Barking Spiders

Rolling Stone have a 100 greatest vocalists where Karen C is down at 94 which is utterly ludicrous, below the likes of Morrissey, Thom Yorke and Joe Strummer. And Art Garfunkel at 86! In a poll of sensible people that don't have cloth in their ears, those two are all time top 10. Have a butchers at this list. It's even more nuts than best guitar player polls https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-147019/mary-j-blige-4-35089/

+ 1 for Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates. Sounds of Silence and Bridge Over are classic examples of S & G's harmonies being bang on the money. Viz H & O, tracks like Out of Touch and She's Gone are have equally great vocal performances. Then there are the classic soul singers like Marvin Gaye. No question there which leads me to this, which even tops Otis Redding.. In rock for my money no one can touch Mike Patton, especially in Faith No More. His range and versatility are something else Finally my fave pop cutie, Sigrid. She's just great. End of.

While I tend to gravitate towards groups that are a bit edgy or quirky from time to time I find myself really liking something that doesn't fit the mold usually a pop song. I remember watching Later With.. and being totally captivated by a 22 year old Norwegian singer Sigrid's performance and the two songs she did. She doesn't fit in with my usual stuff but she was different to all the US and British pop clones

Being weak minded and easily influenced I'll like whatever's on the radio, playing over the supermarket tannoy, anything Amazon suggest and whatever the popular kids like.

Today as I work it's been Call of the West by Wall of Voodoo , Slow to Fade by the Red Guitars and Hunters & Collectors comp Natural Selection. These tunes got quite a lot of air time on Peel's show and they still sound fresh and original

Had never heard of her so obviously I Google her image. Yep, very nice. Good call.

Marcus Miller and Louis Johnson (RIP) fighting to get to the left seat first, Mark King to the right after kicking Flea out of his, Larry Graham in the middle, jaws hitting the floor watching me shredding it slap stylee 😉. The OP dos say 'bassist heaven' and not 'bassist realidee' 😁

They say laughter is the best medicine. Just sit me in the front to get the best view of Este Haim's bassface and I could fight off covid and all his chums together

Think I saw him on on the Mercury music Prize thing. The only act that grabbed my attention. Nice stuff as I recall

Ha ha great stuff. The old geezer sure has a nifty pair of feet. Really nice playing and performing by the busker. As for those pedestrians who just walked by, clearly they have no soul or mojo.

Vulfpeck, Snarky Puppy and their ilk are very good at what they do but there's nowt new here. Put on something from the early 70s like The Blackbyrds debut platter and you can see where these current bands got all their 'ideas' (for want of a better word) from

Darn right. The only people who tend to rate bass players either way.....are other bass players. This contrasts with electric guitarists where every man, woman and their dog has an opinion

That's what I like to hear. As 99.999r % of songs are repetitive it makes sense to cut them short to avoid repetition. Recently heard a very dull one by Aretha Franklin about love on the Freeway which went on for 5+ mins. One minute would be sufficient. Back in the 50s I think most rock n roll songs were around the 2 minute mark.

When I was a teen I went to a Jesus and Mary Chain gig. I think it lasted about 20 minutes. I wasn't disappointed as such as this confirmed their rep as being a snotty, punkish band, which is what I liked.

Just had a quick gander at my VH Cds. Fair Warning's the shortest at 31:18, followed by Diver down at 31:21, VH2 at 31:57, Women..at 33:28 . The debut is the longest at a whopping 35:13. Yep, I don't think any of them would've benefitted from another track or 2. The inferior van Hagar platters are up to 20 mins longer yet could've done with being 30-40 mins shorter.

Following on from the double albums thread at the other end of the spectrum are short albums with running times less than half an hour. Some albums this length are still way too long, by 30 minutes. Some bands only have one or two songs anyway so 30 mins is enough (hello Ramones). Others leave you frustrated wishing there was more. Which shorties would you have liked to have been another 10-20 mins longer and which are just fine at the sub-30 mins level. I'll kick off with Come on Pilgrim by Pixies. There are 8 tracks so IMO it's not an EP but it is just 20 mins 28 secs. Could've done with another half dozen tracks for my money but then I'm a huge fan so am biased.

Just wondrin' which bass players are rated just as you'd expect, not too high, not too low, you know bang on the money?

Dunno why nobody's ever thought of this as an idea for a thread?

I've rarely heard a double album that wouldn't have been better for some major pruning. As most seem to be by prog and 'classic' rock bands I'll gloss over those quickly and go to the handful I do like in parts.. London Calling - sides 1 and 2 are near faultless. 3 and 4 are mostly pants Sign of the Times - I've always thought Prince pretty overrated. Side 3 of Sign is brilliant but the other three are patchy In Your Honour by Foo Fighters - the rock disc is great, the best FF have done IMO but I can take or leave the acoustic disc. For me to listen to acoustic guitar stuff it has to be virtuosic e.g. Leo Kottke, Martin Simpson... Hardwired by Metallica - first 4 tracks are on a par with their best from the early years but after then it gets patchy What do you want from live by the Tubes - they could've cut the banter as you'd need to watch footage to make sense of it but for me this is the ONLY double album I've heard that works from start to finish

Oddly enough, it's often thought that women generally don't care for prog but both the previous and current incarnations of mrs Spiders like some prog among their diverse tastes, while I'm the big girl's blouse who tells them to turn that racket down. The current mrs has CDs by Yes, PFloyd and Gabriel era Genesis while the former had some Jethro Tull, Kate Bush and mid 70s Genesis and Peter Gabriel. OK I admit to having Virgin era Tangerine Dream stuff and Three of a Kind and Discipline by KC but they're not really prog are they?

I generally have little patience with lead guitar solos as most of them bore the titz off me with their derivativeness, inappropriateness to the song and overlonginess . No such thing with EVH's which were to the point and never overcooked. He also cut the mustard live. While most bands leave theatrics and crowdpleasing to the lead singer, Eddie was every much a part of the frontline as DLR and Sammy Hagar.

Also let it not be forgotten EVH was also a big influence in guitar design, starting with his Frankenstrat and going onto the Wolfgang, for my money the coolest electric guitar design of all.

He also rates The Smiths, which is also a blot on his character

It would also make life much easier e.g. when buying / receiving christmas/birthday presents, taking the family where I want to go on holiday, having to eat food cooked by other people than me or the missus...

While Eddie was a singular guitar talent, he did pave the way for legions of shredders who seemed to've missed the point that rock n roll should be fun. I'm just thinking back to '92 when I saw VH in Michigan and contrasting that with seeing G3 at the NIA Brum in the early noughties. Aye caramba that was a snooze and a half