Leonard Smalls

There's 2 major points here! Firstly, the idea of "self-indulgence" and "niche appeal". Self indulgence is usually applied to virtuosity in music one doesn't like, whereas a similar, or possibly far lower, level of skill in another piece of music could be called "genius". And those types of music with by far the highest levels of skill are also those with niche appeal - frinstance classical and jazz. Now could this lack of appeal of more complex music be because of the first point, a failure in music education at a young age? After all, most (UK) school music lessons are an excuse to misbehave, it's not treated as a proper subject, media largely ignores any music outside of the simplest of popular warbling. So in order to continue your musical education you have to either go it alone - often because of parents' hot-housing' efforts via private lessons - or being self-taught, or braving the school education route with all its difficulties. And by musical education I don't just mean playing an instrument, but an appreciation (not necessarily a liking!) for all forms of music. And there's been many Berkeley alumni in all sorts of musical genres: Les Claypool, Stewart Copeland, Adam Duritz (Counting Crows), Susanna Hofs, Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead - attended for a while!), Raymond Pepperell (Dead Kennedys), Terry Riley...

It's a .mov file... Because it runs on Apple's 8 bit architecture it won't run in Chrome, or Edge, or even allow you to download! And the itunes link won't allow play on anything but the itunes app - no browsers!

Here's something rockin' my old band recorded live in our living room back in 1991ish. Was recorded using 4 mics on kit, di from keys and bass, and vocal mic/ guitar mic, all going to a borrowed 24 track desk in the bedroom next door. All was recorded directly to DAT with no fx. I've tinkered with some eqs, compression etc to make a better mix!

Personally, I don't like 'em. But as one who gravitates toward the unpopular, I would say that! Meanwhile, I don't like musical theatre either. Seems like the worst of both worlds to me...

Don't worry, you're not alone.... I like 'em too! I still occasionally listen to their 1st 2 albums - saw them at Liverpool Eric's when I was a wee 'un.

Basschat seems to have lots of folks who can neither cope with jazz, slap or too many notes bass... Here's a bit of all those 😁

I can't be doing with any of that wet 70s Americana nonsense... Everything from the Doobies/Allman to Petty, The Band, not-quite-so-American piffle like Fleetwood Kack, blokes/women with a guitar singing emotional stuff I couldn't give a toss about (eg Janis Ian, Joni, Tim Buckley etc). And I actively hate folk, or at least British type folk of the " I sawe a prettye mayde " type. Including Wishbone Ash, Lindisfarne etc even though one of my neighbours is June Tabor (and she's really nice!). And metal bores me stupid, or at least identikit this-is-where-you-sing-this-is-where-you-growl rubbish, but I do like Rolo Tomassi, because they're at least musically interesting. However, I like jazz... Or at least I like proper unlistenable jazz, anything from Coltrane to Bailey, but not big band or elevator ook like Sanborn. And I like The Funk, The Whole Funk and Nothing But The Funk. Including slap, anything with the bass player playing far too many ( or is it just the right amount?) notes.

More melodic fusion!

Groovy Turkish/PhillyFunk Jazz!

Bizarrely, when I'm out mountain biking this usually pops into my head as a cadence... I do love the ridiculous rock'n'roll bit at 1'43!

I'm afraid my contribution has vocalisations... The picture reminded me of the Moody Blues' Malapropic misquote of Milton, which further reminded me of a schoolmate who swore his dad had just bought a new Austin Fandango. Hence a song about cars ending in "O", which obviously meant a weird jazzy ambient bit sandwiched between 2 slabs of Funky Cockney and Groovy Scouse... And for those interested, tis all recorded in Ableton. It started as a first-and-only-take bass noodle to click track, with guitar noodles (Strat, btw), funky and otherwise added after as were the drums (mix of EZ Jabo Sparks, Addictive and programmed vis Impulse keys pads). Guitar has some Bias Amp, Bass has a touch of Objeq Chorus. Vox double tracked, smeared in Raum reverb and Vocal Splitter with 25ms delay between them. Everything had a light sheen of Ozone 9 Greg Colibri mastering preset, and all slightly saturated using Devastor...

From what I understand all those wind turbines in the north sea are actually propellers; all it takes is for the anchors to be weighed and we can set off into the ocean!

I prefer to drive! From Shropshire to Saalbach in Austria is 2 500 mile days with an overnight at a £50 Ibis in Luxembourg which has a most excellent Italian restaurant next door... We stay for about 10 days skiing, and it costs us about a grand each including liftpass...

Tips? Have a lesson... And keep your ankles flexed so your shins push into the front of the boots. That keeps weight over the front which makes turning much easier, as you'll then be using the whole edge. And learn how to carve as quickly as possible, as the beginner's snowplough turn and stop hurts far more!

I suspect it's because it's a .mov file... Don't work well with windows! Is the band The Bridge? Or Valley Uprising?

That's Scottish skiing (and mountaineering) 😁 But when the weather and conditions are good is one of the best places on earth... However, that's for maybe 4 days a year! Skiing is much easier nowadays, as the skis are so much easier to turn with. But my tip is to get at least 6 hours of tuition in. And go to Austria - the chair lifts are heated, the mountain food is on the whole better than France and beer's cheaper. And it's weissbier! Though saying that, I love France too, though choose wisely as it can get very crowded. Don't go at half term!

Me too! I remember a school trip to Aprica in about 1981... Shame I'm not as young and supple as then - otherwise I'd be doing lean angles just like this 😁

File doesn't seem to work... What was the bar?

It might be worth thinking about getting one of THESE. I know people with serious arthritic knees who can ski again by using a Ski Mojo. Not cheap, but it means you could get back on the slopes... Just to get you more jealous, I've just bought my first ever pair of new skis - they're 95mm at the waist, and 154mm at the shovel. And despite their proper off piste/all mountain shape they're designed for fast on-piste carving. They catapult you out of turns like you've got a jet engine!

I used to play these at my gothfunk'n'soul disco in the 80s!

I'd suggest going to your device manager, right click on all the USB options, open the power management tab and make sure windows can't turn the device off to annoyingly save power... Do the same for graphics and any onboard sound. And as right click on any DAW, and make sure it always runs as administrator. I found my laptop speeded up quite a lot after that! However, the 16Gb that had still tended to max out when running 6 VST instruments and 16 other tracks, all with Ozone/Neutron/Raum or Bias FX on them. So I went to Bargain Hardware, and bought a refurb HPZ440 audio workstation with 48Gb RAM, 2x Xeon 8 core processors and 3Tb of solid state storage for (wait for it) £867... It's pretty quick!

Coolest bass solo from the funkiest mutha in the universe? I saw him at the Barbican on this tour, doing this very solo. I don't think my internal organs have ever vibrated like that!

One man's crap is another's steaming pile of heaven... I would file all the above in my stinky crap pile, and my steamy pile of 80s heaven would include Bauhaus, Trouble Funk, The Exploited, The Meteors, Guana Batz, Jonzun Crew, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Mad Professor. Funnily enough, from my NotDooDoo Pile, only 1 charted in the 80s (that I noticed) - Bauhaus, with a cover of a 70s Bowie song...

Has this thread been resurrected due to Hucknall's recent arrest for molesting a rabbit? I heard that when caught, Mr. Hucknall was singing "Holding Back The Ears" , then "Bunny's Too Tight To Mention"... 😁