Leonard Smalls

I thought to myself, "that geezer has got the blues"! So that's wot I done... Me and my (singing) mate had a session with my remarkably smooth Ludlow Stolen Youth "English Spirit" (as they can't legally call it whisk(e)y) and came up with just about every blues cliché short of having woken up this morning... Guitars by both of us, with one sneaky bit being Amplesound Les Paul VST (can you tell which? 😁). Bass is a Lightwave fretless overdriven through Focusrite preamp - no other processing. And drums are Clyde Stubblefield plate mix kit part programmed in EZ drummer. All lightly polished with Ozone 9.

Personally, I refuse to play Sweet Home Alabama... Simply because I'm not interested in compromising my opinion that it's a pile of old stinky poo! 😁

Did a Battle of the Bands last night in Hereford... Apart from me being stuck right in front of the guitar amp and being able to hear little but that, it went well! Good crowd and as we went in the van and I wasn't driving I could even have a whole 2 pints of Real Beer! Both basses coming along quite nicely now, with both players sporting proper punky hairdos - with basses from Cort and ACG, my amp being Marshall Jubilee into Markbass 2x10 via Helix. Problem is, us being oldies, we can barely do Facebook and voting for the Battle is over at Instagram where codgers fear to go! So if anyone feels brave and would like to vote for us (Choked), it's here https://www.instagram.com/stories/thejamfac/3080250387046344714/ Here's a snippet featuring punkdisco bass! ChokedKissThisJamFac13-4-23.mp4

There was an excellent one on every Saturday we used to go to in Leeds - 99. We'd go after the Cosmo club... Meanwhile:

She was a scouser!

I used to have a neighbour called Jill Ingham!

We're in Hereford next Thursday! Battle of the bands at the Jam Factory...

Y'all will be pleased that a friend who sings in a blues band came to visit this week. And we had a good 'ol fiddle and a rummage through the clichés... Which means a) I don't have to "sing" b) it's not crazed atonal jazz. More's the pity! Next time, eh?

Currently playing in the shop!

Here's our album... https://choked.bandcamp.com/album/choked Edit: bear in mind the album was recorded 6 months ago... Our dual bass approach has evolved since then!

It's true! I play 5 and 5/9 times better on my Wal than on the Kawai I paid £90 for. But only play 1.25 times better on the Wal than on my Sandberg, but on my ACG I play 1.9 times better than on the Wal. I'm best of all on the Lightwave fretless, which I can play exactly 12x as well as the Kawai on! But that's because, being a fretless it only does jazz.

Us too! Raph does the standard bass stuff and I go widdley woo everywhere else... I use a splitter in my helix so it puts reverb and envelope filter, plus loads of overdrive and distortion on the higher frequencies. However, much to Rap's chagrin, being an E/A string never higher than the fifth fret type punk bassplayer, we've now got a song where he plays chukkachukka damped chords on 3 strings well above the 12th fret.

To my ears it has no disco or funk vibe, but plenty of 80s MoR hair metal/rock vibe! This has a disco vibe... 😁

You was lucky! When I was a lad we'd work 23 hours59 minutes every day, then we'd have to go and fell a tree and make our instruments, mine some iron to make wire for strings and and fashion a large His Master's Voice type cone to make it louder, then we'd have to pay double our daily wage to go and play in a dark cellar stood up to our necks in raw sewage with no-one watching, and we were only allowed to play one song, Mustang Sally!

I've managed to give myself a painful slap injury!

Not sure why, it fits the song which is meant to be a bit getupanddancey! Meanwhile, Remco's band:

Some lovely bass!

But it's a classic and fun to play!

It's been cancelled! Venue probs, apparently... However, we're doing our very first battle of the bands in Hereford on 13th April at the Jam Factory.

Youse lot were all proper lucky! Me and my mates Swamp and Sgav attempted to record our "band" live (me on terrible sounding Farfisa copy organ, Swamp on Kays Cataloge bass through Winfield 25w amp and Sgav hitting Swamp's mum's pots'n'pans) using one of these: Results were poor... But then that's not surprising with the lyrics of one song beginning: I wish I was a paramecium Life would be so very eacium (nick it if you want 😁)

Disco is after all just Funk-Lite!

And don't forget these!

You want rock and you want funk? Don't mess about, look at the works of Mother's Finest!

Strangely, I read that as "Jim Division", and thought what an entertainingly bizarre thing a Joy Division tribute with Jim Davidson-alike singer would be! At least for about 2 minutes...