Everything Flows TV - episode 1

I love YouTube. I come from an era where I recorded music videos and performances from The Word, Top of the Pops, the White Room, Later with Jools and BBC coverage of festivals like Glastonbury and T in the Park on to VHS cassettes!

And there was a market for this. Some enterprising individuals would mass produce their homemade bootlegs and sell them at record fairs. So I forked out £15/£20 for everything I could find on the Stone Roses, Oasis and The Charlatans!

Of course nowadays any TV show a band has ever done is online, as is their promo videos, interviews, official live footage and plenty of bootleg footage - some good, others shoddy.

I love when people I follow online post good stuff to watch, so I thought I would introduce what will hopefully become a regular feature - Everything Flows TV.

Episode 1 features brilliant stuff from The Beastie Boys, Nirvana, AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix.

The Beastie Boys fly through Sabotage live on the Letterman show. Check the ferocious energy and fun they are having. Superb!

The Word, broadcast late on a Friday night on Channel 4, was essential trash TV for a young teenager. There was some truly awful stuff broadcast, but some incredible live performances. Check Kurt's intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit, Captain America (to become Eugenius) t-shirt and the brilliant performance - Nirvana were such a tight live band but they could just go crazy - and they do....live on TV.

There used to be so much music on TV. This was extremely memorable! Nirvana were booked to play their current single Lithium on Jonathan Ross' show and were introduced to that effect. Broadcast live, they decided to tear through Territorial Pissings instead! They blitz through it with exceptional punk rock energy and intensity, leaving Jonathan Ross a little shocked but he makes the most of it with a little joke.

Speaking of energy - a few people recently posted this brilliant video of AC/DC performing It's A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock n Roll. Rocking out in the street (complete with bagpipes!) the band look like they are having the time of their lives - something that they always transferred to their fans.

In 1967 it must have seemed like anything could happen - and it often did. 2-days after the release of The Beatles seminal Sgt Pepper's, Jimi Hendrix and the Experience opened with it .... in front of The Beatles (Paul and George).

It would be one of his first gigs in London. Jimi was a sweetie, a very nice guy. I remember him opening at the Saville on a Sunday night, 4 June 1967. Brian Epstein used to rent it when it was usually dark on the Sunday. Jimi opened, the curtains flew back and he came walking forward, playing 'Sgt. Pepper', and it had only been released on the Thursday so that was like the ultimate compliment. It's still obviously a shining memory for me, because I admired him so much anyway, he was so accomplished. To think that that album had meant so much to him as to actually do it by the Sunday night, three days after the release. He must have been so into it, because normally it might take a day for rehearsal and then you might wonder whether you'd put it in, but he just opened with it. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honours of my career. I mean, I'm sure he wouldn't have thought of it as an honour, I'm sure he thought it was the other way round, but to me that was like a great boost. - Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now

There Are No Saints

I first listened to Siobhan Wilson's There Are No Saints the week after its July release. It was a gorgeous sunny day, I was out at my Mum's in Carluke and I downloaded the album so I could listen to it on the drive home.

The windows were down and the sun was beaming down, shades were on. In truth, I'd normally choose something far more upbeat than this beauty of an album to drive to. But the music captivated me. It stayed on and I even took a detour home so I could listen to it all.

A month or two on and I am listening to the album on headphones, marvelling at Siobhan Wilson's voice, the arrangements and most of all the feel of the album. It is gorgeous.

Wilson is classically trained and on songs like Disaster and Grace when she plays piano, backed by strings, she sounds like a dream - really beautiful, what a voice.

The production, by Chris McCrory of Catholic Action, is just perfect. Wilson and McCrory allow the songs space to breath. Whether backed by fuzzy electric guitar, piano or strings, Siobhan Wilson sounds heavenly. Just listen to Whatever Helps.

You're stuck in the break of a wave

You're haunted by a line from a song

Siobhan divides her time between Scotland and Paris and if anything her voice sounds even more sexy and dreamy when she sings in French. J'attendrai is exquisite, sounding like it could be from a French Disney film - gorgeous melodies. Paris Est Blanche is just magical.

Make You Mine is jaw dropping, heart stopping, spine tingling gorgeousness. Wow! Even managing an AC/DC reference!

Closer It Must Have Been The Moon is another stunner. This has an Eva Cassidy kind of feel to it. Just gorgeous.

Check this brilliant feature on Drowned In Sound where Siobhan gives a track by track guide to the album. They describe There Are No Saints perfectly as elegant and beautiful, dark and stormy.

I really hope to catch Siobhan playing live in the near future. Check her website for live dates. Scottish dates confirmed at present are 24/09 Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh and 28/09 Tolbooth, Stirling. You can stream, download or buy a CD or vinyl by visiting Song By Toad Records.

Siobhan covering Aztec Camera for The Quay Sessions