Leonard Smalls

Gig at the Green Meadows festival yesterday could have been very poor after almost no sleep the night before (thanks to a Bunch of Bu%%£rs from Bicester yakking loudly till 5am in the tent next to mine).
However, our 2nd rehearsal of the year before hand went well, sound was excellent, PETA didn't throw blood on our singer for wearing his nan's 70 year old mink coat, and a number of punters came up afterwards and said we were the best band of the festival (UJahm hadn't played yet!), and it's possible our next gig (we don't do many, got to keep the fan wanting more) is going to be Glastonbury next year...

Absolute killer bass line!

[MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsG1qIwevRQ[/MEDIA]

Cheers! Cheque's in the post...
And it's a 6 way tie!

We don't care where it comes from, so long as it's crazed...
Here's the Weeds complete with Sister Bez - 2nd guitarist has a Bishop's dog collar:



The cardinal and Pope outfits were left over from a Utah Saints gig from when our drummer was with them - came from a theatrical outfitters.

It used to be worse... This is a band I was in from about 1989:



Wedding dress was about £3 from Oxfam - went beautifully with a black 2" stripe from hairline to chin!

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1469522395' post='3098910']
Not that I want to deliberately elbow ahead of the 9-page discussion on "Let's define cover band" [i] ([/i][i]tip: it's a band that plays mostly or exclusively cover songs - there you go, job done [/i])
[[/quote]

Perhaps we need a "Basschat Covers Competition" with real cash prizes...

Sounds like lots of compression and some flange and/or phaser, with plenty of eq-ing...

Here's a gently spiky noodle - Wal into dbx compressor into 3 leaf envelope filter into Ableton 9 via Focusrite 2i2.

https://soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/vermicelli

Aye!

[MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dozyL8KWGAI[/MEDIA]

Excellent!

[quote name='MoonBassAlpha' timestamp='1469055615' post='3095499']
It isn't even a style I'd usually play, it's just what came out when I started to record the eub.
[/quote]

I'm liking the Tom Waits/Marc Ribot feel to it all...
And what's an eub?

Not only that, but we didn't have a record-cutting lathe...

Talking of clunky multi-track set-ups, when I was in Sound Transfer I was once given a 2" 24 track tape and a roll of 16mm film. The tape contained 8 different mixes (i.e. final, music and FX, dialogue etc), and the customer wanted 18x16mm magnetic film copies of mixes, plus 4 DAT and 5 1/4" tape copies of the final, plus 2 D3, a Beta SP and 10 VHS copies copies of the film and final mix...
It took us 1/2 a day to set up and plug, but we ran it all in one with everything slaved to one of the Nagra T 1/4" recorders (due to their excellent time code generator and syncing properties).
So when I pressed play/record on the Nagra, 4 other Nagras, plus 2x Sony and 2x Fostex DATs, an Otari 2", 19 Albrecht 16/35mm film recorders, 2 x Panasonic D3s and a Sony Beta Sp chugged into action automatically. The VHSs we had to start by hand!
We were so pleased we permitted ourselves a number of pints of Fullers ESB that evening... (as we did most evenings!)

Nope...
But these chaps are one of the craziest bands I ever saw, with an extremely wide range of sounds, and Gabby uses lots of FX on his vocals!

[MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE8tg3hONzQ[/MEDIA]

Funnily enough, I used to work in sound transfer at the BBC...
This chap looks cheap and seems to use quality kit - but I've never tried him!
http://www.video99.co.uk/audio_transfers.html

[quote name='the boy' timestamp='1468534154' post='3091668']
I might add, it's not very Zen. However I like it nonetheless.
[/quote]

Cheers!
It was meant to invoke lying there on a sunny afternoon, looking at a beautiful view, beer/reefer/cup of tea in hand, feeling just a touch mellow, a touch elated, and at one with the world...

Am I the first?
Here's my bagpipe based opus, featuring the talents of fellow Weed and Guitar Hero, John Sullivan.
[url=http://soundcloud.com/dredd-and-the-badass-weed/weeds-investigate-the-duality-of-man]Donald Where's Your Troosers[/url]

The picky just seems to say "epic funky disco thang with enormous sweeping synths".
Though I could be mistaken...

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1467548322' post='3084432']
The Badass Weeds played a big outdoor party near Shrewsbury last night..

[/quote]

There's even a photo!

The Badass Weeds played a big outdoor party near Shrewsbury last night..
Funnily enough it rained about 5 minutes after we started, but luckily we had a roof on the stage, unlike the revellers.
They were far enough gone not to notice - they also seemed not to notice our computer with backing track (samples) crashed twice.
And against our usual policy, we did a cover - Last Night a DJ Saved my Life - in order to let the party organiser sing. We didn't hold back from spoiling it with a very loud and distorted guitar solo.
Roll on our next outdoor gig, just before Craig Charles at Green Meadows Festival in August.

I've got 2 bands...
Firstly, Dredd and The Badass Weeds. We started in Leeds back in about 1983, and had as members such luminaries as Jay Rayner on keyboards (!), Chris Haskett (later of Rollins Band), and Jez (still with the Utah Saints). We've still got the original core - our drummer used to be with the Utahs, Andy was the singer in the New Fast Automatic Daffs, one of our guitarists was in indie merchaants, the Snapdragons, and the other is still in German goth favourites, the Cassandra Complex.
We do, as we always have despite a 20-odd year hiatus, funk, rock with lots of daft clothing. Here's a hint:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WRGw-D08Gc[/media]

My other band are The Bucknell Noise Kollektiv, which is sort of jazz, though our idea of doing a standard is Herbie's "Chameleon" with heavy trombone becoming "P-Funk" via "Happy Birthday" and "Mission Impossible"...

I've seen them once - and funnily enough they were supporting Muse at The Astoria.
Wetter than Wet Wet Wet, and they haven't got any better.
So rather than watching them at Glasto, I flossed my dog's teeth then cleaned out the u-bend in our toilet.

My favourites include:

Dread Beat and Blood - Linton Kwesi Johnson
Natty Dread - U-Roy
High Priest of Dub or Scientist vs. Space Invaders - Scientist
Dub Me Crazy - Mad Professor
CB200 - Dillinger

[quote name='Musicman20' timestamp='1466694739' post='3077963']
I got asked why I wanted a 4 as well as a 5 string, well, I'd say it was my choice. [/quote]

When I went in for some FX, we had an entertaining if robust discussion...
He wanted to know why I stuck with a heavy, 30+ year old 4 string Wal when "5 strings are so much better"? Having tried a Dingwall 5-er I discovered that it felt weird with all those extra strings (!), it didn't have the killer mid-range tone and the Wal just played better (spose I'm very used to it!).
His response was "but 5 strings are better!", to which I responded "if 4 are good enough for Bootsy, they're good enough for me! And besides, I'm confortable with 4".
And then we got onto amps... And cabs... He was appalled to hear I had an enormous bass horn (!) and a 25 year old Marshall jubilee at 30 and 22kgs each. "But this ones lighter" etc
Still, we agreed to disagree, I bought an excellent distortion and an envelope follower and everybody was happy...

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1466612740' post='3077260']
listen to your track instead.
[/quote]

Careful now... It's liberally smeared with scat!

Bassline from the first 50 seconds of my entry into this month's compo-compo:

http://soundcloud.com/leonard-smalls/hes-a-noodle-doodle-man