Leonard Smalls

Talking about floating thumbs and fingering techniques and the like, I remember reading an article in Ozzie Razorback hunting mag "Baconbusters" (as you do) which discussed the various ways of separating fighting pig-hunting dogs. They came to the conclusion that the best way was to distract 'em by slipping a handy digit up doggy's jacksie. I suspect one might have to wash one's hands before playing bass though.

Indeed! I've got a mate who's head of equities for a major bank... He pulls a 7 figure salary with bonus to match and completely agrees that it's a house built on sand, though government bail-outs exist if they really c0ck it up! He takes the money happily - his justification is that if he didn't, someone else would! Each to their own, but as I say to him Come the Revolution etc!

Careful now!

Talking of technique... A while ago I was talking to a classical piano teacher about jazz. I showed her some live Thelonius Monk playing "Round Midnight" at Newport Jazz fest with Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie, and all she was interested in was the fact that he had the wrong hand posture. She couldn't listen to what he was playing, couldn't get over the fact that not only were his hands almost completely flat, the little finger sometimes curved over his 4th finger! She couldn't believe that he'd got away with his terrible technique... This didn't surprise me, as she's the sort who get apoplectic if Bach is played using the pedal (*), and who take the score along to concerts in order to whinge if there's the slightest deviation. *the argument is that Bach never had the loud pedal, so how could it be right to play his music using it? My retort would be that Bach not only didn't have the loud pedal, he didn't have the pianoforte. So to play it on one was also deeply wrong!

More proper Christmas music!

A concession to Christmas 😁

Bigger picture this time, and just to show how square most bassplayers are 😁

I think Mr Curtis may have been over-thinking this somewhat in order to be an "interesting" interviewee... However, I also think he fundamentally misunderstood the direction of punk; he seems to feel that it promoted self-obsession, a sort of "my-feelings-are-everything-and-are-the-most-important-thing-in-the-world". Whereas, in actual fact it lead to all sorts of protest movements which were about getting rid of injustice, protecting the environment and stuff. While the Sex Pistols were largely about nihilism (and product), bands like Crass, Dead Kennedys, even the Exploited, were about fighting a crooked system with variously subtle lyrics, not about selling merchandise. At least not specifically. Though I always found it rather entertaining to see that anarcho-syndicalist-espousing Crass had a fine line in beanies and sew-on patches featuring their instantly recognisable logo! Still, everyone's got to make a living, including Mr Curtis, who no doubt has another series to promote...

Here's a little something my band recorded live (but in a studio!) back in October and mixed by me. It's our one and only cover, and it's Penetration's debut single (and minor hit) "Don't Dictate" from 1977... There's also a sly nod to Cameo's "Word Up"! Recorded live at AR Studios with no click track. Sequencers added to manual tempo map, as well as doubling up on bass tracks. Guitar (Strat) is through a Marshall somethingorother, mixed with Bias FX and some plate delay. Vox split, phased and tube distorted, with a touch of Raum. Drums have bass drum and phased snare added to mixed drum stem, and Raph's bass is a Cort through Sans Amp, my bass is a Wal Custom through Helix LT. All rolled in a spot of Ozone 9...

Had a decent gig last night at the Rigger in Newcastle under Lyme. A49 had been closed much of the day due to an accident, and the usual poor diversion signing meant half the band didn't arrive till the moment our soundcheck was due to start (I was on time, being a bit anal I'd checked traffic before leaving 😁). We played well, a couple of Headstocks came to see us but due to being 1st on at a metal night there were only 20-30 there to see us. And despite a stupidly loud kick drum (why?) Nobody threw tomatoes or nuffink. Sound man liked us, said we sounded like some incredibly obscure math punk(?) band none of us had heard of. Still, we got paid, though our drummer somehow left his jacket and cowbell behind! Edit: spellcheck don't know what Headsticks are! And we also managed to take the other band's bass stand, due to over-exuberant sound bloke wanting to completely clear the stage...

Having taught myself bass I have a rather odd technique, which consists of either slapping, picking or strumming with the thumb, and popping, picking or flicking with 2-3 fingers... Works for me!

We're playing in Newcastle -U-Lyme this Friday. I suspect there won't be many Christmas songs! There's us (punk funk originals), a grunge-metal originals band and a prog metal band. I'm saving Auld Lang Syne for NYE in Manchester...

We did 2 streamed gigs during lockdown... The first thing I discovered was that our broadband upload speed needed to be at least 10 Megs, preferably more! So we recorded it and sent it to someone to play out when the time came - they had sufficient speed. Also, and luckily, our drummer had left so I programmed drums using EZ drummer as a backing which made micing drums and stuff disappear as a problem. We played quietly, with everything recorded onto Ableton on my laptop through a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. I gave it all a quick polish using Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 and it went out quite happily - we only used one fixed camera btw and did the entire gig in 1 take... Here's a snippet!

As George Clinton himself said "you can't Doobie yo' funk!"

To be fair, the majority of new music doesn't half sound like music that's been done 1000 times before,albeit with an extra doo wah diddy or slightly different instrumentation or (God forbid!), a different key. Anything that is seriously new and completely different tends to scare most folks so much that they turn into a sort of pitchfork- and torch-wielding mob, advancing on the evil monster and shouting "this isn't music!" and "the kids nowadays don't know nothing about a proper choon!".

Not exactly a gig situation, but I've lost count of the number of people who come into our shop and say "it's so nice to walk in somewhere and hear something different from all those same old Christmas songs!" I do slot a couple in, like Bootsy's "Silent Night" and this one (which our band refused to cover 😁)

I'm just mixing a cover my band recorded recently for our upcoming album... Does that count? Or as a more leftfield question, can I submit a cover I've done of one of my band's songs even though I've used the existing vocals?

Perfect anniversary - weekend in February by the bracing sea at Butlins in Rhyl, topped off by a visit to a club with (wait for it) a Function One sound system! And what a surprise it would be to see yours truly playing there as well!

We're on at The Late Lounge in Rhyl on 4th Feb with Eyelicker and Red or Dead... https://fb.me/e/23iGjTy7j

For £900 I got a refurbished HP audio workstation running windows 10 Pro from Bargain Hardware... That included 48Gb RAM, 2 x Xeon 16 core 3.6GHz processors, a 1Tb SSD and a 3 TB disc drive.

We've changed the intro to one of our songs for the NYE gig... Now it's full distorted Royal Blood bass doing Auld Lang Syne for 8 bars before coming in with our anti-hunting song 😁

I'll tell Sam to cut back on her constant effin' and blindin'

When I worked for the Beeb I used to go to the incidental music recordings at TVCentre music studio for a couple of progs I worked on - Lovejoy and Hetty Wainthropp. In both cases the composer and MD would get together beforehand, send out music to the "band", there'd be one rehearsal then everything would be recorded live - mostly in 1 take. 30 cues would be recorded perfectly in 3 or 4 hours...

We're working on a mash up of Groove is in the Heart and Gary Numan's "Cars"...