Leonard Smalls

Funnily enough, this is my experience of U2 as well - I saw them in 1980 on the Boy tour as well (in Liverpool). Guitar was great, singer charismatic, band sounded fine but rhythm section-wise, nowt to write home about (especially as I'd seen ID and the Blockheads the week before). Next time ('83) I saw them The Edge was still good, rhythm section competent but nowt compared to Bauhaus, Simple Minds or Kid Creole who'd played at Leeds Uni not long before. However, Bono had discovered Messiah Mode; he clambered onto a scaffold and held forth for ages in quite an annoying way. Since then I haven't really bothered with 'em.

Excellently shouty punk rap... Expect some bad language!

Funky as! Slightly raunchy vid, but unusually for rap, there's a guitar solo!

I love a good bass solo - more notes the better! Though I prefer ones where the drums keep going, and perhaps guitars and keys do a rhythmic stab on the one or wherever... I tend not to do many at all, probably because most of our band's songs are built from a number of busy bass riffs so there's only so much our poor audience should be burdened with. However, the 3 I do are a 16 bar intro, with melodic bass playing the actual song melody in reverse with guitar feedback and cymbals slowly joining in, a 4 bar with lots of notes slappy groove that's a pre-amble to a crazy chromatic guitar solo in a You've Got Foetus On Your Breath style (!), and a fast chromatic run down the fretboard based on roots and 7ths lasting 2 bars.

Breaking 2 strings at once is quite a feat!

Got one of these coming soon, and this is the feature I'm looking forward to most:

I'd be extremely happy to be fiercely, even violently, loyal to a brand if they would be so kind as to bung me free stuff and put me up as an edorsee on their publicity... And if another brand came and attempted to buy my loyalty with bigger and better free stuff (in much the same way as the first one did), there's absolutely no way I'd jump ship, oh no.

Bit of ol' time Ozzie rock:

Spent far too much time on the this over the last few days... Still, 'er's funky! This month we have a celebration of the Full Moon, in all its forms 😁 Contains basses by Sandberg and ACG, plus lots of fiddling with my new organs. Guitars by Strat (with some widdling by J - cheers!). Drums programmed in and/or using loops by EZ Drummer. Mixed with Neutron 3, Ozone 9 with plenty of Phasis and Raum and a large dollop of BassRoom.

Finally able to make a start... My laptop had decided not to recognise my password - I eventually noticed that it wasn't actually recognising 1/2 of the keys on the keyboard. So I got up the ease of access on-screen keyboard to get into it. After some investigation I discovered that a most helpful Windows update had decided to save power by shutting off some USB buses, which just happened to be connected to part (not all, for some reason?) of the keyboard. Turned that off in power management and all was fine. Cheers Bill! Anyway, so far we've got some quite groovy jazz funk with, mercifully, no singing or (eek!) rapping. Will hopefully get it finished!

Nice to see some Parker Fly geetars... Still use my PB51 bass!

Fan of George too... Here's one of my favourites:

Now this is what I call a good drummer - you should hear his versions of Summer Bries, Camembert Feel The Noize and Relight My Gruyere!

I suspect I'm not one of the Zombies, but I may have a touch of vampire in me... Because I can't be doing with any flat pick'ey P bass tones, or that Danelectro Eurovision tone, or Flea's horrific Maggot Brain sound, or anything at all by Future Islands apart form CrazyMan Dancing!

Perhaps we should merge this thread with the worst bass sound thread, as one man's "this is awesome!" is another's "f$$$ me wot a racquette!"

Our new drummer (if 7 months is new!) wears industrial ear defenders due to tinnitus; however, he's right on time and listens to the rest of the band enough to produce fills and grooves that are actually musical, as opposed to neanderthal!

Slightly odd gig - 'twas a benefit for a local community enterprise in a village hall. Place was full of kids and felt like a house party! However, despite the tiny 400W PA they'd provided (could barely hear vocals!), a real effort had been made making the place look like a haunted castle (including papiere mache autopsy room next door!). We played very well, I was very happy with my bass sound and loads of people danced about - apart from 1 kid who stood at the front telling us it was too loud. We had to do 2 encores before they'd let us leave so all was good!

I'll give this a go! I change strings about every 3 months, depending on how much I play, and I've got 4 basses I use regularly...

I've still got my copy! And I've still got my copy of the Bunnymen's 1st single, from when they had a drum machine. I remember seeing them at Chester Arts Centre, with Teardrop Explodes - £1 to get in iirc, and there was a huge punch up afterwards for some reason, but we managed to escape with inflicting or being inflicted!

Funnily enough, in my 1st band back in the ATs our "drummer" programmed a basic beat into a Roland 606 (or whatever it was) which was strapped to a stringless guitar body. He jumped about with it live, and played stuff over the top. Worked surprisingly well! And last year, after our "real" drummer left, I programmed drum parts from all our songs into Ableton using EZ Drummer, then outputted onto my phone which we plugged into the PA to do a number of live-streamed gigs... And that also worked very well indeed.

Do you mean tunings or standard pitch? As in DADG, or perhaps Just Intonation, or using Equal Temperament relative to A-above middle C being, say 430.54Hz ("Scientific Pitch")? Me? I just stick to A-440 Equal Temperament. Not even a drop D from me, though I have been known to tell folks I'm playing microtonally when my fret position isn't quite right on the fretless!

My effort... I fancied a bit of Dub, so here it is! Sounds best on big speakers with serious bass handling... For those that like that sort of thing, bass is an ACG Recurve double tracked with Bassroom and Voxengo eq. Guitar is a trusty Strat, FX and keys all IRIS 2. Drums programmed from Sample Magic dub kit, cymbals through Jabo Sparks vintage on EZ drummer. All smeared liberally with Dubstation 2, Raum and Phasis, mastered with Ozone 9. Vox by Lee (apart from BG shouts - me!), cheers m8!

Having loved the Chillis from their 1st UK show at the Clarendon in Hammersmith (RIP!), at 2 or 3 quid, all the way up to 5 or 6 paand at the Astoria with blagged after-gig party and quick puff with Flea, I'd go and see them again if tickets were reasonable. But £200ish is far too much for me, especially as it'd involve a hotel too and the fact I don't like any of their touch-feely-attempty-tuney stuff since Californication. I'd prefer to buy a concert DVD, fire up the hifi and sit there comfy with my glass of wine, pipe and slippers, all safe in the knowledge that the only things likely to bash into me are one of my dogs jumping on my head, or my Mrs' elbow objecting to a loud fart. Still very happy to watch bands in small venues though, where you can actually lick the artist's sweat off your own face!

He's known as a fine mimer... He doesn't actually play any of the stuff on the records, it's all Pino on his fretless.