Dankology

Ah, so easily said...

My band doesn't do many covers but this one came up in rehearsal and that intro/verse figure is driving me mad. I can do a sort of fumbled approximation of it but it (E F# G A A B C# D) but this is pretty far away from the tabs I've seen online (https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/j-j-cale/after-midnight-bass-2751288) and I'm now pretty sure that neither I nor the tabs have it right. This feels like the sort of tasteful, musical bass playing that should be getting my head and fingers around - can anyone give me some pointers, please?

I'm 42 and started buying music when I was about 8 so I was just on the cusp of CDs coming of age but because of the cost of players (and discs back in the day!) I did most of my listening on a mono tape recorder and a series of boot sale/hand me down/budget turntables. I picked up most of my vinyl from secondhand shops, charity shops and car boot sales and did so primarily becuase it was cheap and secondarily because the covers looked better that big and I also genuinely enjoyed the process and ritual of putting a record on. Fast-forward a couple of decades and my continued miserly ways have been thwarted by the vinyl resurgence: unremarkable pressings that I spent £3 or £4 pounds on routinely sell on Ebay for anything between £30 and £80 and the days of hitting the Vinyl Exchange and coming out with a stash of stuff that I just fancied the look of are long gone. I still love vinyl for the other reasons mentioned above but I'm finding it harder and harder nowadays as the quality of new records has entirely gone to pot: indeed the last three new records I bought (Stephen Fretwell, Arlo Parks and Jesca Hoop) all sounded like complete sh!t - clearly the quailty control people are aware of how many of these new releases are being used solely as objets d'art. (And yes, I have a reasonable turntable with an upgraded and properly aligned cart). I suspect my days of buying *new* records are now over but I'll always love the format for many of the reasons others have cited above and hopefully we'll see a return to sensible secondhand prices once the current, inexplicable, penchant for cassettes fully takes hold... (DOI: currently own two turntables and am actively looking to replace one of them)

I'm sure someone will help put me straight here but I'd have thought that the properties desirable of a turntable plinth (ideally deadening all vibrations) would be rather different to those of a guitar's body (t*ne w**ds and all).

After the mid-lockdown collapse of my last band (whole sorry tale recounted elsewhere on here), the three of us left behind have been working hard. We've got our first gig this Saturday supporting friends at a small bar close to home. Here's one of our works-in-progress: https://www.mediafire.com/file/45nwkqhivxuck1a/Dead_Tenant_-_82_%5Bnew_vox-rough_mix%5D.mp3/file If anyone is near Rawtenstall on Saturday night do pop in to the Whip and Kitten and say hello 😀 https://www.facebook.com/deadtenant

The version of Lost in Music on 27 Points is a thing of wonder - so much better than it should be...

Joy Divison - Preston 1980: in the midst of an incredibly intense performance fired up by equipment failures, someone grabs the mic: "Anyone from Burnley - the coach leaves in 10 minutes" At another point you hear Barney tell the soundman "everything's fukcing bust so everything's going through the bass amp"... I do like to think about the band's more humourless fans trying to discern the poetry and mystery in all this.

Just remembered a few more... Iggy Pop - TV Eye - one of the few live recordings that actually sound like being at a gig Allman Bros at Fillmore East Bob Marley Live Pink Floyd - the live stuff on Ummagumma Joy Division - Preston - love listening to the synths and other gear gradually failing and the band reverting to a much rawer set Mick Ronson tribute concert - quite a bit of dull stuff but the bit where Joe Elliot fronts the Spiders from Mars is fab Neil Young Unplugged - brilliant flipside to Weld despite being I'll thought of by many Suicide - 23 mins over Brussels Really looking forward to making my way through some of the recommendations posted above. God, I love live albums.

I love live albums. My favourites: Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl - check out the harmonies vs the rudimentary (non-existent?) monitoring Who - Live at Leeds - not a massive fan of the original short album but love the expanded 1995 edition with A Quick One etc John Martyn - Live at Leeds - the original, not the later rerelease that swapped a load of performances out Stones - Get Yer Ya Yas out Neil DIamond - Hot August Night Jane's Addiction's first LP Lou Reed - Rock & Roll Animal and bits of Take No Prisoners Nirvana Unplugged J. RIchman & the Modern Lovers - think it's just called "Live" Doors - the big In Concert compilation, despite multiple edits and overdubs The Fall - Totale's Turns, 27 Points, Live Various Years, Legendary Chaos Tape, Reykjavik... Most of the live ones, to be honest The Meat Puppets are about to release a live album I was involved in recording. Sadly, my mix was rejected and I've been relegated to a photo credit :o(

Yep, that would be sensible but I've now dug this mic out of the "Ebay box" and I'm keen to give it another whirl.

This is the sort of thing I should just know off the top of my head (and probably did once upon a time) but as my plans to record a session for a friend next week unfurl in a terrifying but sadly predictable way I find my brain unable to process even simple queries. I want to plug an external mic into one of my cameras - the mic has a 3.5mm mono tethered plug, the camera a 2.5mm mono input. I, of course, do not have the required adapter (although I do: somewhere, just not anywhere anyone with a brain would store it) but I can get a cheap 3.5mm female to 2.5mm male stereo shorty cable delivered prior to the session. This should work, shouldn't it? The ring elements of the cable should remain disconnected and unable to interfere with the signal - or am I being naive? I can use the camera's internal mic if this doesn't work as it will be being synced up with the multitrack audio afterwards but I remember using this particular mic many years ago and it always meant that at least one camera had decent sound while also looking pretty cool mounted atop the camera. Any help would be much appreciated, not least if this runs to being available in Salford on Thursday afternoon to lend a hand 😀

I rang the shop back this morning and basically told them I wanted a refund. I explained my disappointment with the sequence of events and the salesman had the temerity to suggest that I had only paid a deposit for the piano - a 90% deposit... He got a bit stroppy when I said I just wanted to draw a line under things and re-took my payment details in that clipped, disgusted way that only employees of the most prestigious establishments can muster. It was all a bit Mitchell and Webb. Anyway, Forsyth's of Manchester, I realize that my custom might pale next to that of some of your clientele but I've still got a lot of strings, instruments and amps to buy over the next 30 or so years- and they'll be being bought elsewhere.

Thanks for the replies. To answer the points raised above: the price was advertised online so I sent an email, the shop replied to say that it could be pre ordered at the listed price over the phone. I did so that day and tried to play by credit card, as I always do in order to gain extra protection. Unfortunately (and oddly), the payment would not go through so I used my debit card instead. No receipt was sent. The piano is now listed on their website for something like £950 - ie more than they are currently trying to charge me. The other shop has had the exact same model for sale for £750 during recent weeks so I don't think anyone could argue that the price was clearly an error. Ta for all the advice - I'm going to phone tomorrow and give them the choice of honouring the original price or refunding me. Will report back...

I pre-ordered a digital piano from a local independent store just over two months ago for £750 and the money was debited from my account there and then. Twice I've rung them to follow-up on the order as no updates were forthcoming but I remained patient, knowing that there has been something of a rush on these instruments in the last year or so. Another local store has had the same model in stock for the same price for the last few weeks but I decided to stay loyal and wait for the original shop to get hold of stock. They phoned this afternoon to say that it was ready to pick up. Hurrah. But they phoned back literally two minutes later to say that they'd charged me the wrong price back in May and that I needed to pony up something like another £120. So I'm feeling like a bit of a chump now. I've told them to hang fire while I consider my options - the other retailer now has it for sale for £780 so I reckon my options are: 1) insist that they stick to my original price (a quick Google suggests that I might be entitled to do this) 2) ask them to price-match the other store 3) Cancel the order and buy from the other place in the hope that their "in stock, guaranteed immediate delivery" promise is indeed true. Anyone know where I stand legally/morally/practically?

In the kid's defence, I've never met a single guitarist who could do that...

I think about this a lot. I think the concept of "growing" bands over the course of a multi-album deal was dying a death by the early 90s - I can name a decent number of personal favourites from that time who only managed an LP or two and may well have gone onto even greater things if they'd have been given more time. I heard Guy Garvey talk about the recording of (I think) The Seldom Seen Kid a while back: hit the studio in the morning, food and family time at teatime and then back to the studio again in the evening - was very jealous of the idea of having the financial backing to create music as your full time job and the creativity that it might allow. But then I thought about Joy Division, the Fall, Manic Street Preachers and countless others who held down day jobs while creating great music and building audiences - and we have it so much easier now: home recording technology is remarkable (I "needed" a mellotron last week - downloaded a VST one for free within a couple of seconds - it sounded just like I wanted it to!) and we're spoilt for choice in terms of channels of communication and sales. Let's be honest, if the music industry was still geared up to nurturing a realtively small number of huge bands, most of us would find reason to feel we were being sidelined due to genre, age, location, politics or whatever. Now you can put your money where your mouth is: cheap home recording set-up, Bandcamp/Facebook/Youtube output, gigs at the small venues that have sprung up across most cities - do we really need a large advance and access to professional studios to develop our craft? That's only a half-rhetorical question - I'd be interested to hear the other side of this.

This. 100%. I'm sure I've said it here before but what a world we live in in which you can potentially reach every single member of your potential audience throughout the world - without having to tour, sort out distribution deals or play some horrible corporate game. And let's not forget that the price of having a select group of acts elevated to arena level was countless bands being screwed over in punitive deals or silly tax-loss arrangements. Not to mention that the ability to attract 16,000 people to a gig in a given area almost certainly involves being able to attract a lot of people who arguably have very little interest in music whatsoever. And why would they - a quarter of a mile away from the band, listening (or not) to the music bouncing back at them from the concrete sides of a sports venue?

Over lockdown we tried doing some online writing that involved playing to a click and sharing the files. I found it incredibly difficult to keep time with a plain click but programming it as a simple bass drum and snare beat really helped. I'm sure a bit more practice would have helped too but it was a good workaround.

A fundamental.

John Martyn doung Johnny Too Bad? But, if anything, his cover is skankier than the original...

Elvana - the Elvis fronted Nirvana covers band? Their version of Aneurysm is a thing of genius but I'm not certain I could stick a full gig

Apologies if I'm stating the obvious but have you checked that turntable has a built-in preamp or that the interface has a phono input?

Great thread! I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Lennon's very loose bass playing on The Long and Winding Road yet. As an aside, many many years ago I told my brother that the laugh at the start of Roxanne had been prompted by Sting whipping his member out at the start of the take. It was only very recently that I found out that he'd assumed I was serious and had spent the intervening two decades believing that was exactly what had happened.

I think there is a difference between recognizing having to wait for inspiration to strike -fed by whatever conscious and subconsious influences are around- vs believing songs are being mystically beamed in by some higher power. It's one of the reasons I try to expose myself to a constant soundtrack of new and old stuff as well as music I don't necessarily enjoy - you never know what good bits might filter through, or what misheard bits can be appropriated. Anyway, I'd have hoped the ether, being infinite and all that, would manage something a bit more inspiring than that same two chord hook we were constantly having to rework...

I seem to remember reading that Madness had a system whereby the originator of the song got 50% with the remaining 50% being split equally between all of the band (so the main songwriter would get 50% + 1/7 of the other 50%) - I quite like this as an idea although I'm sure it's not something that would work for every band.