Leonard Smalls

None from last night yet, but here he/she (you can't tell these days 😁) is next to my ACG.

Proper punk rock night for us at the Star and Garter in Manchester, with Vomit and Ed Banger. Great crowd, we played well and at least 20bpm faster than normal. And someone actually recognised my Parker bass! However, city centre a bit of a nightmare due to huge club just over the way which caused the road to be completely covered in barely clad teenagers - bit of a contrast to the punters at the Star!

We've got to be there by 1630!

Always liked "The Zoo". Very funky for metal!

I do that as well! In fact I do it so often that there's wear marks at the base of the neck...

Funnily enough, when I worked for Auntie Beeb we had lots of layers of management, and some terrible planning... In order to save money, they'd make craft staff (i.e. those who edited, or dubbed, or recorded pix/sound) redundant, but keep the layers of management. Then the programmes themselves (as everything in the beeb was separate within the internal market) would hire those same craft folks to do the work for them. It would cost the programme makers the same, the editor/mixer etc would get paid more because more of the money went to them, and the resources dept who'd made the craft person redundant would save the wages of that person, but lose the far bigger amount of money that hiring them out would bring in. So Resources would lose money, and would eventually only exist in order to hire in staff. Which would mean that all the lower tiers of management would also be made redundant and upper management would be congratulated for reducing the amount of staff (though programme budgets went up as the supply of BBC trained folks became more in demand, what with BBC training also disappearing). I suspect a similar thing is happening in the NHS!

It's not quite so much "Daddy or chips?", but more "boiled turnip or boiled cabbage?" 😁

And now, a Christmas song!

😁

More importantly,if sticking a digit up a dog's fundament doesn't stop 'em fighting,and I'm not sure if choking a scrapping large boar-hunting hound is a good idea, then how do you stop them tearing chunks out of each other? I'm not keen on pulling them apart - tried this on my wedding day when a Weimeraner and Rottie started on each other. All I got was a bite - though my shout as I bled onto my kilt did stop 'em!

That must've been the time our drummer was suffering from Russian Roulette flatulence!

Line 6 Helix... No more dodgy connections, or duff power supplies, no noise at all bar what I play.

We're at the Star and Garter in Manchester for their "traditional" punk New Year's Eve, with HomerSapien, Us (Choked), Vomit and Ed Banger and The Nosebleeds/Slaughter 2. Our concession to the festive season is me playing 8 bars of "Auld Lang Syne" with max distortion as an intro to our anti-hunting song. I may wear a kilt!

Our NYE gig is still on, though Knock Off sadly had to pull out - new headline is Ed Banger and the Nosebleeds/Slaughter 2...

We definitely need to know now! Possibly without pics...

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...