Leonard Smalls

I'm enjoying this arty lot at the moment...

You're on at Down on the Farm too? We're playing there Sunday 11th - 1st on main stage...

Our singer's going! She'll definitely be watching Terminal Rage at 1645 on Friday...

I use an enormous Yamaha folded horn with a Precision Devices 1x15, with a Markbass 2x10 Traveller on the top. Both are similar sensitivity, though the Markbass sounds louder because of the horn (!). However, they work very well together - very large and clean sound from 1500W of bridged Crown. I've also tried them with one plugged into each channel of the amp - the 1x15 set to everything below 200Hz and the Markbass all above 100Hz, then turned the 15 channel up higher than the 2x10. Overall this is quieter, but there's still immense headroom so in some ways this is the best option for most serious low end.

Mobile phone footage of our gig last week at Funk In The Forest... You can actually hear the bass!!!

All 10 were actually engaged - just 5 of them were jumping about... One of them was extremely enthusiastic saying we were awesome and how he wanted to have my babies and everything. Let's hope there's more folks at our next gig - though Down On The Farm is a much bigger festival; Coghlan's Quo are headlining Sunday eve and we're on in the afternoon.

Played a new festival yesterday - Funk in the Forest near Welshpool. Unfortunately they'd only been given a licence for 500 people due to complaints from the village (on the other side of a hill and 1.5 miles away!), and we were playing at 1530, which meant we only played to 10 people! However, PA was good, sound person was good,I was provided with an Ashdown rig that sounded very punchy indeed which meant all those unnecessary notes i play could be heard. And despite the drummer being unhappy as he had a bad chest and had to carry some stuff a couple of hundred metres, we all played well; couple of minor fluffs but nobody noticed, 5 of the audience danced about quite a lot (perhaps they'd started very early on the "Festival Spirit? Or maybe we were actually groovy? Who knows...) and we got interviewed by some fanziney podcast thing who I gave yet another false name (*) to. You've got to keep them guessing! The picture shows me doing my impression of the Incredible Melting Man... * I went for Leonardo di Piccolo. They said I sounded very English for an Italian!

Me just before playing at Funk in the Forest today... First outing for the Snakeskin Cowboy!

Big fan of Big Tony Fisher as well - always funky...

Aye! Still gigging too...

When we moved into our new house a couple of years ago I got chatting to one of our neighbours about dogs... She's got a couple of wolfhounds. I mentioned I was in a band (as you do!), so we chatted about this for a while then she said she was a keyboard player and used to be in a band. I asked if it was anyone I'd heard of and she said "Jethro Tull". She's full of excellent stories of 70s rock'n'flute excess!

What abour the tv series? Or this?

Now I love beetroot, whether pickled, roasted, finely grated; however I don't like Yes. But I'm not a fan of eels, either the band or the slimy water dwellers that multiplied after the Battle Of Jutland. I'm a fan of hot food, and also like early Chilli Peppers (at least while they were still spicy). Conversely, I've never been a fan of The Jam, but love a bit of the old confiture, especially damson. And while I'm not a fan of offal (apart from liver), I definitely like The Bad Brains...

Love a bit of Jonas: And Les is also a master, both are highly recognisable without sounding like standard music shop slap artists...

I've got no problem with capes either... I love Parliament! And I've also got no problem with prog - at least in theory. I'm a big fan of Magma, King Crimson and even like ELP's "Pictures at an Exhibition". I can even cope with Gentle Giant despite their medieval bent! As for more modern prog, I'm very happy to listen to Porcupine Tree, Physics House Band, Sky Architect, Liquid Tension Experiment, Mars Volta etc. But I don't like Yes (or Genesis for that matter, but that's a different story); it could be the annoying folky chord progressions, the complete and utter lack of The Funk in any shape or form, the constant stopping and starting in order to fit in yet another fanfare, the fantasy album covers, the screeching vocals or the terrible lyrics. Either way, they're musical hell for me, or perhaps one of the outer circles; the centre is occupied by boy/girl bands and "I sawe a prettye Maide" type folk...

Eek! It's full of pomp and portent, and is about very little at all unless you're a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons, in which case it's deeeep, maan! 😜😀 And that's just the music. The singing, as I said earlier is like the mythical screaming baby-monster with bagpipes and metal gauntlet scraping down a 1000' blackboard for 21+ minutes! (*) Still beauty is in the ear of the beholder; but while they can most certainly play I'd prefer them to play somewhere in the vicinity of the star Icarus. * by way of balance, I quite like a bit of free jazz improv, so pinch of salt etc...

While he may be able to hit a note, I'd prefer the sound of a screaming baby with an airhorn scraping a metal gauntlet down a 100 foot blackboard to that Yes geezer!

Not unless they got a decent singer!

Many artists have made gear popular. Frinstance Bob Marley and ganja, Grateful Dead and acid and Doctor Feellgood and amphetamines...

I like to play with myself, and I also like to play with the band... But you can't beat a good gig, with a roaring crowd and groupies that are recognisably animal, vegetable and mineral queueing outside the enormous dressing room waiting to have a go on our extensive rider. Then there's the press adulation - HERE'S an example from 1991...

Don't listen to all this sensible jibber-jabber! I take it we're talking rock'n'roll of some sort here? In that case all you need is to look like you're The Band - get some great trousers and shoes, work on The Stare, practice walkin' the walk and standin' the stance. Soon old ladies and young mums will be crossing the road to avoid you, young children will stare in awe and youths will finally understand what a role model is. Then you'll be ready! And get a big amp with at least 500W and the biggest speakers (not just 1!!!) you can find (*) cos rock'n'roll ain't noise pollution... (**) *make it class D and neo speakers - you've got to take care of your back ** don't forget those ear defenders - you don't want white noise to drown them all chanting your name!

Indeed… Folks like what they know and they know what they like! It seems, at least in the rural areas I currently inhabit, that there's no appetite at all for any new music, or for anything that's at all leftfield. If the Wurzels came to town (and they did once - I booked 'em!) the place would be absolutely rammed. But if Idles played, or Deliluh, or (lawd'elpus!) some free jazz, there'd be a tiny audience. It wasn't always so - back in the early 2000s before they were big, Pendulum played to a full community centre. There used to be a thriving free jazz scene. But now there's no interest at all in music, unless they already know all the words. Could it be because there's no more TOTP? Or that music coverage in general is limited to Glasto and the same old stuff on the short Jools series?

Some places just don't seem to have an audience! Mate of mine tried to set up some gigs in our local community centre with varied selections of bands. After he'd paid for PA, security (comm insisted he needed 2 security guards at £250!), insurance and hall hire it worked out £4 entry to break even. And maximum audience was 50, so he made a loss of £400 each night! Folks said it was far too expensive even though all the bands were excellent. And recently my local, completely out of the blue, decided to have a band on in the bar; they were a Dutch prog band called Sky Architect - the quality of their musicianship and music was by far the best that had been seen/heard in the town for years. It was free, on a Friday night, not very loud (you could talk to the person next to you!), but there were about 8 of us in the bar. Young Farmer types would come in for beer every now and then - one even asked me if the band were any good (why didn't he just listen!!!). But they all stayed out in the courtyard,ignoring this amazing band and shouting at each other in exactly the same way as they did every other Friday. However, nip down to Hereford (an hour down the road) and there's a ready audience for new music!

I 2nd the recommendation that you try and convince the guitar players to lose some of their bottom end. In my last band the guitar was that big crunchy rock tone coming out of 2 Marshall 4x12s. It was all very nice, but he was covering all the frequencies that a bass would be heard at; this would have been fine if all I played was straight ahead root/fifth. However, as our music was very funk bass driven with wah and synth blended into slappy Wal tone, you just couldn't hear me. So I made the point that if there was no point in having a bass player playing complex stuff who who couldn't be heard - after much argument he cut the bass out of his tone (I pointed him in the direction of Larry Lalonde from Primus and the Chilli's guitar sound). And all of a sudden we were much better! But still not better enough; the drummer thought that if you weren't hitting it harder than John Bonham you were doing it wrong. I tried to get him to check those groovy jazzyfunky blokes you see on TinyDeskConcerts, but he couldn't understand their lack of violence. The answer was much more headroom. So I bought a Crown xls1502, put into into bridged mode (1500W into 4ohms - get the 2502 if you want more!) and shoved that into a Precision Devices 15" and Markbass 2x10. Now it goes loud enough to completely drown out drums and guitar without distorting at all - it just about flickers onto the 2nd LED at this volume - which means all my sound is produced by a combination of FX, compression and pre-amp - sending post DI to the desk gives me control of much of the FOH bass sound. And I can hear octave down fx on stage! Funnily enough, the best sound I got on stage was by borrowing a Mesa Diesel 2x15 plus the Markbass 2x10 - immense,and scared the guitarist enough to have nightmares. BTW, I've been using hearing protection since the early 90s - first Etymotics and recently custom ACS. Guitarist foolishly doesn't, and complains about ringing. To paraphrase, there's no so deaf as those who will not hear!

Stanley Clarke is my favourite Rotosound player - because you'd think what he does is impossible until you see him do it...