Leonard Smalls

I ran a pseudo surround set up for years in my hifi, called a Hafler Circuit. In effect it puts a difference between left and right channels signal into a pair of rear speakers. It gives a surround experience for any stereo recording, though some were more successful than others! But it doesn't have to be a surround recording... You wire your front speakers as normal. Then you put a 2nd set behind you listening position - if they're more sensitive than the fronts you'll get more from them, they also do't need to go very low as bass is less directional. You get a single bit of wire from amp R+ to 1st speaker R+, then from speaker R- to other speaker L-, then from R+ back to amp L+.

Biggest gig so far for us, Rebellion!

I've got p-lenty of that - often produced for the BC monthly compo compo, though unfortunately I'm yet to score a nul points And a jazz-classical crossover attempt at the Christmas number 1...

This is my other band... Formed nearly 40 years ago with no actual success apart from playing with Mikey Dread at the Warehouse in Leeds back in 1985. However, the drummer went off to form the Utah Saints via MDMA, one guitarist went back to the USA and played with the Rollins Band, other guitarist is now with successful Goth band Cassandra Complex (top 10 record in Germany last month) and keyboard player was Jay Rayner! Only little 'ol me had no stardom! This is what we (unsuccessfully!) produced after reforming for drummer's wedding (we're still playing!) - vid shot in my garden and edited by me...

From perhaps 1991... Audio and performance video all recorded live (to DAT and Umatic)in our rehearsal studio, which was a back room in a Harlesden terrace. Our nearest thing to fame was a tour supporting Gaye Bykers on Acid, plus another tour supporting Carter, and 2 headlines at the Marquee...

In our band we have a policy of either above or below the belt buckle, if worn... With sparkley trews like this though it would be rude not to show 'em off!

We always have 2 basses on stage, with 2 amps/cabs and 2 sets of FX. If we only had one of everything what would our 2nd bass player use?

On the occasion of my mother's 70th birthday I thought I'd treat her and take her to Vienna to see something exciting at the Musikverein; she'd never been and was desperate to see the beautiful Golden Hall. As she's a piano teacher I got tickets for Someone Or Other (can't remember who) playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. We'd gone for a 5 night break, and on the 2nd night I discovered a lovely little microbrewery just round the corner from our hotel. We had a number of pints of very fine beer to wash down our schnitzel mit kasspaetzle, and at around 930pm mother got worried I'd lost the tickets. I got them out to show we were sorted when I realised the concert was that night, and would be just about finished... So that was £130 wasted! But in order to make up for my duff calendar-keeping I rushed round to the concert hall in the morning and found they had tickets for that night's performance of a little known Liszt organ work, so we went to that instead, which was nice!

Another outing to the excellent Dark Horse at Moseley for us...

Banks are trying to make cash more and more difficult... In our shop it's now cheaper for us to take cards (debit at least) than cash. Shopping around for merchant services got us a great deal, and now that our local post office is closed we have to drive into town to bank cash. So we have to pay a cash deposit fee, plus a counting fee, plus paying for parking and whatever the time taken costs!

Fkin A! https://youtu.be/yldR0TcbML0

Mine are called "This one", "That One", "The One Over There", "The Other One" and "Darkinblad the Brightlayer, Destroyer Of Worlds".

New Lachy Doley single with Bootsy. Funky!!!

It was Art, dahling!

Oh yes! There's money in the right kind of weirdness! I remember our lot changing the show somewhat while I was away in That London - I was only the (on-stage) stage manager (I wandered about on stage in a dinner suit with a Moroccan Horseman's sword strapped on my back) - and we were due to do an actual show with actual decent audience at Peace Hall in Halifax. So I'd only wander about during the first bit of the show, then I was meant to run up a ladder to the top of this tower I had to build and throw first turnips then flour down this huge funnel. Meanwhile they "walked from the stomach" and recited important gibberish in Chaucerian English while dressed in sacks. As I hadn't been party to what was due to happen after the flour-dousing I just remember thinking "they can't be that stupid" as they lit some flaming torches. I slid down the ladder shouting "Noooo!!!" as Paul, the leader, swished the torch near his hessian skirt and went up with flames about 15-20 feet high. He jumped off the stage and as he rolled on the grass I sprayed him with a CO2 fire extinguisher. To all of our credit the show went on as if all this was part of it... And as we sat in the pub for a post-performance pint of Landlord Paul said "who'd'a thought flour were flammable?" Me, for one. But they were Artists...

Funnily enough, in about 1984-5 I was in a Grotowskian theatre company called Theatre Babel who looked (and postured) in much the same way! We were so unwilling to "sell out" that we packed up our Edinburgh Fringe show rather than have a Guardian reviewer see us 🤣

I remember the Sisters were on at freshers week at Leeds Uni in 1982, which was a decent introduction to Goth Town!... I went with Simon from the March Violets who I'd just met that day having joined his Music for the Masses society. At the time I had an attempted Daniel Ash mohican!

Here's a goth precursor... At the time as a sixth form new-wave-kid I thought this lot (and Bauhaus!) were the absolute epitome of cool'n'groovy! Love the bemused audience at the end.

Excellent bit of rocky fusion. Loving them trews as well!

Guitarist in my Other Band also plays for thes OGs!

To be fair, Bring Me The Horizon sound like Justin Bieber doing metal anyway! 😁

I tend toward the slightly crazed nutter look, with occasional forays into looking completely indifferent.

It's a fine line... Buggles glasses, no. Bootsy star-shaped glasses, yes. Either way, trousers like these are de rigeur. I've got some!!!

This! But to make it slightly more interesting, every 4th bar throw in more disco/high NRG octaves chromatically up from F# back to A. And wear sequinned trousers - that's what I'd do! 😁

I'd only get them all to be a bit more exuberant,clothing-wise... We're the band, we should be rock'n'roll, not just some scruffy punters!!!