Leonard Smalls

Bit of forgotten 70s fusion featuring the flute stylings of Jeremy Steig with (wait for it!) Anthony Jackson on bass, Alphonse Mouzon on drums and bizarrely, Johny Winters of guitars!

Heavying up the fusion a bit...

Own up... Who voted for me? I thought I'd managed to make my entry so unpleasant that folks wouldn't be able to listen to it! What does a guy have to do to get nul points round here? Just wait till next month...

Slightly crazed Zorn and Frisell...

Tiny snippet of audience reaction from last night! ChokedPlough.mp4

We did a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis at a large pub in Hereford yesterday... Turned out the pub's PA was knacked, so we took our own - which doesn't half add to the effort needed especially as we took a 24 channel desk, plus monitors, subs etc all for 3 mics and one on the bass drum! Still, it was good practice for setting up for larger gigs. But it was nice to be in charge of sound - we didn't overdo it and as a result everything was very clear. Anyway, support was Hereford boys The Deadbeats; they were excellent, did punk/new wave covers and got the reasonable crowd nicely lubricated for us... And we'd thought it might be a 2 bass/no guitar gig, but somehow he got his act together and we were a 5 piece. Not only that, but we played very well indeed - usual pink torpedo ups by drummer; one song has a bass intro which is straight 4:4, somehow he always has to do a fill when I'm 2 beats from the end of the intro, and that fill always lasts 4 beats and interrupts the flow. Next time I shall bring a baseball bat... We even did 2 covers - Rage's "Bullet to the Head" and Penetration's "Don't Dictate" (or own mashed up version with "Word Up"!), and had to do a song we hadn't played in a year after more encores were demanded. We managed to raise a few hundred notes for MS and got expenses paid (which we weren't expecting, we'd agreed a freebie for new pub music venture and good charitable cause), one bloke said we sounded like Faith No More (his favourite band!), and another staggered over and said we were like The Prodigy (!), then asked if we had any ketamine... (We didn't). Used my Sandberg for the first time in ages (and realised why I'd bought it), into Helix, BBE pre and DBX rack compressor, Crown bridged power amp and Markbass 4x10. As there was so little room on stage Helix sat on top of the amp case, which meant I couldn't do my squealy lead guitar octave stuff but probably nobody noticed.

Possibly with just 2 basses,vox and drums - no guitar!!!

This Saturday, in Hereford...

Listen to just about any funk! Bass is the place etc... Or Big Bad Bob and the Infectious Boys always have bass proper up-front.

Apart from, everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition... Firstly Pope Lucious 111 declared the first inquisition in 1184, nearly 300 years before the actual Spanish one started, so they had time to get ready. And if 300 years notice wasn't enough, the Inquisition actually gave thirty days' notice. This was a thirty-day grace period during which heretics could voluntarily confess and avoid serious punishment. And these "Edicts of Grace" were read publicly after Sunday mass, so everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition. However, with time, these edicts were phased out, anonymous denunciations became more common, and more people were detained without warning, in a more Python-esque manner. Of course, by that time, the Inquisition had become of the most powerful, infamous, and universally known forces in Spanish life, so I'm not sure it could truly be said to be unexpected then either. But nobody expects the Death Metal Comparison!

Indeed... As a kid I was dragged to the opera, and the ballet, and concerts of all sorts ranging from Peter Katin playing Beethoven, to Askenhazy playing Rachmaninov and the Vienna Boys Choir doing that annoying angelic thing. I was told that popular music was only for the great unwashed and was somehow far below "proper" music. As a result, when I was old enough to dare to use my own brain I rejected much of classical, though I rediscovered baroque music, and also discovered more challenging classical that we never went to see or heard at home, such as Varese and Shostakovich (though my ma now likes ol' Dmitri, admitting she should have given him a chance years ago). However, I still can't be doing with opera - perhaps all that soprano nails-on-a-blackboard stuff turned me off most sorts of accompanied singing (as opposed to singing which is essentially part of the music).

One man's pile of steaming pig ordure is another man's Jefferson Airplane! And as all broad churches vary, funk ranges from simple barely syncopated pop music (though I would argue that this doesn't really qualify for the lofty moniker of "Funk", as the Great George himself said "You can't fake The Funk!") via the joys of Parliament/Funkadelic to the complex grooves of 70s/80s Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock and Stanley Clarke... Still, each to their own!

Was just listening to a few singles I'd saved up my school dinner money for... This craziness was an early inspiration for New Order's Blu Monday, by members of Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias.

No idea! But I've got a Zappa live dvd from the 80s with Scott Thunes on bass complete with some interviews called that!

We used to play at the Opera quite a lot back in the early 90s -the Opera On The Green on Shepherds Bush Green.

It's quite likely that John Zorn (on sax, for it is he and he alone) either wrote every note for everyone who played, or just as likely drew comedy phalluses in brown crayon and told his crew to go from that... As Frank Zappa said "Does humour (oops, humor) belong in music?". And both me and Mr Zorn think it probably ought to.

I've listened to that gig many times too when I'm in the mood for some easy listening dinner jazz. 😁 Remember seeing Derek Bailey once with a dj and keyboardist which was pretty out there; I also used to play in an improvising band where the drummer and I would play funk grooves and former associates of Lol Coxhill would go all Brotzmann over it. But for ultimate fusion, try this - it's like a fusion of all the hells from all the religions crossed with punk and jazz...

We had a rehearsal yesterday to get ready for Hereford gig next Saturday and the guitarist didn't turn up! So no annoying noodling between songs, no unnecessary feedback drowning out the vocals, no poorly set up pedals making almost as much noise when there's no sound going through 'em... So it was just bass, bass, drums and 3xvocals, which was great! Everybody could hear everything, and excitingly, when we did a dead stop there was no extra bit of guitarnoise cos he hasn't worked out how to properly damp the strings. So we were tight as, and ready to gig without guitar if that happens!

It's definitely not too wild for me, more a bit safe! This pushes the boat out a tad more: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/mirakle/1189663910

I've been listening to it, but agree with Pete! Good effort, but a bit fusion-by-numbers. The only slightly less formulaic bits are some of the guitar solos. Keys in particular are completely What Is Expected. I prefer a slightly more leftfield, creative approach:

A vid I made for my occasional band...

Funky things to play with!

On 6music

Punk Classics: Chinese pink torpedos - Johnny Thunders God shave the Queen - Sex Pistols Babylon's Gurning - Ruts Lust for Wife - Iggy Pop I wanna be your bog - The Stooges Long Dong Garden - Siouxsie and the Banshees Nasty Pasty - 999 Farty in Paris - UK Subs I'm not a tool - Cockney Rejects

I can't cope with more than about 30 seconds of even just acoustic drums without my plugs... So I always wear 'em! And bands are still often far too loud. Frinstance, at Rebellion back in August the Introducing Stage is in a large auditorium that's well know for sounding bad - loads of hard parallel reflective surfaces etc. And the soundmixer's solution? To turn it up so loud that it's painful, even with plugs. While lots of damping might not be possible, turning it up is bound to make the situation worse! In contrast, last week we played a small pub in Birmingham which had a capacity of at very most, 150. I was a bit worried because even in this small room, everything was mic-ed up and DI-ed. However, the sound was great - crystal clear, with thwacky bass drum, audible bass and vox and still not too loud, though still rockin'. I could even take my plugs out for a minute or so without pain, which was nice!