Leonard Smalls

Bit of pumpin' jazz blues (or is it blues jazz?) from guitar maestro Scott Henderson and band...

We rehearse as much as poss... Had our 2nd rehearsal with our new drummer (Bob, ex of terminal Rage!). And while we're still a bit rough - some of our songs are quite complicated with annoying stops and rhythm changes - he's getting the hang and we'll hopefully soon be even tighter than we were before. Luckily, we haven't got any gigs booked till May so we can sort some of the previous annoyances out - like getting rid of old drummer's 4 beat fill he always stuck in a 2 beat space, despite hundreds of attempts by me to stamp that out!

I remember when I used to DJ at Leeds University back in the 80s... I played almost exclusively, funk, rare groove, electro and funky disco. I rarely had an empty dancefloor, folks were happy to get down to James Brown, Parliament, Fatback, Jonzunb Crew, Mean Machine, Trouble Funk... But once a guy came up and asked if I had any dance music. I asked what he meant by that and he said "something like The Virgin Prunes" (this was Goth Central in 1984ish!). And amazingly, I had Pagan Lovesong on 7". So I put it on, the dancefloor emptied and Me-laddo wobbled about on his own for a bit.

Blue Meanings -Toyah

Death Star Disco - PiL

Oh didn't I say - Tubeway Army

There isn't one! This fizzled out a while ago, though the monthly composition challenge allows for all things, including noodles (or even silence!). Unfortunately there's only about 8 or 10 regular posters or listeners to that thread - seems that most BCers aren't interested in their fellow forumateers' attempts at fame and fortune...

Angels One Five - Weeds

I wanna be your dog!- The Stooges

Totally Wired! - The Fall

Apart from 6 Music! They have Giles Peterson with obscure jazz on a Saturday afternoon. And Craig's funk'n'soul show is filled with gems both obscure and ancient. There's even bangin' choons for da kids with Jamz Supernova's show. Even during peak afternoon shows I've heard bands like The Residents, Goatgirl, Gillaband...

Dead Souls - Joy Division

Mommy, where's daddy? - Red Hot Chilli Peppers

Knowing that narrowboating and drum'n'bass go together like Chas'n'Dave I've done some jazzy fretless noodling. Roni Size eat yer heart out! 😁😎🤘 Lots of C chords on the Johanna (Ableton stock sound), with chromatic noodling on fretless lightwave Sabre bass. Bass is clean, plus 2 tracks through 2 patches of Future Impact. Extra synth is Bloom vocal synth and Iris bass synth with fretless track rendered to midi to trigger 'em. Drums are programmed through Ableton's Phat and Flat and FADL kits. All mixed in Doblys with a good dollop of Raum, Dubstation and Objeq delays then all smeared in Ozone 9 and Neutron 3.

Cast A Long Shadow - The Monochrome Set

My Girl - Madness

Nazi Goths F Off -Suzi Sabotage

Don't Fake The Funk - prince Charles and the City Beat Band

My favourite haiku, courtesy of the great Dr John Cooper Clarke: To freeze a moment In seventeen syllables Is very difi

Funky Worm - Ohio Players

First time we played the old Powerhaus in Islington we did our soundcheck, discovered we were all starving so headed round the corner to an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. In order to get out moneysworth we took them at their word and ate more than we thought possible. Which turned out to be foolish as none of us could move and had to have chairs on stage. This might have been OK if we were a jazz band, but we were a high-energy punk-funk band, complete with two painters who painted us with fluorescent paint as we tried to play and not to gag... And we got grief for the painty chairs - we had to scrub 'em! Still, we played there again and at all the other mean Fiddler venues...

Police Truck - Dead Kennedys

We used to have a roadie called Paul who had a hand-painted black transit van that had a top speed of about 50mph... We were playing in Exeter, iirc, and drove back to London slowly. All of us were a bit knacked (and possibly lubricated - there'd been a couple of cases of beer for us!) so the band all fell asleep on top of the amps'n'cabs in the back. I woke up quite a while later to discover we were in the middle of nowhere, no motorway anywhere in site, just very dark countryside. Turns out that Paul, who looked a bit like Camberwell Carrot man in Withnail and I (and usually had something similar in his mouth) had this thing where he'd follow the line on the left of the road. With us all asleep he'd done that and now we were on a single track lane somewhere in Oxfordshire. From then on we made sure someone was always awake to keep him on the correct road!

There's loads of bands. You just have to go out and find 'em! We're playing Rebellion this year, there's well over 300 bands playing ranging from 60+ OG punks to spotty 18 year olds. And that's just one punk fest - check all the others, there's a few more than plenty! As for charts, we haven't even registered our songs - you have to pay extra!

Deep in the woods - The Birthday Party