Leonard Smalls

Captain Kirk has got a date on the Enterprise Holodeck with Nurse Chapel in his favourite romantic piano bar on Aurora Prime. However, alien microbes have got into the matrix so when Kirk goes to find Christine admiring the view from the bar's private beach he finds she's actually a bloke called Derek from Redditch... This month I've sort of followed the Baloney route, to some extent! I programmed a manic 150bpm drum track, and did a 1 take bass improvisation over the top. Then I stuck 2 tracks of piano "accompaniment" on it and 3 tracks of wah guitar noodlings. Drums programmed using Impulse pads triggering identical midi sounds from EZ Drummer (Clyde Stubblefied kit), and Ableton's Arizona and Exposed kits. Bass is Sandberg DI-ed via Focusrite (double tracked, touch of delay on 1 track). Piano is Ableton's Grand Piano, and guitar is a battered Strat with clean Helix wah and Bias FX bluesdrive. Everything is rolled in Ozone 9 and Neutron 3.

Coming up soon, 1st public Weeds gig in at least 9 years. We're actually thinking of having a rehearsal! Exciting support bands too, and limited capacity...

Einstein a go-go - Landscape

Ride a White Swan - T Rex

The one that was cancelled was from Manchester to Carmarthen... Which caused me to miss the connection in Shrewsbury to the little max 2 carriage train you mention - that's the Heart of Wales line to Swansea and there's only 4 a day!

I remember back in the early 90s I walked the Tour de Mont Blanc with my girlfriend... We carried a tent, and food/clothes for 7 days - being fit we managed the 100+ miles in 4 days but we'd sweated like pigs as it was also warm. When we got back to Chamonix we looked for gifts for folks, a friend of ours was well into Reblochon so we bought her a decent lump. As we were going home on the coach I'd put on my lightweight shoes for the journey back so the only safe place to put the Reblochon was in my mountain boot (the one I'd been wearing for 25+ very sweaty miles per day) in my pack. The nearly 24 hour journey was accomplished in sweltering heat - 30+C - so we naturally worried a bit about the cheese. However, there was nothing we could do... When we got back the cheese had melted into the shape of my boot, but we stuck it in the fridge and gave it to our friend the following day. A week later we saw her and she thanked us effusively for the cheese- "it's the best I've ever had!" she said.

Silent Land - Material

Git Down - Gaye Bykers On Acid

Y'all will be pleased to hear that Bass On A Train worked fine... Minor problems were dragging the huge and heavy wheeled kitbag containing clothes and flightcased Helix up a flight of stairs in Shrewsbury (bass comfy strapped to back), long walk to change at the extra-isolated platform in Manchester Piccadilly and 10 minute walk in Blackpool to B&B. I sent the Helix back in the Band van to save carrying it again, which was good as connection was cancelled in Piccadilly meaning far more walking between different platforms to actually find out what was going on. End result was that I liked the actual train part, but not the changes nor the fact that out of 6 trains one was cancelled meaning connection missed and arriving home 6 hours late!

In the punkyfunky and the funkybluesey bands most of the songs begin with a full structure written by me, but everyone writes their own parts with collective input. In the FunkyRockDancey band songs are usually started by guitarist producing a synth backing and sending it to me, then I add a bass line to it and that gets sent to singer, drummer and other guitarist - all this is by WhatsApp and email. These "jams" then become the basis for new releases and even get played live very, very occasionally (look out Chester - 11th October is the first public Weeds outing in at least 9 years!).

Bit of Headhunters.

Raincow Uriah Head Jethro Tall Player MegaHeath

Sudden death - Mr Bungle

My gig tonight didn't involve me playing at all... However, I brought my PA and did sound and lights for a charity gig for our local LegClub (don't laugh, you might need 'em one day) by ex Jethro Tull keys Dee Palmer and Labour peer Stewart Wood, with support by a local Dobro and Beefheart Enthusiast... And due to rain and tiny gazebo (twas outside), didn't even get gear out of car till 1730, punters due to arrive at 1800. So no chance to set any levels, and all key sounds being completely different volumes meant lots of speculative fader-riding (had to put mixer behind the stage!). However, all sounded excellent, loads of Tull songs done and crowd happy, plus nearly £1000 raised.

La Bouganvilla Strangiato - Rush

I remember many years ago a mate of mine had a posh but very right-on girlfriend. He was a proper midlander, but kind of skinny and not at all hard... And I lost count of the amount of times he'd get punched because she'd taken exception to some cokernee geeza effin and c-in at the bar... It normally went: Geez to his mate: Cor what a F-in C he is! She, next to Geez at bar: You do realise that that's a term that's highly offensive to women and I want you to stop using it! Geez: Or f-in what, you C? Partner to She: C'mon Vix me duck, let's go! Geez punches partner in face.

If you're on a phone then the friends feed is the only way... However, if you're on a pc and using a browser, add the Facebook Purity extension. It gets rid of large chunks of stuff you don't want!

Wherever I lay my Hi-hat - Paul Young

There is the other side of the coin though... A few years ago I was in a funk-metal band (!), and the guitarist was what you would call an ordinary geezer. Great player, but liked to make risqué jokes about "birds". Nothing to off-colour, or Bernard Manning but some might find it a touch offensive. Which our drummer did... However, he was considerably more right-on than yow, had virtually zero sense of humour and took offence at absolutely anything, especially if he thought there might be some sort of imagined slight against the Welsh. And he'd constantly have a go at guitarman as well as telling us both what we should be thinking. Eventually Mr Guitar left, and that was the end of the band. Which was a shame as he was good to play with , but drummerboy had a poor sense of timing and kept doing overblown and out-of-place fills that he insisted were from "The Rudiments" but always ended at least a beat late and usually much more...

Six Bad Brothers - Boo Yaa Tribe

Devil Woman -Sir Cliff

Have me had Stiff Little Mingers? or Pubeway Army?

We had a keyboard player once who was always on about "workshy dolies", and was very conservative in his views... So long as he hadn't been on the Stella he tended not to shout very much about looney lefties or whatever, but never ever appeared racist. However, he also bought the Daily Star every day, and after he'd left the band started going on about how we'd all be under Sharia Law soon. And this ranting rose as he came more under the Spell of Stella - soon he was unable to work anymore and could only afford White Lightning. At about this time he also informed me that he'd been playing with Lily Allen, but as he wasn't very handsome they kept him behind a curtain (though I knew for a fact that he hadn't left Swansea, and wasn't very good as a keyboard player either!). And he was also thrown out of the covers band he was in for unreliability, drunken-ness and being too aggressive. However, he'd always been quite unhappy and blamed others for his self-inflicted misfortunes. So while I wouldn't have played with him in a band again, I sympathised with how his life had completely gone down the toilet. He died aged 62 as a result of his booze'n'fags regime.

I've found over the years that the more creative an artist is, the less likely they are to be far right so luckily, I haven't often come up against many fascist type musos, especially if they're any good. However, they may be a touch lefty, but as my position on Political Compass is on the libertarian left of Tony Benn and Gandhi I'm relatively OK with that (unless they get too SWP!).

Money Money Money - ABBA