Leonard Smalls

I love Vivaldi's bassoon concertos!

Amazing how many times you hear folks saying "in 1000 years time, folks will still be playing The Beatles songs... Funnily enough, Bach himself was largely forgotten until re-popularised by Mendelsohn nearly 80 years after JS's death. So I don't hold out much hope for JohnPaulGeorgeandRingo (at least I hope not to 😁)

He could write a good choon, but like with Bob Dylan, covers are better! 👌😁

I suspect that's overstating it somewhat! I don't think even a noticeable minority of BCers are ParkerBaileyBrotzmann fans! And talking of gateway drugs, here's one to Derek...

Some of his stuff is a little bit out there... But this is a gateway drug to it!

Or better still, if they'd got Larry Graham in to slap his way through!

You won't like what's for dinner then! 😁

To some extent! Some punters will only ever like what they know, they're usually the sort of punters who don't really like music and wouldn't go to a specific music venue. Last thing they'd want is new music they've never heard before - what they want is a nice easy sing a long and plenty beer. That's fair enough! However, I wouldn't go to the sort of place where everybody stands next to each other, shouting in their mates' faces, due to being an equal opportunities misanthrope. Dedicated music venue with new bands? Yes. Big packed boozer with covers bands, and large screens showing football at all other times? No. That's why I play in a shouty punkfunk band - last thing we want is an audience!

Next time you'll grimace your way through 30 seconds... Soon you'll have to listen to 45seconds until you buy one of their albums. Then everything else will start to sound twee and tame and you'll look for more Brotzmann, perhaps discovering Derek Bailey and Zorn's Naked Eye. Before long you won't be able to play any normal songs without frightening your band mates with loud unexpected dischords and high speed chromatic runs while playing The Final Countdown... I know, cos that's what happened to me! 😝

Arguably! I enjoy finding music for folks who come to my house who say they like anything... I usually put something like this on, just to see the look of horror: Those same folks wouldn't then reply "Anything" when I say "What would you like to eat then?"

One would expect, on a bass site, that there would be some degree of veneration of acknowledged bass innovators... Which is why it's surprising that I can put forward the unpopular opinion: I like Jaco Pastorius * *At least with Weather Report. And on that album with Birelli Lagrene. But not his overblown and wet solo stuff.

In what may be an unpopular opinion, I can't be doing with Roy Orbison. His mouth's weird and just a bit creepy. And I don't like decade-based music - never trust anyone who, when asked what music they like, says "80s".

Joy of the P? It ain't what you got, it's what you do with it.. This is The P!

I remember talking to an amazing jazz drummer I briefly played with... His attitude was "f#*k the audience! I play because I need to, the music's inside me!" I'm not quite as black and white - though if I was doing a Dead Kennedys song it'd be "Stealing People's Mail"... If it was a Bowie cover it'd be "Yassasin" and requests for "Summer of 69" would tempt me to wield a guitar as a club... (Not one of my basses, obvs)

Conversely, there's the songs that inspired instrumentals! I won't link for obvious reasons, but Chopin borrowed heavily for his Prelude in C minor from Barry Manilow's "Could it be Magic"...

To be fair, Elvis did two good films - King Creole and Jailhouse Rock. The rest were pap...

Just rediscovered these 32 year recordings by old band did live in our living room. So I've been listening enough to do remixes wot sound just a little bit better. Shame we only recorded straight to DAT so limited with what I could do. Suffice to say, there's an ambient jazzy drum solo about 4 mins in!

You can't build a 6 skinner on a cd case, never mind a download! 😈

I'm looking for sympathy votes in the composition challenge 😁 Annoyingly, we've got a gig in Morecambe a week on Thursday! Hopefully 'twill be in plaster by then so at least the slightest eructation doesn't hurt.

This morning I was so excited at receiving a message from eBay saying I'd won an auction for a Line 6 Helix LT that I slipped on wet grass and broke my ankle in 2 places!

Indeed... In the red tops scientists are always "boffins". And kids in ordinary schools get a kicking if they're a swot!

There's 2 major points here! Firstly, the idea of "self-indulgence" and "niche appeal". Self indulgence is usually applied to virtuosity in music one doesn't like, whereas a similar, or possibly far lower, level of skill in another piece of music could be called "genius". And those types of music with by far the highest levels of skill are also those with niche appeal - frinstance classical and jazz. Now could this lack of appeal of more complex music be because of the first point, a failure in music education at a young age? After all, most (UK) school music lessons are an excuse to misbehave, it's not treated as a proper subject, media largely ignores any music outside of the simplest of popular warbling. So in order to continue your musical education you have to either go it alone - often because of parents' hot-housing' efforts via private lessons - or being self-taught, or braving the school education route with all its difficulties. And by musical education I don't just mean playing an instrument, but an appreciation (not necessarily a liking!) for all forms of music. And there's been many Berkeley alumni in all sorts of musical genres: Les Claypool, Stewart Copeland, Adam Duritz (Counting Crows), Susanna Hofs, Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead - attended for a while!), Raymond Pepperell (Dead Kennedys), Terry Riley...

It's a .mov file... Because it runs on Apple's 8 bit architecture it won't run in Chrome, or Edge, or even allow you to download! And the itunes link won't allow play on anything but the itunes app - no browsers!

Here's something rockin' my old band recorded live in our living room back in 1991ish. Was recorded using 4 mics on kit, di from keys and bass, and vocal mic/ guitar mic, all going to a borrowed 24 track desk in the bedroom next door. All was recorded directly to DAT with no fx. I've tinkered with some eqs, compression etc to make a better mix!