Leonard Smalls

And a bit more!

A bit of New York No Wave from 1979

There's some seriously crazed guitar playing here... And a Danelectro!

Reliving my youth at Oliver's Nite Spot in Chester...

One of my favourite jazz groups... Always funky but still Proper!

That's a bit catch-all! Rhythm and Blues was coined in 1949 as a phrase by a journo from Billboard magazine to describe, basically, black music. This included blues, jazz, swing etc, and had artists as varied as Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Nat King Cole, The Fabulous Platters. As black music moved away from the basic 12 bar structure a new term was coined -"soul". Meanwhile, a bunch of Brits had got into the blues and started their own combos based on their interpretation of this sound - It got rockier, and many British folks feel that this pub-rock sound is what Rhythm and Blues is/should be. Meanwhile, in the US the term "Black Music" was coined, which covered everything from Miles Davis to Parliament and everything inbetween. However, in the 80s more white artists were using African-American influences so by 1990 Billboard re-purposed the term R&B to mean almost any music of black origin, which is a very wide church even discounting jazz (though this has just as many haters within the BC community as modern R&B!). Me? I like bits of all of 'em

I had no idea who Del Preston was until a quick Google!

It's Ralph Brown...

I though we didn't allow covers? It's a bit faster than Cage's original but otherwise virtually identical! 😁

Being a musician in my own band, making our own music and making sufficient money without having to play 5 nights a week in some duff sports bar would be excellent... However, I don't think I could do the session musician thing. It always appals me to read some ace player's resume - "X played with Miles Davis and Stanley Clarke, also with Deep Purple and Hendrix and went on to be in-demand session musician to play with the likes of Little Mix, The Spice Girls, Take That and Black Lace".

Talking of Chopin, I did two lots today! Briefly played his cover of Manilow's "Could it be Magic" (as nicked by me many years ago in a composition compo), and nipped into Aldi for some Weissbier. Proper cultured!

😁 S'not EDM at all! And there's no rave horns. Even better, there's no auto tuned vocals.bor any vox for that matter! Just plenty bass and lots of stereo FX...

As you can tell, I done a special bangin' EDM choon especially for you, Mr Doug, complete with rave horns and auto-tuned vocals...

Here's mine! I was tempted to defy the directive and do Putney Parsnip Dub... Then I nearly veered off north of the river to attempt Pimlico Parsnip or even Totenham Turnip Dub. However, because I always do what I'm told, here we have a dubwise celebration of South East London's finest root vegetables. Bass is the trusty Wal all done with first and only take, to basic rhythm track. Then more drums, percussion, melodica VST, strat and various funny noises liberally slathered in delay and FX all added later in a desperate attempt to gild the lily...

Our next one is April 27th! But gives us time to work on arrangements for new stuff. Singer gets most of our gigs sorted, she wants to do loads, I'm happier with no more than 1 a month, unless they're very local (though that's unlikely unless you're playing "All The Hits of The 60s Right Up to Now!", or you're a StatusQuo/Wurzels trubute act). And we make no money out of it - we jokingly justify this to ourselves by saying we're preserving our artistic integrity 🤣 Though many years ago I was in a Grotowskian theatre company. We were very keen on our "Artistic Integrity" (or at least the director was!) to such an extent that, while doing a 2 week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival successfully playing to audiences of 5 or less with great adherence to our principles, we discovered that a journo from the Telegraph was coming to review us. We (sorry he, the director) were (was) so appalled at the possibility of selling out to The Man that we (i.e. he) found a reproduction of the Man Ray photo of an eye, put it in a nice wooden frame, and carved the words "Do Not Use The Sign Of The Eye Until You Yourself Can See" into the frame. Then he (for it wasn't us!) summoned the chap who'd championed us (Richard Dimarco), presented the picture to him and promptly put his fist through it. Then we all left the Festival. We (not him so much) thought this was all rather bizarrely hilarious, but then we had been drinking lots of barley wine over bitter in Jeannie Dean's Tryst next door!

And I've made a start on the bassoon, bouzouki and balafon, with beatboxing, bongos and banjo to add later.

Think I've got the bones of it sorted after a couple of hours today.... Laid down bass and bagpipes already!

I felt it was a bit plodding too...

Back in the early 90s our wacky PunkFunk band used this as intro music, which we'd drown out with an everyone playing everything at once complete noise, which we'd abruptly stop and jump into our first song...

Tis!

In 1990 or so I went into Allbang and Strummit in Covent Garden with £500 cash in my pocket... I tried a Jaydee at £450, a Wal mk 1 at £500 and an Alembic (the Stanley Clarke type) for £550... Loved them all, couldn't afford the extra £50 so bought the Wal, which I still have. It's a bit battered after 100s of gigs, there's still some fluorescent paint in-between the pickup and body from a band where we got painted as we played (!), but don't think I'd ever sell it...

Here's me with extra fat skis...

None more slappy!

Blues featuring Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Jerome Bigfoot Brailey and ex Ornette Coleman guitarist James Blood...

Derek Bailey and the history of free improvisation is a most excellent read... It is as well!