Leonard Smalls

There's quite a few! Vice Squad, Plasmatics, Amyl and the Sniffers, Ctl Drp, Ginjer, Choked (my band!) for a start. And Rolo Tomassi rock a bit!

If he'd listened in school rather than noodling away on his guitar all day he could... All he'd need would be some rust, a bit of aluminium powder and a sparkler.

Was a 2cv so no probs!

It was a great place to play, and the first time I'd even been to Birmingham...

I remember playing Edward's Number 8 back in the early 90s supporting Gaye Bykers, that was the furthest north Barf Roco ever got!

I was a proper man's man back in the day... There was also a little blue cocktail dress, a 50s swimming cozzie and a wedding dress.

And nearby, the Doors "The Lickey End"

And of course, The Lady in Redditch...

The Killing Joke classic "Turn to Redditch"

I worked there in 1986 for 6 months, though it was the Three Kings by then! There were 13 bar staff on a Saturday night, and 'twas completely rammed, but there was no live music. We got paid £1.90 an hour, and I remember the landlord asking after one busy shift if we wanted to stay for a drink afterwards. Most of us agreed, then he insisted we paid for our drinks! We didn't stay next time he asked.

Get a 4! If it's good enough for Jaco... Etc etc 😁

And talking of Chapel Lawn, I played there a few of times, once with Bang Bang Romeo (who went on to bigger things, someone from here played bass on their last tour?), and twice with Dredd and the Badass Weeds...

The only knee trembling going on in Chapel Lawn now is if someone's forgotten their walking stick 😁

Funkin' On! Crackin' bass too...

A few years ago my last band were playing at the White Horse in Clun, Shropshire - they don't often do music but for some reason had booked us, a hard rock originals band. We were a couple of songs into the set when a coach load of young farmers turned up; the girls promptly went to the (tiny) loo, which was right next to where we were playing. As Tim was in the middle of a solo, guitar held aloft with pained guitar-solo face and closed-but-expressive eyes one of the farmeresses came and shouted in his ear "Can you do "Summer of 69" ?" To his credit, he held the note for a second longer, then nodded at us which we somehow understood to mean "stop", and launched into the "69" chorus on his own. We then continued with the song we'd been halfway through. And did the Young Farmers cheer? Nope... They'd gone outside to throw beer at each other.

I've taken to putting bright blue nail polish on the middle finger of my right hand especially to show people who ask for any songs at all. They'll get what they're given, and if they don't like it I can show them my blue-polished middle finger again...

In my ongoing series of Songs From The Shows, here's my version of Rogers and Hammerstein's classic from South Pacific, "Happy Talk", as done by Captain Sensible. The lightning dictated the use of a vocoder and hence, the slight title change... Fun was had with vocoder plug-ins and getting funky bits out of a battered Strat. Bass is the trusty Wal, keys are through Iris, drums programmed from Digicussion sounds. All has been liberally smeared with Ozone 9...

Crazy disco banger by exMagma dudes... Features a one note bassline (until 3'40 when it briefly changes). Get yer dancin' shoes on!

Not sure about the comfy white slacks and Genesis circa 1984 look! 😁

Luckily the only cover we do is a punkclassic (Penetration's "Don't Dictate") which I've made sure I like playing by sticking some of Cameo's "Word Up" and a splodge of the Crass ""Walls (fun in the oven)" in. I wouldn't play a song I didn't like because I'm on stage purely to fuel my ego, not to keep various drunk folks who don't like actual music and moreover, don't understand my genius, happy!

We discovered recently that the kids use Instagram and/or TikTok, not Facebook. We did a battle of the bands, which we were told had judges to decide who'd won. Turned out it was voting on Instagram, which we've barely had a presence on. One of the bands on was truly terrible, but still only lost after a last minute flurry of support for the eventual winners. Since then we've started Instagram posts as well, as it's not just oldfarts who go to gigs!

With the Jon East pre-amp you can get it sound exactly like you want it to - once you've worked out what all the different pull-up/down/twisty-left-right'n'everywhere knobs do! However, I could probably use almost any bass at the moment and it would sound the same as I'm mainly using a very distorted split guitar/bass octave thing on my Helix...

ACG Recurve

Here's a photoshop one of me pretending to know what goes on in the nether regions...

Good'n'rockingly funky album with Bootsy, Stevie Salas and Buddy Miles!