Leonard Smalls

Quite fancy this though at £299!

Me neither! Not since I asked the bloke who runs our local jazz club if there were going to be any electric or fusion jazz gigs. He said "If you'd care to come along and give us the benefit of your no-doubt extensive knowledge then you can see what we're about"... I replied that with that sort of patronising response to a perfectly reasonable question, that I wouldn't feel at all welcome. And his bookings have been exclusively acoustic straight-ahead jazz in always the same vein. I found a similar attitude among classical concert goers - not the majority of them, just those who sat at the front with the score on their lap desperately hoping for the performer to make a "mistake" they could tut about!

Weirdly, this was playing on our shop playlist just as I clicked this post! Spooky...

Cosmic Slop - Funkadelic

Alice in Chairs

Pimp Bizkit Moundgarden

I don't give a Fork - Suicidal Tendencies

Cut the Cake - Average White Band

I've now rolled it in 3 coats of glitter and 2 coats of oak-stain varnish, so here's some ambient grooves in both 6:8 and 4:4 time. Possibly. Bass is a Sandberg, synths by AAS Iris and BassStation, drums sequenced from Ableton and EZ Drummer sounds. Guitar = Strat. Delays and reverbs by Raum, Objeq and Dubstation. Plenty Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 and MixRoom and BassRoom eqs, comps, limits etc.

Good'n'rockin'n'groovy, sort of like B52s play XTC!

still smokin - trouble funk

We had a 0929 Saturday rehearsal too - 2nd one with our new guitarist. We told him not to worry about playing what our old guitarman did, to make it his own, and it's definitely got punkier, though in a good way! His rhythm playing is excellent, he improvises little bits of twiddle here'n'there where before there was nowt, and now there's a bit more sparkle. He's young (well, 30s!) too! Not only that but I've got him to duplicate some of my linking bass runs that were previously lost under a power chord - it'll add to tightness and interest. Though when I asked him how well he knew his modes as we had a tendency to slot in (more than) the occasional Phryge (😁) he said " I thought I was joining a punk band!" to which we all chanted in Gregorian "punk is in the eye of the be-ho-ol-der!".

Androids of Pu Ass Grass Eddie and the Hot Sods The Ball Mega Tity Four New Modal Army The Nuts (and Nuts D.C) Spizz Oik Stiff Little Mingers Swell Paps Nice Squad Wreckless Pric

Howling at the Moon - The Ramones

Dog Bite - Dead Kennnedys

We've only got three gigs booked, all on consecutive weekends... National Mountain Boarding Festival, a joint show in Hereford with Brazilian punks Anti Virus, then Rebellion Festival in Blackpool.

Night Watch - Guana Batz

Canoe Dig It - The Mock Turtles

Sharp-Dressed Ahriman -ZZ Top

I'm forever blowing Beelzebubbles - West Ham

Wipe worry - Dire Straits

Louie Louie - the Kingsmen

That's not exactly free-form jazz! That's playing by ear... This is a touch more free-form, but not quite free-improvisation. If you need some of that. try Han Benninck, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill (*) or Derek Bailey! * I briefly played in a free-funk-jazz thang with some of Lol's sidekicks! Though we aimed for extended relatively straight funk jams over variously sensible and crazed saxes.

Doh! That's our band busted...

Hiding In Plain Sight - Manic Street Preachers