nekomatic

Honestly, they should just spin off the Last Night as its own separate brand. It’s got next to nothing to do with any of the other nights.

Sorry to be that guy, but it says on the rota that I’m on classical music nitpicking duty this week.

Progress on this has been delayed by Various Things. Apologies to anyone who was on the edge of their seat. Anyway, the grille arrived and unbelievably, I had transcribed the dimensions wrong and it was five centimetres too long for the cabinet. Measure twice, cut once, kids. Even more unbelievably though, using only the Dremel, the cheapo workmate thingy and two bits of wood, I managed to correct it such that I honestly believe only I will ever know it was wrong. Well, and now you lot will, obvs. Anyway I am hoping this was the obligatory screw-up of the project and everything else will now go smoothly 😄 and also half thinking that I could have saved a few quid by just buying the perforated steel flat and doing all the cutting and folding myself. Next time… I am assuming that the grille needs to be at least Xdamage in front of the rest position of the speaker cone plus a bit for safety. The datasheet quotes Xdamage as '27 mm peak-to-peak' so I assume that's 13.5 mm from rest. Here it is on the mounting blocks in approximate position: When it comes to mounting this properly, would people fix the blocks permanently to the baffle then screw the grille on to that, or screw the blocks to the grille then screw that assembly to the baffle? In the next instalment I plan to have cut some cutouts…

That’s seriously good! The music is great but also the sound balance in the recording seems spot on and the video is nicely shot. I’d be very happy to pay money to hear this band live!

I’d like to apologise for my earlier post in this thread, which was complete rubbish. I don’t know what came over me. I’ll try again: It’s well known that most of Jamerson’s bass parts were actually Carol’s. For example if you take the bass part of What’s Going On, slow it down to crotchet=60 and put it into straight time, you get In The Bleak Midwinter.

Is the correct answer!

The Bass Pod acts as a recording interface…

Is that a pizza or a dirt pedal?

Ann Peebles did some other great stuff too

Looks and sounds amazing. Best of luck with it and, assuming you succeed in making it pay, good on you for diverting some of your clients’ no doubt ill gotten gains into the threadbare wallets of honest musicians!

Never mind the Trace ad, the stuff about different types of cassette tape takes me back a bit…

‘Bootsy! Always play on the one!’ - James Brown

Steve Swallow, asked if he had words of advice for aspiring young bass players: ”Travel widely; seek romance; sit up straight, clean your room, and chew your food.”

This is a bargain, because 35mm film pots now cost at least a fiver each!

I was going to say I was working behind the bar at that, but from the lineup it can’t have been. 1992 maybe.

It’s well known that all Jamerson’s bass parts were actually played by Carole King. But what’s less well known is that all Mark King’s bass parts were actually played by Danny Kaye.

Paging Spongebob. Paging Spongebob. Please report to the ‘Songs you didn’t realise were covers’ thread. Thank you. 😉

Unless I’ve missed it, we haven’t had this language (or this banger) yet:

Ooh, that must have been good!

This is true. Although at the same time, we have a pretty strong amateur choral tradition. It’s odd.

A guy I used to play with had a rule ‘never let a singer get hold of a shaker’. This is a crude generalisation of course, as I know singers who can wield a caixixi much better than I can. But it’s a good working principle.

I've seen many jazz groups in symphony halls and they can work, but it seemed to me they often used to be poorly set up for sound reinforcement, however excellent they were for unamplified stuff. I think things have got better over the years though. That reminds me of another great gig which was discovering the extraordinary Maria João who supported (I think) Wayne Shorter in (I think) the Royal Festival Hall one time. Unfortunately half the audience were only there to see (I think) Shorter and talked or got up to leave at intervals throughout João's set. Their loss though.

Mid '90s, a friend suggested we go to see Betty Carter at Ronnie Scott's. I didn't really know her. Surprisingly for a massive jazz fan who lived in reach of London he'd never been to Ronnie's, so he was amazed when we were seated right in front of the stage - which back before the smoking ban was where the non-smoking seats were. Carter used to hire young local bands when she toured, and I can't remember who any of them were unfortunately, but she really made them sweat, and we were close enough to see the terror in their eyes! They did well though. Melody Gardot at the Lowry in about 2010 was also pretty amazing - at one point she did Somewhere Over the Rainbow as a duet with her cellist, in which he strummed the cello across his knee like a guitar. (Somehow, inexplicably to me, my wife deduced from this that they were in a relationship - clearly a level of intuition reserved for either women or classical string players.) I don't want to nominate a worst, but I do remember being disappointed with Björk in Manchester in probably 1999 - I guess I had high expectations because it was Björk but she basically just ran through the tracks on her current album, which sounded like they did on her current album. I believe this was the period she was dealing with a serious stalker though so maybe her heart wasn't in it.

Ha ha, that needs to go in the top tips thread in Repairs and Technical!