Congratulations to Davie Scott and team, great work with the Scottish Classic Albums series of podcasts released in 2018 and good luck with the next batch for 2019. Its been a superb accompaniment for me on my 500 miles wanders....
I've borrowed some of the text from my Fat Al camino website fatal-bananas.blogspot.com.....
Whenever I walk the Camino I've got songs aplenty in my head. At 400 miles there's Big Country as we climb O'Cebriero in Galicia, the spanish bagpipes and the Celtic landscape. As we enter Santiago the Proclaimers can be heard over the noise of the traffic.
It's such a joy to walk 500 more again this year and a huge thank you to Chewy Racoon's Davie Scott for making my sleeps so much better.
Snoring as many of you will know is the less salubrious side of the sunshine Camino. The walk across Spain provides a new vista for every stage and sometimes many within the same stage.
Followers of FatAl-bananas.blogspot will know the music of the Camino is equally varied. Whether it's "Pillar to post" rattling through my head as I take to dancing down the scree, or "I can see for miles", there's always a song.
The inspirational camino landscape forms songs in your head and they merge with songs that have been there for years.
I've written many songs daundering along, not least bastardised versions of Wednesday week and little boxes have seen me pause to record videos I've loved them so much. Little vineyards on the hillside still tickles me.
Especially the last verse as I rhyme "then the winos, go to Tesco's, and buy the vino, to drink alfresco, and it all tastes, like ticky tacky, and it all tastes, just the same..." scroll to 44 seconds....
In fact I'm so proud of it I want to get the band back together - meantime, sing it to yourself you'll have that song in your head all day.
That's the beauty of the Camino,
You let go of things you didn't know you were holding.
When listening to Davie Scott's series of classic Scottish albums I hear everything from subtlety to granite and as the sun shines, glistening on the feldspars and iron pyrites, whether its the Pyrenees or Galicia, you really do get the big gold dream.
At the time in 1982, I was so entrenched in the north south divide. I'd cross it frequently thinking the charts were for the south and the clubs and gigs were for the north. Nowadays I forget that history was largely written by the south, its irrelevant, just as how shite the charts were in the 80's, its true, but we weren't about the charts, certainly not TOTP, more the live performances on the Tube, OGWT and radio sessions.
Davie Scott, all the engineers, runners and contributors who have put the Classic Scottish Albums podcasts together must have enjoyed a jubilant job in highlighting some of these landmark moments in the history of, what is, local music.
The dark holes from my past have been illuminated not least in finding out that Spencer Tracey used the Tayside Bar, and then did the showcase at la Sorbonne.
I knew I'd heard that "Mary...", song before.
I remember watching both Big Country and U2 months apart at night moves in Glasgow in 1982.
Who knew how quickly they'd be in stadiums.
Stuart Adamson's guitar playing close up taught me I had a whole lot to learn.
I still cant believe how few people were there that night.
Hats of to Stuart Adamson for saying "No Gobbin!"
That form of punk was over, for sure and I'd forgotten an umbrella.
On seeing him at Night Moves I decided to stick to singing!
By November 1982 we were watching Aztec Camera and the Daintees, in Dundee, and this rock n roll thing was "still on fire".
By 1983 "Sweet Dreams" were made of the interview Hilary & I had with Annie Lennox after the Dundee Dance Factory gig.
2 issues later Stuart Adamson was talking to Roy Terre.
Barney was talking to Karen McD.
But back to the point of the Scottish Classic Albums story.
By 1985 we approach my dark amnesiac period so I can't remember if we reviewed chewy Raccoon but I think Davie's brilliant at interviews!
I enjoyed Campbell's apology to Roddy saying "knife" was sterile compared to "high land hard rain". Half full here, wrote as close as I get to a scathing review of "knife" in issue 27 where I felt the polished production had got the better of the songs. Roddy was rougher live and we knew a few of the songs sounded sweeter on stage. It did for me as I think I realised slagging musicians off hadn't been the plan and from issue 27 to the last issue of 33, I slowly lost it.
Music is so important to the soul and many pursue it at a young age. Few are funded in the rock'n'roll lottery of life, but they still carry on. Memories of those venues linger long and whilst most of us have moved on to concentrate on careers, children, camping out in doorways or other aspects of their life, from full time carer to part time alcoholic and back via karaoke at the gym, it's been a blast and better still, it continues to be.
These podcasts are brilliant and I wish them well in getting more bands to share their past and present as there's still many gaps to plug in the encyclopaedic environment this electronic age encourages.
I've got a yearning to be a librarian by the time I reach 60 and if I can master this electronic environment I'll put on record a set list of every band that ever played Night Moves, Tayside Bar or La Sorbonne.
Cross checked against the "I was there" eg the Clash at la Sorbonne!
A lexicon of love, ha ha ha!
Look at those smiles as we sang in Santiago de Compostela......"Yes, I will walk 500 more!!
