Musings on the byways of popular culture
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Solas Festival in Perthshire, like every other festival this year was cancelled, but they have tried to put out entertainment online. Singers from the Glasgow and Greater Clyde Community NHS Trust Choir, Karine Polwart, me and loads of others perform Michael Marra’s ‘All Will Be Well’. If you use a magnifying glass, I can be found during the choruses. If you zoom in on the magnifying glass, you’ll find a Pencilsqueezer on the wall behind me.
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I tried to post this on imgur about 6 weeks ago and it kept failing. At least, it said it failed, but it’s been there all the time. Anyway, I spent my whole working life in a petrochemical factory, and hated it mostly. Now that I am retired, I realise how lucky I was to be employed all that time, and that compared to others, they treated me not badly at all. I wanted something to remind me of my time there, so I set pencilsqueezer the task. Prompts I gave him were – nightshift, winter, smoky flares, bright lights, steel pipes and towers. I originally wanted it greyscale to capture the cold/dark, but changed my mind. Magic, innit!
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I’m getting ready to decorate my spare room. I would like to paper one of the walls with a mural. Actually, it’s a still from the Roy Orbison ‘Black and White Night’ DVD. A mate has a printing company and can make the wallpaper, so all I need to do is capture a HIGH resolution still from my DVD. The snipping tool, print screen option and the capture option in the video playing software all give me a jpeg of less than 1Mb. This jpeg will pixelate at about A4 size. Any video experts out there?
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Venue:
Back Stage, Green Hotel, Kinross
Date: 08/12/2017
They’ve been around in one form or another, for ever. I’ve never heard anything new from them for well over 30 years, yet they only played 4 songs that I wasn’t familiar with. I suppose you could call it a greatest hits tour, because that’s more or less what they played. Rod Clements is the only original, though I think everyone else has been there for over 20 years. Dave Hull- Denholm takes on most of the lead singing and front man duties as he’s much younger and fitter than Clements, though Clements still gives his all as a multi instrumentalist. Hull-Denholm is married to Alan Hull’s daughter. I think he had 4 different 12 string guitars on stage. In fact, I counted 14 guitars in total! This was the first night of their winter tour, and I felt it showed in the first few numbers, but from then on they were as tight as a gnat’s chuff, with Steve Dagget encouraging the crowd to join in on the anthemic parts…which, of course, we all did.
The audience:
I’m not quite 60, but I was probably the youngest there.
It made » Continue Reading.
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There is a tree in the local park that my girlfriend photographs all year round. She has dozens of pictures all from the same spot, taken during the different seasons. She’s a bit arty farty and wanted to make a collage, one from each season, and get it framed and hung on her living room wall.
I suggested giving the work to our local Picasso, and giving it to her as a Christmas present.
It’s ready now, so she’ll be getting it soon. On Christmas morning, she’ll get a stocking with an apple, an orange and thruppence.
Picture in comments if I can get imgur to work.
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I’ve never really hired a car before, and I am planning to when we go to Ireland in May. I looked at a couple of sites, and the prices look fine, but they want 13000 euros from my credit card, which they’ll return when I return the car in one piece.
I don’t like the idea of this, but more to the point, 13000 euros is way, way beyond the limit of my card.
Am I doing something wrong here? Basically, how do you hire a car?
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I’ve just joined the pencilsqueezer club!
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Venue:
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow (Celtic Connections)
Date: 27/01/2016
It was the first time I’d been in the gods at this venue…sheesh, I almost got vertigo…but the bottom section was sold out. TT was just a speck in the distance. No matter as he was excellent, obviously in a good mood bantering with the Glasgow audience and in fine voice….sheesh, what a voice and what a guitar player! 90 minutes of favourites from his 18 year old back catalogue and a few from his forthcoming release “Little Windows”. The new album is a dozen or so originals and sang as duets with an American lady – Kelly Jones, who joined him on stage for 4 or 5 songs from that album. They’ll be in Edinburgh together in May and I may just go see them again. Teddy used the same guitar all night and changed the tuning several times….no need for him to change guitars every 2 songs. Quiet strumming, fast fingerpicking or rockabilly shuffle are no problem to him. I didn’t keep a setlist but all songs were excellent; my particular favourites being the Leonard Cohen cover “Tonight Will Be Fine” and “Family”. The encore was “Delilah”, “Family” » Continue Reading.
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Kindle Daily Deals – 99p.
Today only!
Steven Stelfox is the most horrible character I’ve ever come across in a book. Even worse than that bent copper in Irvine Welch’s “Pig”.
He’s a record company A&R man, so it’s all just another day in the music business.
A great read!
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My mother wants to send money to her great grandson in Australia. Last year she did it through the bank and was charged £20. She only sent £60! I’m sure at the Australian end, there were charges too.
Is there a better (ie cheaper) way to do this? Is there anyone experienced in doing this?
Thanks!
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Jings crivvens!
A night catching up on some blogs here and I’ve just bought 2 Gretchen Peters CDs, 2 John Fullbright CDs and 1 by Sturgill Simpson(I’ve never heard anything by any of them before). Also Mary Gauthier’s latest and I’ve ordered Ron Sexsmith’s new one.
Expensive, though I can’t imagine I’ll regret it.
