Leonard Smalls

Jonas Hellborg in not playing too many notes shock!

My mum was a piano teacher, so I grew up listening to mainly classical music, from Bach and Telemann right through to Mahler, but rarely anything more modern. I was dragged to recitals and various operas - can't stand opera to this day! However, I still have a love for Baroque music and have also developed a taste for big'n'heavy orchestral stuff like Shostakovich and occasionally Mahler... But my mother can't cope with any popular music at all - especially anything beyond 50s rock and roll - so she was a bit appalled when I discovered punk and new wave at about the same time she splashed out on a B&O music centre... I'd play my records and listen to John Peel - she somehow thought that "horrible noise" would pollute it! And my dad was a bit of a skiffle and trad jazz fan; in his understated northern way he'd extol the virtues of Chris Barber ("he's not too bad") and The Vipers Skiffle Group ("they're ok") - I still like a bit of that stuff now, daddy-o!

I only do it cos I know how fond you are of tuneless noodling in no discernible key! Still, this month's ditty is a touch more conventional...

"Yes my Darling Daughter" by Edie Gorme...

I usually do that!

When I was a kid in a small village in Cheshire AI meant a chap with a rubber glove impregnating livestock... And if we're talking about gettin' jiggy with the Artificial Insemination Man there's only one choice, Funk!

Early and funky Japan...

One man's rubbish is another's gold... A mate of mine once found a pair of fully working Quad 405 power amps and matching pre in a skip just off Hammersmith Grove! And while we may agree on Magma, I'd be quite happy to bung any incarnation of the Jeffersons in the skip, unless it's in the original reggae 😁

Name or place don't ring a bell... I met the bloke through Nic of Trilogy Audio fame. Can't remember what he was called but I think his amps were Ongaku!

I know someone who was so into his valve driven SET hifi he made concrete horns that went 20m into his garden... It went surprisingly low for about 8w/channel!

I'll come! 😀 And when we move to the environs of Marciac/Pau or thereabouts I'll set up my own troupe consisting of 14 one string basses and an angle grinder. We'll be called "Effondrement de Nouveaux Bâtiments".

His earlier stuff with Derek Bailey was probably a lot more weird - his nonette and tennette (😁) is possibly more film-y, but evocative all the same. Though I think I was more freaked out when I first heard The Residents or even Cabaret Voltaire back in the day.

As I said in my other post, being musically shocking is quite difficult. My 2 examples were lightly shocking simply by being different. Back in 1976 many folks were shocked by the Sex Pistols - simply because, for most people who hadn't heard of the New York Dolls et al they'd never heard such a racket or seen such an attitude. Similarly, when Elvis, Bill Haley etc rocked up older folks thought it was the end of civilisation. And Ornette Coleman appalled the "jazz establishment" with his "Shape of Jazz to come". Never mind what aficionados of classical music thought when Schoenberg ditched melody and key with his twelve tone system!

Many do! Though what is a good tune? In western music that means something that is purely (or at least largely) in our major and minor scales (i.e. Ionian and Aeolian modes) - probably because we are conditioned virtually from birth to hear those as "right". Though until about the 1500s neither mode was widely used at all - more likely that a good tune then was in the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian or Mixolydian modes. However, if you were brought up with "Persian tuning" where an octave is divided into 24 notes rather our twelve, completely different possibilities for a good tune occur, similarly for those brought up on Chinese or Indian music. Then there's the sounds used to make that "tune" and the rhythms involved; the more they veer from the widely accepted norm the less folks will like 'em! However, us angst-ridden outsiders crave novelty... We like it be be different from what the squares dig, daddy-o! Whether that's finely sculpted noise like Gilla Band (who imho sculpt noises with far more skill and creativity than previous noiseniks like Sonic Youth), or weird modal or chromatic stuff with added oddness, like Mr. Parker likes to produce. Though to be musically shocked is quite difficult, methinks; we're more likely to be shocked by content, such as Throbbing Gristle's beautifully wistful "Hamburger Lady" (😁) or with the benefit of modern sensibilities, old rockers singing about their likings for little girls (e.g Mr Chuck Berry himself, though that also had a "good tune"!).

Indeed! Being shocked implies having experienced something that is definitely different and puts you outside your comfort zone. Being good at something relatively "normal" isn't really shocking. This is just a little more shocking: As is this!

New record for us Chokers - 3rd gig of the month! We're on at the Dark Horse in Mosely, 18th February...

You boys sho' are quick on the draw!

A staple floor filler from when I was dj-ing early-mid 80s...

Had a trek to the seaside yesterday - a venue in Rhyl... We were headlining, but wanted to be 2nd on as all of us had a combined age of around 250 and needed beddy-boes at some time before 2 am. So we went on at 2130, which, as is the way with music venues actually turned out to be 2220. There was only a vocal PA, which I discovered after turning up with a Markbass 2x10 and Marshall Jubilee head; our other bassist had brought an 80s Trace and enormous 4x10 so I thought there might be issues with being heard. As it was, all was just as loud as with a PA, but without that artificial bass drum thump, but still clear sounding (at least if you had ACS plugs like I did! Audience was very appreciative, only a couple of c0ckupses (both by guitar man) and Mr Drums did fine despite having dragged himself out of a flu-ey deathbed in order to infect us all as well. And managed to get home in 1h45 beating Mr Google's claim of 2h20! So in bed by 0130, despite a wind-down glass of Edradour. Sparkley trousers went down a storm too.

Many years ago when I was a trainee sound recordist I was on "Keeping Up Appearances" for a month as boomswinger. In the evenings in true BBC style everyone would meet up in the bar and get p1ssed up. I got chatting to Geoffrey Hughes (of Eddie Yeats fame) and we discovered a mutual love of whisky, and he'd also brought 2 guitars. So we spent many an evening jammin' away, me on "bass" (i.e. bottom 4 strings of an acoustic) and him strumming drunkenly, there may have been singing involved... Not a bass hero, but a hero nonetheless!

I taught myself to play bass by playing along to Bootsy records. That put The Funk in me!

Back in the late 80s we had a band who supported us regularly - The Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis - who were a sort of skiffle punk... They had a tea chest bass, made (funnily enough) out of a tea chest, a bit of stair banister and some thick string. Their bass player could get various frequencies of thump out of it, but had to draw the line at Stanley Clarke covers...

Just checking my new fabulous trousers for Saturday's gigno

I shared a funny cigarette with Norman Watt Roy once!

Sold Brian a pedal - all went exactly as it should. Top bloke!