26/07/2024
With thoughts of long-gone AWer James Blaast, I notice Chrysalis Records are releasing remastered albums The Cutter & The Clan and Once In A Lifetime (Live) as a 2CD set, or just the studio LP as a Barry Grint half-speed master.
I first heard Once In A Lifetime in my first week at university, the first I had heard of Runrig.
Years ago, I worked with the now head of Chrysalis back catalogue on a Furniture CD. And their recent reissues from the Specials, Selecter, Sinead O’Connor, Blue Aeroplanes, etc have been magnificent.
The more I think it through, R*nr*g were either ahead the game, or entirely responsible for the current plethora of Scottish bands, from Manran, Skerryvore, Tidelines to The Chair and Gnoss, bands with one foot in trad and the other in Springsteeny guitar rock. (Wolfstone and Capercaillie are probably responsible for all the rest.)
“‘Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. ‘”
I always think of The Average White Band as the Scottish band. They formed in 1972, a year before this one.
SAHB same year.
I think of SAHB specifically as a Glasgow band, hard as nails – and a full decade or so before the light jazz stylings of Deacon Blue, Hue & Cry and the rest…
Along with fearing Mogwai, Blast had a superstition about people saying the name of The Scottish Band out loud, in the same way that theatrical people cannot bear anyone saying the name of The Scottish Play, especially backstage in a theatre.
Hence, to save his sensitive feelings, we referred to them as The Scottish Band.
A Blaast from the past indeed Mr Fenton. God bless him.
I was in Edinburgh from 1984 to 1993. Being English, and not wanting to be lumped, I accepted traditional and local culture without question, and was soon drinking pints of “heavy”, eating pan loaves, having salt and sauce on my smoked sausage supper, and having the boak/ feeling peely-wally. But I had to draw a line at Runrig, a kind of Scots Nationalist “Status Quo” with added self-righteousness and a not insignificant anti-English vibe when playing live. Many Scots have told me that this was not racism or prejudice. I have yet to be convinced of that argument, and still see nationalism as no excuse for being rude about other people, or damning them all. There are other words that describe that kind of behaviour. The RunRig lead singer is very right-on, and it might have been their fans rather than the band, but it was this sort of thing that did for Sham 69, and I never warmed to the Scottish band or their enthusiasts. The mullets didn’t help, either.
“eating pan loaves”
Very much Edinburgh, if I may say so: in Glasgow we prefer plain bread, not pan – and well-fired morning rolls! And “smoked” sausage – what’s wrong with a regular battered sausage, with salt and vinegar?
Edinburgh – cuh!
At what point in Scottish history did someone take a bread roll and think “well this is nice, but what if we burnt it to absolute f**k?” – and lo the well fired roll was born…..
I never got the “well- fired rolls with a potato scone and brown sauce” thing, though see it may be good for vegetarians, and for double-carbing a hangover away. Give me square sausage any day.
The only food I’ve seen my BIL – a younger Big Yin look-and-sound-alike, despite living in France since the age of two – not finish is the deep-fried Scotch egg. He took one huge mouthful, and turned a funny colour.
“Their lead singer” means, I guess, Donnie Munro, their later incumbent being a Canadian from Nova Scotia, who, coincidentally, is now dead. Munro ended the first run of the band, by leaving to pursue a career in politics. He sought to become a Labour candidate in the then safe seat of `Western Isles. He came second and so that was that. Ironically, Pete Wishart, who played keyboards alongside him, left as he became what now has been the longest currently-serving Scottish National Party MP, and the second longest–serving of all time after Alex Salmond.
Your jibe around them being a Scottish Status Quo is a little odd. How so? And, if the audiences they had, in Scotland, at that time seemed a little agin the English, that says maybe more about how Westminster had been and still is dealing with the country that lent England their King when they didn’t have one handy. Shock horror, little love for England at a gig by a band that played decisively Caledonian and Gaelic based music.
Expecting Scottish, Welsh and NornIron-ish musicians/sportspersons/etc. not to take the occasional knock at England and it’s complacent exceptionalism is a bit ridiculous and could be interpreted as that exceptionalism in action.
“How dare you knock us. We are Enger-land!”
“Scottish Status Quo” is a gag – as when Gryphon were described as “a medieval Slade”. Though I did think The Scottish Band were rather forced, and not a patch on SAHB or Beggar’s Opera, or later, Love and Money, or Mogwai. Back then, as a leftie out of London anarcho squat and co-op culture, I did not recognise the stereotypes of England, or appreciate being thought pro Thatcher by someone who defined me by my accent or birthplace. As said, that sounds like prejudice to me. Never a pretty sight.
Whose prejudice?
I saw the ‘Rig at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in about 1989 and they didn’t demand freedom from England then, they just happily took the ten quid each ticket money and played us some tunes.
Plus there were 1,600 of us and only six of them.
All mouth, no tartan trews, as I suspected.