Leonard Smalls

Here's mine! I was tempted to defy the directive and do Putney Parsnip Dub... Then I nearly veered off north of the river to attempt Pimlico Parsnip or even Totenham Turnip Dub. However, because I always do what I'm told, here we have a dubwise celebration of South East London's finest root vegetables. Bass is the trusty Wal all done with first and only take, to basic rhythm track. Then more drums, percussion, melodica VST, strat and various funny noises liberally slathered in delay and FX all added later in a desperate attempt to gild the lily...

Our next one is April 27th! But gives us time to work on arrangements for new stuff. Singer gets most of our gigs sorted, she wants to do loads, I'm happier with no more than 1 a month, unless they're very local (though that's unlikely unless you're playing "All The Hits of The 60s Right Up to Now!", or you're a StatusQuo/Wurzels trubute act). And we make no money out of it - we jokingly justify this to ourselves by saying we're preserving our artistic integrity 🤣 Though many years ago I was in a Grotowskian theatre company. We were very keen on our "Artistic Integrity" (or at least the director was!) to such an extent that, while doing a 2 week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival successfully playing to audiences of 5 or less with great adherence to our principles, we discovered that a journo from the Telegraph was coming to review us. We (sorry he, the director) were (was) so appalled at the possibility of selling out to The Man that we (i.e. he) found a reproduction of the Man Ray photo of an eye, put it in a nice wooden frame, and carved the words "Do Not Use The Sign Of The Eye Until You Yourself Can See" into the frame. Then he (for it wasn't us!) summoned the chap who'd championed us (Richard Dimarco), presented the picture to him and promptly put his fist through it. Then we all left the Festival. We (not him so much) thought this was all rather bizarrely hilarious, but then we had been drinking lots of barley wine over bitter in Jeannie Dean's Tryst next door!

And I've made a start on the bassoon, bouzouki and balafon, with beatboxing, bongos and banjo to add later.

Think I've got the bones of it sorted after a couple of hours today.... Laid down bass and bagpipes already!

I felt it was a bit plodding too...

Back in the early 90s our wacky PunkFunk band used this as intro music, which we'd drown out with an everyone playing everything at once complete noise, which we'd abruptly stop and jump into our first song...

Tis!

In 1990 or so I went into Allbang and Strummit in Covent Garden with £500 cash in my pocket... I tried a Jaydee at £450, a Wal mk 1 at £500 and an Alembic (the Stanley Clarke type) for £550... Loved them all, couldn't afford the extra £50 so bought the Wal, which I still have. It's a bit battered after 100s of gigs, there's still some fluorescent paint in-between the pickup and body from a band where we got painted as we played (!), but don't think I'd ever sell it...

Here's me with extra fat skis...

None more slappy!

Blues featuring Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Jerome Bigfoot Brailey and ex Ornette Coleman guitarist James Blood...

Derek Bailey and the history of free improvisation is a most excellent read... It is as well!

I think it's only guaranteed to embed if you do it with a laptop or PC... I can't embed with my (android) mobile.

Me neither! Added to our work playlist - now up to 1200 songs!

Bit of early Spizz... He was staying at our B&B at Rebellion this year - nice guy!

I thought I'd celebrate Albert Hoffman's Bicycle Day a bit early this year 😁😎☠️ In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed, I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. For a change we've got proper singing, a touch of rap and a relatively straightforward groove featuring the Wal as both guitar and bass, plus a Strat and a few found samples. Drums programmed with EZ with some Loopcloud drums as well. Keys are AAS, Iris and Clavinet and everything has been first daubed with 196 types of reverb and delay, then liberally rolled in Ozone 9.

Bit in the futt, but looking forward to this one... With Hereford skapunk legends, Last Tree Squad, punky riff monsters MC16 and the crazed electropunkdance of ANoise...

You missed exactly this in this month's Basschat December Covers Challenge... I did Sylvester's "Do you Wanna Funk" but with a P... Unfortunately, my band don't think the lyrical content is serious enough for us to all play it. Praps if I sing it too?

Not straight ahead metal, but not easy! Otherwise their alter-egos, Infectious Grooves with "Violent and Funky" - live version here...

Discovered these Oz rockers at Rebellion this year...

Most sadly missed. I remember booking them once and they turned up, sniffling and obviously not at all well but they still put on a brilliant show. Lovely blokes as well!

Not necessarily! It's just a question of arrangement. One can do the bass-ics, the other can do rhythm guitar, or play counterpoint to the vox or guitar, or do little widdley bits left right and centre. That's what we do!

If she's only a beginner all she has to do is play the simple root stuff, allowing you to solo wildly over the top. Like we do in our 2 bass band!

ER... For the cover challenge I thought I'd do a completely original song wot is all my own work. Any similarity to the Sylvester disco classic with a very similar name is purely co-incidental! This also features my wife on backing vox! Featuring Wal bass as both disco bass and punk guitars (via Bias FX), vox by me and my wife, sequencers are Massive and USynth, drums through EZ. All rolled in Neutron 3 and Ozone 9, with some Nectar Elements on the vox.