there are plenty of gigging bass players who have only the most basic skills

Sid Vicious was another. In fact, he didn't even have the basics 😉

Yes it was filmed in Buttershaw but that photo is looking out from the city centre (ish) towards Denholme/Queensbury if I'm not mistaken

I went to Lagos for my honeymoon, mid June one year. It was lovely. Toasty warm but not too warm, if you know what I mean.

Monchique mountains good for MTBing

more restaurants than you can shake a stick at, all in the old town. Not so hot for "proper" nightlife, but if you want that, go to Albufeira; plenty of bars though

ah the lovely Buttershaw. Makes Holme Wood look nice 😉

btw for the non-residents that photo isn't Buttershaw

Fender Squier Precision?
http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/squier-affinity-p-bass/3820

I've got an AXL p-bass copy, cost me £130, not bad quality, sounds ok but a bit heavy at the headstock end

I have a 57 plate 1.9TiD (150hp) sportwagon & it's very nice. Bit of a dead spot below 1500rpm but get it above that & it certainly moves. I get about 42mpg on mixed urban/motorway driving.

Mine is the Vector Sport Anniversary edition – satnav, bluetooth, leather seats – very comfy. Stereo is perfectly adequate – can't see the point in having anything too fancy in a car as road & engine noise will suck some of the sound anyway. Cost me £13k a year ago, as a 2yo car with 32k miles. That's about 50% depreciation over the first 2 years. Don't buy a new one!

"class traitor" would sum it up I reckon.

I work in Barnsley. That's fighting talk

IMO a house should only be painted in pastel colours if it overlooks the mediterranean sea 😉

otherwise, what's wrong with white?

(oh yeah, Leeds Utd play in white. MOT!)

There's a painter/decorator lives in Leeds, big fan of Leeds Utd. Will NOT use red paint, ever. Under any circumstances 🙂

Class is supposedly determined by parents occupation.Well it was when I was 'reading' Sociology' almost a quarter of a century ago.

ok then.

while my parents are now retired, my dad was a builder, my mum a secretary & my stepdad a sales rep, later a civil servant.

independant school & university educated, but no letters after my name (got bored, dropped out); IT "professional" since 1988. drive a Saab, previously a BMW, estate car, live in a "middle class" area in a 3 bed semi

but I think the biggest clue is when I fly, I fly economy class. so there.

I'm economy class

I'd add a nought 😉

from experience, gigs that have a legal capacity of say 100 people = small pub; 200W, vocals only

300 people – decent sized hall – 1-2KW, everything mic'd up but not necessarily turned up

600 people is a university/college sized hall. you'd need a full scale PA for that – probably about 5KW or more. And don't skimp on the lighting rig either 😉

also from experience, I've been playing since 1980 (ok there was a break from 1990-2008) & never yet played a gig that didn't either have their own PA or hired one in; I wouldn't even consider playing at a venue that didn't provide the PA (and the sound engineer), whether inhouse or hired in. For many gigs I've played we've even brought our own sound engineer who knows what we should sound like

Sorting the PA is the promoter's job (in addition to getting all the bands together & organised so they all turn up in time, advertising, getting tickets printed, sorting somebody on the door to collect money/tickets, and so on)

So. To sum up – don't buy them a PA unless it's for rehearsing. It won't get used otherwise

BTW for vocal microphones Shure SM58 are pretty standard but not the cheapest – about £100 a pop. Other dynamic microphones are available, a.g. AKG D5 at about £50 each

You'll also want some speaker stands, mic stands & mic leads…

whoa whoa whoa! hold on a minute

what exactly do they want a PA for? rehearsals? The one you linked to ought to do it, but TBH any decent rehearsal room will have a PA included in the price per session; if they're rehearsing in somebody's garage then a 100W job should be plenty. But please for the sake of the neighbours get some sound proofing even if it's just heavy curtains & a big sound screen in front of the drums

you do NOT need to mic up the guitars, bass or drums in a rehearsal room; when they come to doing gigs, if the venue is any good, they'll either have an inhouse PA or they'll hire one in.

Josh's advice about a set of drum mics is good though – the last couple of gigs I've played I've provided the drum mics – we're talking a 2-300 capacity room big enough to take a touring band like Spear Of Destiny. The inhouse PA had enough mics to cover the headline band's kit but my mics covered the support band kit (i.e. mine)

If they're playing your average pub gigs (assuming they're old enough) then only the bass drum & snare drum will need mic'ing up, if at all; the guitar & bass most certainly will not. For gigs like that, only the vocals need to go through the PA

If you MUST spend big on a 2-3KW sound rig, then you might want to start hiring it out.

IIRC Aluminum was the original spelling; some bright spark decided to put an extra 'i' in it to make it more like sodium, calcium, helium etc. Like cricket, it didn't catch on everywhere…

Mike Scott is an Edinburgh boy

ah, I didn't know that

I think I'm getting senile; wasn't Alan Parsons in The Animals? Geordie bloke, Geordie band

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I don't usually give up on books but I was gone by the first 20 pages. I have been told it improves a lot after the first 100 pages, but I am never going to find that out personally, too many interesting things to do.

the (Swedish) film's very good though. Please please please don't let the Anericans remake it

anyway, for me, the hardest thing I ever tried to read was Lorna Doone. The words are English, but…

I thought The Waterboys were Irish

sat on a beach in Roses, Costa Brava.

Went to a cafe to use los servicios, saw it all live on TV. Locals thought I was French for some reason (perhaps the proximity to the border); English didn't even occur to them.
Next day sat on the beach, the air raid sirens went off. That was a bit nervy
3 days later, Barcelona airport was crawling with army types

But real perfection – NMA – No Rest for the Wicked

close but I'll raise you "Thunder & Consolation"

also

The Sisters Of Mercy – First & Last & Always
David Bowie – The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars
The Men They Couldn't Hang – How Green Is The Valley
Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material
The Clash – London Calling
Adam & The Ants (yes, really) – Kings Of The Wild Frontier
The Damned – The Black Album / Machine Gun Etiquette
Fields Of The Nephilim – The Nephilim
Nirvana – Nevermind
The Smiths – Hatful Of Hollow
Cocteau Twins – Head Over Heels
Terrorvision – How To Make Friends & Influence People

The Skids (maybe 70s)
Big Country – Mark Brzezicki (SP) is one of my favourite drummers
Altered Images (featuring the lovely Clare Grogan)
Simple Minds
Ultravox
Texas
Garbage (?)

didn't know Dept S were Scottish – we do a cover of their one hit, Is Vic There?

bugger off then

8 weeks.

45miles each way down through Grenoside into Hillsborough. Get there, ask if there was any work for me, got told "I'm a bit busy, I'll get back to you later". This went on for 4 weeks, then I had an interview at the place I'm at now. 2 more weeks of the above and a second interview at the place I'm at now.

Handed my notice in, got told "you don't have to work the full notice, you can go at the end of the month. Shame as we had big plans for you"
Really? then why not give me some sodding work to do!?

at 26 I was 3 years into my career in IT, but still being treated as the office teaboy by most of the senior (and some of the junior) staff. My hair was still dark and still long, and my belly had yet to make much of an appearance

I'd just passed my driving test, was living with my then girlfriend (now wife) in our first house, which we finally managed to sell only this year.
I'd given up on music too…

pretty dull really

congrats Rich & Clare 🙂

Also if you all can download a friend of mines new single just released yesterday, available on itunes, amazon etc.. search for "Tiny Giants" only 69p a shot!!

we came up against Tiny Giants recently on a local radio show; 3 songs, a bit of each, the audience votes on the one they want to hear in full. TG won, well done to them, it was a great song. I'll go do a search now…

not going to any AFAIK but I am playing 3 between now & christmas

I'd like to go see New Model Army on their 30th anniversary tour but the closest they come to me is Nottingham, and I can't do that weekend due to (a) work and (b) 2 weddings in Newcastle & Scarborough on successive days
🙁

Nothing unhealthy about that 😉

PSA Farscape is on FX channel weeknights just after midnight

a nice dark gravy made with port or red wine, and redcurrants or redcurrant jelly. serve with mashed potato, roasties & in season veggies, garnish with some more redcurrants

If we hadn't had a nice piece of topside earlier i'd be making myself hungry 😉

my Saab 9-3 is a little bit sluggish at first, and first gear is very narrow – but that's probably due to it being a GM Saab (Vauxhalls have very narrow first gear too, from experience).

once moving and above about 1200rpm it's great. I don't do that much stirring of the gears, as it's a diesel with way more torque than a weedy petrol engine

my previous car, a BMW 320D was much better, but I guess you get what you pay for 😉

I wouldn't have petrol again for my car, although Mrs_drummer's C4 1.6 petrol is quick enough

Canada is good. We went last year, flew Manchester to Calgary, picked up a hire car & drove to Canmore – about an hour's drive. It's just outside the Banff national park so it's a bit cheaper to stay than Banff itself, which is only 20mins up the road

We stayed there for 6 nights, then back to Calgary for 2 nights for a wedding. Then a road trip to Vancouver, staying over in Kamloops – surprisingly hot at 38deg during the day in early August. 3 nights in Vancouver & then another road trip back to Calgary for the flight home – bad planning, could've flown home from Vancouver & had another night there.

Plenty of scope for outdoorsy stuff in the Rocky Mountains – two trips you shouldn't miss are Lake Louise:

and the Columbia Icefields:

Downtown Vancouver is nice – I'd move there tomorrow – but there's also Vancouver Island to visit, maybe a bit of whale watching, or a trip to Whistler (about an hour or two away). And there's also Stanley Park at the northern end of downtown:

Chinatown is well worth a visit too – eat in a proper chinese restaurant, where the chinese locals eat

more here[/url]

I think my peak was 25 🙁

that was a LONG time ago

whatever. sense of humour bypass?

if you have to define it, you haven't got it.

I find it useful for getting & publicising gigs. other social networking sites are also available

Twitter, on the other hand…

looks ok to me, but what are you trying to sell? the PhD or the programming skills?

If it's the programming skills that you're trying to emphasise, perhaps you could say "while doing my PhD I have developed F77 & Perl programming skills by implementing…."

either way is just as good, it just depends what you're trying to emphasise

I've got a 57 9-3 estate. 53k miles so far & a nice car. bigger boot that old model 3-series touring but I can't compare it with anything else

would you get it on the 30th if that was a Saturday or Sunday? Same rule applies – next working day.

Although having said that, I bank with Natwest & if I get paid on a Monday, I can get at the funds on the Saturday

apparently Axl put a stopper on the BBC showing footage from Reading so it wouldn't spoil anything for the Leeds audience. allegedly.

Although to be honest I haven't bothered watching any of the footage from this one. Absolutely nothing worth watching for, IMO. I gave The Libertines 2 minutes of my time just to see what all the hype was about, & wish I hadn't bothered

I'd be well p***ed off if I'd paid for festival tickets before they announced the line-up

sounds good, but…

needs more passion

and the artwork 😯

I'm 3rd from the left

bit early for me