Leonard Smalls

Next one is tonight (12th) In Birmingham, supporting OPs 999 And then it's almost a local gig (an hour away!) at the Heart Of Anarchy Halloween Punx Party:

Back in my rockabilly rebel days we used to go to the Klub Foot too! I even saw the Chilli Peppers there when it was just the plain Clarendon...

Scott Devine's fusion band!

I dun one! I felt that the rather spooky image deserved my rather jaunty cover of Spandau Ballet's classic. Get yer dancin' shoes on! Apologies for the bad language - my Latin pronunciation is not up to scratch. Sounds using synths by Universal PolyMax, Massive and Usynth. Vocals and translations by me. All mixed in Doblys with Ozone 9.

From way back when... Old Skool!

Me slappa-da-bass! From last Saturday at the Foundry in Brecon. Proper photo by proper photographer! Cheers Barry Hill...

We travelled to a reasonably new venue last night, The Foundry in Brecon, and very nice it is too! Easy load in, helpful and very pleasant owner/soundman, decent little room (maybe 140 capacity?). First up were some crazies - Anoise who had stand-up drummer, dancey backing tracks off a laptop and bassist triggering fx and playing dubby stuff. They had a dancer dressed firstly as Mr Blobby (Mr. Bezzy!) who stomped about while the band made who knows what sort of racket, complete with costume changes. And they'd brought 90 balloons, all blown up by the band which were scattered hither and thither. Huge Fun and recommended! Then we were on, unfortunately, the guitar cab was next to our drummist so he couldn't hear many of the cues he needed but we muddled through. In fact despite me not being able to hear me (the usual "everyone needs to turn down" during soundcheck then I'm the only one that does it, but luckily I can play all our songs without hearing any of it...) there was jumping about and gentle moshing and obligatory balloon football form much of the 50-odd people there. The Anoise bass player even jumped up on stage at one point to tell me I had "amazing technique" - while he probably wasn't wrong (🤣) he was a touch inebriated. Excellent fun had, and those Brecon folks are Madferit! And I used my ACG Recurve with Helix into Marshall Jubilee and Markbass 2x10. Must turn it up a bit next Thursday for 999 support in Birmingham! Finally we had Dropping like Flies, long established South Wales punkers and a proper bunch of comedians - their between songs banter was worthy of Frankie Boyle, but a bit more risque! and they were tight as a gnat's with great sound and good bunch of songs.

It'd be nice! But we're making more money than we did a year ago... And playing to bigger audiences which hopefully means we'll build a bigger fanbase leading to more people paying to come and see us until finally, we take over the world. Unfortunately, it's a bit more difficult with originals bands and takes longer (or perhaps never!) to become profitable. Our merch has just about paid for itself, now we're in profit on that so if we get say £100 for a gig (we sometimes get more, sometimes less) we may sell tshirts, cds, mugs, keychains and assorted tat as well which makes it worthwhile.

Our nearest possible gigs are an hour away - local pubs will only have a very occasional covers band and then only the cheesiest of shoutalong song choice is popular... Our next gig is 1.25 hours away, next 2 hours, after that we've got one in Hereford (1 hour - nearest). Then we're looking at 2 that are 4 hours away - we'll lose money as we'll stay the night and not get paid enough to cover hotel; we'd need to camp! Still, we see it as a hobby and hobbies usually cost money...

Indeed! However, it's difficult to take lectures on poverty seriously from someone who spent $1700 flying a forgotten hat first class to Italy...

Brighton noiseniks:

Aye! Perhaps they also do the "Shreds" series as a side project! However, if you're going to mangle a classic it's not easy to destroy it as well as this!

A mate of mine sent it to me! Here's the blurb that was with it: Bandleader David Kant teaches a machine to hear pop songs, and the Happy Valley Band plays what the computer hears. FREE DOWNLOAD of "Like a Prayer" from ORGANVM PERCEPTVS: indexical.bandcamp.com/album/organvm-perceptvs Buy ORGANVM PERCEPTVS on vinyl + digital: indexical.bandcamp.com/album/organvm-perceptvs ORGANVM PERCEPTVS is a deconstruction of popular music through the use of state-of-the-art machine listening technologies. It is a collection of 11 songs composed over the past five years for the Happy Valley Band, an experimental music group formed specifically to play this work. ORGANVM PERCEPTVS asks the question: how do we hear, and how can machines help us hear differently? The Happy Valley Band is the Great American Songbook heard through the ear of a machine. The project is a deconstruction of popular music through the use of state-of-the-art machine listening technologies. It's about machine learning, listening, pop music, and copyright. Custom-built computer software written by bandleader and composer David Kant "unmixes" recordings and transcribes them into musical notation. The Happy Valley Band is an experimental music ensemble formed specifically to play this music. https://www.indexical.org/releases/happy-valley-band-organvm-perceptvs

This is how a computer hears and then notates Madonna's "Like a Prayer". I'm liking it - better than the original in a WTF freejazz sort of way. Sounds like some of my own offerings 😁

We booked 'em once without Shane (about £10k cheaper!) and they were excellent, possibly better than with The Drunken One - loads of hilarious (and worrying) stories about The Troubles.

I saw 'em twice in the 80s, once on the October tour, where they were pretty good, then in 85 or 86, when Bono acted like the Messiah himself ("every time I clap my hands, another child dies" "Then stop $£*&in' clappin'!" etc), which was rather irritating. We all knew he was just a very naughty boy!

Here's a whole song from our last gig at Going Feral Festival...

There's a scale of fees depending on where the music is... Frinstance we get charged more because our office area is on a mezzanine - as we can hear music in the "employee area" as well as the "public area" they want more. And as I said, PRS had absolutely no interest in having a copy of our playlist - I offered but they flatly refused! I'd also thought about joining PRS - they want £100 flat fee, plus a further £100 for MCPS membership for recorded music playback. However, their rules for distribution are so complicated that I have to idea how much we'd make, or how long it would take to pay back the initial fee. And what if we do a cover?

That's my understanding too... I spoke to PRS about this a few years ago when we started playing music in our shop. I asked if I should submit our playlist to ensure that the right artists got the money, but they said it didn't work like that - basically the artists received money as a percentage of how much they'd previously made. So if I played, say Sugar Minott or the Monochrome Set, then Paul McCartney or Ed Sheeran would get the majority. Which I feel is a bit appalling!

It's actually a new cultivar, Echeveria agothavoides that is always black and only comes out after dark...

They're not! But the Weeds drummer was their manager, and we all fancied a country gig, though I lived there so easy for me...

Chapel Lawn!

New venue for us in Brecon, 5th October. Not sure who's headlining!

I had the error of my ways explained to me when visiting Bass Direct once; despite having played 4 strings for 30 years I was assured that wasn't good enough and that I had to have a fiver. But being a contrary sort I did just the opposite and stuck with my four. If I need to go down a tone or two I can just programme a patch into my Helix - that's the only new trick this old dog learned!