Leonard Smalls

We've got a run of 4 consecutive gigs coming up - Heart of Anarchy with last Tree Squad in Hereford (poster previous page) on 27th April, Guttercrush Festival 5th May in Wellington near Telford (no poster yet!), Soap Girls in Nottingham (poster above) 11th May and newly booked with OG Punks, the Samples in Malvern 20th April:

Orgasm Addict - The Buzzcocks

I've chatted with a few people over the years about a mutual love of P Funk... Firstly, Flea - we shared a "hand rolled cigarette" after I'd blagged my way into an after show party at the Astoria. And Lenny Henry - I arranged to have lunch in the BBC bar with a mate, who brought Lenny with him. They were working on a sitcom together.

I was in a band in the early 80s in Leeds called Dredd and the Badass Weeds... We were kind of ramshackle, and played extended funk-metal and occasionally reggae jams for up to 3 hours if we could get away with it... We broke up when most of us finished at university - some members went on to far greater things. Keith and Jez went on to form MDMA, and later, Utah Saints with lots of chart success. Chris moved back to the US, met up with his old mate Henry and they became the Rollins Band Chris even went on to play with Bowie! And he got me to meet one of my bass heroes, Melvin Gibbs, when I met the Rollinses for lunch in, of all places, the BBC canteen. Our singer, Andy, went on to sing for probably the best of the Madchester bands - New Fast Automatic Daffodils. Our other guitarist - another Andy - still plays with Cassandra Complex who are huge in Germany. And our occasional keyboard player, Jay with the famous mum (Clare Rayner), went on to appear lots on telly eating fancy dinners. The Weeds are still an occasional entity - our long-anticipated debut album is due sometime in the next decade.

Our furthest east gig coming up in May, we'll have to dig out our skimpy mankinis and practice bending over backwards... First time even visiting Nottingham for me!

They're playing at Rebellion 3rd August...

Early electrofunk

Go-Go

A bit of Turkish/US fusion to add to your list!

You did well! When I was in student accommodation halls we had 3 shared toilets on the corridor with 6 student rooms. I put a speaker in the toilet next to my room, and we'd worked out that it was possible to lock the door from the outside. So when someone new went in there we'd secure the door, get Foetus "333" or similar ready at full volume and as soon as they'd started to ablute we'd turn the light off and whack the horrible "music" on. Nobody lasted as long as a minute before screaming for mercy!

Slightly worrying stuff you don't want on full blast while trapped in a student toilet with the lights off:

Kraftwerk-influenced New-Wave Electro:

My goth choices would be even older school! Deutscher Girls: Arguably: And as an alternative

Harmolodic jazz and its offshoots: Heaviest! https://jamaaladeentacuma.bandcamp.com/album/dreamscape Still with Jamaaladeen on bass, widdly wobbly and wonktastic! James Blood, George Adams, Amin Ali and George Adams - Phalanx

Some gentle wake-up music

If it helps, the waiter asked us in German what we wanted... I said "Apfelsaft, gespritzed bitte". Presumably he didn't really speak German very well, or my pronunciation was appalling, so he assumed I wanted an Aperol Spritz...

To paraphrase my namesake: "The name's Smalls, Leonard Smalls. My friends call me Lenny only I ain't got no friends."

Daves seem to be a bit odd! Years ago I was trying to set up a band, had put an ad in the local muso-rag specifying funk, jazz... So Dave turned up at my house in his Reliant Robin, brought out his acoustic guitar and without coming into the house, proceeded to regale me with his repertoire, which were all his own material. Which would have been nice if they weren't so terrible! Like drunk folk round a campfire who couldn't play or singing belting out unrecognisable tosh after 2 bottles of whisky. After his "gig" he got back in his Robin and fecked off. He barely spoke a word at any point, and I never heard from him again!

And a bit more!

A bit of New York No Wave from 1979

There's some seriously crazed guitar playing here... And a Danelectro!

Reliving my youth at Oliver's Nite Spot in Chester...

One of my favourite jazz groups... Always funky but still Proper!

That's a bit catch-all! Rhythm and Blues was coined in 1949 as a phrase by a journo from Billboard magazine to describe, basically, black music. This included blues, jazz, swing etc, and had artists as varied as Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Nat King Cole, The Fabulous Platters. As black music moved away from the basic 12 bar structure a new term was coined -"soul". Meanwhile, a bunch of Brits had got into the blues and started their own combos based on their interpretation of this sound - It got rockier, and many British folks feel that this pub-rock sound is what Rhythm and Blues is/should be. Meanwhile, in the US the term "Black Music" was coined, which covered everything from Miles Davis to Parliament and everything inbetween. However, in the 80s more white artists were using African-American influences so by 1990 Billboard re-purposed the term R&B to mean almost any music of black origin, which is a very wide church even discounting jazz (though this has just as many haters within the BC community as modern R&B!). Me? I like bits of all of 'em