Terry M.

I always assumed the snobbery pointed "down" rather than "upwards"

Ha ha I nearly spat my tea out laughing at that 😆

This simply isn't true. Initially MTV wouldn't play any videos by black artists. It was when the president of CBS records threatened to pull all his company's videos from the network that Michael Jackson's Billie Jean was eventually aired. Sad but true.

100% yes.

The latest Squier Affinity range are actually excellent machines. I bought a 2024 Affinity Active Jazz V and there was simply nothing wrong with it. I only traded it in because a Lakland Skyline Darryl Jones 5 became available and I don't need two Jazz basses.

Because?

That didn't stop Pino Palladino and Stuart Zender. Both can't read dots. Zender has said in interviews he relies on "shapes". There are countless others like that and their work makes plenty of musical sense. Forgive me if that's NOT what you meant.

Great post and exceptionally important point here 👏

I better not let my missus know that. She fancies him enough as it is 😂

Hulk Hogan and Keanu Reeves off the top of my head. Oh and Malcolm Jamal Warner who played Bill Cosby's son Theo in The Cosby Show.

Some of us will remember the Fender American Series from about 20 years ago (not American Standard) that came with the S-1 switch as stock to change between series and parallel mode. I tried a used Jazz 5 string version just a few hours ago in Fair Deal Music in Birmingham and asked the question: Fender why did you stop this feature? In series mode it simply sounded divine. To me anyway 🤤

The good thing is if you get rid of the Jazz and fancy another one later on they're not exactly hard to come by.

Take the Z7 out the equation unless you HAVE to have a neck pickup? I tried one in Andertons and found the neck pickup mixed with bridge one didn't give me the Stingray vibe I was after. A leap of faith with a decent return policy I've always found "fun". Done it with success many times.

You will "allow" me? Your response only proves what I said originally about the phenomenon pre dating the 90s in response to the OP. I neither know or care who the original boyband was whether Monkee, Chimpanzee or Orangutan. And anyway the Beatles initially flopped in the US.

This should answer or address the OP quite well 👏

I'm up on current albums featuring groups that appeal to me,they just aren't mainstream acts so a little more "searching" is required 👍

Totally agree. There's some killer music being produced to this day.

We're all allowed to pick our favourites which is fine. A boyband is still a boyband regardless. I like the Jackson 5 who completely went through the Motown grooming process so much so that they left the label minus one brother.

My point is the Boyband phenomenon predates the 90s as the OP mentioned originally.

Not in the same way that Simon Cowell does but they still went through a "grooming" process even down to their clothing and general image. To achieve their chart successes required a certain amount of applied formula.

The 90s early 2000s bands pre-existed in some form or other before mass exposure also. I'm aware Epstein didn't create them from scratch.

They still benefited from a certain degree of moulding.

How about Brian Epstein with the Beatles?

This applies to society in general I think. Anyway the music industry has no interest at all in selling products with maximum artistic integrity. It's about the "pop star" lifestyle and maximum capital generation. I'm wondering how many major players in the industry can explain the difference between a major and a minor scale 🤔