The fallacy of cheap anything! *sweary alert*

This isn't my normal subject area for blogging but I was shown this last night and wanted to share it, not least because (A) it is fantastically funny and, (B) it shows how effective satire can be at highlighting how much we are being conned by, in this case, big business (and even more precisely, in this case, a certain budget airline). In fact, probably much more effective than a normal journalistic approach, as it pokes fun and pricks the skin of the liars!

I have heard and enjoyed these three gals on and off for years on Radio 4 and I wasn't aware that they were still treading the boards, let alone as effectively and comically as this! (Mum - if you are reading this, and I'm pretty sure you will, there's sweary stuff - but it is funny and in a good cause!).

Enjoy!

Singing in Stirling...

The following Youtube video was put together to promote a music project that O and I have been involved in as two of 30-40 singers who collaborated to put together a CD earlier this year. Singing Stirling and Kippen Wee Sing are two amateur community singing groups in this area (there are many others too). We sing with the former, and the two groups decided to work together on a special project this year.

It is the first vid I've done for Youtube so the picture editing is a bit hammy, but at least the pics are nice! I hope you enjoy the music too - you can also watch it direct on Youtube here and read more of the blurb about the CD project, how to buy it if you are interested, and about the song featured here (Both Sides the Tweed, traditional, but better known as a song performed by Dick Gaughan, someone about whom I've blogged before).

Sing, sing, sing...

After seeing Dick Gaughan last week, another interesting musical experience this week. Our singing group was privileged to have a guest teacher, Brendan Taffe, a Vermont-based musician, song-writer and leader of singing workshops who introduced us to two hours American harmony singing, plus some songs from Zimbabwe. Brendan has a great musical philosophy and is in the UK on a tour of singing workshops. We learned the shocking statistic that probably only 2% of the music we listen to nowadays is live music and Brendan left us encouraged that our involvement in live singing helps to build community spirit and connect better with people in our area.

You can find out more about his music and work here on his website. A Stirling friend's illness meant Brendan was short of accommodation after the workshop so we put him up in our spare room here at Ella Towers for the night - he proved to me that my guitar wasn't really broken by playing the best tunes it has experienced. It seems the problem is me, not the instrument. At least we managed a mini guitar/ harmonica jam.


Brendan has just released a new CD, "Little Boots", which features lots of interesting, moving songs, dance tunes, African instruments (kora!) and some fine playing:


You can hear, and download for free, some of the CD here, and, indeed, order it if you like it here.

A fortuitous, enjoyable and stimulating crossing of paths and hopefully we'll see Brendan round these parts again!


On the road again

Fair winds of coincidence

Dick Gaughan

I posted about the following on Facebook on Friday morning as a "Great coincidental, unplannable, unrepeatable experience" but I wanted to make a more permanent record here (hopefully) for a wider audience.

My wife and I are members of a singing group in our town and, after the Christmas break, the group reconvened last Thursday. We meet in the local music venue and arts/ performance centre, which also hosts gigs most weeks. Our first night back together coincided with a gig by the great, near-legendary Scottish folk musician, Dick Gaughan. A gig I’d normally have leapt at the chance to attend, I was disappointed that I had already committed to going to (and had paid for) our singing session. I was delighted, therefore, when Jo, the leader of our singing group announced that, as not all the tickets had been sold for the gig and the manager of the Centre was inviting us to join the audience for the second half (for free!) after our singing was finished. With that to look forward to, we started practicing a new range of songs that we aim to record for a CD this Spring. One was “Now Westlin Winds”, a beautiful song in five verses by Robert Burns which I can see becoming a firm favourite of our group.

Dick Gaughan recorded one of the best-known versions and has said it is his "favourite song of all time", as it also seems to be for our teacher Jo. Gaughan has also said that it is the perfect song as it says, in five verses, absolutely everything that it is conceivable to say about every subject. In those five short verses, Burns covers autumn, others' obsession of hunting birds for pleasure, cruelty, wooing, love and taking joy at the beauty of nature. Wow! Anyway, our class finished during the gig’s intermission, so we sneaked in (as invited!) at the back of the hall to watch some of the second half. “Now Westlin Winds” was the second song played after the break, and he played a blinding version. I don’t know if it is just because of the coincidence that we’d been singing the song earlier, seen Dick Gaughan when I thought I wouldn’t, and maybe even because it felt slightly subversive to be allowed in for free, but it gave me goosebumps to see his performance.

Here’s a link to a similar recent performance I found on YouTube. It captures really well the sheer musicality of the song, the musicianship of Gaughan and the emotion with which he manages to invest his favourite song. I hope you enjoy it.