Barking Spiders

For me the most interesting thing was John Grant's drummer's pig head. Other than that, sorry peeps

Having tried out a good dozen or so YT tutors I just stick to Scott and Mark Smith now. I like Scott's affable manner and Mark's easy going but very easy to follow tutorials.

I don't have any high value gear but I'm getting shot of most of my drums, guitars and bass collection bar one fretted and one fretless bass, one electric guitar, one acoustic , the cajon and one djembe. I'm in my late 40s, have my partner and two teenage girls and tbh I rather spend saturday evenings in or out with my mrs than gigging in pubs to barely interested punters. I don't listen to the same amount of music as I used to have already halved my DC collection to 400, nearly all of which is electronica. Still, I like to put in a couple of hours practice and noodling at the weekend to keep my hand in just in case I get any urge to get back out again. So I'd say keep the Jazz and carry on noodling when the urge takes you and mebbe in 10 years tiMe you might get an urge to gig once more.

That's fair enuff and understandable. Some time ago I used to watch a gardening show which was fronted by uber tasty former model turned horticulturalist Rachel de Thame, and it wasn't for tips on growing dhalias!. And I quite like Antiques Roadshow n' all!

Ha ha this talk about older geezers getting back into gigging again reminds me of the current Legal & General TV ad featuring same ageing rock chick with large teeth

So you don't get off on Fiona Bruce then?😊

Here's a bit of a gem from the way underrated /overlooked Black Heat

The Motet, Analog Sons and Fearless Flyers are all very tight and excellent players but for me The North 41 have the groove. They just swing a bit more and have that dance-ability factor. Each to their own but if I was gonna choose to see any one of these The North 41 get the nod. The Funk is their best tune though I like their take on Enter Sandman.

Mostly been The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, deluxe edition. Still sounds as fresh as the day it was born

yes indeedy, I really like the first four Jamiroquai albums, with SZ's bass standing out on those he played on.

is that a festival celebrating different sexualities?

Sure thing! And I still listen to them. Do you? The Minds were great between Empires & Dance and New Gold Dream. Yello and Propaganda were my faves though. You a fan of A Secret Wish or early Yello albums like Stella? Never keen on Depeche Mode or Vince Clark's other duos either

Yep. Mediocrity prevails and mediocrity sells. Why do commercial radio stations never play stuff that's remotely experimental, quirky or virtuosic? Look at the big names in pop of the last 20 years. Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams, Take That, Coldplay, Adele, Ed Sheeran etc. Not even their most ardent fans could say any of them is a great singer or player or had an ounce of originality. They all conform to a tried and tested industry template or blueprint that's a proven commercial winner.

As a yoot, I was into quite a lot 80s synth stuff - Human League, Heaven 17, pre stadium rock Simple Minds - but there were a few who I thought were giant pants back in the day and who clearly still are, #1 being Soft Cell. Marc Almond couldn't hold a tune in a bucket back then and on the Later evidence still can't. And talk about weird looking! Dave Ball looked like he should be calling out bingo numbers at a Haven Holidays caravan park.

Soz, not for me, Too much like the background music they play in slightly pseud wanna be Parisian cafes. Seen quite a lot of music clips of this nature on BC of late. Never liked Steely Dan either

I mostly buy CDs through Amazon but will download stuff from Soundcloud or Bandcamp if CD prices are loopy or they're unavailable, and then burn them onto a blank CD. That said, I'm downsizing my 800 plus CD collection in keeping with the 80/20 rule though it's more 70/30 or 63/35 for me.

Why ever not and who said it's not supposed to be mainstream?? And can you get more mainstream than albums going multi-platinum and selling out massive arenas the way dozens of big name rock bands used to do in the 70s and 80s

Aye that's the view of the kidlings in my home. For a while up to the age of say 10 they'd enjoy some rock from the mrs's albums e.g. a bit of System of A Down, a smidge of Evanescence etc. Now all the 14 year old girl will bother with is pop pap being pumped out by Heart FM or worse. She indeed does dismiss the music we listen to as old fogey stuff and that includes my taste in 90s to current electronica. It's not just rock that's had it . With cr@ppy EDM hitting the charts, this has all but made but old skool styles like House, trance, trip hop and drum n' bass pretty redundant outside the underground. There are no names that sell albums or pack out gigs like the bigger acts that formed in the early 90s could.

In Germany, where my father's family come from, domestic soft rock acts are the ones that sell the most other than Die Toten Hosen, who are more rock as non Germans would recognise. Other than them it's the usual old timers from the international world of pop n mainstream rock that dominate sales stats e.g. AC/DC, U2, Abba, Queen, Beatles, Floyd etc but the big current acts are, like everywhere else, pretty much the usual suspects; Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, David Guetta and Adele. Rammstein are the most successful harder rock band by a country mile and they've been popular pretty much all over Europe. There are strong rock scenes in most European countries but as with the US and UK, the heyday of when rock was massive is long gone.

For me the Rancid clip shows the true spirit of rock n' roll - that it should be fun and a bit wild - and that bass solo is pure adrenalin. But for me DT epitomise 'so what' about advanced technical proficiency in rock. There's no doubting John Myung's impressive skills on the bass but at the think of that clip I just thought.. 'meh' .

From a commercial POV it is 'dead' in that other than 'best ofs/greatest hits' most rock albums don't sell that well in the US or UK. Check this out for the top 40 selling albums in Blighty last year http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/the-top-40-biggest-albums-of-2017-on-the-official-chart__21316/ Rock as a genre has also never been mainstream in Europe, leastwise not in countries I've lived in for a few years - Italy, Germany Croatia, Czech Republic and France. There are a few that have strong followings there, e.g. Metallica and U2, but overall guitar based rock has always been niche.

The noises Idles make isn't groundbreaking but at least they seem to be enjoying themselves and treating it all as a bit of a laff. Maybe they might give rock a much needed boot up the 'arris

I've not bought BGM this year I don't think, the last issue being with Bernard Edwards on the cover. Still, each month I've flipped through issues while lurking in a dark corner of a newsagent -the only BGM stockist in town - so the fussy old woman of a man doesn't make sarky 'this isn't a library' type comments. But I've not found any justification for shelling out the best part of a fiver for summat with about 15 mins worth of interesting content for me.

Skank's right on the money there. And I kind of agree with those blokes in the vid. Since Grunge, there've been few new major globetrotting rock bands shifting multi platinum albums. Creed? No, their sales were mostly to flat earth Creationists living in the Bible belt of the US. What about Nickelback I hear you shout, except they're personae non gratae in polite society so they don't count. Foo Fighters? You can maybe make an argument for them, but would they have got anywhere were it not for the Nirvana connection?. Rock festivals are struggling to attract big contemporary headliners so have to resort to wheeling out time served old lags like Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne , Kiss and Iron Maiden. Avenged 7fold are about as big as any contemporary headlining act can get these days and they're hardly a name that trips of the tongues of 16 year old schoolgirls in their 'I Love Sean Mendes' T Shirts'. None of A7's albums have gone platinum in either the US or UK. And Planet Rock? the UK's biggest specialist rock station has around 1 million listeners, 71% of which are male and 68% in the 25 -54 age range, mostly 45+ judging from listeners contributions. This is a fifth of the 5 million listeners Classic FM gets. Maybe the time will soon come when guitar based rock CDs are put in the Special Interest section in HMV

Never heard of Idles till last night and i actually stayed awake for the first time during a Later broadcast. Not my usual cuppa but they were a refreshing antidote to the po-faced earnestness of most Later performers. Come to think of it they could teach most rock bands a lesson in how not to take yourselves too foopin' seriously. (hi there Radiohead!). I can see more of a future for rock in their hands than in those of retro merchants like Greta Van Fleet, in no small part due to the fact they have much better facial hair.