Leonard Smalls

I'd love to know how to give 101%. That Simon Cowell appears to be able to do things "1000000%", but I can't get any better than a measly 100% of what is possible. What am I doing wrong? 😎

We're in the Welsh Borders - our town is only just that, with maybe 2000 residents. There's 2 pubs that do occasional music, and that consists almost exclusively of covers bands and "open mic" nights, with one of them having a proper wild night every quarter involving a "Lady DJ". There's another very small town about 8 miles away with one of its pubs having covers bands and very occasional pub blues. Then our nearest "larger" towns, Ludlow and Bishops Castle have between them perhaps 4 venues that put on music, they're covers, blues or easy listening jazz. So not much doing for a funk-punk-rock originals band that sound somewhere between Primus, Penetration and Public Image! We've tried putting on a rock night at our local community centre - which is quite large at about 500 capacity. Despite asking everyone we knew, putting up posters for miles around etc we got about 60 punters at £3 each (for 4 bands!), which only just covered the PA, but not the bouncers the committee insisted we hired. So now we have to travel further afield if we want gigs; Shrewsbury, Hereford are an hour away and the very modest fee we get covers the fuel and a pint or 2 each... Worcester and Whitchurch are about 1.5 hours away - the fee just about covers travel... Any further and we might make a loss! However, even if we were being paid the rates covers bands are getting (say £250?) there's no way that would give us a reasonable income. If we could play 4 nights a week (!), assuming £50 expenses each gig we'd make £200 each or £800/month. If each of those gigs meant we were there for 4 hours, plus 2 hours travelling that 24 hours work for £200, that's £8.33/hour without taking into account rehearsal time or any gear costs! Which means none of us could afford to give up our day jobs in order to be a musician, unless we hit The Big Time... But it does mean that we can play what we want as the money is now largely irrelevant.

I know a drummer who does just that - his excuse is "Dennis Chambers uses double bass pedals". Difference is that Dennis Chambers plays what the song needs rather than what he thinks is going to impress folks... Dennis can impress any time by just doing a tiny fill - he doesn't need to do a double whupdedoodlediddle which invariably over-runs by nearly a beat putting everybody else off, nor does he think that funk drumming is only the version of the funky drummer riff as popularised by the Stone Roses. Nor does Dennis speed up by 5-10bpm during a song!

I went and had a play with the Mooer GE200 yesterday, and while there's hundreds of effects on it and plenty of amp sims, not many of them are much use for bass. The wah and autowah sounds have too little range of adjustment, distortions are very fizzy, octaver is limited and amp sims are geared toward guitar. But there's some reasonable eq. Still nowhere near as good-sounding as my 3 envelope follower/BassWhammy/B7K/Bass Synth pedalboard...

The reason in this case is the owner only wants originals bands, as a result the venue has punk/rock/metal/hiphop bands from all over the world playing at his venue - and it's always free to get in. He feels that out in the wilds of Shropshire there are very few places to play or hear original music...

As another Wise Old Musician said: Give the people what they want when they want then they wants it all the time Fortunately, he played his own music, so now we have PFunk… Which some of the people wanted, even if they didn't necessarily know it at the time. But if every single musician only played other people's music there'd never be anything new! And one of the venues we play at takes a very dim view of covers - he'll let you do one. Any more and you're out!

I've never been willing to play material I don't like. If I liked the music that's generally popular I'd no doubt be happy to play it in order to play to crowds of happy punters... However, I've always liked left-field music starting with the early no-wave scene, through free jazz, obscure funk, unheard of prog-fusion etc. We could attempt covers of some of this ephemera, and 90% of folks would think it our own (and probably hate it!). So covers for me are rare - this is also because I like to make my own music; I get far more enjoyment out of writing in collaboration with the band than working out someone else's song. I had a conversation a while ago with a well-known (in the scene, at least!) free-jazz drummer. He was the original drummer with Bon Jovi, and left because he wanted more music and less crowd-pleasing - he said (in his Brooklyn accent!) "the music's in me, man, it's just gotta come out! I don't care about what the audience want, I've just gotta play!". And strangely, I know exactly where he's coming from. It means that, even though he's the best drummer I've ever played with - by a long way - he'll never get rich doing it. He does occasional sessions for pop bands, even played drums for Chuck Berry once, teaches drumming in a local college, but all that's to pay the bills. He spends the majority of his time playing with obscure jazzers to a few chin-strokers in a back-room in Hebden Bridge. For just a few quid...

Had an afternoon free so I thought I'd be first in with a daft'n'funky little thing about a ridiculous climbers route in Llanberis slate quarries linking areas such as Dali's Hole, California, Lost World, Mordor by the use of rusty old ladders, enormous in situ chains and 50m abseils into deep holes...

It's singed me trousers... Still, the smell of burning has stopped them noticing that the slow break I've put in the middle of our new song (to be debuted in Leominster, 2nd March) is actually Death Disco...

I was a bit disappointed in my band today... We do 1 cover - "Don't Dictate", the punk classic by Penetration. So far I've managed to get the bass line from Cameo's "Word Up" into the intro, and to play the guitar line from Nirvana's "Come as you are" as the bass line during the verse. But when I tried to get the guys'n'gal to start it with the riff from "My Sharona" they said it was silly... It's a shame as next I was ready to shoe-horn Parliament's "Flashlight" in as a break.

Bit of Eddie Hazel...

Each to their own! But I find many lyrics to be so deep'n'meaningless that they'd be better in Swahili, then I wouldn't have to hear quite how cheesey they were... However, sometimes cheese in any language can be quite entertaining: And sometimes no specific language is worth a listen...

Clipping isn't a cut-out, it's distortion; as the Wikipedia section you quote says: The extra signal which is beyond the capability of the amplifier is simply cut off, resulting in a sine wave becoming a distorted square-wave-type waveform. In other words what you hear with clipping is your max level signal with the top cut off the wave-form, which, depending on the amp/speaker can either sound terrible, damage the speaker or, in the case of valves etc, can sound like overdrive... The square wave is effectively the sum of many harmonics of the original tone - all that extra high-frequency harmonic content is what causes the damage. Personally I prefer any overdrive to be produced by something that's designed to produce overdrive!

Not just German! This works well when it goes all furrin' at 3'25 And French? In rap? Surely not!

Sometimes! However, an English version can sometimes sound cheesey and a bit trite. Like this! And some songs just wouldn't sound right in translation...

I'm not going to post it, but he's also recently done gigs with The Wiggles in Oz, one song being "Play The Bass Guitar (Jamaaladeen you're a star)"

No mention was made of Derek Bailey and his use of feedback and distortion in the 50s... At least Hendrix acknowledged Bailey's impact despite the fact that not many folks outside of free improv jazz had heard of him.

For me, and I realise I'm in a muso-snob minority, it's the actual music that counts most... After all, I can go to many places at pub chucking-out time and see people jumping about stupidly. But I'd prefer to see Jonas Hellborg and his band concentrating their little heads off in an almost motionless way apart from the blur of fingers, hands and toes than to see some very average musician posturing using every rock cliché. However, Jonas would be even better if he had his foot on the monitor, leapt from the drum riser, did the devil's horns after every crazy bass-run, then bit the head off a bat...

This is full of chromatic bass runs! And lots of other stuff... Though I didn't realise he'd changed his name again to Jamaad-Len!

But if nobody went to see new bands there'd be no new music... Folks round here will cross the country to watch some blokes kick a football about. But a few years ago I booked Wilko Johnson to play at our village hall - it was barely 1/2 full. And conversely, I booked the Wurzels fir another gig - it sold out in 2 days! So maybe it's just rocknroll our Bordrs dont like!

The kids in Japan do metal as well as we do!

I think so long as the tune was something the punters knew, and wasn't being completely mangled, they wouldn't notice who was playing it! However, if it's world class musicians playing something unknown your average punter would just leave! In December I saw a notice at my local pub saying a Dutch band were playing there. So I went, and this band were playing, just in the tiny bar; they were most certainly world class musicians, but they were playing proggy originals: I was awe struck for the 1.5 hours they played. Sound was perfect, at a reasonable level - most certainly not too loud and most definitely a head-and-shoulders above what you'd normally hear in Knighton. Especially as it was free! However, a steady stream of locals walked in, ordered drinks, didn't even glance at the band, didn't even pause in their loud shouty conversations, and just left to go and have more shouty conversations just like they did every single other Friday and Saturday night. One even asked me what the band were like - I said they were excellent musicians and well worth listening too; he said "don't know the song" and promptly went outside. It just makes me think that the majority of folks don't actually like music as a thing, especially if there's any complexity. Don't know why - laziness perhaps? But judging by how music is treated in schools, and by our broadcasters - where music will only appear at prime time as X Factor, or in that weird stuff they do for Strictly where a tango has to be done to something by Madonna just in case folks feel a bit challenged - it's not surprising. However, it appals me that a majority of the population are missing out on so much creative endeavour cos they don't realise that the effort you put into properly listening is repaid in spades!

I think some English folks are rather too hung up on things being rubbish if they're not in English, cos foreigners are obviously stupid and need to be spoken to more loudly, and obviously patronised heavily...😉 However, there's a whole world out there that's not English - it'd be daft to just confine yourself to one bit of what's available! After all, it's the music that counts - singers have been conning us all for years that they're the most important!

Not necessarily! Some folks just want the joy of making music, without having to perform. I was listening to Desert Island Discs the other day, with Tracey Thorne; she said she sang for the 1st time with a band from inside a cupboard as she was so shy. As a result she doesn't appear live much at all, just does recording.

Indeed - though less so for bass players... I bought a very nice Parker bass there a few years ago, but they reckon bass players don't buy as much gear as guitarists. I pointed out that they do, if you've got stuff they want! Though they've currently got a very nice EBS 660 at about £200 off, plus cabs to match, and a few Phil Jones amps. And for those that like that sort of thing, a Bongo 6er! And I missed out on a lovely Thumb bass by dithering...