Leonard Smalls

As ZBD and others have said, Bach is always a good starting point. Always great bass! Though when it comes to his many piano works, I much prefer the way Jacques Loussier does 'em to the no-pedal soul-less-ness of Andras Schiff (a source of much disagreement with my classical-only music piano teaching mother!). I bet Bach would have liked his Italian Concerto done all groovy! And more Vivaldi recommendations - I get sick of the usual overplayed 4 Seasons... I much prefer the bassoon and lute concertos, and for more baroque, Scarlatti's Sinfonies. For more lovely bass lines, I'd also recommend Schubert's Impromptus. I also like a bit of heavy, so loves a bit of Shostakovich's symphonies and can get as modern as Varese...

Oldies but goodies!

I've spent a bit more time than usual on the bass for this month's songlet... We've got 8 different basslines played on 4 different basses! It's inspired by the time I worked at Chester Zoo (as a boat driver, what else?). One day loads of police turned up and completely locked the place down - they thought they'd smashed a major drugs ring. Turns out a lad who used to work there had been caught in London with a carrier bag full of weed, that he said had come from Chester Zoo. The police duly found a large amount of cannabis plants growing behind the bird house; however, they'd grown from hemp seeds thrown out while cleaning out the bird cages! For those who only want the very funky bit, rather than the ambient build-up, just skip to 3 minutes... Basses are Lightwave fretless, Wal Custom, ACG Recurve and Parker PB51. Guitars are an old Epi semi-acoustic and a Strat with lots of pitch shift, reverb and delay and Valves overdrive. Drums programmed in EZ Drummer and Addictive Drums. All mixed in Ableton and polished with Ozone 9.

I suspect I wouldn't get on very well with your record collection! But then most people of taste would baulk at my love of avant- and free-jazz 😁

As a young punk kid I really hated all that Americana - basically that middle of the road US muzak dribbling with hippy looking dudes and strummed acoustic guitars. And now, may years later, I still hate it.

An actual single!

Indeed! I've been trying to convince our guitarist to play almost anything but blues-ey widdle by introducing him to Primus, and Marc Ribot and David Fiuczynski, but only limited success so far...

I think it's the more usual position! However, I preferred Youth-era - possibly because they were sparser and groovier...

I would like to see some live music on TV that isn't just the latest boy-girlband on Graham Norton promoting their new single, or Jools' "Later" and Hootenanny - which is about the sum total of TV live music! I remember back in the 70s80s there was quite a lot - Rock Goes to College, OGWT, TOTP (!), The Tube, Something Else etc, all of which promoted the idea of actual bands playing actual music in an intimate space, rather than just a superstar in a football stadium charging everyone £100+ to get in...

New Model Army at the Cosmo Club in Leeds 1984ish... It's not that they were bad, but that the Cosmo was largely a reggae venue - we'd seen Mad Professor, LKJ, Black Uhuru etc, and assumed NMA were also reggae. So we arrived after some serious herbal refreshment, all ready to skank the night away, and what did we get? Noisy oiks in clogs. Never forgiven the beggars!

The Parker that this ultra-cool dude is playing 😁😎

Parker bass pics would be nice Just got this!

None from last night yet, but here he/she (you can't tell these days 😁) is next to my ACG.

Proper punk rock night for us at the Star and Garter in Manchester, with Vomit and Ed Banger. Great crowd, we played well and at least 20bpm faster than normal. And someone actually recognised my Parker bass! However, city centre a bit of a nightmare due to huge club just over the way which caused the road to be completely covered in barely clad teenagers - bit of a contrast to the punters at the Star!

We've got to be there by 1630!

Always liked "The Zoo". Very funky for metal!

I do that as well! In fact I do it so often that there's wear marks at the base of the neck...

Funnily enough, when I worked for Auntie Beeb we had lots of layers of management, and some terrible planning... In order to save money, they'd make craft staff (i.e. those who edited, or dubbed, or recorded pix/sound) redundant, but keep the layers of management. Then the programmes themselves (as everything in the beeb was separate within the internal market) would hire those same craft folks to do the work for them. It would cost the programme makers the same, the editor/mixer etc would get paid more because more of the money went to them, and the resources dept who'd made the craft person redundant would save the wages of that person, but lose the far bigger amount of money that hiring them out would bring in. So Resources would lose money, and would eventually only exist in order to hire in staff. Which would mean that all the lower tiers of management would also be made redundant and upper management would be congratulated for reducing the amount of staff (though programme budgets went up as the supply of BBC trained folks became more in demand, what with BBC training also disappearing). I suspect a similar thing is happening in the NHS!

It's not quite so much "Daddy or chips?", but more "boiled turnip or boiled cabbage?" 😁

And now, a Christmas song!

😁

More importantly,if sticking a digit up a dog's fundament doesn't stop 'em fighting,and I'm not sure if choking a scrapping large boar-hunting hound is a good idea, then how do you stop them tearing chunks out of each other? I'm not keen on pulling them apart - tried this on my wedding day when a Weimeraner and Rottie started on each other. All I got was a bite - though my shout as I bled onto my kilt did stop 'em!

That must've been the time our drummer was suffering from Russian Roulette flatulence!

Line 6 Helix... No more dodgy connections, or duff power supplies, no noise at all bar what I play.