Leonard Smalls

Many years ago I lived with my band in a back to back terrace in Harlesden... We stuck carpets to the walls, covered the window and did everything we could to damp down the noise, but it was still pretty loud outside... But one day I was out in the back yard, waved at a couple of our neighbours and they both came over for a chat - basically they said how much they enjoyed the band playing cos it brought life to the place. They also requested some reggae; but not being a reggae band we wrote a song for 'em based on a funky sleng teng riff. Here it is!

Arguably! I had a "neighbour" (he's 400m away, on the other side of the valley!) complain about band rehearsals we were doing in our garage - it was once a week from 630pm - 8-30pm. So I told him I'd sound proof the garage and could he let me know if it was any better. So we built a box in there, he wasn't happy, so we moved into our garden room - this is double glazed, brick-built and insulated. We also moved rehearsals to Sunday afternoon, 3-5pm which coincided with his incessant chain-sawing. Didn't hear anything, assumed all was fine (it was audible 20 yards outside the house but by no means loud). Then we got a letter from the council detailing the noise complaint. I told them the story so far - but it appeared we'd been noisy again for 1/2 an hour, I think we'd had to open a window due to it being boiling. I told the council we wouldn't open the window again, and that we'd stick to those hours. And also I told them TW@ttyBollox had a name for being a whinger; he'd complained about his next-door neighbours "burning noxious rubbish" - turned out it was a kids bonfire party on 5th November. So we got three more letters saying that they were setting up monitoring equipment. Then Covid and lockdown came along; during one of the breaks our then reduced band (drummer had left) recorded a couple of on-line charity gigs using EZ drummer. Lockdown started again, I noticed one of the bass tracks could do with re-recording, so I played back the band through the PA and re-recorded my bass parts - this had to be at decent volume as bass had to match. Imagine my surprise when the police turned up to investigate an alleged breach of covid regulations, and their surprise to find me on my own playing along to a backing. How we laughed! After all the lockdowns had ended we starting rehearsing again. Just as we'd finished 2 chaps turned up, said they were from the council and that monitoring was finished, and they'd just listened from the other side of the valley. They explained that while it was faintly audible, it was by no means a nuisance ( a lot quieter than the b road below) and that Complain-Man had been told he was being deeply unreasonable, and that we had shown ourselves to be just the opposite. Council said that "unless something changed substantially" they wouldn't act on any more of his complaints. About anything. So it goes to show, there's miserable gits everywhere!

Me like Last Exit... And Zorn's crazed rantings... And this should be in the drum'n'bass thread!

Harmolodic, man!

And Bill's more ambient take:

Sort of!

😨 Double eek! This is what should happen in these situations.... X Factor judge in common sense shock!

Sounds similar to those from my nightmare - except it wasn't just one of the buggrs!

But we both like Magma, and appropriately-placed a'postrophes! But back to la Mitchell; I'm sure she wouldn't care what I thought (nor should she!), but it's not just her I don't like... It's acoustic guitars with a singer attached (not the guitar so much - love a bit of Eduardo Niebla - it's the dinkydinky strumming). Many years ago I went camping with some folks, some of whom I didn't know very well - turns out it was with good reason! We built a campfire, I broke out the Bruichladdich ready to have a nice and increasingly drunken chat looking into the flames and listening to the sounds of the night. But at least 5 of these evil gits had other ideas. They produced acoustic guitars - not lovely little flamenco ones but those big, overly-loud folk ones - and proceeded to strum their way through "I'm leaving (on a jet plane)" and various other songs, including the one about the yellow taxi and various other of those nadirs of music also known as 60s and 70s Americana. Perhaps if there'd been less of that sense of enforced jollity, or perhaps even the tiniest iota of actual musical skill rather than just every note and beat with exactly the same intonation, with no hint of even the slightest syncopation I'd feel differently about that sort of hippydippy strumfest. As it is I still wake up screaming with the words "Kum bye R" (wtf?) bouncing around in me heid. And to those who feel personally affronted by my hatred of Joni (and Janis, and Neil Young, and Boob Dylan), don't be! I can't understand why someone can't feel the majesty of Ornette Coleman, but also realise that it's Different Strokes For Different Folks...

Before this becomes a full Joni love-in, I can't be doing with her at all. 😜 Too much singing and absolutely no funk. All beautifully played, and completely bland, no musical interest at all for me. And I have spent lots of time being forced to listen to many of her offerings ("Oh you'll love this one" "Nope". "But the lyrics are so deep!" "Well so's Krubera Cave but I have no intention of going down there!" etc)

This may call for Art. Or perhaps just a rack'ette. Or ev'n j'st a m'xt're 'f bo'h. Mebbe even some singing!!!!

More to aspire to!

Through the amp with whichever bass is nearest at the time - sometimes with fx and sometimes without.

Own up, who voted for me? I was sure I'd be the first recipient of nul points! Shall try harder next month...

Some slightly crazed funky spiky modal jazzy groove...

I'm fighting against my old BBC training, where 1KHz reference tone on a digital recording was set at -18dBU... So I tend to record all instruments at peak of around -6, then smear a bit of neutron 3 on it so RMS level is between -15 and -10. Then at the master I use either a Shadow Hills Compressor plus Waves limiter set at absolute peak of -0.5, or recently I've been using Ozone 9 with a Greg Colibri preset such as "high detail wide", then turn down compression slightly as this would otherwise give a dynamic range of only about 3dB! However, when producing a masterpiece such as this month's CompoCompo piece you want it to be as loud and unpleasant as possible - mainly to benefit those of us of a more delicate persuasion (eh Doug? 😁)

I got "coupon usage limit has been reached"...

Apart from the large chunk Big Tony Fisher's got!

The Antidote are pretty good in a jazz-but-funky sort of way...

Arguably! One man's Good Stuff is another's screaming nightmare from hell... If a gig contains Rule Britannia, That Hornpipe and/or Jerusalem, then that, for me, is a bit like that bit in The Exorcist where her head starts spinning and she's bouncing off the ceiling.

Indeed... Cos it's 4 or 5 basses all played only once without any plan (never!), and with all the other tracks apart from click (not that you'd guess!) turned off. I could send you tabs for it though if you're keen 😁 And I have no idea how you managed to play it through twice without murdering someone...

Of course it is! Not like prog... And all those 70s fretw@nk rock guitarists were just keepin' it simple. And that bloody Liszt and his would-be mate, Paganini! Though personally, I love a bit of self-indulgence and subscribe via Eurosport to both types of pissing contest - high wee and long piddle.

For those that like it a bit more Out There, here's Ornette with Jamaaladeen and a pink Kubicki (is it?)

I personally find the JBerlin and the Michael Camillo stuff all that bit wet, beautifully played as it all is. I'm actually the anti-Doug, while he wants all music to tend gently and tunefully toward Jefferson Airplane, I want it to veer wildly off-course, bumping into Suicidal Tendencies, Bootsy and Primus before crashing into Ronald Shannon Jackson and John Zorn...