Leonard Smalls

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!

We were playing at the Dark Horse in Moseley, Birmingham last night with 3 other bands... And we were very grateful for the cloudbursts and lightning because it meant that the organisers of the Mostly Funk and Soul Festival just up the road closed down early due to being scared of imminent deaths. So as the Dark Horse was the nearest pub, and the venue upstairs was free entry (donations gratefully received!) it was packed. First band on were doing Joy Division-ey post punk and were OK until they had a melt down (with tears!) over the lack of vocal monitoring (welcome to rock'n'roll in pub (and other!) venues...). Next band were pretty decent, with groovy bass and excellent drummer and slightly crazed ranting and guitar FX from dishevelled singer. I liked 'em! (Pulsar). We came on to a pretty full house, with folks actually moving about (I hear it's called "dancing"), lots of cheering and even folks seeking us out to give compliments, rather than the usual pitchforks and flaming torches. We even got paid (a bit!) and sold some tshirts and cds which was nice. And even better, my Super Mario Cart managed to smash the Google maps expected return travel time of 1 hour 45 by 25 minutes! Snippet (not sure why uploaded mp4 video comes out audio only?): KissThisDH8-7-23.avi

Too rock'n'roll for that... Choked on someone else's vomit!

Tonight, in Moseley, Birmingham!!! Relatively early start, 6pm doors. We're on at 8.30pm.

Back up generator!

But it's mains powered?

Didn't know there were modes! I just press the tuner button and up it pops, with note letter in the middle and arrows either side...

Helix tuner has a huge display and is excellent. And it comes free with the helix board, so a relative bargain. 😁

I think that if you're playing rock'n'roll you have to make sure you're both rocking and rolling... So I have two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.

I occasionally smoked and played... But felt much cooler smoking and climbing 😜 This was 30odd years ago.

Funnily enough I've never found a P bass I enjoy playing. And I only ever found an enjoyable jazz bass once, that was a serious custom shop jobby for about a grand more than a new ACG. As a result, I have no Fenders. To me they're like a Vauxhall Vectra, everyone's got one, even though they're just a bit rubbish and just trading on the Viva name

A bit exhilarating, but has a number of naughty words... A must-listen while driving

Personally I'm happiest if we've played well enough to a reasonable sized audience, none of whom ignored us, none of whom threw anything at us and at least one of whom came up and said "wow, fantastic bass playing, I'd like to offer you a deal where you get 50% of total take" and after all that, still get home for a nice wee dram by 2200.