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And so to Greenland my fellow Americans Were going in to save the penguins Don’t tell me there are no penguins there I’ve seen them flying through the air With their rainbow beaks and their stubby wings They’re really very beautiful things Like me though obviously I’m taller And I can’t fly as my hands…
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“Going to see the lights.” Not to see the ceremonial switching-on of Glasgow’s Christmas illuminations, but just to witness the multicoloured glare of George Square; we were easily astounded in the monochrome 1960s. But for my parents, survivors of a blacked-out wartime childhood, the profligate use of electricity to turn Scotland’s winter darkness into a…
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Last Beatcroft before Christmas, and from Glasgow I wish everyone a happy and satisfying Christmas, especially when it comes to sustenance. Moderation in all things other than turkey. This song was inspired by a recent photograph of one of Shetland’s weel-kent politicians. Like many on the celebrity circuit, this individual appears to have lost a…
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This is one of the essays I wrote to accompany Stewart Cunningham’s pictures in our wee book Big Rhythm: 1980s pop snapshots from Scotland. Too late to get a copy I think now before Christmas, though I have one or two with me on the south side of Glasgow and I think Stewart has a…
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On the 18th of April 1975, I was part of the reverent mass of mostly males in the Apollo, Glasgow. Steve Howe played The Clap. Jon Anderson sang in that twee angelic monotone. I really didn’t understand the complications of the near-songless music, possessing none of Yes’s albums. But the band were huge, somehow I’d…
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Signed copies available now for £9.99 plus postage ONLY from https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheBeatcroftShop Big Rhythm was going to be called Caught Up In This Big Rhythm, but as that’s a line from a Blue Nile song, Tinsel Town In the Rain, legal discretion was the better part of copyright valour. Now, as you’ll realise, there’s no connection…
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Those were the days of miracles and wonder… Glasgow 1985, and it’s the Rock Garden in Queen Street, sometimes the Halt in Woodlands Road, the Fixx in Miller Street. All kinds of London record company characters are blowing in via the Holiday Inn to check out the action. The haircuts, the clothes, the drugs and…
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The culling of late night BBC Radio Scotland. “The Bauerisation of Scottish public broadcasting.”
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The fury of culturally-fleeced Shetland knitters. And two songs, loosely woven around the subject. Channel Four’s horrible attempt to turn knitting into a televisual bloodsport, Game of Wool, is subtitled ‘Britain’s best Knitter’. I can unequivocally say that there are technically better and more creative knitters than anyone on the show, including the judges, within…
