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Thoughts on an all-Scottish music show: (not) putting a kilt on it Full playlist at the end of this essay Almost a quarter of a century ago, I was involved in an unholy row which made the front page of The Herald, still a power in the land at that time. It was my fault, sparked…
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Del Amitri are currently on tour in the USA, playing sold-out theatres and travelling, I assume, in comfort and style. Which befits their status and maturity. A summer of big outdoor gigs and festivals awaits. Their drummer these days is one Jim McDermott, a fine practitioner of the percussive arts, and wee brother of Kevin…
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And so they left, the guests last week at our holiday cottage, driven from their beds by the scratching, rustling and rattling, the just-discernible whine of the plug-in deterrents that don’t actually work. Not against the Shetland mouse, aka ‘da hill moose’, viking-Pict hybrid among rodents. Elvis the monster cat, who used to patrol the…
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Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves… You can listen to me reading this article, or download the audio here: There’s a record I’m pretty certain the late Dave Hewitt held that’s rarely mentioned…
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Lessons from guitars, motorcycles and the truth about wristwatches… Listen, I’m no Sturgeonista, but could the claims by Scotland’s former First Minister that she didn’t know about the multifarious and massively expensive purchases her husband made…be pretty much true? Two very well-paid individuals with no joint account, living often-divergent lives? I mean, marriages can hide…
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A weekend of moveable feasts… Next to me was Kim Carnes’ goddaughter. She wasn’t called Bette and her eyes, though perfectly nice, seemed normal enough. We didn’t exchange our names, just almost every other biographical detail, as she and her husband were from California and avoiding conversation with Californians while sitting so close is impossible.…
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Transports of joy. Saying goodbye to two wheels You can listen to the whole of what follows by clicking on the audio file above. I think I was only allowed to have that Vespa 150 GL at the age of 15 because it didn’t run. It had no logbook, no MOT, a rusty frame, and…
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…and ending up all-inclusive under a volcano All-inclusive. Except it isn’t. The wine, for example. At the buffet lunches and dinners, it comes on tap – low alcohol (‘spring harvest’) red, white or rosé, along with weak but refreshing beer on draft. You can get a glass of ‘house Cava’ but a bottle will cost…
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An assured campaign so far by SNP candidate Hannah Mary Goodlad may indicate the end for Liberal Democrat rule in the isles. On the other hand… The initials are unfortunate, to say the least. HMG: His Majesty’s Government. Hannah Mary Goodlad. The two are clearly not one and the same, as Hannah Mary’s campaign…
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As the Scottish rugby team’s day of reckoning arrived, my thoughts turned to our nation’s sporting anthem, Flower of Scotland. I decided I would write a replacement. As you can hear, things went somewhat awry… I heard Roy Williamson’s masterpiece – and it is – for the first time in 1974, at the Corries gig…
