June 2023

  • The Kübler-Ross Box: pictures and text

    …and the latest Beatcrofting music show on Mixcloud In 1969, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss psychiatrist, published her book On Death and Dying, which introduced the concept of The Five Stages of Grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. There has since been a lot of debate over the accuracy and limitations of her diagnosis.…

  • Beatcrofting on 60 North Radio, 23 June

    Music from The Bible to The Tumbling Souls, via Aztec Camera As heard on 60 North Radio, 7-8pm Fridays. Archived there but streaming too on Mixcloud now. Of all the tracks played here, it’s Neil Finn’s She Will Have Her Way that I keep coming back to. That and Roddy Frame’s We Could Send Letters.…

  • All the news that's unfit for print…

    …and let’s face it, hardly anyone’s interested in. Stuff I’ve been consuming this week After less than the first chapter, I realised I couldn’t bear to re-read Derek Raymond’s influential and epically murky crime novel I Was Dora Suarez. The repulsion it evokes – which apparently made Raymond’s publisher vomit at his desk and drop…

  • Cool tunes for the hottest day…

    Shetland simmers in the simmer dim  Cool tunes for a boiling day on the Old Rock. On 60 North Radio between 7 and 8 on Friday, archived thereafter and streaming now on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/beatcrofting-with-tom-morton/ It’s been hot in Shetland this week. Hotter than ever before, with temperatures in Unst apparently reaching over 27 degrees on…

  • Look out, there's a monster coming

    Pylons to wind turbines. From joy and awe to fear and horror Pylons. When I was a wee boy, bouncing unsecured in the back of my dad’s old Wolseley (those endless holiday journeys, baby Ruth sleeping on the rear parcel shelf) we would sometimes play spot-the-pylon. Extra points for especially gigantic ones, soaring Meccano-istic structures…

  • Cover stories: 1970s adolescent boys in full display mode

    …and oh, how the girls flocked to hear those Wishbone Ash, Uriah Heep and Groundhogs albums… Marr College, Troon, early 1970s: if you were into music, the thing was to ostentatiously (yet also somehow displaying a certain coolness) bring an album to school, holding it with one hand under your shoulder as a kind of…

  • The Beatcroft Not-Particularly-Sociable

    (In fact, sociably reclusive or reclusively sociable) As usual, the playlist below is available to listen to as a show on 60 North Radio (Fridays, 7-8pm) and on Mixcloud (link follows). The choice of songs this week has a sneaky tip of the hat to one Bruce Springsteen, who performed in Edinburgh to 50,000 or…