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  • 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…

  • The Holy Waters Songbook

    An excerpt, with Caramel Logs and Glenlivet Served on entry: Glenlivet 12 single malt whisky (‘Original Stories’ Licensed Dram) and a Tunnocks Caramel Log The idea for a live interactive musical extravaganza (one man, a guitar, several bottles of relatively cheap booze, cheese, chocolate, biscuits, possibly an audience) based on my book Holy Waters stemmed…

  • The Beatcroft Unsociable. An hour of quite good music with very little meaningful chat

    On 60 North Radio and Mixcloud Listen to the show on Mixcloud here: https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/toms-beatcroft-anti-social-26-may/ The death of two people overshadowed this week – one was Professor Donald (“Donnie Foot”) Macleod, Free Church theologian, journalist and charismatic (small ‘c’) communicator in both English and Gaelic. The other was Tina Turner, hugely influential performer, writer and survivor…

  • Sleeper

    A 24-hour raid on London from Glasgow by train I promised myself, when the pandemic hit, that if I survived, I would one day travel on the new Caledonian Sleeper train from London to Scotland. Preferably to somewhere like Crianlarich, Fort William or Bridge of Orchy, but if not, Glasgow would do. To seal that…

  • Music to ponder – a new Beatcroft Social

    Songs by Bruce Cockburn, Nick Cave, one Patty and another Patti Proper show this week, with speaking and everything… the Mixcloud link is here. Still find it odd that I didn’t know Andi Oliver had been in Rip Rig and Panic. Oh well. I met her, or at least was presented with a prize by…