Home recording #1

Here’s a home recording of one of my own songs.  Help yourself if you want to download though its just a wee demo.

My Nimble Shoes

Upcoming shows? All in good time.

“The bright road seems dark…the great vessel is finished late.”

I have exploded…

….and the pieces are scattered all over the world of internet networking:

My musician site on Facebook

Me on the Twitter

If you want to, you could “follow me” or “become my fan”.

I will fully understand if you’d prefer to wait until I’m actually playing some shows and have some proper recordings.

Wigging Out #2

Here tis!  The video for Camera Obscura’s splendid new single “The Sweetest Thing”.   Highly recommend you get their new album “My Maudlin Career”.  As previously I written, I’m in this video a wee bit…the Stevie Nicks at the party.  Check that out that Lionheart though!  She’s presently in the other room, painting beautiful paintings.

Folk musical update

Well, I’m still beavering away on new trad interpretations.  Presently I’m working hard on “Matty Groves” (a ballad in which an aristocratic adulterous fling goes horribly wrong, Child Ballad 81, from early 17th C at latest) and “The Dark-Eyed Sailor” (Irish,  18th C,  I think,I need to do some more research).

“The Dark-Eyed Sailor” has a happy ending!  Should possibly have given a spoiler warning there, but never mind.

They both need more work but in the meantime I’m looking for opportunities to get out singing the numbers I believe I have thus far nailed.

I’ve been out at “Friday Folk Night with Fozzie” at Queens Park Cafe in Glasgow, which was dead good.  I knew some folk there from the Bladnoch Festival so it was good to catch up.  Fozzie himself  is a brilliant guitar player and knows a lot of songs.  I will definitely be going back…I think I could learn much.  I got the chance to do a few numbers which went down well.  I had to crank the volume up a lot though cause there was a lot of really drunk noisy dudes there - not the usual crowd apparently.  They were pretty riotous but not at all threatening.   There was little room for subtlety and I made a number of mistakes but pretended not to.

I’ve also been to check out the trad folk session at the Ivory Hotel, also on the South Side of Glasgow.  Lots of very talented musicians but it seemed to be entirely instrumental, jigs and so on, no singers.  I’d go again just to listen, although I am slightly put off by the Ivory itself, which is rather soulless and Sky Sports, and somehow both over and under lit.

Next up: I’m going to get myself along to the Scotia on Stockwell Street.  Folk nights on Weds.  I think I’ll go purely as a punter first to see what kind of a night it is.  I shall keep you posted.

I really need to do some more recording as well.  I’d really like some good recordings.  I’ll need to have a think about it.

Old Things with Pieces Missing

Yesterday, I spent many hours with my dad and wee sister sifting through boxes of books, videos, games, jigsaws, hairbrushes, pants, pens, puzzles and other items with their useful origins in our shared past.

Before: a colourful jumbled daunting dusty landscape.

Now: clear yellow fibre glass.

Things saved from the charity shop mountain: a violin, books of fairy tales, books of verse, books of reference (inc “A Dictionary of Shrubs”), a microscope, favourite wee kids books (inc “Mog”, “Alpaca” and “Burglar Bill”), a WWF Calendar 1983 with seventies’ style paintings of big cats, a few hardback first editions of things worth a fiver or so, some Catholicanalia, a National Geographic with an article about Lapland and Lapland folk, a handmade red crocheted vest with an owl, purchased as a young teen from Mr Ben when it occupied the still much-mourned Virginia Galleries.

Things set on course to charity shops or landfill: countless Enid Blyton paperbacks, video tapes, missing pieces, things with pieces missing, once-loved, much-drooled on giant soft toys Benjy and Clarence, binders full of “Tree of Knowledge” magazine, books, books and more books.

I’m built on books and I feel really lucky for it.  Still, so long, Secret Seven.

The Aloe Vera

I dislike the aloe vera plant.  This is in part based on my personal experience of living with an aloe vera plant that occupied, through no fault of its own, too small a pot.  As a consequence, I was always catching one of its pointy encumbrances with my sleeve and knocking it to the stained, uncarpeted floor.  It was that sort of flat.

Informed by this experience, but also based in more general contemplation of the succulent, I consider the aloe vera plant to be unsuitable for small homes due to its inefficient use of space and its dispiriting air of victimhood.

(Contextual note: Someone has put an aloe vera based handwash in the Ladies’ Necessarium).

In the Necessarium

The necessarium at my dayjob is strange and archaic, much like the floppy discs I recently found at the back of my stationary drawer.  It’s located in a high old tenement building and we dwell daily on the fourth floor, breathing heavily on arrival and slowly getting better at the stairs.

The ladies’ necessarium is a large single tiled room with a high frosted window and a strange earth-coloured wooden hut built into one corner.   Within this unexpectedly rustic construct is a disappointingly prosaic fixture of white ceramic.  One expects a hole, black and terrifying, cut into the wooden boards or a rusty bucket or vole-like rustlings in a groaning cistern.  Probably for the best.

The exterior door to the tiled room has a yale lock for access, presumably to prevent junkies climbing twelve sets of stairs to shoot up in our toilet shed.  In theory, the door is secured from inside by clicking a little snib.

Occasionally this system breaks down however, I expect due to the over-enthusiatic and sometimes desperate scrabblings at the lock from those on the outside trying to gain entry, unaccountably unaware that the snib is clearly snub and that a poor worker is within, trying to evacuate some kind of bodily substance in peace.

During the difficult and turbulent interregnum between periods of secure lock functionality, a familiar social question is cast up for  contemplation.  It’s an almost identical dilemma to that faced by the user of the bathroom within a dilapidated student flat at a medium-sized party.  With what vocal command, plea or declaration should one make it clear to the ignorant that the toilet is presently in active use?  Cloaked within the little wooden shed, an added sense of the ridiculous complicates the situation.  Imagine - you enter the main door gaining access to the tiled space.  A step towards the absurd little wooden hut and a disembodied voice calls out from within.

What are the options?

(1) The apology: “Excuse me!”  “Sorry!” “Pardon Me!” But why is the occupier asking to be excused - no wrong, social or otherwise has been committed.  It would make me feel slightly indignant.

(2) The greeting: “Hello! or “Hi!” This feels inappropriate because the purpose of this vocalisation is not to greet but to politely warn off.  It feels implicitly mendacious.

(3) The third person: “There’s someone in here!”  If I were on the receiving end of this, I would automatically think “Who?”  And my imagination might run wild.  It’s also just strange referring to yourself as “someone”. It somehow combines pretension and uncertainty.

(4) The declarative: “Engaged!” issued in a clear,  stentorian tone.  This is my instinctive favourite.  The problem has its root in the absence of a written sign, tab or notice that reads “Engaged”.   The declarative goes direct to this root, solving the problem by creating a kind of audible sign with the voice.  It would be impersonal and fundamentally neutral because of its denial of human relationship with the intruder.  I believe I would also be channeling the spirit of Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise (”Engage!) which would give me a feeling of power in a vulnerable situation.  However, although this may work well in the moment of utterance, what happens when I eventually exit the neccesarium?  The intruder is waiting.  Eye contact, smile.  Human relationship re-stablished.  Perfect, clear, stentorian, disembodied sign linked  forever to concrete origin in individual human reality.  Concept retrospectively destroyed.  Vague feeling of embarrassment.  Loss of comforting identification with celebrated fictional starship captain.

(5) The non-verbal: whistling, a loud cough, the clearing of the throat.  Whistling has a certain classic quality in this kind of situation. But I’m a shit whistler.  I could never make it sound effortless or in any way tuneful.  It would be a pathetic and laughable attempt worthy of contempt.

This leaves coughing or throat clearing.  I usually have plenty of throat to clear so maybe this would be best.  It does have some of the implicit falsehood of the greeting option but it avoids making an explicit conversational connection with the intruder, which was the tenuous advantage of the declarative option.   Unlike the declarative, one doesn’t go weaving inhuman commands in the air and thus can’t crash to the corridor floor mere minutes later.

Right, I’m going with that.  Glad I got that sorted.