Leonard Smalls

I put up a thread a few weeks back asking if anyone had tried the Mooer... It's £299 in my local music shop - when I have a spare moment I'll go and have a go. Not sure how well it'd work for me though; my current sound-of-choice has 3 mixed FX loops - 1. a 3Leaf envelope filter going into a Darkglass microtubes into a Digitech Bass Whammy, 2. a DOD envelope filter, 3 a Fwonk Beta envelope filter going into a Boss bass synth. I'd be surprised if I could get that same Bootsy-on-keyboards-that still-sounds-like-a-Wal sound out of any of 'em.

Choked - my new band have been rehearsing busily and managed to produce a set containing just 1 cover, which in true "can yer tell what it is yet?" style contains both a punk classic, a funk classic and a more deeply hidden grunge classic. And just like in all our originals, I play far too many notes. We're at: 2nd March - Reet Petite, Leominster with punks Alvin and the Angry Barrels and Terminal Rage 23rd March - Paradiddles, Worcester 10th April - Albert's Shed, Shrewsbury 26th April - Percy's, Whitchurch 26-28th July - Funk in the Forest - Berriew nr. Welshpool

My 1st gig was on keyboards with a hastily-put-together band at school 6th form in 1981. We were doing 60s/early 70s protest songs after a screening of that scary anti-nuclear weapons doc wot got banned... We weren't very good! 1st gig on bass was 3 months after I'd decided I was actually a bass player, and had worked out how to do it using an acoustic guitar. We'd had 2 rehearsals, written 6 songs, of about 10 minutes each (!) and Jez (later of the Utah Saints) lent me his Gibson short scale bass and IIRC, a Carlsboro combo. We played for around 2 hours (we did some stretching) at the Tartan Bar at Leeds Uni in 1983, and we didn't get booed off - which was rather surprising... After that we played many parties, where we'd start playing a song, any member could nip off, put a baked potato on, have a bath and we'd still be playing the same song when they came back.

RIP!

There does appear to be a lot of our members who do seem to actively hate it... And not just that unmusical dunkadunka thing often heard in said demos and music shops around the land, but the very idea of virtually any sort of bass virtuosity is instantly dismissed as showing off. For these folks Jack Bruce was about as far as anybody should go, and even he played a few too many notes! I say live and let live. If you want to slap, great. If you just want to play the root in 16ths, great. Just listen to, and more importantly, enjoy the music!

But I had some free jazz I thought you'd want to listen to!!!!

I don't understand all the hatred for slap bass; surely it's better to celebrate skill than it is to dismiss it as "showing off" or "fretw£qry"? After all, if every musician stuck to doing the absolute minimum just in case someone say "look at him, he's up himself!" we all only be playing the root and occasional 5th. There'd be no Stanley Clarke, Les Claypool, Billy Sheehan, Jonas Hellborg etc. Or for that matter, no Bach, Mozart or even Mach and his Saddest Of All Keys...

I always use black cherry nail polish with matching lippy... 🍓 doesn't suit my complexion!

You sure? My local don't stock it! https://www.nailberry.co.uk/products/laitfraise

My Wal has a 1/4" out and a balanced xlr; perhaps perhaps he's done the same and is DI-ing the bass and the other's to monitoring?

Not sure if I would! If there's a poor quality Smashy'n'Nicey disco blasting out "Heigh Ho Silver Lining" or somesuch I can just leave. But if it's a slightly duff band doing a very average version of "Mr Brightside" too loudly, and dressed like Man At C&A I still feel it's sort of my duty to support them by standing at the back, staring at the bass player and thinking "give the people what they want when they want and they wants it all the time!" (© Parliament "Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication")

Having been brought up by a piano-teaching mother I was dragged out to classical concerts from an early age... There, it was my misfortune to behold those front-row sitters with pinched faces and pursed lips who all clutched their Edition Peters version of the score. And rather than listen to and enjoy the music they'd slavishly follow the dots on the page, and they'd tut and point and give off a general air of "there's been a murder!" if what was played was just forte instead of fortissimo, or woe-betide if a different note or minor rhythm change occurred! Meanwhile, the rest of the crowd who were equally divided between those who loved music and just wanted to hear it played well, and those who liked to dress up and say "I go to classical concerts, doncha know!", sat back and enjoyed it to various degrees... So now, if I go into a pub and see a band play I think: 1. Does it groove? 2. Do I like it? 3. Do I know the song? If it's a slavish attempt to reproduce a song I don't like - frinstance most of the "popular" covers repertoire - even if it's done well I'll whinge or go somewhere else. If I like the song I'll be relatively happy. But to be really happy when someone's doing a cover I want different; I want to not quite know what it is until at least the chorus. I want to think "These guys are doing that slightly annoying Floyd song in the way it should have been done in the first place!". However, I realise that the majority of punters aren't chip-on-the-shoulder muso-snobs like me, and that the most folks just want to hear a song they already know so they can feel at one with the crowd in their shared knowledge, pointing in the air and shouting at each other's faces until they knock the PA over. And I'll be sat in the corner, bitter and nursing a pint, muttering.

This, from Hiromi's Time Control album, has a fine example of modal walking bass... Some older more stick-in-the-mud jazzers would say "it's not jazz, it's fusion" to which I say Get hip, daddy-o! Next y'all will be telling me there's an actual difference between Djent and Thrash metal 😄

This is one of my favourite bits of acoustic bass in jazz, with plenty flute smeared liberally all over it...

My Tuning-Tech does it, under the strict supervision of the Acting Assistant 2nd Bass Tech. As for the bottom-wiping thing, it depends on which of my other bass roadies are available.

We've just worked out our first-ever cover... It's a mash-up of Penetration's "Don't Dictate" with Cameo's "Word Up" - punk lyrics with funk groove and Hendrix-ey guitar. I've even squeezed the guitar line from "Come as you are" into the verse bassline...

Only bass related purchases were amp stuff... I got a Crown 1502 power amp with 6u rack and rack power distribution to replace my 28 year old Marshall. It weighs about 1/2 of the Marshall, puts out 1500W against the Marshall's 300W. And the difference is that I get much more bass weight, even when using sub octaves - the whole thing is clean right down to 20Hz rather than the slightly indistinct bass-amp tone I used to get. Now I dial tones/effects in via pedalboard and rack BBE pre and know that I'm getting exactly the same sound from my Precision Devices/Markbass speakers as I'm sending to the desk. Anyone want to buy a Marshall Jubilee?

Amazing how different people's tastes are... I know folks who love Californication as well. Each to their own! But then I'm a fan of Urban Dance Squad, 24-7 Spyz and Infectious Grooves.

I like the 1st 2 albums... Got into them after I heard "Hollywood" played on John Peel which I bought as an import 12". A friend brought the 1st 2 LPs back for me from the US in late 1985, and I finally got to see them at the Clarendon in Hammersmith in October '87 (their unofficial tour history page says this was cancelled - it wasn't. 5 of us went and paid £3 each to get in and it was much, much emptier than when we'd seen the Guana Batz!). We saw twice in Feb '88 at the Mean Fiddler on successive nights (Hillel Slovak was "indisposed" about halfway through the 2nd one and the other 3 had to continue without him - it was surprisingly awesome!), then again in the Electric Ballroom. All of those gigs were amazing, despite some of the occasionally very dodgy lyrics - it was like seeing a punk Defunkt, which I guess was their plan. I'd never seen anything like it, with the possible exception of James Chance...

Proper cover, with proper bass playing...

Red Hot Chilli Peppers were excellent back in the day; from the first time I saw them, at the Clarendon in Hammersmith, they completely blew me away - I'd never seen anything like it. They stayed just as hard-hitting, funky and rockin' until the success of BloodSugar, then there was a rapid demise into stadium-tedium and little pop songs. Don't begrudge them - they'd done the ground-work and deserved some money! But it seems that it's rare for creativity and big bucks to go hand-in-hand...

Here's a mobile phone one of my old band playing at an excellent venue in Whitchurch - Percy's. Unfortunately, it's effectively outside and this was March...

Certainly in the topsy turvy world of rock and roll, having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is quite often useful.