Leonard Smalls

Last night was Going Feral For Mental Health at Gwatkin Cider in darkest Herefordshire. We played there last year as well, but have moved up the bill a bit, we were at 2010, just before @cheddatom's Headsticks, who as usual were excellent (though I had to sneak off early...). As Tom said, it's a slightly odd crowd - more people seem to sit outside on the benches, but we even had a dancing dog - though it's possible he was trying to get my sporran (oh yes...) and we only made a couple of minor mistakes (drummer keeps insisting on putting a 4 beat fill in where it should be 2) but nobody noticed enough to start throwing tomatoes. Otherwise, all fine - sound is great even on stage! I even had a chap afterwards very interested in my bass and how it made all those weird squealy noises... My Mrs took a photo when I got home, after driving through a serious lightshow followed by torrential rain...

I'm aiming for something that challenges each listener to actually get to the end, and makes most of my previous offerings appear to be like The Carpenters...

Indeed! My introduction to jazz (apart from my dad being into Chris Barber et all) was going into Jumbo Records In Leeds one day to browse. I used to go in weekly to find new funk stuff to play at either the Uni weekly discos, or the Phono or the Warehouse. There was nobody to ask for recommendations (unless I wanted goth stuff!) so I'd browse the imports until I found something funky-looking. There was no way to try-before-you-buy, so I'd look for PFunky art, afros, whatever shouted "funky!". Invariably these same records would have in the credits "thanks to God, and my mom" so when I found Jamaaladeen's "Showstopper" I thought I had the grail; funky suit, cool dude with amazing looking bass shaped like a cricket bat, special thanx to Mom and God - I'd found Tyrone Brunson's "The Smurf" in much the same way. However, I soon realised that the Thursday funk disco couldn't cope with Mr. Tacuma... But I was hooked, soon joined the library and discovered their jazz section which contained "Man with the Horn". Which was nice! And a bit of a slippery slope... I listen to Ornette Coleman for light thrills now and the Company albums for a bit of a boogie!

Next gig tomorrow, at this excellent little festival, just before @cheddatom 's Headsticks...

Which leads me to this:

Talking of widdley jazz, this chap died recently... He even played with the Rollins Band!

I also remember getting into electric jazz, so it's likely one of my Maxwell UDXL2 cassettes would have had Jamaladeen Tacuma's "Showstopper" and Miles Davis' "Man with the Horn" on it...

Proper! I loves a bit of Hiromi... Especially the Sonic Bloom stuff but tis all glorious.

Chilli Peppers "Freakey Styley" on one side, with the excellent "GoGo - the Sound of Washington DC" compilation on the other.

The cradle of Goth! I briefly DJed with Marc Almond there, as well as living downstairs from Dave Gedge for a year, and was a member of the band which spawned Utah Saints, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Snapdragons, Cassandra Complex as well as having a member who went on to be guitar in The Rollins Band and another member who made a living eating food and writing about it, as well as having a famous agony aunt mum. In fact I was the only member who never found any sort of fame...

More guitar and drums... Also kickin'... Contains rude words...

Huge fan of Rob Trujillo, and his previous band(s). But not Metallica!

To be fair, I always liked Limp Bizkit's "Faith"...

A mobile phone snippet from the back garden of the Beauchamp Arms, Dymock... Minor glitch where drummer counts 8 beat rest instead of the 6 it should have been! ChokedKissThisDymock.mp4

Support to xSLF (IE Henry of stuff little fingers) at a pub near Gloucester... We played very well, only one mistake where drummer miscounted a 6 beat rest as eight. Luckily I was watching him! We supplied the pa which was added grief and made it a much later night but at least we got paid! Highlight was when the singer from the other support took his shoes and socks off and ran into the crowd - this was in the pub garden. Unfortunately, unlike me with currently seven dogs, he didn't have the turd eye. When he got back to the stage he complained about a terrible smell, checked his bare feet and noticed the smeared dog egg 🤣

Just been watching TOTP 1984.... Why would Rod Stewart do such an embarrassing version of "some guys have all the luck"? Any more examples of incredibly poor judgement?

Funnily enough we're supplying PA and lights and allegedly getting paid for it... But that's because the venue was let down by their PA guy and the gig was due to be cancelled until we said we could supply our Yammy rehearsal PA - luckily we have lights to. As for backline, I know they're not using my bass amp which is what counts It's only needed for vox (and vox monitor) anyway with perhaps a touch of kick.

Explained it beautifully! However, as a fellow widdler and FX user I find that wearing our band t shirt explains how and why:

In a slight deviation from the topic title, nice support for us with Henry Cluney, ex-guitarist of Stiff Little Fingers, hence xSLF. Anyone near Hereford/Gloucester?

Just been sent this - cheers SeeYaDownTheFront Photography! Me going widdle-de-dee at Rebellion wearing my own band tshirt (though the logo is on the back...)

Getting a bit noisier, this band are most excellent live...

Me too! I've only seen it about twenty times, and it's just as good every time I see it. My Mrs is a veteran of 30+ watches!

Me too! I remember when I moved to this area 20+ years ago the local pub advertised a "jam night". I asked if there would be a bass amp, was told "no" but that amps were allowed. You should have seen their faces when I wheeled in my enormous folded horn cab and Marshall bass amp. The pub was full of folkies with their penny whistles and twiddleytee music - I got to back one brave bloke strumming his own song on an acoustic guitar with no hint about what chords he was likely to play. I never went back to the "jam", but did join the house band for the blues festival "open mic" where we backed singers or instrumentalists - we could do any song from any genre so long as it was strict 8 bar or 12 bar blues...

Me too! I had a chap asking if I wanted to join his band recently and rather than ignore him we corresponded and even found we had folks in common. And I had no interest in joining his band, wasn't my thing and I was busy anyway, but I felt like it was good manners to reply. It's not like he was a spammerscammer trying to steal my life savings (or if he was, there's probably better ways).

Aye! And what's amazing is the amount of folks who don't put pics in, or any sort of idea of what/when/how/why. It only takes a couple of seconds to type something like "been playing guitar for 10 years, looking to join covers band, influences range from Beatles to Metallica"