Barking Spiders

After an abortive attempt with the Foo Fighters I'm back on safer ground now with Massive Attack's CD singles box set which I picked up for a song a short while back. 63 tracks with many great remixes including

Yep I concur with that. In my social circles, nobody but nobody EVER talks about music. We'll discuss many other topics including good stuff to watch on Netflix and the like, sports, travel, current affairs, gaming, work, environmental topics, cost of living, growing your own, family matters, food and cooking, booze, bikes etc etc but absolutely zilch about gigs, instruments, listening tastes etc. I just think for most people it's slipped right down to the bottom of their lists of priorities and interests.

whoops my bad! I should've played the vid but couldn't as I was at work. Good to see him sending up the whole ERB thing👍

I went on GC recently for the first time, mainly to flog a guitar but there doesn't seem to be much activity on it compared to here. Has it been going long and how many members are on it compared to BC? Seem to be more here. Is this maybe because there are loads more guitar sites in the Webverse than bass sites? I notice there are a few BCers there but is this committing high treason and punishable by hard labour moderating Reddit posts?? 😏

A coupla days ago I picked up Wasting Light and The Colour & The Shape by The Foo Fighters for 50p each in a charidee shop. TBH that's all they're worth and tomorrow they'll be going back to another. The latter has two or three goodish tracks at best in Monkey Wrench, Everlong and another I can't remember which one. My Hero is woeful. Wasting Light also has 2 good tracks. This seems to be the same with all their albums. The only CD I rate as being mostly good is the rock one off In Your Honour. Too many tracks are of the quiet verse-loud chorus variety but they 100% lack the tension or menace of a typical Pixies tune. Oh well mediocrity sells..... by the shedload. Just ask Oasis, Madonna, Robbie Williams, Nickelback, AC/DC, Taylor Swift, Adele......

Hoping Leftfield might do more dates in 2023 now that the only 5 ones in 2022 are sold out otherwise there's nowt planned will Bluedot 2023

Nowt to do with LB but I've always found it peculiar if not perverse that the band is named after the journeymen players in the rhythm section who had nowt to do with the songwriting in either of the band's guises. Also why did they stick with that name in the 70s -80s incarnation when all the material was written by the new members? Any insight?

I was gonna say if you played bass fingerstyle then you could transfer to guitar without much problem. I played fingerstyle guitar before taking up bass. I just can't get on with picks however much I try so don't know how difficult/easy it is going from bass with a pick to guitar with a pick. The biggest thing difficulty may be chords. If you're playing metal then power chords will be relatively easy to master. If it's jazz then that's another kettle of fish entirely.

9 grand is very steep even if the bass was some classic boutique number of top condition. No disrespect meant to the guy but as most of us replying hear have never heard of him, I can't see that the provenance has any intrinsic value.

before I saw where you live I thought you meant Halifax in Yorkshire and thought 'yikes, she's easily pleased'. Reminds me, I have fond memories of my visit to the Alexander Keith brewery when I was there visiting my former sister in law.

Looks like it's been pulled out from the bottom of a builders skip. Never heard of Jim Richardson but then again I'm neither a jazz nor prog fan.

Because it's about pushing yourself to the next level and see how challenging certain techniques are to do proficiently.

Kind of ditto for me viz guitar playing. Dare I say it but I'm actually pretty proficient at double handed tapping and sweep picking. I choose NOT to do it outside of practice as I particularly dislike the music that features such techniques. I have no wish to emulate Eddie van Halen or Yngiwe Malmsteen. I'd much rather cop ideas from Keith Levene and Andy Gill.

I think it's good to look at musicianship from a perspective of someone who doesn't play any or such and such an instrument, i.e. being able to see the wood for the trees. Problem with playing bass or guitar is if you're too close to the instrument you praps don't hear what the punters want to hear. I don't play the violin, trumpet or piano but want to hear something melodic and memorable. I have eff all interest in listening to a load of high speed runs up and down the scales however expertly done. I enjoy quite a bit of bass slappage - when its Marcus Miller, Larry Graham, Louis Johnson - but outside of funk or other dance music it mostly sounds utterly shyt3 particularly when done at NAMM type shows by members of the public.

It's odd and also fkin annoying when you might express a lack of interest in so and so's display of fretw@nkery and the immediate retort is that you must be jealous because you can't do it. Thing is I bet many people can do all this flashy shyt3 but choose not to because they have the good manners not to.

Bluddy well love that era of Soul, the whole Solar/Boogie scene. Here's a much less well known - but seriously underrated - belter of a tune ..

They certainly put rock 6 string merchants to shame. Great threads too. Who are all the suits in the front row then?

Gloucestershire isn't blessed with great venues hosting mid-level well known bands other than the town/civic halls. The acoustics at Cheltenham town hall aren't great though legacy acts and tribute bands gig there mostly. There are quite a few venues hosting open mic nights and even though there's the 3,000 capacity Centaur at the racecourse Jools Holland's big band orchestra seems to be the only act that gigs there. Chelt's pretty good for local metal, punk and straight ahead rock bands (2 Pigs and Frog & Fiddle) if that's your thing and you don't mind crowds of gypsy's kissed students. I miss the Axiom where I saw a fair few good dance/electronica acts almost a couple of decades ago. The Cotswold Inn is pretty good for localish jazz, reggae and folk stuff. Seems to me most well-known ish bands that aren't over the hill opt for either Oxford or Bristol which are only 40 minutes or so away.

I've recently been playing a couple of Flaming Lips albums including Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. This track, arguably their most well known song, never fails to bring a lump to the throat. It's obvious why.

In general I'm more interested in players of any instrument that have an unorthodox approach i.e. that may look to some like incorrect technique. I don't have big hands and long fingers and when standing it's more comfortable to fret the bottom string with my thumb rather than index finger, whether on bass or guitar. I never critique other players approaches because they do what they like doing or are required to do whether it's just playing 8ths on the root note or 'Clutterbucking'.

Growing up in the 80s for me it was mostly Derek Forbes, especially the Empires & Dance to New Gold Dream era. I also nicked my elder brother's Stranglers albums to try and emulate JJ's tone on tunes like Peaches. Never did though.

Ballcocks to criticisms is what I say. If it feels right for you that's all that matters other than keeping in time and staying in tune. Imagine someone telling James Jamerson his playing might benefit if he'd used a couple more fingers . You sound absolutely fine to me and nowt wrong with your right hand action or fretting.

I'm regularly playing Osam, the new album from Tosca, which includes Dorfmeister of Kruder+... Fkin love Tosca, IMO the most consistent on downtempo/trip hop acts.

Whether you like someone's voice is all about opinion sure but IMO you can also state objectively whether someone has a good singing voice or not. I'm a big fan of Talking Heads up to Speaking in Tongues and David Byrne's quirky vocals work well within that context. However, objectively speaking he's not really a singer at all. On the other hand I'm not a fan of Whitney Houston at all but I acknowledge that she could actually sing

Agreed, and to him you can add 90% of rock and pop 'singers' of the last 50 years, e.g. Jagger, the two AC/DC frontmen, Ozzy O, DL Roth, Morrissey, Bowie, Ferry, John Lydon, Joey Ramone, Bjork, Kate Bush, Madonna, David Byrne, Joe Strummer, Dylan, Bernard from New Order, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Axl Rose... People say, 'oh but their vocals suits their music'. Mebbe, but they sure couldn't sing in other any context, which 'proper' singers can. Fr'instance Bowie next to Bing on Little Drummer Boy sounds dreadful while both he and Jagger utterly ruined Dancing In The Streets