Leonard Smalls

Me neither... If our loud'n'heavy punk(ish) band sounded half as crazed as that I'd be happy! But Ronald needs to work on his singing... Though with Bill Frisell, I preferred his early stuff; remember seeing him with Powertools (i.e. him, Ronald and Melvin Gibbs) in a pub in Fulham once, which was a little bit of a weird thang!

Some batshyte crazy wake-up music...

Weirdly, back in the late 80s I bought a Rotel RB970 hifi power amp to go with my Gale 401 speakers... It made a squeaking noise and died after about 10 minutes. So I took it back, they replaced it and the next one did the same thing. So, thinking that was a bit weird I prised off the cladding lining the recess the amp was sitting on and I found a live coil of about 25m of mains cable right next to where the amp's transformer was (old house, and housing co-op so no maintenance since probably 1936). I removed the coil, took the amp back for replacement (they did!) and all worked fine from then on. Until some bleedin' burglers had it away (we were in Harlesden).

Unfortunately our gig at Babar Cafe in Hereford on 19th May has been cancelled by the venue due to "noise complaints". We hadn't even got there, but perhaps they'd heard about my 1500W amp... Next gig is for the Weeds - first gig in about 8 years and with only 60% of the band - they've been replaced by sequencers, sample triggering, multi tasking and (allegedly) a well-known dance DJ...

The @rse who complained about our band from 400m away also complained to the local farmer about sheep noise... And he reported his direct neighbour "for burning noxious waste and making excessive noise" - on investigation it turned out the burning in question was on 5th November, and the excessive noise was kids going ooh and aah as fireworks went off.

It's up to the driver to ensure that they're driving at a speed that's appropriate for both the conditions and their skill level. This means it's not up to others to avoid them... So if a driver is doing 60mph on a foggy motorway, that's inappropriate. Similarly if someone is driving at speeds that cause them to be on the other side of the road because they can't feel what the car is doing then that's inappropriate. But if a reasonably skilled driver is doing 90 in clear conditions with good visibility on an A road that's making progress even though it's against the law! Similarly playing Flea slap or Jaco fingerstyle over Walk on the Wild Side is probably inappropriate for the conditions unless that's the arrangement... Though I've discovered there's a certain sort of bass player who feel that anything more than rootfifth should be punishable by death 😁

It's like driving; it's not speed that kills, it's inappropriate speed! And that means speed that's inappropriate for the conditions, or for the driver's skill level.

Right-O! In my occasional series of covers, here's the Motel's "Total Control". Though it's slightly reworked as a rant against the billionaire newspaper owners who shape public opinion in order to further their own agendas.... Lyrics are on the Soundcloud link for those that like that sort of thing. Starring me on basses (processing by Helix and/or Bias FX), guitar solos (processing Bias amp/FX)and vox (sorry!) and Mr EZ Drummer on drums (but fills programmed by His Royal Me-ness). All mixed in Ableton, mastered with Ozone 9.

You'll be pleased to hear I've veered in this direction too... My 2-and-a-bit minutes of puwest punk wock are nearly ready. Be afraid!

We had a long running issue with a "neighbour" (he was across the valley, 400m away!) complaining about our band practising. After many letters from the council and one visit from the police (he'd told them I was breaking covid rules, they were surprised to find me on my own, playing bass with EZ Drummer), plus recording equipment installed at his house, the EHO concluded that while you could hear it there it was by no means at any sort of nuisance level (quieter than the road), and that he was being unreasonable, as we only practised for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon... Which was nice but still rather annoying.

I had to play much of our last gig sitting down due to the 1st bad back I've had in more than 10 years... I couldn't find a handy stool, but I discovered that my Marshall Jubilee amp on top of Markbass 2x10 worked perfectly.

The simple answer is to play jazz and/or funk... Alternatively, just hoik the strap and make like guitar matey from Idles. Cool is how you carry it off, not by copying

We played with them last year at Percy's in Whitchurch!

I'm enjoying my mashed up version of Penetration's "Don't Dictate" and Cameo's "Word Up"... And I'm working on a proper fun punkmetal version of Sylvester's "Do you wanna funk".

Sold the Revox years ago... But had to borrow a Dolby SR unit to listen to work stuff... Amazing my Ditton 66/2 and Lumley valve monoblocks speakers had a much more extension than BBC broadcast kit!

To be fair, at least you get a sheet! If you want real completely Batshyt crazy useless stuff, these folks take some beating... http://machinadynamica.com/machina47.htm

They've published a paper by messrs Oschmann and Chevalier - all the papers include a mix of those two with a Mr Brown and a Mr Chopra. There appears to be no independent verification or studies by anyone else, so who knows. But the nonsense about dirty electricity tells me it's a fad product with no real basis in anything but a bee in the bonnets of a few alleged scientists - I also note that Mr Chevalier is associated with the Quantum University of Integrative Medicine: Quantum University is the world’s largest institution of higher learning to provide online degrees and certification programs in holistic, alternative, natural, and integrative medicine based on the science of quantum physics. Didn't Doctor Gillian McKeith, previously the world's foremost TV poo-doctor, get her doctorate from a similar place? And anything that uses "Quantum" in their marketing and blurb is usually a purveyor of pseudo-science...

But there's a whole page on The Science!!! Though I note that most of the studies cited are by a Mr Geatan Chevalier and Mr J Oschmann. And that no further peer reviews seem to be available... Most excitingly, I see that while these grounding sleep mats are connected to The Ground via a mains cable, there's a 100000ohm resistor in line for "safety" which is likely to seriously inhibit the flow of all those lovely negative earth electrons (as opposed to yer common and garden ordinary electron) in to your body. And in a further rebuttal of their own "Science": A common misconception about Earthing technology is that when you ground yourself indoors by connecting to a mains plug socket, “dirty electricity” comes through the cord to the Earthing sheet, and through your body. However, this would be impossible as there can be no current on Earthing products connected to a plug socket because they are connected to one Earth point only, and not part of a closed circuit necessary for a current to flow. No “dirty electricity” can flow through the Earthing sheet, and then through the body because you are not part of a closed DC circuit. For a more detailed explanation, here is a useful resource from the Official Earthing Institute: http://www.earthinginstitute.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/beware-of-earthing-misinformation-2018.pdf As it says, no "dirty electricity" (snigger!) can flow through the chord. Though it's not very clear on how their lovely clean earthelectrons can flow, unless they've made use of a DirtyElectricityNoPass Filter... And if they can't flow from the ground, where are they coming from? I suspect punters with Machina Dynamica (look 'em up!) levels of gullibility are needed.

Once I hadn't been able to finish checking the final mix of a drama I'd been Post Production Manager on. It was needed the following day so I took it home and played the 1/4" on my Revox through my stereo. I discovered that throughout the post production process nobody had noticed that one particular location had a loud but very low frequency rumble - I guess it was a tube train as the location was in central London. The reason that no-one had noticed was because all editing was done on Rogers LS3/5a speakers, which are excellent but have virtually nowt below 75Hz, and track laying and dubbing had been done using Rogers LS5/8 speakers, which looked imposing but produced no bass below 45Hz! The Beeb soon commissioned new speakers for dubbing theatres after that (they bought big Harbeths)...

I remember seeing him doing a half'n'half back in the early 90s, Royal Festival Hall iirc, with an amazing supergroup featuring him, Omar Hakim on drums, Wayne Shorter on sax and Herbie Hancock on keys. Though I still prefer it when he gets those enormous fingers on that tiny Alembic...

Here's some energetic fusion from Mr Godin's band...

I'd buy 'em!

Not necessarily! Listen to some Christophe from the OP in Morglbl. Goes from nice jazz to screaming metal to face melting rock within one song... Similarly, David Fiucynzski of the Screaming Headless Torsos plays everything from crazed microtonal free jazz on a fretless guitar to ultimate shredding.

GoGo! That drummer is the Shizz!

For those who hadn't already spotted it, the video in the OP was a little bit tongue in cheek...