 Radio is the first thing that got me into music. There were very few families that had TVs and I was crying. I mean that wasn't really until the early to mid-70s so all of your entertainment came from the radio and I think it made quite a big difference to how we grew up as opposed to how some of the instruments were growing up today because there was no B.E.T. there was no M.T.V. So if you got into music it was purely because of what you heard rather than what you saw. Were I not a musician I would almost certainly be a gardener with some description. I had a job as a landscape gardener twice, once with Lamberth Council and once with Wandsworth Council. Got set from both, not very good with the timekeeping but it was very very satisfying even if you only were turning up a school to remove all the leaves in autumn and put them in these big bins to come on the truck and drive off in a place that would be beautiful a very very satisfying job. So a gardener probably. The Blackstar products I'm currently using are this my HT20 which is a fabulous amp I like a really clean sound that you can mess up at your pleasure and this gives me a really nice beautiful clean sound and I have an Artist 15 which I'm lending to Dover for the purposes of the next tour and a really really cool overdrive pedal I can hear the guitar as well as the crunchies. Hi I'm Chris Dover and I play a slide guitar in Maxi Gazzini's Guitar Boys I use the Artist 15 first saw these amps where and I saw a video of Jared James Nichols using them and I just love his tone. What made me switch to Blackstar was quite simply the sound I got to try one and I said this old Gretches never sounded so good let me try another one so it kind of worked from there. My name is Jake Libretto I play guitar in Maxi Gazzini's E-Type Boys The amp I use is the HT40 Club which is a two channel amp each channel has a voicing so I kind of use it almost like a full channel and I love it. The Blackstar amps that I've been using thus far are just right for what I'm doing because they give me exactly the sound that I want on stage which of course is really important because if you hit that first chord or hit that first note and it doesn't sound exactly right it's just off the tune and the really cool thing is the exact sound and Jake the exact sound that they want to and they play entirely differently from me that's why I'm unhappy I like anything at all that's versatile from guitars to amplification to musicians. My mum and dad both influenced me but my dad took me to see Deep Purple when I was about 11 ever since then I wanted to do Heavy Rock and things like that but I got influenced into jazz, funk, blues. I'm hugely influenced by a player called Amber Solzborn New Orleans who's a fantastic slow guitar player Jimmy Page, Dave Trucks all look kind of great it's really, but yeah Ben Harper was my main influence as to pick up a slow. Deep Purple, Thin Lizzie, Free and Gary Moore and then you have your soulful funky guys like Noel Rogers and people like that. What we as a band have planned for the future is to play as many gigs as we possibly can and make at least three or four more albums and tour the world until they're tired of us. How do I prepare for a live show? I tell myself incessantly to be myself because quite often you can have a gig that is like pretty much any other gig except it's important for whatever reason maybe there's people there to see you or record deals in the offing or whatever it is it's important to just tell yourself to be yourself because that actually is not difficult and plus I'm a Buddhist so I chant Nam Yai Reng Eke a couple of times too The best piece of advice I would give to a beginner is don't be like me, practice.