintage but as I'm now just a hobbyist I can't justify shelling out the wonga on those.

TBH I didn't realise he hadn't died long ago considering his prodigious....ahem... 'tastes'

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.

12 hours ago, jezzaboy said:

For example, my old band had a drummer who wouldn`t play Oasis, just refused point blank. And quite right I hear lots of you say but people love to hear the songs, especially when there is drink involved. 

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.

2 hours ago, mcnach said:

As a teenager I hated country, but now... I still haven't changed my mind. So that's twice a 180, right?

 

There are things that I like better/worse than I used to but I don't think I've come to truly dislike something I used to like. In general what's happened is that as time passed I discovered more music and my tastes just widened.

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.

On 07/01/2023 at 13:33, SteveXFR said:

 

FNM have such an amazing range of musical styles, often all in one song. I love the way they can go from heavy, distorted metal with growling straight in to almost lounge jazz with super slick vocals and it just sounds right.

I really hope they manage at least one more record. I really like the last one.

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.

5 hours ago, 40hz said:

I'll keep it brief. As a 16 year old getting into bass, I hated any form of 'pop' or electronic music, believing it to be somehow lesser than music played on 'real' instruments by 'real' musicians.

 

Now, I pretty much have stopped listening to Guitar based music, as I find it very samey and listen to 95% electronic/EDM!

 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.