Leonard Smalls

Original Funky Drummer!

Aye! But if it's a 160bpm punk thing we don't really want 110bpm funky drummer!

Aye! Bass players are their own worst enemy - we see it on BC frequently where amazing bassists are dismissed as wannabe lead guitarists, or "playing too many notes and not knowing their place". We have the biggest instruments (unless it's a Steinberger!) and so should wield them, rather than letting the look-at-me guitarists get all the adulation! We need a protest group - Musicians Against Guitarists' Attention-seeking.

We had a full band rehearsal yesterday to get ready for Worcester gig on Friday 11th... The part-band rehearsals really helped - everyone is now more receptive to what the others are playing, and as a result we're tighter and a bit heavier. Guitarman, however, hadn't learnt some of the intricate widdly bass bits I do which would have sound awesome if we both did 'em, so we decided he'd just emphasise the beginning of the phrase in one of the songs leaving me to have a number of mini solos... and in the other one where my busy line does a sort of double time syncopation with the vocals he does just muted scratchy stuff which further emphasises the rhythm. So a bit of a win! Just hoping drum-man doesn't start every song far too slow!

Big Spliff - Black Uhuru

That video is private!

Is Vicar There - Vic Goddard and Subway Sect

Say Hello Wave Goodbye - Soft Cell

Bastille Day - Rush

Hit Me Baby One More Lime - Britney Spears

Request time! Can you do play by magazine? I'd come!

Me too! There's lots of decent old joannas you can get for virtually nowt - old Challens go for pennies if you're lucky and are decent. I've just looked up our Pfeiffer, looks like they're selling ones similar for over E10000! https://www.pfeiffer-pianos.com/en/used/pianos

Funnily enough my mum's piano is still with us... Her parents bought it thinking it was new from the makers (Pfeiffer) in 1932. My mum learned to play on it, then did all her practice for LRAM, I did lessons on it, my mum gave lessons on it and recently we decided it needed a good service. So we found a really good piano builder who almost fell over when he saw it! He spent a quite few hours re-felting, adjusting hammers, sorting out the pedals and putting on a couple of replacement "ivories". It cost us about £400. Turns out it was actually made between 1872-74 and had been sitting in their warehouse for 60 odd years. And pianoman said it had possibly the best bass he'd ever heard from a piano - as good as a concert Bösendorfer he reckoned. So if you can find an oak overstrung Pfeiffer, buy it! And find someone very strong to move it. I've been involved in 6 moves with it so far and 'er's a reet bugger!

featuring Julian C on bass... Funky as!

We had just a drum'n'basses rehearsal on Sunday... I think I've convinced them this is a good way to go as they're all learning exactly what everyone else plays without just relying on a particular cue - means we'll be tighter and clashing parts will be ironed out as you can't hide so much. Last week was basses and guitars, so hopefully next weeks rehearsal for full band will have everyone knowing exactly what to do for gig a week Friday. So new drums and guitar will be tight as after only 4 rehearsals, including getting guitar and drums to occasionally follow me to bring out the progfunk part of of our punk!

Wash It All Off - You've Got Foetus On Your Breath

Our other bassman uses an Elf, and we have no trouble at all hearing him over drums, vox, orange guitar stack and my 1500W bridged Crown doofer...

Stench of Honey - Cardiacs

When I were a lad there were only two cores (apart from apple) - soft and hard. Soft was found under the Magic Porn Bush, with its pages stuck together by rain and who knows what, and hard was near-mythical - most certainly not what was shown in cinemas with titles like "Confessions of a Window Cleaner" or "Rosie Dixon - Night Nurse".

Nowadays that's not necessarily the case, as most will be freelancers specialising in whatever aspect of sound recording/mixing they're hired for... However, you definitely have a point about the past! I worked with studio sound people a lot in the days of live Top Of The Pops; their thinking was the sound must be "as is", no FX, no making it sound any better as that was cheating and not putting out exactly what was put in. This, I might add was also when these folks were exclusively recruited as engineers - there was no time for fancy frills and expression, twas purely a matter of keeping it within spec and watching the meters. Their thinking was "if the band don't sound good enough on their own it's not our job to help 'em!". As a result, most bands sounded terrible! I also had them working for me on a well known drama, and the amount of grief we had just convincing them to actually add to the plot with a spot of intelligent sound design was amazing. Not all of 'em, I might add! So I kept the best 2 or 3 and brought in sound dubbing mixers from Post Production (the others were studios) - their job was to make it sound good so that's what they attempted to do but because of studios demarcation, those mixers never got a look-in at music mixing.

Indeed! And the only time I've enjoyed Country and Western is when Hank W. did it.

Flake Of Fire - Nirvana

Chocolate City - Parliament

Just been asked to join the Samples at the Marrs bar in Worcester on 18th July... Then the week after that, we're with Brazilian HardCore-istas, AntiVirus in Hereford (26th July) Then we're at Rebellion fest early afternoon on the 10th August, and same day, at mini fest also in Blackpool at the Washington Then that's all Choked've got booked for the year!

Or originally and arguably, skatepunk 😁 Then BobbyT got really good and they became a bit more funkpunk! And Turnstile appear to have been a lot harder in the past - shame they've gone all wuss now! This is the last "hardcore" band we played with, though in the daft world of extreme categorisation they're also street punk and thrash punk/metal - Potbelly In 3 weeks we're playing with hardcore Brazilians Anti Virus, though they could be just punk... And next week, we're playing with OG punks, the Samples. They're definitely not hardcore. Or Thrash. Or Metal.