Leonard Smalls

But we both like Magma, and appropriately-placed a'postrophes! But back to la Mitchell; I'm sure she wouldn't care what I thought (nor should she!), but it's not just her I don't like... It's acoustic guitars with a singer attached (not the guitar so much - love a bit of Eduardo Niebla - it's the dinkydinky strumming). Many years ago I went camping with some folks, some of whom I didn't know very well - turns out it was with good reason! We built a campfire, I broke out the Bruichladdich ready to have a nice and increasingly drunken chat looking into the flames and listening to the sounds of the night. But at least 5 of these evil gits had other ideas. They produced acoustic guitars - not lovely little flamenco ones but those big, overly-loud folk ones - and proceeded to strum their way through "I'm leaving (on a jet plane)" and various other songs, including the one about the yellow taxi and various other of those nadirs of music also known as 60s and 70s Americana. Perhaps if there'd been less of that sense of enforced jollity, or perhaps even the tiniest iota of actual musical skill rather than just every note and beat with exactly the same intonation, with no hint of even the slightest syncopation I'd feel differently about that sort of hippydippy strumfest. As it is I still wake up screaming with the words "Kum bye R" (wtf?) bouncing around in me heid. And to those who feel personally affronted by my hatred of Joni (and Janis, and Neil Young, and Boob Dylan), don't be! I can't understand why someone can't feel the majesty of Ornette Coleman, but also realise that it's Different Strokes For Different Folks...

Before this becomes a full Joni love-in, I can't be doing with her at all. 😜 Too much singing and absolutely no funk. All beautifully played, and completely bland, no musical interest at all for me. And I have spent lots of time being forced to listen to many of her offerings ("Oh you'll love this one" "Nope". "But the lyrics are so deep!" "Well so's Krubera Cave but I have no intention of going down there!" etc)

This may call for Art. Or perhaps just a rack'ette. Or ev'n j'st a m'xt're 'f bo'h. Mebbe even some singing!!!!

More to aspire to!

Through the amp with whichever bass is nearest at the time - sometimes with fx and sometimes without.

Own up, who voted for me? I was sure I'd be the first recipient of nul points! Shall try harder next month...

Some slightly crazed funky spiky modal jazzy groove...

I'm fighting against my old BBC training, where 1KHz reference tone on a digital recording was set at -18dBU... So I tend to record all instruments at peak of around -6, then smear a bit of neutron 3 on it so RMS level is between -15 and -10. Then at the master I use either a Shadow Hills Compressor plus Waves limiter set at absolute peak of -0.5, or recently I've been using Ozone 9 with a Greg Colibri preset such as "high detail wide", then turn down compression slightly as this would otherwise give a dynamic range of only about 3dB! However, when producing a masterpiece such as this month's CompoCompo piece you want it to be as loud and unpleasant as possible - mainly to benefit those of us of a more delicate persuasion (eh Doug? 😁)

I got "coupon usage limit has been reached"...

Apart from the large chunk Big Tony Fisher's got!

The Antidote are pretty good in a jazz-but-funky sort of way...

Arguably! One man's Good Stuff is another's screaming nightmare from hell... If a gig contains Rule Britannia, That Hornpipe and/or Jerusalem, then that, for me, is a bit like that bit in The Exorcist where her head starts spinning and she's bouncing off the ceiling.

Indeed... Cos it's 4 or 5 basses all played only once without any plan (never!), and with all the other tracks apart from click (not that you'd guess!) turned off. I could send you tabs for it though if you're keen 😁 And I have no idea how you managed to play it through twice without murdering someone...

Of course it is! Not like prog... And all those 70s fretw@nk rock guitarists were just keepin' it simple. And that bloody Liszt and his would-be mate, Paganini! Though personally, I love a bit of self-indulgence and subscribe via Eurosport to both types of pissing contest - high wee and long piddle.

For those that like it a bit more Out There, here's Ornette with Jamaaladeen and a pink Kubicki (is it?)

I personally find the JBerlin and the Michael Camillo stuff all that bit wet, beautifully played as it all is. I'm actually the anti-Doug, while he wants all music to tend gently and tunefully toward Jefferson Airplane, I want it to veer wildly off-course, bumping into Suicidal Tendencies, Bootsy and Primus before crashing into Ronald Shannon Jackson and John Zorn...

Be afraid! But I'm actually able to listen all the way through without vomiting now...

Where? Sounds like a nice mellow jazzy thang to me! Here's an example of building jazz carnage...

This month I done a song about Infinite Regress, which is where in an infinite series of entities, each entity depends entirely on the existence of the previous entity. This is often illustrated by the idea that the world is supported on a turtle, which is in turn supported by another turtle. So how far do these turtles go? All the way down. But every fool knows it's hippos, not turtles! Hence, we have this achingly beautiful melody: (good luck ☠️) For those that need to know, apart from drums programmed in EZ drummer, everything else is a Wal bass through various Line6 Helix FX. Obviously not the train and the robin; train was from Freesound, robin was in my garden just itchin' to be a rockstar.

I had the same from See Tickets for the cancelled Primus gig. What was particularly galling was the fact they wouldn't even refund the £4.80 cancellation insurance! The add-ons worked out around 25%, there weren't even printed tickets!

For recording, an '83 Wal. And live, an ACG Recurve. Or a Lightwave Sabre if I feel a bit fretless. Or a Parker PB51 for wild'n'crazy. Or a Sandberg Basic if a little more staid.

And something a bit newer!

Arf McSnigger-Chuckle!