Leonard Smalls

5 minutes of anti-hunt sentiment from our recent Punk 4 The Homeless online benefit for Compass Children's Charity:

Just having a double bill of these 2, while looking for next years (possible!) holiday...

Some jazz, Daddy-o!

Some rockin' Bootsy:

Annoyingly, our Freeview doesn't have this (or many other!) channel... We're on one of those booster sub transmitters - they obviously think us yokels wouldn't be interested in any of that fancy Townie Telly!

Our drummer and guitar player both have difficulty counting to any number other that 4... So they just carry on in 4/4 and I just play the appropriate number of bars so that it all comes right in the end! Luckily our singer understands feel a lot better, otherwise my twiddley bits in 11/8 or 5/4 would be wasted (they probably are anyway!).

I suspect his sons don't identify with their Dad's roots... Friends of mine have been unfortunate enough to encounter Otis in his role as Joint Master of the South Shropshire Hunt!

Here's a ditty from our last online gig...

Our next gig is recorded and ready for online transmission on Saturday 19th at 1810 - all in aid of Compass Children's Charity: https://fb.me/e/WZnOpIit

The final coat of varnish has now dried, so Happy Yulemass!

Ozrics, in all their incarnations, have never failed to impress!

Blockheads!

BTW, my mum's a piano teacher and she always starts with the Waterman book...

craddock Waterman! Her books are the industry standard for beginners... Classical based, but I rather suspect they use the same notes... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Piano-Lessons-Book-Waterman-Harewood/dp/0571500242/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&hvadid=80745491384709&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=craddock+waterman&qid=1607793502&sr=8-1&tag=mh0a9-21 EDIT! swear filter in daft as a feckin brush shock... F@nny W@terman!

Bootsy's version of Silent Night has some improbably funky bits!

One of the pioneers of rap/rock...

If I'd been on the poll list I'd have won, as I can accurately reproduce (*) not only all of Stanley Clarke's solos in the amazing "Schooldays", but I can do it while supping a pint of Jennings SneckLifter and scoffing a Tunnock's Teacake. * on my record player

My Lightwave Saber fretless with Heavyweight Wal...

Talking of which, my effort this month appears to be a jazzy musing over a bass improvisation of Auld Lang Syne. Just got bagpipes and robot chickens to add! And I'll get my first apology in now...

Very tight... But they've fallen foul of one of my pet hates; while the women have made an effort to look like they're in the band the blokes are just wearing boring shirts/tshirts and look like they've just walked in off the street. It happens far too much for my liking!

My only bass purchase this year was a Lightwave Saber (!) fretless bass in black... It's lovely!

Love Bbotsy's Christmas album... And this!

This normally means wanting to hear what you want to hear. Anything different is political bias (or as Herr Trump would say, "Fake News"). The way I see it, the beeb is accused of political bias by both left and right wing folks; this probably means they're doing something right! Perhaps if every news story was followed by a bit of comment in the style of the Telegraph (or The Sun if it's TV news 😄) that would give it more of an air of "telling it like it is". Though every time I've heard someone being congratulated for "telling it like it is" it's following something deeply offensive said by the likes of Our Honourable M.E.P For Not Turning Up To Fisheries Meetings... As for whining right-on left wing comedy, would you prefer a bit of Jim Davidson, or Big Bernard Manning? Not sure if it's down to political bias by media organisations, but you don't seem to hear much right wing comedy, or right wing music? Could it be that Right-On Whining types are that little bit more creative? 😁

It is poor... But as I said, it wasn't The BBC who dropped the musicians - it was the producers of Strictly who are probably freelance anyway! The whole broadcast industry has an unfortunate culture of dangling the carrot of "gaining experience" in return for usually younger folk desperate to get into the business having to work long hours for free as runners... The BBC took no part in any of that sort of thing when I was there (till2002), though pressures on the licence fee no doubt have squeezed budgets...

I suspect that some grief will be had by those responsible, as The Powers That Be don't really like too much bad publicity. But as with all news stories it's only the original headline that sticks - you rarely find out what happens in the end or what action has been taken unless it is in itself deemed "newsworthy". Funnily enough, the area of the beeb (and i suspect other media organisations) that rarely if ever got grief and really didn't care if it did was news - they were largely a law unto themselves because they felt that their (usually highly selective) reporting was much more important than anybody else. In Post Production, we had the saying that if the technical quality of something wasn't very good that it was "good enough for sport", and if it was really, really bad "good enough for news"...