Random Roundup

I have a bit of a mish mash of stuff to catch up with on here. Just, general music news and observations over the past few days. All to be brushed upon shortly. I’ve been delayed in getting to the topics coming up because on Sunday I was out pretty much all day with not much opportunity to post prior to leaving home. And yesterday I was just in an exhausted state. Physically knackered and tired, but also in the brain fug that comes with it, not in any real state to be writing blog posts with any kind of clarity. 

Hence two wordy posts today. First the rather extensive one about the Warm Digits set at the Stag & Dagger in Edinburgh on Sunday, and now this general catch up in the world of Simple Minds and associated acts.

Firstly on the Friday was a special Drumathon fundraising for Children In Need. BBC weather presenter, Owain Wyn Evans, came up with the idea and Cherisse Osei was involved. All through Friday drummers took turns to do stints at the kit and raise funds for CIN. The highlight was a mass drum-a-long to the BBC News countdown theme.

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You can still donate HERE. Children In Need is on BBC One this Friday (Nov 19th) at 7pm.

Saturday night I tuned into Billy Sloan on BBC Radio Scotland. His special guest for the show was none other than former Dreamboy and Springburn local done good, Peter Capaldi. After some 40+ years in the musical wilderness, Peter has released his debut album titled St Christopher. His interview with Billy was a great one. He discusses getting back into music, the making of the album, the songwriting process, his acting career and highlight roles like playing The Doctor and Malcolm Tucker and meeting Burt Lancaster on the set of Local Hero, and of course he talks about The Dreamboys, the Hellfire Club, Jaine and David Henderson, and meeting Craig Ferguson and Craig becoming drummer for The Dreamboys.

You can listen to the interview by clicking HERE

As I was heading out for the day in Edinburgh, there was a post from Jim on SM FB. Something about tartan shorts. Nah – not the pledge for him to wear some (and nothing else!) on the stage next year (goddamnit!) – but more to do with the construct of time and how time can feel both fleeting and protracted, dependent upon all the other sets of circumstances you find yourself in at any given moment. An hour feeling like a minute when in the company of a pretty girl (or that five minutes when you’re with that man that you bloody swoon over every single second of the day…how that feels like it is gone with a click of the fingers) – I wouldn’t know. Or conversely a short passage of time feeling an eternity. Billy Sloan’s interview a few weeks previous with Patti Smith springs to mind – of her telling the story of waiting on a phone call from her then boyfriend – later to be husband – Fred and how they only got the chance to talk on the phone once a week. He’d call at a prearranged time, but this one week he hadn’t called at the arranged time. An hour went by, then two… while she waits for him to call, she writes her section of lyrics to Because The Night. “Have I doubt when I’m alone / love is a ring, the telephone” – that line symbolic of her waiting on her call from Fred. Actually, the whole song is for him, she said. 

I digress. 

Jim shared a rather different anecdote – one to do with boxing and Ken Buchanan. There was Einstein in there too. And there he was expressing the duality in him that I love – the brains and the brawn. “Brawn” I guess being rather overly complimentary of me as he describes his 12 year old self as being “whippet thin” and me thinking “you were still a whippet 10 years later – ya sexy devil – ggrrrrrr!!!”, more than a little conscious of how sad a fact it is an old, fat ‘coo’ like moi should be crushing on wee skinny boys (of then) like Jim. Talk of a 12 year old “whippet” had me thinking of one boyfriend I had for all of five minutes. 

Should I share this sad tale of woe here? Ah, go on then! Why the hell not?

When I liked a boy…really liked a boy, I was NEVER going to wait for him to ask me out! (Sometimes I think the 51 year old me could really do with the gallus that the 11/12 year old me had for certain things!) Boys. I was boy crazy from… I dunno when. I can’t EVER remember a time in which I thought “Boys?! Eewwwww.” Nah. NEVER happened!

I’m in my final year of primary school – so I’m 11, turning 12. The boy in question was called Rodney Johnston (it is VERY rare for me to remember names of people I went to school with, so there’s some insight already about how fixated I was with him). Over the year, I asked him out several times, either directly, or indirectly. Every time a knockback. And…not just a subtle knockback, either. I mean…he made it pretty obvious after a while that he was NOT interested. I eventually stopped asking, starting to realise I was flogging a dead horse.

Several weeks later, lo and behold, he’s asking ME out!? Whaaaa? I was suspicious. Had he been dared into it by his mates? Why the sudden turn around? Was I gullible because I still fancied him? Probably. OF COURSE I SAID YES! So…we arrange “a date”. I’d visit his place and we’d hang out.

The day comes. I am SSSOOO excited! It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining, it was warm. I’m almost sick with excitement when I get to his house. “I’ll meet you by the back gate” he said to me when we arranged my visit. So I’m there at the gate waiting for him to appear. I can hear him approaching but before he gets to the gate, the family dog arrives at the gate. I put my hand over the gate to pat the dog and just as I do Rodney rounds the corner from the side of the house, sees what I’m about to do and shouts “NO! DON’T TOUCH THE DOG!” Just as the dog starts to take a leap and a snap of my hand. I retrieved my hand, but not quite in enough time to not get done by the dog’s bite. I still have the scar, though it is very pale now, on the pinky finger of my right hand. The dog sliced the top third of my right pinky finger open. Blood went everywhere. Rodney ran inside and got his mum. I was driven home and then driven to the local GP. I got five stitches to my wound. I didn’t have any other dates with Rodney. 

The dog wasn’t a whippet, in case you’re wondering – but an Australian cattle dog – or “red/blue heeler” as they are known (depending on colouring). I had a fear of cattle dogs from that day on. Not really any other dogs. Just the red and blue heelers. 

Rodney himself was the whippet. A skinny boy. 

I have such luck with boys. Lol

I mentioned in my comment on the “tartan shorts” post about how that miscorrelation of time happens to us fans too. That a Simple Minds gig can feel like it lasts minutes. That it’s over before it has begun. The American is the signal indicative of that feeling for me. The American usually heralds the beginning of the end for me. 

When someone asks why you would want to go and see your favourite band gig after gig, time after time – this is why! This is the biggest reason why. Because – time doesn’t behave itself! “Only with you life moves so fast – when I’m with you life moves so fast.” Don’t you know it, Jim Kerr! You were grappling with the construct of time even all the way back then.

Finally – a post on Instagram last night from Joe Donnelly, talking of new Caezar music in the making. All on course to be released early next year, with a summer tour to follow. Wonderful stuff!

That was a rather wordy catch-up! And a bit of “Priptona’s Life Story” piece right in the middle of it there. Oh, well. I had nothing much else doing on this Tuesday afternoon. 

Ciao for now.