[Rudolf Wagner]

Hello,

Just a short note from my side (We will answer all the other questions above regarding the membership shortly in a more detailed way to provide a good Q&A resource).

Tonight we tried to roll out a huge update for your membership profiles to vastly improve the “My Account” part of our website. We were very enthusiastic about the look and feel and the opportunities it will provide for club members but had to discover that it would cause a security/privacy problem that needs to be resolved first.

It also looks like there’s an issue regarding the profile photos. The new implementation uses a different system for storing and showing profile images that is not compatible with the former plugin. Your Facebook or Gravatar profile photos should work all the time (if you are logged in to Facebook) but uploaded images did not show up anymore. You may have experienced these troubles tonight.

We now rolled back everything, trying to fix the problems on our test site and hopefully come out soon with a shiny new user interface 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Haha, I forgot about the sock incident, that was a great one! “Eric the Fish” holding up a sock during our performance of “Bus Stop” (referring to our music video) cracked us up for sure!
Okay, let me think of some more examples (and there are plenty ;-))…

– During Holiday season, a drunk Christmas elf tried to storm the Cavern stage. Very festive!

Or

– Mona misplacing her capo on stage not just once but TWO TIMES during a show, having to stop the entire performance super awkwardly! Looking around, scratching her head, audience members started to help her find it (Turns out she placed her silver capo on top of the silver bass drum … good move ;-))

In her defence I should add that this has been one of our very first shows we had played in Austria, and we were clearly not that organised yet haha

Or

– At a show in London we once accidentally locked ourselves and two other bands IN the backstage area (the already weak door handle decided to break that very moment). The compère who was about to announce us to the audience had to get us all out (while someone from the film crew who was locked in with us nearly had a panic attack!).

🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

The “correct” pronunciation would be VAHG-ner and I try to stick to that when we meet new people. However, when the postman wakes me up early in the morning to deliver a parcel and asks for my name I’ve found myself saying it the English way more often than not. It’s easier and people understand it quicker (and I get back to bed again quicker). 😉

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Daniel!

The pickup that comes with the J160e is a magnetic pickup – the kind that you usually find in electric guitars. It’s very unusual for acoustic guitars to have that sort of pickup as it has a very specific sound and needs e-guitar strings. The original intro of “I Feel Fine” is played with that sound!

It’s great for those specific things but the tone overall isn’t very versatile, not very “acousticy” and very much prone to feedback, which is a nightmare when playing live – you can also hear that feedback at the very start of “I Feel Fine”. 😉

So we installed an L.R. Baggs M1 pickup instead (not in addition) which is one of the most natural sounding and reliable acoustic pickups out right now. I’m quite happy with the current setup and sound of that guitar. It’s a bit battered from countless live shows but I love it 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks for telling me and thanks for helping others to find workarounds.

1. The problem with the menu on mobile displays is a problem of our WordPress theme. It is not a free but a premium theme so they should get it working. They are normally very fast at fixing things but this seems to be a bit harder to fully repair because every solution they offered so far caused other bigger problems. Our support ticket is already massive but I still hope they can get it done.

2. The main problem with the failed login is that we cannot reproduce it on our side. It is probably a caching problem. Our Web host will try a few things over the next days and asked me to report if the problem still exists. It would be very helpful if you could report back to tell me yes or no and maybe you could also find out some circumstances surrounding the problem. e.g. only on Android mobile phone with Google Chrome browser.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jung, like you said, it depends on the type of performance, how long we’ve been playing with the other musicians for, how familiar we are with the set list, etc.

As a general rule we normally practise with the whole band once a week for several hours (when we’re performing – we’re currently still on a break). If we get a new line-up together or have a particularly important show coming up with a new setlist, we sometimes have a lot more and longer practise sessions until everyone is comfortable and grooved in.

On the other hand, during our Cavern residency for example, we had weeks where we (as a group) didn’t have any band practice at all, because everyone knew their part so well and we didn’t change the setlist each week.

It really depends, and of course I’m not talking about the practising everyone should be doing daily on their own anyway 🙂 Band practise was more of a way to go over details, work on performing, harmonies or refining arrangements and to get tighter as a whole.

Preparing for something like the Steve Harley tour is a lot different. Most of the songs were completely new to us, and we started learning our parts months ahead. We had the recordings and our ears to work with and to figure out chords, harmonies and our percussion, guitar and vocal parts.  At one point we met up with Steve where we’d go over the tricky bits and any questions we had, or what he wanted us to focus on.

Then, two days before the tour started, the whole band got together (some flying in from South Africa) and we basically practiced for the whole 48 hours 😉 It was a tough schedule but we made it work. For things like that it is absolute key to come well prepared!

We had a ton of improvisation going on on that tour as well. The music and setlist really allowed for that. For the majority of MLT gigs, that is normally less of an element, though of course no show ever really sounds the same 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

My trusty ol’ Gretsch Duo Jet + Vox AC30 = no need to slash open anything 😉 Love the Dave Davies story though. They were pioneers in many ways!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Jung,

You seem to be faster than I can answer ;-). We also thought back and forth about reversing the order of replies so to have the newest replies on top but then we decided against it because for new people it would be hard to read and it would also be a bit unusual for this kind of forum.

We are  now close to releasing a rather big update of the user interface with some features that make organizing your online presence a better experience. It’s not really easy to implement because so many aspects have to be taken into account not to break the site while updating but we hope we can make it within the next days.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Sorry Tom,
we prepare some rather big updates in the background that might affect things like not showing images or strange formatting of text or colors. We thought it’s better to take in account some minor hiccups than closing down the whole site for a few hours. After the update things like that should work again and I hope you will find the improvements worth the trouble.

Maybe we can find a quick fix in the meantime. Did you upload a profile picture, do you use Gravatar or did you expect to see your Facebook profile picture?

[Rudolf Wagner]

Sorry for any inconvenience you might experience. It probably has to do with a rather big upgrade we are working on which will come out within the next few days (fingers crossed). It has to do with the way things are organised on our website and will hopefully improve the user experience a lot. I had hoped to get that done without any disturbances.

We had the choice between closing down the site for maintenance for a few days until the new features are implemented or to just roll it out in the backend without any noticeable performance issues. I hope that once you see the new features you will agree they were worth the hiccups.

[Rudolf Wagner]

Thanks for your suggestion Steve and I’m glad you enjoyed the interview!

Doing something in an acoustic setting like that is definitely something we’ve considered in the past and we’re always interested in hearing feedback like yours. At the moment our list of projects is about a mile long and we just work our way through the many ideas we have. The item “acoustic show” just got bumped up a few positions but I can’t promise it will happen or at least anytime soon. We have a lot brewing but always appreciate additional input 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Yes, Howard, please go ahead. There might be people checking out just the Vinyl, so your review would be helpful there. Thanks for asking, and thanks for the review, of course!

[Rudolf Wagner]

Good day, Ron and welcome to the treatment centre, thanks for checking in. Our classes are based on month-long procedures that include regular doses of exclusive music, question & answer sessions with your hosts Lisa and me as well as visual content in the form of past musical adventures of your source of addiction and much more.

Here at the treatment centre we believe that all of that and the amplified exposure to music and like-minded people will have a positive effect on your life and hopefully bring a smile or two to your face. So far, no studies have shown that it will cure your addiction so be assured that you are safe and secure here.

Thanks for checking in, we hope you’ll have a pleasant stay.

Namaste,
Mona

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hmmm. One might think that could be a simple one word answer, but we give you the long version: When it’s just the four of us we mainly talk German. It would feel a little strange “switching” languages within the family when this is how we’ve grown up and talked to each other all of our lives. But all of us are regularly incorporating English words and phrases in our sentences (adapted to German grammar :-)) as it is often so much shorter to express a thought in English. All in all we have got quite the mishmash going on, but as long as we get the message across (telepathy helps a lot) we don’t care much. Except when our grandparents visited, then we made sure to make ourselves understood 🙂

[Rudolf Wagner]

Hi Rick, yes, you’re right. I changed the original Bigsby to a Düsenberg tremolo. I love how they feel and the tuning stability is much better too. Plus it makes changing my guitar strings a whole lot easier 😉