Leonard Smalls

ER!

Indeed! I tried to explain to him the concepts of headroom and distortion, and the idea that bass frequencies need more power - even when I pointed to the big bass driver and said "big thing need big power" he still didn't get it.

We had one like that, England were playing (I think) Holland, so we brought a 12" portable tv along, stuck it on the stage and had the footie going while we played... Funnily enough, that gig actually got reviewed in Melody Maker, though the reviewer doesn't mention the telly, or the reason (possibly not the only reason!) why the gig was empty... https://pushstuff.co.uk/mmlives/barfroco110591.html I was the one dressed in an Edwardian bathing costume (as you do).

We did a support for Carter the Unstoppable at the Marquee many years ago... It went down so well that the Marquee offered us our own headline, which was nice, and in the week before Christmas! So we thought we'd make it special, we gathered our painters (who would paint both a backdrop and our white overalls in fluorescent paint - my Wal still has some blobs of it!), rehearsed to within an inch of our lives and booked a "festive surprise" for the audience. After our first number, our singer let slip that the surprise was due to be a stripper, which really got the male members of the audience going - you could virtually see huge clouds of testosterone condensing on the ceiling. 2 songs before the end our singer shouted "who's ready for the stripper?"; the (male bits) of the audience went wild, which he milked for every penny. When the much-hyped stripper finally came on there was a stunned silence, for it was a he... Not only that, he was a rather portly though not unattractive Father Christmas! Luckily the audience coped with the Noel-ish nudity and we finished the set without a single can of piddle thrown at us. But when we came off stage we found the singer's girlfriend snogging Father Christmas in the dressing room!

I used to book bands a number of years ago for our local "traditional" festival; gigs were to take place in a 500 capacity village hall. We had a wide variety of bands ranging from The Wurzels to Wilko Johnson and The Oysterband... The village hall committee were at best, difficult; one year (when Wilko was playing) they chained the kitchen cupboards shut so we couldn't use plates or cutlery! They also insisted on the use of a limiter, set at 90dB C weighted with the mic about 6 feet from the left PA stack. Not only that, but whoever had wired it in had only 2 sockets on stage, both connected to the limiter. This meant max possible on-stage power was just over 6kW,to include PA, backline and lights! This was before the widespread use of LEDs so the lights were more than 3kW on their own! And our PA was about 10kW too - we were believers in a quality sound, not loud but very clean, which meant headroom. However,just an unamplified gentle tap on a bass drum would set the limiter off... So we mentioned the lack of facilities to the hall comm- they said it was a council requirement,and their tame electrician pronounced our PA "too bloody loud, shouldn't need more than 1kW in there!" (for he knew all about these things). We actually asked the council, who said that they didn't require the limiter, as it was a historic thing based on a number of rather noisy and violent raves many years earlier. Comm insisted we used the 2 supplied sockets... So we agreed. However, both the sound engineer and I were electricians; we ran a length of 10mm SWA cable directly from a 63A RCBO in the consumer unit (it had the capacity, and was 3 phase), gave it a test and removed it at the end of the evening. We did this for all 8 years I was involved in the festival without the comm knowing, and without any complaints either from inside or outside the venue!

We had a roadie back in the early 90s who not only had a legendary dog (Merlin, see earlier story), but an ancient, hand-painted Transit van in matt black. Now he was a proper old hippy, always had a large reefer in his hand and never exceeded 45mph (which was no doubt a good thing, but journeys invariably took a very long time). Once we were supporting (i think) Gaye Bykers in Exeter, which went down very well; we'd had a decent rider, we'd been paid and all were a little tired and emotional (apart from Roadie, who didn't drink). So we set off towards London, one in the front and the rest of us lolling on top of cabs and gear in the back, and everybody eventually fell asleep. Quite a while later I woke up and saw complete blackness everywhere, no motorway, no signs of any lights or life, we were on a tiny single track road and Roadie had absolutely no clue where we were. Turned out Roadie had a problem with fixating... He would follow the line on the left unless specifically told not to! So he'd bimbled off the M4 somewhere in Gloucestershire, and via a series of random left turns we'd all ended up in mid Wales. We got home about 11am, which was a bit of a problem as I was working at 8am!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, which may be counter to someone else's... In which case there's a good chance the counter opinion will be aired!

I love 'em! Mainly because Wilko basically does the same in every song so Norm has to fill it out... But then I'm the sort of bass player who got offended by School of Rock; just watched it again the other day and at the end JackBlack tells FlyingV boy to "melt his face" with a solo (average solo follows). Then he says similar to the drummer, keyboard player, each and every backing vocalist in turn, all of whom do their bit. Except the bass player, who stands there like a spare part doing that tedious bass player thing of doin' nowt except 8th note root and fifth, if you're lucky. I just don't understand why so many bass players feel this is all they can, or are allowed to, do! Since when was musicality and (dare I say it?) showing off only permitted on instruments that aren't bass? After all, getting up on stage is really all about showing off... And if a bass player dares to play more than the allotted amount of notes there's a chorus of tutting from the Staid Hordes Of Square BassPlayers!

Back in the 90s (again) the band lived together in a housing co-op house in Pimlico, 'twas a very nice Georgian Square just a stones throw from Scotland Yard... So we decided, after having been given our notice to leave (that's the way it was with co-ops) we thought we'd have a party, with the band playing. So we set up the 5kW PA in the big upstairs living room, there was a house full of folks and we started playing. We were just about to do our last number when a large police inspector came in (at least we thought he was, there were lots of shiny bits on his epaulettes!). He told us that if we didn't stop playing now the vanful of police outside would come in and make sure we did... Just as we were assuring him that we would do just that, and we were terribly sorry about the racket, our roady's large and very fluffy dog ran through the inspector's legs - he didn't notice the dog but he did notice that his nether regions had been heartily caressed by something quite hard and hairy, and that something he also couldn't see was wetly sniffing his bottom. By the time he looked round Merlin had gone, and by the expression on his face we can only assume he thought he'd been fiddled with by some sort of conjured-up rock'n'roll succubus! As he ran out he shouted over his shoulder "and don't do it again!". Otherwise a most excellent party, and we had invited all the very posh neighbours but I suspect they felt they might not fit in... And one of the Carter Unstoppable boys broke his arm falling down the stairs!

I occasionally use slap as well - works surprisingly well for punk 😁

Our faster punky bits usually get played using my thumb as a plectrum!

Back in 1990ish we managed to get a headline at the Powerhaus in Islington... We were quite chuffed about this, loads of folks were coming plus a promised support of The Dickies at the Mean Fiddler. So after soundcheck we went looking for food and found an all you can eat Indian buffet just round the corner. So we got our money's worth, eating more than we could eat... When we got back to the venue we realised this was a serious mistake as all of us we so stuffed we could barely move (we were quite a boisterous punkfunk band with lots of jumping about and crazy costumes)... So we got some chairs and just about managed to play the gig seated, until the keyboard player got a bit excited in the last song, jumped up and promptly chucked up on his Roland Surprisingly, our new almost Kraftwerkesque lack of movement went down very well! And we got the Dickies support!

Me at today's skiing, Le Chattrix...

Funnily enough that's on our playlist... As is London Calling, Bank Robber and Guns of Brixton. Luckily we're not b&q but independent - though my mrs sometimes reigns in my choices: Last Exit and Derek Bailey/Jamaaladeen Tacuma's Mirakle were not popular!

We've got a playlist of 1100 tracks I've put together... It's probably 65% reggae ranging from Rebel Sojie dub, to Bill Laswell's Dub Chamber to the Abyssininans... That's all likely to be interspersed with stuff like Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Fatback Band and bizarrely, early Simple Minds and Monochrome Set.

Funnily enough, that track came up on our garden centre playlist earlier!

My other band is Dredd and the Badass Weeds... Can you guess which one Dredd is?

A mate of mine sent me his new album recently... It was a cassette! So I got in touch and after calling him a sad retro hipster dude he told me to look under the flap where the tape was and to swing out the USB connector. But the thing even rattled like a cassette!

I've got a strap on at the moment due to peroneal tendonitis... (no sniggering! and it's per-O-neal, not per-I-neal). It's a nasty ankle pain, which appears to be a repetitive strain injury caused by over-enthusiastic foot tapping to keep time - a legacy from our old drummer who didn't seem to be able to do that. Any more unexpected bass injuries?

We'll be debuting our new 2 bass line up, featuring yours truly on widdle bass, and Raph, ex of Hereford punx Terminal Rage, on rhythm bass... Basschat's very own @cheddatom is on in the evening with Headsticks... https://www.facebook.com/events/849392645569098?ref=newsfeed

Not sure if we've had any Buttholes yet... Seeing them at the Mean Fiddler was probably the most violent gig I ever went to (though the Modernaires at Chester Gateway ran it close!); There was a mini riot outside in the crowd who couldn't get in, there was a hail of glasses thrown at the stage for some reason, one of which cut Gabby quite badly. Though he barely flinched - he set himself on fire a bit later (as you do).

I love a good FunkShow... Saw Zapp back in the early 80s - awesome!

And Robert Plant lives in north Herefordshire... Though it appears that the borders region tends do be where old rock stars are put out to grass! There's Bob, then there's a member of Jethro Tull who lives next door to us. Then there was Ronnie Lane's farm, which was just up the road near BC. But if you ask folks round here what music you like it's either Wurzels or Quo... We don't play many local gigs!