Leonard Smalls

I remembered how Portugal, back in the early 2000s decriminalised drug use... So I was reminded of classic US 50s scare-movie, Reefer Madness. Hence quotes from US 50s movies on the dangers of The Weed! Bass is Sandberg Bassic thru Helix, some reverb. Guitar is a Strat, drums a mix of EZ and Ableton sounds. Clips are licence free from Loopcloud. Plenty of Dub Station and Quadraverb delays, plus Nectar 4, Neutron 3 and Ozone 9.

Fattie Bum Bum - Carl Malcolm

Had our first rehearsal as a 6 piece... Though 2 pieces were missing - drummer due to bad back and singer as we thought we should perhaps do some arranging of guitar and bass parts before a full rehearsal. We had drum parts from our album recording going through the PA, along with vox if we needed them (I quite like to do it without so everyone knows and counts the structure - I've found it gets into your head better if you don't just rely on a singer's cue, this helps if there's poor monitoring I find). And we got new and sort of different arrangements for 5 songs - with chuggy rhythm guitar I've got room to explore some new pastures up at the widdly end, which is nice (some may disagree!), and lead guitar now has the space to do occasional crazy stuff. So all in all, quite promising! We'll see whether singer and drummer agree next week.

And more James Carter - awesome sax playing!

Gammon Everybody! -Eddie Cochran

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bacon - Otis Redding

You Need Hands - Max Bygraves

We once sold a high quality Burgon and Ball garden fork to someone... They came back about 13 months later and one of the tines was bent, They insisted on an immediate refund as it was a "shoddy item" and he "knows his rights". I asked how it happened and they started getting really p!ssy, saying "that's irrelevant", and eventually that the gardener was just forking over an ordinary flower bed. I explained that the only way that this would have happened to a fork was if someone was using it to prise out a deep root or stone (which it's not designed to do, it's not a crowbar!), and they'd repeatedly put all their weight on it. The fact it hadn't broken showed it was a quality item. They started shouting about going to trading standards and writing to You and Yours - I said I'll investigate, and if it turned out to be a duff fork they could have a replacement or refund and to come back in a week. So I took it home, put the tine in a vice and bounced on it until it was straight (about 1/2 hour!) - no signs of cracking or obvious fatigue. They came back in about 3 weeks, still sour-faced and p!ssy. After I'd explained how long it had taken to straighten and how much effort they left without so much as a "sorry for being a miserable git and trying it on!"

Fiddler On The Roof - Cannonball Adderley

Tossers - Get Carter and the Convulsions

Are You Offended? - Dub Jamaica

NRG - Skrillex

Story of the Blues - Wah

As did Stanley Clarke... Bootsy started in the 60s, as did Larry Graham...

Rockin' jazz fusion...

Precipitation - Belouis Some

We've had 2 rehearsauditions for guitar players recently... 1st one said he knew nothing about theory but had put quite a lot of practice into working out our songs. He was, however, a bit plodding and standard-metal with very little invention, spark or syncopation though timing was generally good. 2nd guy was far more interesting musically, understood what modes were and could play around with our songs. He started off playing a little too blues-ily (as our original guitar player did on the album) but varied from that when told he had free reign. His only negative was that he's very slow to respond to messages on't phone... So I was keen on 2, the rest of the band wanted 1 as "he was heavier". I said "heavy is easy, interesting isn't, what sort of band do we want to be - same old same old or an interesting mix of all-sorts?"). As a result it looks like we may now have a 2 bass 2 guitar band! I'm very tempted to show 'em Chick Corea's advice to musos, though as they all hate anything to do with jazz, often including musicianship, it may well fall on deaf ears!

Can You Dig It? - The Mock Turtles

I'd vote for that!

Bass In Ya Face - Jamaaladeen Tacuma

Oh Bondage Up Yours! - X-ray Spex

Careful with That Mic... - Clutch

Dear Diary - Moody Blues 😁