Barking Spiders

But I did say 'which most people would agree are bona fide 10/10 classics'. So there's you, which is +1. Any more takers?

On this morning's journey to work in the car I played Future Sound of London's excellent debut Accelerator. Here's the stonking breakbeat opener...

The production and engineering on Sgt Pepper was brilliant for its time and IMO hides the fact that most of the actual songs are mediocre at best bar Lucy ITSWD and She's Leaving Home. Like The Who and The Stones (in the 60s anyway) I'd say The Beatles were a great singles band but none of their albums are packed with quality tunes throughout. Then again, there have been relatively few albums made which most people would agree are bona fide 10/10 classics.

It took me some time to get used to Phillip Bailey's falsetto before I eventually did, well at least on the uptempo tunes like Serpentine Fire. I still skip those ballads where he's the principal vocalist. I'm not a fan of ballads in any genre and for me these tend to spoil those albums where they account for around half the number of tracks. Funk-wise EW&F, War and the Ohio Players praps did more slower unfunky tunes than most other funk mobs.

Nice! Takes me back to the Half Moon in Putney where I saw them twice back in the mists of time. Used to have Badness, Life on the Wire and It's About Time on vinyl. Must try and get hold of any CDs

The degree of metal-tude is down to perception. For the non-metal fan I'd say the black album is 100% metal. To the average fan of Norwegian black metal it probably is pop with slightly louder guitars

And yet........they're still better than Megadeth, Slayer, Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot, Alter Bridge, Shinedown and any other metal/hard rock band I've heard who were formed this century. At my stepdaughter's last weekend she insisted on playing a Shinedown track to her mum. I had to go to the end of garden to get out of earshot. Short haired Metallica at their worst are preferable to the best Shinedown has to offer.

Bo Derek👇 Axl Rose 👇

Back in the 80s-90s there were quite a lot of metal singles hitting the UK and or Billboard top 20; Living After Midnight, Breaking the Law, Run to the Hills, 2 Minutes to Midnight, Number of the Beast, Ace of Spades , Dr Feelgood, Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City, Enter Sandman.... And they all had pretty memorable catchy sing-along choruses!

I'm no Metallica fan but TBH I don't get all the noise about them 'selling out' when the black album came out. In fact I'd say they got better, moving way from the tune-free first 5 albums etc to writing actual songs, you know the stuff that people can actually hum/sing along to. Load and Reload both have some good tunes and if they'd been combined on one album, this would by some way have been their best effort.

Been on an Orb trip of late. Here's a particular fave track, a massive stomping slice of dubtronica

I'm paying for my missus to go to Download this year with one of her daughters and son-in-law primarily because they're big Metallica fans. I kind of owe it to her as I took her to Sonisphere 2014 and by the sunday morning i couldn't stand it any more and we left so she never got to see them. On the plus side Chas n' Dave were great. Watching this vid I'm glad not to be going with her. Love has its boundaries ya know!

Then maybe I'm odd as over many years I definitely have formed some all-time #1 faves e.g. band, album, sitcom, alcoholic beverage, city, country to visit, motorcycle, novel.

yep it's just you 😁 I see nowt wrong in asking. Makes a change from talking about tonewoods, bridges, pickup configurations etc. It's about being interested in others tastes and opinions. Makes the world go round. My question is quite pertinent IMO as it's kind of accepted wisdom that The Beatles are the GOAT. If that's so, among the 30,000+ music fans on BC what % would say the Beatles are their own #1 fave and how does this stack up against accepted wisdom. I sort of accept what you say about age and background. I'm a child of the 80s and for me Kraftwerk have had a far more informative impact on my music tastes than the Beatles, Stones etc

Just an idle wondering as no one of my acquaintance ever listens to them , or the Stones and the Who for that matter. Obviously they're touted by the music establishment as the greatest pop/rock band ever but is this reflected in what people actually listen to rather than what they might glibly reply when asked 'who's the greatest rock/pop band ever'? They're possibly in the lower reaches of my personal top 500 though I've never actually bought anything by them....👉

In the past I placed several ads on Join My Band looking out for Nile-type guitar players, Zigaboo-type drummers and horn players but never got many looks let alone likes and anyone bothering to message me. Unless you're looking to join/form a metal, Emo, blues-rock or punk band JMB isn't a good place to look. In the end I gave up looking and chose to jack it all in. I also find that pub landlords don't care for the funk

I find these and ALL other blues-rock lead players and all those 80s shred merchants boring and uninspiring as f***, always have done. Give me the likes of Nile, Leo Nocentelli and Paul Jackson jr any day. Check out the latter, after Louis Johnson killing it, on this belter of a George Duke track, at 5.00. I play this vid endlessly it's so uplifting.

Huzzah...another who likes Ulrich Schnauss and has heard of Planet Funk and Sunburst Band. Reminds me to dig out the excellent Non Zero Sumness. I'm a big fan of Dave Lee is all his many guises; Jakatta, Joey Negro, Z Factor, Sunburst Band..

As well as being one of the worst bands ever, to me KISS stand for everything that's rank about crass, unfettered consumerism on this planet. Gene Simmons is a colossal t0$$3r. I can objectively see one or two merits in most bands I can't stand but not KISS.

And please no more run of the mill bassists' Signature models just because they're in famous bands. Gene Simmons anyone? Do people really buy Signature basses just because of the bass player in a fave band?? Extraordinary.

Mayones - stop with those stubby Cali 4 basses. They may be fine for Tyrion Lannister but ugh! Non Fender manufacturers - stop churning out endless P and J basses. Bass and amp manufacturers - I second what another said about black amps, which I'll extend to basses. Bass effects manufacturers - please come up with a unit that emulates the Roland TB303. Bass manufacturers- stop with the sunburst finish. It's a look that belongs in the 60s. Bass manufacturers - enough with ERBs please. They're a gimmick that's past their rightful expiry period. And they're mostly fugly. Warwick - why do you still design basses with body parts that look like marital aids?

well, I don't call myself a musician 🙃. I'm most definitely a hobbyist. As I get older and time gets more filled up with other stuff I'm not bothered about looking for new sounds . If I come across some great band by chance that's another thing. I was done with classic rock and metal decades ago. To me, most rock coming out since the end of Grunge is moribund, with 99.999r% of bands I've heard just rehashing the same old riffs, solos, drum sounds and vocal styles of the 70s. To my ears, since the late 80s all the invention is coming out of leftfield electronica and hip hop.

While I mostly listen to a broad range of 'electronica' ranging from full-on hard house and drum n' bass to ambient and world fusion I have a lot of stuff by German and Scandi producers that not even most Swedish, Norwegian and German speaking people are likely to know so what chance have I in Blighty? Ugress, Robag Wruhme and AES Dana anyone? 😁. Mrs Spiders loves Bluedot festival but she clearly didn't share my huge enjoyment of the likes of Leftfield, Orbital, Chemical Brothers, Groove Armada, 808 State and The Orb when they've been there in recent years. We'll go together to some stuff like ahem ... Coldplay..... On the other hand, for my part I had to suffer Download twice and Sonisphere 2014 and couldn't really share her delight at seeing Metallica and System of a Down.

Do you ever feel kind of isolated if no one you know shares your taste in music? In my case not only don't I know anyone in the real world who does - and that's out of a good 100+ people I know currently - seems there aren't many on BC who do either. My previous missus was about as close as it got. Such is the case I did use to go to gigs on my Jack Jones but without being able to share the experiences they weren't as enjoyable as if I'd gone with someone. Guess I could try and get into Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, U2 or Metallica and see who turns up? I'm guessing most here - who are in bands anyway - don't feel the same?

two of my fave American bands joining together on this slamming track