Leonard Smalls

When we lived in a housing co-operative in a very swish square in Pimlico in the early 90s we had a party featuring our band... First we heard about any complaints (we were loud, to be fair, though the square was also very large, having a cricket pitch in the middle!) was an entire van-full of police who insisted we ceased and desisted with the racket there and then... And the cop in charge was a super, not just a lowly sarge. So it depends on who's being nuisanced!

Here's our one and only cover, recorded on a mobile phone at our 3rd gig... Next gig is in Hereford, June 6th, at Speakeasy,then at Funk In The Forest near Welshpool July 26th.

It's been doing the rounds on Facebook so I'm afraid it's a Top 40 Party Banger!

It's a she! But she doesn't really like anything that sounds at all classic rock, even if it's not like the KingsX and similar. As for Rasputin, they'd all stick my head on a pole I'm afraid... I am going to suggest Bad Brains' "Rise" though - it's possibly possible!

Not sure if any of the suggestions would work - especially as our singer has the punk attitude that if it's well known it must be rubbish! However, playing to punkier audiences means we could get away with funkin' up punk songs. Singer has suggested Misfits' "Where Eagles Dare", but it annoys me no end , with its poor music and inspirational-to-Green-Day chorus; I'd thought of GBH's "Living My Life", but would have to think hard about how to PFunk it with synth-wah bass. Ministry hasn't been ruled out yet, nor has this:

The biography of Derek Bailey is a very entertaining read as well as being a history and discography of free improv jazz...

Breckers already been rejected! Singer likes Hotrods though, and I have suggested it - she's thinking on't. I've got a slap bassline for it! Singer wouldn't be keen on the lyrics - we're a bit issues-based, other songs are about religion, parental abuse, fox hunting etc so she wouldn't be happy with that! We're likely to be playing to lots of punk crowds so funk-punk mashups would work quite well Trying not to give our drummer an excuse to break out the double drum pedal of doom!

I've got the Dames Games and Guitar Thangs album... And most excellent it is too - especially his cover of California Dreamin'! I've suggested that to 'em - bit faster with slightly heavier guitar and they might go for it. But I'm not holding my breath.

Both been rejected... "Don't like Bjork" and "don't like Rollins or the cheesey (!!!!)spoken bit". Trying for the Cramps "The way I walk" and Tubeway Army's "It must have been years" next...

Our singer and drummer wouldn't go for that, even if we metalled it up! I'm having a lot of trouble getting a chorus of Give Up The Funk in the middle of one of our songs, even though it stomps like a good 'un!

We're having discussions in my rock band about a possible cover - we already do one which is a mash-up of Penetration's "Don't Dictate" with Cameo's "Word Up" which works surprisingly well. Trouble is we can't agree on another - our singer is from a straight-edge hardcore background and suggests songs by The Misfits, our drummer is more straight-ahead rock and doesn't want to do any covers unless we put a serious spin on it, our guitarist is into psychedelia and Hendrix and doesn't care what he plays so long as it's psychedelic, and I'm into The Funk, The Whole Funk And Nuthin' But The Funk. I'm trying to get them to give this a go, if we can do it justice: And we almost had agreement on this - strangely I used to play in a band with the guitarist: Any more thoughts on interesting covers we can punkfunkHendrix up?

Swedish guitar player with a Stevie Salas feel...

It's almost impossible to single out just a great rhythm section as it tends to be a collective effort. So in terms of groove and musical interest as a whole band how's about: Hiromi Uehara - Piano David Fiuczynski - Guitar Tony Grey - Bass Martin Valihora - Drums

While Faith No More are the only band I ever went to see on my own (Dingwalls - none of my mates fancied it!) I do like Mr. Bungle, and Tomahawk (and many of Mr. Patton's other bits of weirdness). Check this Mr. Bungle live performance ( I hesitate to call it a song!). To get this tight they must have used molyslip and a blowtorch...

Standard mark-up for many shops is 2.5 x the ex-VAT wholesale price... That way they can pay for premises, business rates, heat, light, staff, insurance, accountants, trade body membership etc - and hopefully still have a couple of quid left over to be taxed as profit.

Our next gig isn't till 6th June at Speakeasy in Hereford. It'll be rockin', in a punkfunkno-wave sort of way!

Might have been earlier!

We played a gig at the Legendary Percy's in Whitchurch, Shropshire last night supporting the even more legendary Linerunners. Not only is it a great venue with all sorts of bands playing from all over world, but they offered me a cab to play through... So I thought "it'll be some piddley little thing, I'll bring my Markbass 2x10 to supplement it". Turns out it was a Mesa Diesel 2x15 - with the 2x10 on top of that and my rack of amps/compressors it was taller than me. Not only that, but with only an indicated 200W RMS on my Crown power amp it was so loud that both guitarist and drummer couldn't hear themselves! It was big and it was clever We were also very honoured to have in attendance Sir @lurksalot of this parish, his brother and a number of other chaps I hadn't seen since leaving school back in 1882. So I was doubly pleased that we only made minor boo-boos, and that the bass player from Linerunners (who got an excellent sound from his Ric going through my rig) likened us to Can. Though I'm not sure if that meant we were the sort of band that folks pretended to like but didn't really. Still, roll on Speakeasy in Hereford on 6th June and recording starting this Sunday.

It costs us lots - between the PPL and PRS licences (!) it's around £500pa. I remember asking them where the money goes; they said it gets distributed among the artists. I asked how they knew which artists we'd played, and how many times each song had been played - they referred me to their website. I offered to send a list of artists on our playlist and they didn't want to know even though I pointed out that it wasn't fair on the more niche artists we play. Their website says: Our music researchers collect performance details directly from a statistically valid sample of UK venues. We match this against similar broadcast data that contains many of the same songs. It’s this broadcast data that we can then use to calculate how much we pay our members. and also: After our business costs, music licence fees are distributed to all those involved in making music via our parent companies PPL and PRS for Music. This means that those people who write, perform, compose, record or publish music are fairly paid for their work. So presumably it all goes to the Michael Jackson estate and Simon Cowell!

I've done most of the playlist at our garden centre; while compiling it I thought about what would be most suitable for an ageing, quite well-off clientele... So we've got Jacques Loussier playing Bach, Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and "Biatches Brew". Plus most of Kraftwerk's live "Minimum-Maximum", PiL "Flowers of Romance", Elvis Costello "Good Year for the (David Austin) Roses", Parliament and Bootsy and Fatback (plenty); then there's some Monochrome Set, Ivan "Boogaloo" Jones, Muddy Waters, Scientist, Ini Kamoze, Yellowman, Mad Professor, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven and about 300 more. Only thing we haven't got is metal as 2 of our staff members go a bit funny.

And a version I used to play as a DJ in the Crazy ATs!

If the FX part is the same as the GE200 I'm not sure it would! They didn't seem to work very well at all for bass - thin and sounding as if they were only designed for guitar...

This Friday, 26th April we're at the legendary Percy's in Whitchurch with Hereford new-waver-indie-rock types, Linerunners. It'll probably sound better than this, but we won't have the camp-fire, fireworks, explosions or black rubber fist!

This is my favourite! Only a bit out-there, with crazy distorted wah-sax...