SteveXFR

It is real. What sort of person would be lying about a £60 bass to look cool?

I've seen a few pro bassists now using Epiphone vintage pro Thunderbirds and a couple using Sterling Stingrays. The most surprising was Chuck Garrick from Alice Coopers band using an Epiphone Thunderbird, I'm fairly sure he's got Gibson money if he even has to pay for them. It got me wondering what other pro bassists are using budget gear? Has Sting been seen with a Harley Benton or Victor Wooton with a Stagg?

Them bones - Alice In Chains

I bought my first P bass this morning because I wanted something dirt cheap that I could modify without worrying about damaging it. It's a Squier P bass in black and that's all I know about it. I paid £60 for it. I set it up to tune down to drop A# and I'm really pleased with how it sounds. Some hotter pickups would be nice, maybe some toneriders and some decent tuners would be nice. It's pretty light which is nice.

Carefully pull the knobs off and use a spanner to tighten the nut. You may need to take the back cover off to hold the body as you tighten the nut. So much opportunity for innuendo.

I believe the control knobs on the GSR200 are a volume knob for each pickup and a tone knob. Action height is really down to personal preference, there is no right or wrong. As a beginner, the biggest mistake I made was not putting enough effort in to getting solid timing. Lots of scales played to a metronome, try playing patterns within the scales where you're not just going across the strings one at a time. If you only play reggae you'll never want to use a pick, it'll sound wrong but if you want to play other stuff as well, it's a skill worth learning. If McCartney and John Paul Jones weren't to good to use a pick, none of us are.

World wide suicide - Pearl Jam

My only issue with Joshua Tree is its too perfect, too polished and it feels to me like they could have made it a bit worse to make it better

I disagree. Wanna fight about it? The DK album is a masterpiece but the recording is pretty bad.

It was their greatest (and only) hits.

And out come the wolves by Rancid Every track is an absolute killer tune. Certainly the best punk album (opinion, not fact of course) of all time

The world has changed, there's a whole heap more festivals for bands to choose from. Everyone and their mum runs a festival these days.

Mullet head - Beastie Boys

Maybe it's time for DarwinFest. No bands, just liberally scattered medieval weapons and drugs. Let them improve the gene pool.

I'd love to see Dave Grohl do some more of his smaller projects. Them Crooked Vultures and Probot were extremely good. I really like the albums he played for Killing Joke and QOTSA as well. Not sure what would come of the rest of the band. They're all good enough to get jobs in top level bands and rich enough to just retire and buy a fish farm.

I don't think that'll work. If they drastically reduce the numbers, the big acts won't show up and the festival fades away. I think they'd be best off carrying on the entertainment until the early hours. Keep them entertained until they pass out or get tired.

I don't like drugs, lost a couple mates to them and I hate what the drug trade does plus I've never spoken to someone on coke and not thought they're a c*** At Glastonbury the smell of weed is everywhere and you can guarantee you'll see people wasted and unconscious and you'll encounter dealers. According to friends who've been, at Boomtown there's ketamine and coke everywhere. I went to Arctangent this year and all I noticed was the occasional puff of weed and most people were sober, not even drunk. It was much nicer and more friendly.

Mainstream rock has always been formulaic whether it was glam, hair metal, grunge, emo or anything else popular. If you want interesting music in any genre you have to look on the fringes where bands priorities are more likely to be creativity rather than radio friendly unit shifting. Occasionally one of those fringe bands breaks through to the mainstream (Idles for example) but it's rare. Same goes for festivals. If you want a great atmosphere and interesting music, head for one of the smaller ones where they book bands they like instead of bands who sell tickets. I used to go to Glastonbury every year but now I'd rather go to a small genre specific festival, pay a quarter of the ticket price, see better bands and drink better beer and enjoy a better atmosphere

I wanna be your dog - The Stooges

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. Cliff Burtons bass lead masterpiece with Metallica

Three MCs and one DJ - Beastie Boys

Cult Of Luna at ArcTanGent festival. Amazing live performance. So heavy it just sounded like the end of the world but there's so much musical interest going on in that crushing heavyness, much more than just low tuned guitar riffs. I think they stopped between songs once in an hour and a half.

Guerrilla radio - Rage Against The Machine

Cult Of Luna have a lot of instrumental tracks and a lot of their music with vocals don't have much.

Exactly my style