Leonard Smalls

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!!!

Me neither... If our loud'n'heavy punk(ish) band sounded half as crazed as that I'd be happy! But Ronald needs to work on his singing... Though with Bill Frisell, I preferred his early stuff; remember seeing him with Powertools (i.e. him, Ronald and Melvin Gibbs) in a pub in Fulham once, which was a little bit of a weird thang!

Some batshyte crazy wake-up music...

Weirdly, back in the late 80s I bought a Rotel RB970 hifi power amp to go with my Gale 401 speakers... It made a squeaking noise and died after about 10 minutes. So I took it back, they replaced it and the next one did the same thing. So, thinking that was a bit weird I prised off the cladding lining the recess the amp was sitting on and I found a live coil of about 25m of mains cable right next to where the amp's transformer was (old house, and housing co-op so no maintenance since probably 1936). I removed the coil, took the amp back for replacement (they did!) and all worked fine from then on. Until some bleedin' burglers had it away (we were in Harlesden).

Unfortunately our gig at Babar Cafe in Hereford on 19th May has been cancelled by the venue due to "noise complaints". We hadn't even got there, but perhaps they'd heard about my 1500W amp... Next gig is for the Weeds - first gig in about 8 years and with only 60% of the band - they've been replaced by sequencers, sample triggering, multi tasking and (allegedly) a well-known dance DJ...

The @rse who complained about our band from 400m away also complained to the local farmer about sheep noise... And he reported his direct neighbour "for burning noxious waste and making excessive noise" - on investigation it turned out the burning in question was on 5th November, and the excessive noise was kids going ooh and aah as fireworks went off.

It's up to the driver to ensure that they're driving at a speed that's appropriate for both the conditions and their skill level. This means it's not up to others to avoid them... So if a driver is doing 60mph on a foggy motorway, that's inappropriate. Similarly if someone is driving at speeds that cause them to be on the other side of the road because they can't feel what the car is doing then that's inappropriate. But if a reasonably skilled driver is doing 90 in clear conditions with good visibility on an A road that's making progress even though it's against the law! Similarly playing Flea slap or Jaco fingerstyle over Walk on the Wild Side is probably inappropriate for the conditions unless that's the arrangement... Though I've discovered there's a certain sort of bass player who feel that anything more than rootfifth should be punishable by death 😁

It's like driving; it's not speed that kills, it's inappropriate speed! And that means speed that's inappropriate for the conditions, or for the driver's skill level.

Right-O! In my occasional series of covers, here's the Motel's "Total Control". Though it's slightly reworked as a rant against the billionaire newspaper owners who shape public opinion in order to further their own agendas.... Lyrics are on the Soundcloud link for those that like that sort of thing. Starring me on basses (processing by Helix and/or Bias FX), guitar solos (processing Bias amp/FX)and vox (sorry!) and Mr EZ Drummer on drums (but fills programmed by His Royal Me-ness). All mixed in Ableton, mastered with Ozone 9.