Lost Ticker Tape

It's Hogmanay and time to say goodbye to 2008 and welcome 2009 with whisky at the bells, a whole lot of laughter and plenty of dancing. Wrap up warm and remember your whisky/shortbread/coal/black bun if you are first footing tonight! All the best for the New Year!

It's been a while, too long in fact. I have finally stopped working hundreds of miles away from home and I am back north of the border for good! Life has been hectic and some of the things I wanted to write about have fallen by the wayside so this will be a quick post about a couple of Glasgow based bands. First up are Y'all Is Fantasy Island. They write songs that are in equal measures both beautiful and bleak, discordant , dark, intricate, difficult, catchy but all together brilliant. Their recent release No Ceremony is their most immediate record to date and after a few listens you will find yourself singing With Handclaps in your head because it is one of the most infectious songs you will have heard all year. YiFi get better each and every time I see them live which is where they truly show what they are made of. Adam is a fantastic front man , his howling, tortured vocals will grab your attention and will not let you go until he is done and your ears are ringing. All o

The Edinburgh music scene has been bolstered in recent years by the folks who run some of the less mainstream musical events in the capital and by the tight knit community of artists regularly getting together to play in each other's bands and to put on shows. The most recent example of this was Retreat! During the madness of August in Edinburgh, the brains behind The Gentle Invasion, Tracer Trails and Hollow Heart Parlour gave a home to some of the city's finest bands. The line up included The Pictish Trail, Emily Scott, Wounded Knee, Meursault and My Kappa Roots among many others. Retreat! also hosted the launch party for the long awaited release by eagleowl. eagleowl are a lo-fi post folk trio who are just getting better each time I have had the pleasure of seeing them play. They "believe in doing things right, rather than doing things fast" and this is obvious with the release of their EP For The Thoughts You Never Had. The songs are quite simply beautiful, they

The leaves are starting to turn and fall and I am already lamenting the loss of another summer. We will go from summer where it might only rain every other day to autumn where you are lucky if the Glasgow rain stops at all. Gone will be the languid walk home where getting off the bus two stops early to stroll through the leafy green park will be replaced by the rushing through the dark and rain to get home as fast as I can. The tall trees that line the street will no longer hide the houses on the hill, instead they will shed their green coats, lay bare their branches and reveal the neighbours' lit windows. There will be no more evenings spent at the table in the window, watching the changing light as the sun sets, instead I'll draw the curtains so I can huddle up under a blanket on my sofa with a cup of tea and a good book. It will no longer be light more hours than it is dark. I may lament the loss of the summer but only for a short while, soon I will start to become excited a

How do you tell people that the most loved 'club' night in Glasgow is ending? How do you tell people that the place they feel most at home with the music they love, the people and dancing is to be no more? Well, you start with the most heartfelt letter I have read in a very long time. Here it is in full: Hi It is Monday evening as I write, I'm typing this in my old bedroom in Kilwinning . I came down here to write because I thought I would find it easier. I got the train at 6; I read the Evening Times, nothing doing, I walked from the station, through the town... the first day of the school holidays today, wee guys hiding under the bridges at the river, voices rattling like carrier bags, someone calling me "mister", up the long road to Corsehill and it starts to rain only it's warm out and it smells like summer, and the kids up in Corsehill are still in their shorts and t-shirts. You can see the horizon when you get to the top of the hill and the sky stretch

The photo above was taken on a day trip made up of beaches, music, disused bunkers, a picnic, the Barrowlands, fizzy pop and smiles all round. It was a typical March day, dreich and cold. As we trundled (yes, trundled along, it was early on a Sunday on the Scottish coast in March, what else do you expect, sprinting?) we were cheered by thoughts of the day to come. First off it was a genteel stroll over Cramond Island, the jagged teeth of the breakwater leading the way. Cramond is an interesting island, think deserted war bunkers, whin bushes and graffiti all compressed into a wee island in the Forth. We found the right bunker by following the trail of people over the island. Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo were kicking off the first in the series of their Forth Island gigs on Cramond Island. The music was interesting, difficult and being played in a disused war bunker on an island on Sunday morning. The ultimate in LoFi, what more can I say?! We explored the rest of the bunkers,

It's been too long! Good things have happened between my last post and now. Among other things I climbed my first lighthouse, I heard some live music which reaffirmed my faith in good music, went sailing on a proper sail boat, attempted to skim stones on a beach made entirely of stones and discovered a book which echoes the sentiments of this blog. Okay, I'll start with the lighthouse. I know that by proclaiming that I climbed my first lighthouse I am implying that I intend to climb more, well I am. I climbed Portland Bill lighthouse a couple of weeks ago and the photo below is one of many I took of the lens. The visit to Portland Bill ties in with the sailing. This also goes hand in hand with, rain, a view of the Dorset coast, pretty seaside towns, fish and ships, playing board games, a whistling kettle, more rain, climbing rocks, flags, Old Gaffers, the Isle of Wight, drinking tea, more rain, Chesil beach, getting some sea-legs, getting sunburnt and last but not least sa

Keeping in the spirit of this blog I want to talk about the fact that sometimes the simplest of pleasures are the best. The most recent example of this was kite flying and a picnic on the beach. It was a bright, warm day in Scotland (rare, I know) so we piled into the Softmint*, bought a picnic and off we went to the seaside with The Shins playing on the stereo and the car windows open. The long-awaited flight of a beautiful multi-coloured striped kite I bought my friend for Christmas was perfect. The light wind, the warm sun, a picnic with your friends and paddling in the sea. The sheer simplicity and beauty of the kite in the air rendered a few 20 and 30 some-things speechless for a short while. I suspect it was the collective reminder of how simple life was when all you had to think about was flying your kite for the first time. * The Softmint is our bright, mint-green coloured car. You can't lose her even in the dark.

The last post neatly brings me to my next point, have you ever noticed the people who don't seem to glisten with sweat from an evening of dancing? There are people wearing woolly jumpers in overcrowded clubs who don't have a single hair out of place and are inexplicably not waving their hands about their person in a vain attempt to cool down. There are the boys who, in a packed venue, keep their jumpers and parkas on with no outward sign of being uncomfortable despite the temperature being about 30 degrees. And then there are always girls who look as pristine as they did 4 hours ago, no make-up smudges and perfect hair and no hint of them having exerted themselves on the dance-floor. I had a deep-set distrust of these people until last night. It was at the point where I had to tie my hair up because it was actually sticking to me (mmm, lovely) that I noticed the types of people I mentioned above were on the dance floor but not actually dancing. Well, they were dancing but on

I discovered dancing at a works Christmas party in 2006. I know that sounds ridiculous but up to this point I had avoided dancing at all costs. Co-ordinating my limbs to the point that I would not cause anyone else an injury wasn't my strong point. I also think that being picked last at school for Social Dancing in PE was a big part of my fear of dancing as I inevitably ended up with the boy who was a foot taller than me and had a faint whiff of baked beans about his person. Anyway, back to this Christmas Party. I was dancing away after much coaxing from my friend H and suddenly noticed we were the only two people on the dance floor of the Grand Ballroom of this huge hotel and it all made sense. Neither of us cared that we were the only two people dancing, all we cared about was the music and dancing. We were new at the company so had nothing to lose other than dignity and our pride. Prior to this episode, being one of two people dancing would have sent me running for the bar bu

The best presents I have had all year are CDs brought home to Scotland from Austin, Texas. There are 4 bands that I want to mention but Austin has a lot more to offer. I am not going to write any reviews, make what you will of the bands but I hope you at least tap your feet! I can imagine listening to Hollywood Gossip with driving up the west coast of Scotland on a sunny day and bah-bahing along or while dancing in the heat of National Pop League in June. Perfect indie-pop for the lazy days of summer. http://www.myspace.com/hollywoodgossipband Mary Jo by Brazos is a song that I just can't get out of my head at the moment. I'd love to listen to this song on a PA in a really big hall just to hear the echos of it. Have a wee listen. http://www.myspace.com/brazosbrazos http://www.brazosbrazos.com/ Voxtrot songs are made for indie discos in small darkened halls, listen to them turned up to 11. Go on....you know you want to....... http://www.myspace.com/voxtrot http://www.voxtrot.n

Dust off that old vinyl and dig out those cassettes you stuffed at the back of a cupboard. Take some time on a Sunday afternoon, make a cup of tea and play the first piece of vinyl or the first cassette you ever bought. Do you remember how special it felt to bring it home, unwrap it and play it, all shiny and new for the very first time? I hope so. If not, try again. And if you still don't get it then sell all of the records and tapes you own, there's no hope for you. I think people have been so caught up in the accessibility of music and media online that the superior sound quality of vinyl compared to the standard MP3 doesn't get taken into consideration. Even cassette tapes have a depth and warmth that an Mp3 just doesn't have. The memories that a single tape can bring back are worth holding onto, the very first mixtape someone made just for you or songs recorded from the radio. I was fascinated at how music could be generated from vinyl and cassette tapes when I was

Lost Ticker Tape is founded on tea and cake, dancing, the Scottish coast, hills, woods, Berlin, old analogue music machines, National Pop League, cassettes, whisky, records, wandering off, Skye, wellingtons, mixtapes, the Highlands and good music. The name relates to finding a piece of ticker tape long after the parade has ended that may bring back a fond memory of that day. I am a sentimental fool. This will be a place to share the things that I think we may have lost or are in danger of losing. I don't mean people. I mean the frivolous things you learn to love as a child and it's these things that you lose over time, through growing up and moving on and getting older. All of things you held dear that should endure but don't, a momentary return of things that are almost obsolete but also the new simple pleasures you discover with age. But there will be nods and waves to the new, new-fangled and fun! This is a little nudge from me to you to remember the simple pleasures