Leonard Smalls

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.

You'll be pleased to hear I've veered in this direction too... My 2-and-a-bit minutes of puwest punk wock are nearly ready. Be afraid!

We had a long running issue with a "neighbour" (he was across the valley, 400m away!) complaining about our band practising. After many letters from the council and one visit from the police (he'd told them I was breaking covid rules, they were surprised to find me on my own, playing bass with EZ Drummer), plus recording equipment installed at his house, the EHO concluded that while you could hear it there it was by no means at any sort of nuisance level (quieter than the road), and that he was being unreasonable, as we only practised for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon... Which was nice but still rather annoying.

I had to play much of our last gig sitting down due to the 1st bad back I've had in more than 10 years... I couldn't find a handy stool, but I discovered that my Marshall Jubilee amp on top of Markbass 2x10 worked perfectly.

The simple answer is to play jazz and/or funk... Alternatively, just hoik the strap and make like guitar matey from Idles. Cool is how you carry it off, not by copying

We played with them last year at Percy's in Whitchurch!

I'm enjoying my mashed up version of Penetration's "Don't Dictate" and Cameo's "Word Up"... And I'm working on a proper fun punkmetal version of Sylvester's "Do you wanna funk".

Sold the Revox years ago... But had to borrow a Dolby SR unit to listen to work stuff... Amazing my Ditton 66/2 and Lumley valve monoblocks speakers had a much more extension than BBC broadcast kit!

To be fair, at least you get a sheet! If you want real completely Batshyt crazy useless stuff, these folks take some beating... http://machinadynamica.com/machina47.htm