Leonard Smalls

Had a decent gig last night at the Rigger in Newcastle under Lyme. A49 had been closed much of the day due to an accident, and the usual poor diversion signing meant half the band didn't arrive till the moment our soundcheck was due to start (I was on time, being a bit anal I'd checked traffic before leaving 😁). We played well, a couple of Headstocks came to see us but due to being 1st on at a metal night there were only 20-30 there to see us. And despite a stupidly loud kick drum (why?) Nobody threw tomatoes or nuffink. Sound man liked us, said we sounded like some incredibly obscure math punk(?) band none of us had heard of. Still, we got paid, though our drummer somehow left his jacket and cowbell behind! Edit: spellcheck don't know what Headsticks are! And we also managed to take the other band's bass stand, due to over-exuberant sound bloke wanting to completely clear the stage...

Having taught myself bass I have a rather odd technique, which consists of either slapping, picking or strumming with the thumb, and popping, picking or flicking with 2-3 fingers... Works for me!

We're playing in Newcastle -U-Lyme this Friday. I suspect there won't be many Christmas songs! There's us (punk funk originals), a grunge-metal originals band and a prog metal band. I'm saving Auld Lang Syne for NYE in Manchester...

We did 2 streamed gigs during lockdown... The first thing I discovered was that our broadband upload speed needed to be at least 10 Megs, preferably more! So we recorded it and sent it to someone to play out when the time came - they had sufficient speed. Also, and luckily, our drummer had left so I programmed drums using EZ drummer as a backing which made micing drums and stuff disappear as a problem. We played quietly, with everything recorded onto Ableton on my laptop through a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20. I gave it all a quick polish using Neutron 3 and Ozone 9 and it went out quite happily - we only used one fixed camera btw and did the entire gig in 1 take... Here's a snippet!

As George Clinton himself said "you can't Doobie yo' funk!"

To be fair, the majority of new music doesn't half sound like music that's been done 1000 times before,albeit with an extra doo wah diddy or slightly different instrumentation or (God forbid!), a different key. Anything that is seriously new and completely different tends to scare most folks so much that they turn into a sort of pitchfork- and torch-wielding mob, advancing on the evil monster and shouting "this isn't music!" and "the kids nowadays don't know nothing about a proper choon!".

Not exactly a gig situation, but I've lost count of the number of people who come into our shop and say "it's so nice to walk in somewhere and hear something different from all those same old Christmas songs!" I do slot a couple in, like Bootsy's "Silent Night" and this one (which our band refused to cover 😁)

I'm just mixing a cover my band recorded recently for our upcoming album... Does that count? Or as a more leftfield question, can I submit a cover I've done of one of my band's songs even though I've used the existing vocals?

Perfect anniversary - weekend in February by the bracing sea at Butlins in Rhyl, topped off by a visit to a club with (wait for it) a Function One sound system! And what a surprise it would be to see yours truly playing there as well!

We're on at The Late Lounge in Rhyl on 4th Feb with Eyelicker and Red or Dead... https://fb.me/e/23iGjTy7j

For £900 I got a refurbished HP audio workstation running windows 10 Pro from Bargain Hardware... That included 48Gb RAM, 2 x Xeon 16 core 3.6GHz processors, a 1Tb SSD and a 3 TB disc drive.

We've changed the intro to one of our songs for the NYE gig... Now it's full distorted Royal Blood bass doing Auld Lang Syne for 8 bars before coming in with our anti-hunting song 😁

I'll tell Sam to cut back on her constant effin' and blindin'

When I worked for the Beeb I used to go to the incidental music recordings at TVCentre music studio for a couple of progs I worked on - Lovejoy and Hetty Wainthropp. In both cases the composer and MD would get together beforehand, send out music to the "band", there'd be one rehearsal then everything would be recorded live - mostly in 1 take. 30 cues would be recorded perfectly in 3 or 4 hours...

We're working on a mash up of Groove is in the Heart and Gary Numan's "Cars"...

I've played twice with a broken leg, once in the early 90s at Subterranea in Portobello, and once this year at the Nice'n'Sleazy fest. I needed help with my bass cab, but carried everything else!

Bring 'em along! And Rhyl is allegedly late Feb/early March in the Late Lounge, IIRC. Full body armour may/may not be needed...

We've got a gig at The Rigger in Newcastle Under Lyme, supporting female-fronted prog metallers Dakesis on 16th December... Poster to follow, as well as dates in Rhyl, Wakefield and in a field near Pwhelli!

No, he was the bloke married to wotsername off of Eastenders who made his own guitar...

You'd have to have a bit of everything.... Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys Sunk in the Funk - Jamaaladeen Tacuma (Dreamscape version) Italian Concerto - Jacques Loussier (off Play Bach) Physical Love - Bootsy's Rubber Band You Don't Love Me Dub - Dawn Penn Violent and Funky - Infectious Grooves Autobahn - Kraftwerk Get up offa that thing - James Brown and I'd save the Jamaaladeen Tacuma disc - it's jazz, funk, rock and oddness all in one. Book would be Rockclimbs in Snowdonia by Paul Williams. and luxury would be either be full home studio including bass or a never ending barrel of Butty Bach!

It's not possible to say if any band is The Greatest Band Ever... Simply because, unlike in a 100m sprint where it's easy to tell who's the fastest by virtue of them reaching the line first, music is entirely subjective. So saying either Little Mix, or The Beatles, or Gaye Bykers On Acid are the best band ever just shows that you like that band. But as objectivity isn't really possible in matters of personal taste, one can't definitively rate bands above or below each other - they all have equal subjective merit. Apart from Bootsy's Rubber Band and Parliament, who blow them all out of the water 😁 As for the Beatles, not my cup of tea...

Beautiful bit of playing from BassBoy! But my only problem with the YoungJazzer thing is that it's always also SafeJazzer. They never play anything that wouldn't be out of place at Pizza Express in Soho... Saying that, I suspect that if they went the full Sharrock, Coleman or Brotzmann they most certainly wouldn't win!

This is my attitude as well - if you look at my output for the monthly composition challenge you'll see what I mean!

In that case, how's about some harmolodic jazz? Ornette Coleman's Prime Time often played with 2 bassists - here he's with Jamaaladeen Tacuma (pink Kubicki) and Al McDowell, and for the sake of symmetry there's 2 guitars, and 2 drums as well (but only 1 sax)