Leonard Smalls

While Faith No More are the only band I ever went to see on my own (Dingwalls - none of my mates fancied it!) I do like Mr. Bungle, and Tomahawk (and many of Mr. Patton's other bits of weirdness). Check this Mr. Bungle live performance ( I hesitate to call it a song!). To get this tight they must have used molyslip and a blowtorch...

Standard mark-up for many shops is 2.5 x the ex-VAT wholesale price... That way they can pay for premises, business rates, heat, light, staff, insurance, accountants, trade body membership etc - and hopefully still have a couple of quid left over to be taxed as profit.

Our next gig isn't till 6th June at Speakeasy in Hereford. It'll be rockin', in a punkfunkno-wave sort of way!

Might have been earlier!

We played a gig at the Legendary Percy's in Whitchurch, Shropshire last night supporting the even more legendary Linerunners. Not only is it a great venue with all sorts of bands playing from all over world, but they offered me a cab to play through... So I thought "it'll be some piddley little thing, I'll bring my Markbass 2x10 to supplement it". Turns out it was a Mesa Diesel 2x15 - with the 2x10 on top of that and my rack of amps/compressors it was taller than me. Not only that, but with only an indicated 200W RMS on my Crown power amp it was so loud that both guitarist and drummer couldn't hear themselves! It was big and it was clever We were also very honoured to have in attendance Sir @lurksalot of this parish, his brother and a number of other chaps I hadn't seen since leaving school back in 1882. So I was doubly pleased that we only made minor boo-boos, and that the bass player from Linerunners (who got an excellent sound from his Ric going through my rig) likened us to Can. Though I'm not sure if that meant we were the sort of band that folks pretended to like but didn't really. Still, roll on Speakeasy in Hereford on 6th June and recording starting this Sunday.

It costs us lots - between the PPL and PRS licences (!) it's around £500pa. I remember asking them where the money goes; they said it gets distributed among the artists. I asked how they knew which artists we'd played, and how many times each song had been played - they referred me to their website. I offered to send a list of artists on our playlist and they didn't want to know even though I pointed out that it wasn't fair on the more niche artists we play. Their website says: Our music researchers collect performance details directly from a statistically valid sample of UK venues. We match this against similar broadcast data that contains many of the same songs. It’s this broadcast data that we can then use to calculate how much we pay our members. and also: After our business costs, music licence fees are distributed to all those involved in making music via our parent companies PPL and PRS for Music. This means that those people who write, perform, compose, record or publish music are fairly paid for their work. So presumably it all goes to the Michael Jackson estate and Simon Cowell!

I've done most of the playlist at our garden centre; while compiling it I thought about what would be most suitable for an ageing, quite well-off clientele... So we've got Jacques Loussier playing Bach, Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and "Biatches Brew". Plus most of Kraftwerk's live "Minimum-Maximum", PiL "Flowers of Romance", Elvis Costello "Good Year for the (David Austin) Roses", Parliament and Bootsy and Fatback (plenty); then there's some Monochrome Set, Ivan "Boogaloo" Jones, Muddy Waters, Scientist, Ini Kamoze, Yellowman, Mad Professor, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven and about 300 more. Only thing we haven't got is metal as 2 of our staff members go a bit funny.

And a version I used to play as a DJ in the Crazy ATs!

If the FX part is the same as the GE200 I'm not sure it would! They didn't seem to work very well at all for bass - thin and sounding as if they were only designed for guitar...

This Friday, 26th April we're at the legendary Percy's in Whitchurch with Hereford new-waver-indie-rock types, Linerunners. It'll probably sound better than this, but we won't have the camp-fire, fireworks, explosions or black rubber fist!

This is my favourite! Only a bit out-there, with crazy distorted wah-sax...

Sounds like a cuíca to me too - probably played by Carl "Butch" Small or Larry Fratangelo… Not the very best of Parliament, though still better(*) than the very very best that most other bands can come up with! * I mean that in a completely subjective way!

We're normally asked to do a 45 minute set, or 1/2 hour if we're first on a bill of 3 or more... Which is 10 songs ranging from 2-6 minutes with only a tiny bit of chat in between. We run 2x2 of them together with just bass feedback to cover the drummer changing the bpm on his metronome!

I preferred them when they were younger and groovier

And just when you were doing so well! Rap is effectively rhythmic speech or chanting, which (arguably! at least one scholarly type has said this!) has its roots in the medieval music of Occitan, or even Gregorian plainsong... You may not like any of those things but it doesn't make it less valid as music. Similarly, thrash/death/heavy metal is thought to come from the industrial heartland of the Midlands, but actually originated with the Gamelan players of Indonesia, though some historians cite the traditional backing music to Japanese Noh Theatre as the true precursor of metal. Which means it would be churlish to dismiss it as mere noise! 🤓

The point is that not liking something doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad music - it just means it's not to your taste. But it's just as valid as music as any other music - I'm quite keen on free improvised jazz which many folks would think isn't actually music, just a noise. But if it sends me on an emotional journey, despite being possibly atonal or arrhythmic, that makes it music! Personally I can't stand most British and Irish folk music (though I like the Unthanks), it makes me want to put a hole in their bodhran and take a drill to their mandolin, which means that despite hating it I've been taken on an emotional musical journey.

Here's a snippet of our best song, just up to where it just about starts getting good

I don't think "self-indulgent" really exists in music; you either like it or you don't! And within those 2 categories there's "well-played" and "badly played". Some folks seem to think that anything with more than 3 notes is "self indulgent", especially if there's complex rhythm, modal or (God forbid!) "outside" playing. Personally I prefer "more outside the better with cojones the size of the moon", but Mr. D played that beautifully, as did the band. Wouldn't buy it though!

Another from Albert's Shed Shrewsbury, complete with crowd joining in - even though they'd never heard it before...

We played at Albert's Shed in Shrewsbury last night... And it wasn't bad at all - we'd sorted out the terrible problems from the previous c@ck-up in Worcester and actually played (nearly) everything well. There was good reaction from the crowd, with dancing! Here's a little bit, sound a bit ropey but could be worse...

Can't remember his name, but it's the guy in the cowboy hat... Does that mean you're with Bang Bang Romeo? Pic of me and Stasi below at the same gig.