Leonard Smalls

Shiny shiny - Haysi Fantayzi

Shaved Women - Crass

Running from Paradise - Hall and Oates (featuring slap bass!)

Back in the day we learnt that if the grass was strong enough you didn't care if it rained or not. This is perhaps why we stopped imbibing before gigs!

Who needs a bass guitar when you can do serious sequenced stuff - this used to get us out on the dancefloor back in '82. Even saw him "live" at the Warehouse in Leeds in '83 - very funny guy as well (RIP)

Gammon Everybody - Sid Vichysoise

We're originals too, so anywhere between 25 minutes and an hour depending on where we are on the bill and how many bands are playing.

Maggie - The Exploited (NB lots of swearing and anti Thatcher stuff 😁)

Nope... This chap was called John, and worked as a TK operator at Auntie Beeb - at least he did 25 years ago when I last saw him!

No idea! All I know is it's a big one and he keeps it at some railway museum re-enactment playground sort of thing. I do remember working with him once and he rang his mum to ask her to record Eastenders on his 2". Which I found rather impressive as a) it was seriously enormous and b) required a complex line-up procedure to get going. You can see how worrying a bit of kit it was, but he'd got his mum running it happily!

Jilted John - Jilted John

But what about the romance of steam? I do, however, know someone who owns a Deltic! This same person also owns an Ampex 2" video machine...

Reminds me of a holiday job I had when about 18 or 19 as a boat driver at Chester Zoo.. Folks would be charged about 30p each to be driven around the canal in the zoo on an old lifeboat so they could get a different view of the animals. However, there were a number of bridges en route where occasionally little scrotes would wait and drop things or spit on the passengers. A couple of us, being young and fit, discovered we could put the boat into reverse just before the bridge. Then we'd leap up and over the fence, little scrotes would scatter and then we'd jump back on the boat as it emerged on the other side to (hopefully!) cheers and tips from un-spat-on punters.

So I fancied a bit more jazz... So here's Les and The Boys covering some Stanley Clarke.

I find the best solution is to play music that only a handful of chin-stroking goatee- and black polo neck-wearing pseuds will want to watch, if you're lucky. That way no-one is likely to ask for Wonderwall or any of that cack, though you may get embroiled in a heated discussion on whether James Carter's sax-playing actually counts as chord play or, in extreme circumstances, on the relative merits of the BR Standard Class 9F compared to the Deltic.

Modern jazz for Modern people!

I remember a review of his album in the NME saying it was the funkiest thing in the world ever ever... I was most disappointed to find it was mostly soft poppy fluff with only the tiniest hint here and there of The Whole Funk And Nothing But The Funk!

You spin me round like a record - Dead or Alive

This too..

You're never too old, or too young! Check the Herbie Headhunters stuff if you like that...

Where's Captain Kirk? - Spizz Energi

Kid's stuff! This came out in 1982 - my funky blues band are working on a version at the moment, which is quite fun!

Trust in me - Kaa

That ain't a thing, it's a thang - Dredd and the Badass Weeds

I bought the album this originally came from thinking it was a straight-up funk album suitable for playing at my funk'n'disco DJ night, but discovered it wasn't. But eventually I grew to love it and had to play the bass line - Sunk In The Funk: