Leonard Smalls

Btw, this isn't the Tweets classic (!) but our own "Two Can Play" renamed by me to confuse the band.

You've Schlossed that lovin' feelin' - The Righteous Brothers

We had a bit of a schlepp over to Nottingham yesterday supporting South Africa's finest, The Soap Girls... It was the first outing for our new guitarist, who rather than humping around some enormously heavy Marshall amp, uses one of those Blackstar Amped pedals as part of his effects board. Sounded great! And as a whole we were mostly OK - I managed to mess up The Birdy Song (*), but much worse, our drummer managed to play completely the wrong rhythm for our final song which made it impossible to play to. And for some reason we decided to muddle through rather than put our hands up, point at the drummer and say "you've not only let yourself down, you've let the band down and you've let the whole audience down" then restart. Lesson learned! Still, rest of the songs were great - tight, funky and punky - I could hear myself (Parker into Helix/BBE/DBX compressor/Crown Power/Markbass 4x10 and we had folks jumping about in a groovy fashion rather than brandishing sharpened sticks and pitchforks! The Soap Girls were also excellent - great show despite the gratuitous nudity that was mainly to satisfy a number of slightly seedy-looking middle-aged gentlemen who were far more interested in getting a quick flash than in the music. And their bass player displayed impressive core strength by bending over backwards, unsupported to within an inch of the floor, then standing straight back up! They also expressed jealousy over our 2 bass line-up... Getting home took 4 hours, exacerbated by the obligatory 2am stop at motorway services to complain about the prices and quality while I smugly reminded them how I'd urged them to come and have one of the fine burgers (vegan and not!) at the adjoining brewery. I'd partaken alone, along with a fine pint of on-site brewed Castle Rock Mild while they'd complained of being full, having spoiled their tea by gorging on junk food on the way. Kids!!! Anyway, duff Soap Girls pic, none of us available:

Rockin' my Parker!

Unfortunately, it only seems to put on covers bands... Though I gather there's a new owner who may change this... We've played The Victory, The Herdsman, The Plough, Booth Hall (RIP!), The Jam Factory and that weird underground place by the river, but never had a sniff of Gordon Bennett's!

Livin’ Life (On the Edge of a Knife) - Bullet for My Valentine

I still have the instrument I learned to play piano on... My grandparents bought it in the early 1930s, and I discovered recently when having it tuned by Someone Who Knows, that it was made in the 1880s. It's a Pfeiffer overstrung, and it has amazing bass - probably what turned me on to play bass in the first place! Talking of which, I still have the first bass I bought - twas a Kawai Sleekline purchased in 1987 2nd hand for £90.

YMCA - Village People

Sensimilla - Black Uhuru

Keep it Greasy - Franz Zappa edit - spell check sometimes he bizarre, no? Frank!!!

Heresy! I've got a pair of very fine Leema Xavier speakers which were modified by Nordost so that all internal wiring is in silver monofilament.... It's a whole new level of performance over the standard, common-or-garden copper-wired ones - inkier blacks, airier highs - it's like the musicians are in the room with you! BTW, I'm having a minor "giraffe", as yer cockneys say; I worked in BBC sound for many years and even there we couldn't convince one of our dubbing mixers that audio cable couldn't be uni-directional, so I understand the many foibles of hifi-dom. In fact I often peruse the Machina Dynamica catalogue for what self-same cockneys also call a "bubble bath"!

While gold has the advantage of being for all intents and purposes corrosion free any hifi I had tended to live in an area which didn't suffer from either wet or corrosive environments - in which case silver is a far better bet, ohms-wise (that vanishingly small difference in transmissions is like night and day to a proper audiofile ) Saying that, I used to have a pair of 120W Lumley valve monoblocks that weren't so common as to used mere Gold for its terminals... They used Rhodium!

I'd do anything for love (but I won't do that) - Meatloaf

I've made a start on some Mutant Jazz, to follow on from Mutant Disco last month... So far we've got a bass improvisation to a 140bpm click track, plus drums - which I've built up from individual brush/cymbal/rim/drum sounds - they're 16 tracks! Next it's keys, guitar then found samples. Be Afraid!!!

We're in Nottingham next Saturday supporting the inimitable Soap Girls...

I take Americana to mean white square US music, so not blues, funk, jazz etc but more 70s singy AOR stuff - anything from Melanie to Woody Guthrie to the wetter end of Chicago etc... Basically nothing that's got too much of a groove as the last thing you want is to be dancing to music 😁 But then I'm with Chuck Brown - "If it ain't funky..."

You need hands - Max Bygraves

We had a trip to Telford yesterday to play at a "punk and alternative all-dayer". Our other bass player had to bring his kit, but I had a lovely TC electronics head and 2x 2x10 cabs to play through that the venue had provided; Parker into Helix into that sounded great, a proper meaty slap tone that cut through beautifully. We played well, weren't booed off or even beaten up, was accosted in the toilets by a chap who though we were great which is always nice when you're having a piddle. I was stopped a few more times by folks who enjoyed us... But strangely, we had the smallest crowd! As soon as the hardcore growlers started the room was rammed but our far more melodic punkyfunky stylings were much less popular. Each to their own I spose! However, there was a most excellent Indian restaurant 100m away which did Paneer Chilli so I was very happy. Not only that but I discovered a B road route back that took us 61 minutes for the 50 mile drive... Next week we've got a Dingle To Dottingham, supporting the incomparable Soap Girls (!) at the Old Cold Store. Edited to add photie!

Touch me - Sam Fox

Do ya wanna punk - Sylvester

SpizzLive!

'82 Wal custom from Allbang and Strummit for £500 in '90-91ish. Had to take out a loan to pay for it... Still got it! (not the loan!!)

some proper guitarism...

Closing Time - Semisonic

New Mannequins single