1,000 blogs

Welcome to my 1,000th blog!

Thanks so much for taking the time to visit. 

I write about & highlight music I love, whether it's a new discovery or a song/album I have treasured for decades. Ultimately, I hope I turn you on to an amazing song you've never heard before, or cause you to rediscover an old favourite you've not listened to in ages. It's been nice to receive some feedback over the years.

I've taken a little bit of time to reflect on reaching this landmark. What has happened over the lifespan of my blog? 

I've thought of other Scottish music blogs, favourite bands, local bands that made it, bands that were signed and dropped/flopped, helping bands, putting on bands, forming a label, putting out self releases ...

An old photo from my music room in 2012, before kids took over!

Looking back over the time I've been writing the blog, I've been fortunate to experience some very memorable shows, discover some incredible music (whether newly released, or older songs/albums) and I've met and made friends with some brilliant people through a shared love of music.

As a kid I devoured the music weeklies and then spent fortunes on Uncut & Mojo, along with numerous other magazines like Loaded, FHM, Select, Vox, Q (only sometimes - never a real favourite) and many more short lived Britpop era mags.

I dreamed of being in bands, or of becoming a music journalist. 

I had no idea of how to form a band, although I did draft a few adverts for the NME & Melody Maker and jammed a little with a few people I met in Glasgow. But other than a few open mic nights and a MySpace page with Garage Band demos under the name Acid Hazes, I never explored forming a band with any real conviction. 

But now I have, finally, formed a (real) band! We're called Starboard Hazes and our debut EP is out today. It even features Norman Blake on backing vocals on the song Kicking Our Heels! 

Find out more about how the band formed HERE and check our debut EP HERE

And I didn't have the grades to get into the journalism course at Napier University. So my dreams remained dreams.

Then, all of a sudden, it became a lot easier to do either. Social networking websites like MySpace meant you could release music, or write about music to a (potentially) worldwide audience!

Back in August 2008, just after returning from a year of travelling (during which I wrote a blog), I wrote and published a blog about the Glasgow Music Scene at the time. I referenced venues, record shops and 5 of my favourite ever gigs from King Tuts Wah Wah Hut and The Barrowland.

Outside King Tuts in June 2020, lockdown - the city centre was deserted

While travelling, I though of the name Aye Tunes for a blog, but that was sadly taken. Aye Tunes ran for quite some time, Jim (the guy who ran it) put on shows and worked incredibly hard to promote the DIY Scottish scene.

Some other blogs from around that time were;

• Pop Cop - This was my favourite blog. On the ball with snapshot news and superb in depth articles and interviews. I met Jason once or twice at gigs and I hope he is still writing in some form.

• Peenko - Lloyd from Peenko went on to co-form Olive Grove Records with Halina from Podcart (Lloyd now runs on his own and has for some time). As Peenko he put on shows and put out DIY releases. Lloyd is one of the most positive and friendly people I have met through the Glasgow/Scottish music scene. I've got to know Lloyd pretty well through Olive Grove as he has been releasing my sister Carla's albums. One of the most friendly and helpful people out there.

• Podcart - Halina from Podcart is another exceptional person I've met through the scene. Halina's passion for music shines through and creates an infectious energy. From memory, there have been a few name changes, but looking back (at least for me), Halina really pioneered podcasting in the Scottish music scene. Her knowledge of the scene and podcasting has led to radio appearances. Podcart is still going strong.

• Scottish Fiction - Another blog that ended up putting on shows and releasing albums. Mt. Doubt, Annie Booth and Lovers Turn To Monsters were among their roster. Neil somehow did this for quite some time while studying, working and creating quite a big family! (not sure of the exact order!). Oh, and Neil also ran a radio show for a while! 

• Jock Rock - Still going strong! Good for news and views on the Scottish music scene.

The DIY scene was incredibly healthy and I'd check these blogs daily - expecting a big announcement about a band getting signed to a major! Most of the bands stayed local, adored by blogs and a tight knit scene - although you'd get bands like Frightened Rabbit and Admiral Fallow (pictured below) breaking through. Both bands also had singer-songwriters who cut their teeth on the Glasgow open mic scene.

Following my first blog, I then mainly wrote about gigs I attended through to November, then I didn't write anything again until September 2009! It was only in 2011 that I started to really begin to blog consistently.

And now I've written 1,000 blogs and at the time of writing, they have been viewed 754,483 times! 

Three quarters of a million views! Thanks so much for reading my musings!

Some have had mere dozens of views, lots of have had hundreds, many have had a few thousand, a half dozen have had 5,000/6,000 views and then one has had almost 50,000! (see below)

It's been interesting to look back over old blogs and think about what I've seen, experienced and written about over the last 14-years and 1,000 blogs! It's like a diary! 

I've put on some bands/artists that have gone on to quite big things!

• Gerry Cinnamon - I was introduced to The Cinnamons by my friends in the band Sonny Marvello. They introduced me to an amazing group of people from Castlemilk who lived and breathed for music.  I remember one memorable night at Stereo when I put on Sonny Marvello and The Cinnamons and half of Castlemilk turned up. 

Gerry Cinnamon with his band The Cinnamons 

 Photo by Dave Taylor

So it's amazing to see Gerry Cinnamon doing so well. I once watched him playing solo at Love Music on a Record Store Day to around 10 people. Gerry's personality, charisma and talent were always there. His cheeky charm won friends and his rise is a truly remarkable example of the importance of word-of-mouth.

Cinnamon gigged regularly around Scotland and his open mic night in Glasgow really helped him hone his talent. I was pretty humbled when Gerry kindly put me on the guestlist 2-years running for his incredible shows at the Barrowland in December 2017 & 2018. The atmosphere at these shows (the first in particular) were like nothing I had experienced previously. I hope the blog reviews capture some of it.

Gerry recently headlined 2 nights at Hampden Park - INCREDIBLE. My most viewed blog is one I wrote called The Rise & Rise of Gerry Cinnamon. Gerry was doing everything under the radar, with no press agent, so his growing fanbase were searching for info about him and found my blog! Incredibly, no mainstream media were writing about him! It has almost 48,000 views.

• Stevie McCrorie - Stevie and the Moon came from a little scene that formed around Alloa/Stirling. There were some cracking bands like Little Eskimos (Kevin Harper is one of the most talented and funny people I have met through this blog), Minature Dinosaurs and an electronic producer called MOPP who I really thought was going to blow up. I loved his song Dream About You. I put Stevie and the Moon on at the old Captain's Rest on one boiling hot summer night as part of a charity show for Maggie's. I got a t-shirt that my daughter ended up wearing as a nightshirt for a while! Stevie's voice was (and is) very rich and soulful and years later he showed up on BBC's The Voice. I stuck a fiver on him and won £70! I should have bet more. Stevie showed what a funny, humble and family orientated guy he was on the show. Check his blind audition HERE. 

Stevie is still singing. Another great guy from Alloa is Craig Johnston who cut his teeth putting on shows at Maggie Mays in town, before going on to work with DF Concerts, booking supports at King Tuts, then headliners and he's now putting on Lewis Capaldi and others! Craig's warm personality shone through in the darkest of basements. I'm so pleased he's worked his way up and is living his dream.

• Emma's Imagination - One day I was walking down Sauchiehall Street when I saw a really cool looking, kind of grungey, girl busking. She had a sign in front of her advertising her MySpace page. I followed her page and sent a message to say that I had a spare support slot going at the 13th Note that very weekend for a Sonny Marvello show I was putting on. Emma came down and played a stunning little set. Kind of bluesy, kind of folky, possibly a little stoned. Lyrics were full of humour. She was great. The next year Emma entered Sky 1's Must Be The Music TV show, wowed the judges and audience, won a record contract (and £100,000!) and got a deal with Gary Barlow's label! I don't think she was ever cut out to be a Gary Barlow kind of songwriter or performer. Things never really took off. I hope Emma is still writing and singing.

Emma Gillespie, AKA Emma's Imagination

• Saint PHNX - I met a lovely girl called Helen Keenan on a charity walk. We were walking at the same pace and discovered we grew up in relatively close proximity (Carluke and Wishaw) and that we loved music. Helen's brother Jamie is in The La Fontaines and both of them are absolute gems of human beings - up for mischief, laughs and fun. Helen told me about a band Vigo Thieves that were playing upstairs in The Commercial Hotel in Wishaw the next Sunday night. I went along and they'd packed the place out, playing some kind of ramshackle Libertines style songs. But their closing numbers hinted a bigger and better things. I met singer Stevie Jukes and his people skills and work rate blew me away. He have me a name check on the back of a CD single and hand delivered it along with a ticket to a show. I ended up helping Stevie to manage the band. Truth be told, Stevie did most things and I was someone to bounce off. But I did arrange some London shows and actually managed to get some meetings with record labels! 

It was really exciting. Stevie and I got the overnight train to London and spent the day meeting lawyers, labels and pluggers. Some (pluggers!) were chancers. The label meetings were very exciting and I thought a deal might be incoming! It didn't happen though and after pushing things with Vigo Thieves as far as possible,  Stevie and his brother formed Saint PHNX who have had a big hit with Happy Place and earned a deal with Atlantic Records! The band smashed T in the Park this summer and have SOLD OUT the Barrowland Ballroom next year.

Stevie Jukes crowdsurfing at King Tuts with Vigo Thieves

The band sold out 2 nights back to back - unsigned

Over the years I've helped bands and artists with self releases and putting on nights. These have included;

• A Futuristic Retro Champions single, May the Forth b/w Settle Down with artwork by Martin Creed. The launch night at Mono was incredible. Also their Homemade Lemonade retrospective album. 

• A Miaoux Miaoux single, Knitted, in limited edition knitted sleeves - each one unique! They were hand knitted by ladies that attended a women's group at Maggie's where I was working at the time. All proceeds went to Maggie's Glasgow Centre. Julian (Miaoux Miaoux) is now in Franz Ferdinand!

Watching Miaoux Miaoux create, layer & loop sounds was a joy - a real talent

• Sonny Marvello's 100 club mini-album containing the beautiful Fire Went Out - one of my favourite songs. Also their Easy Boys b/w We're All Cruel 7-inch. Two real favourites. Check my 10 memories of Sonny Marvello blog HERE for more details about the adventures we had together including putting on our own festival!

And then I helped to form a record label - Last Night From Glasgow. It's incredible to think of the amount of music that has been released via LNFG (and their various offshoots) since 2016. The label has grown way beyond initial ideas of 100 members and printing limited runs of 300 copies of 6 releases a year.

There are now over 600 members which gives the label an incredible platform and scope (and funds) to do all kinds of things; re-issues, books, a record shop ... it's a remarkable story. I've not been involved with the label for some time, but I still keep up with all their news - just about!

Ian Smith, who runs the label, is a force of nature. It's nice when dreams come true and Ian is now working full-time to run the label. Truth be told he probably needed to do that from year 3, but he has knocked things into such good shape that it needs someone working on it. I hope to catch up with him soon. Check a recent interview he did about the label.

I've also helped my sister with her fanclubs that allow her to be independent and prolific in her art. And helped run her Since Yesterday crowdfunder for a documentary about Scottish girl groups. 

It's nice to help artists and creative types to make/release music. I have always got a buzz out of it.

Long term favourite bands like Teenage Fanclub, The Charlatans and The Lemonheads are still recording, releasing & touring. They've been my favourite bands for a long, long time! 

Change happens naturally over time. I was very sad to see Gerry Love leave Teenage Fanclub.  At the same time I was very grateful that the band didn't split up. Endless Arcade, their first post Gerry album, was excellent - it had to be really. And their live shows still bring so much joy. 

I hope Gerry records and releases soon. What a talent. It's been great to see Gerry playing live again recently and I'll be seeing him again this month. It sounds like he is getting ready to record an album.

Of course, I also hope to see the band reunited at some point in the future as well. Norman & Gerry's voices gel so well.  

It sounds like Teenage Fanclub will follow up Endless Arcade pretty swiftly which is great for fans like me. I've seen them live more than ever over the last 6-years or so.

Teenage Fanclub, Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, September 2021

My first post lockdown show

The Charlatans, led by the effervescent Tim Burgess, haven't release an album since 2017's Different Days. Sadly, founding member Jon Brookes died in 2013. I loved his drumming style so much. This White Room performance of Crashin' In highlights what a sensational performer he was - look at the way Tim gazes fondly at him.

However they are still very active on the touring and festival circuit. Meanwhile, Tim has just released Typical Music, his 3rd solo album (a double at that) since Different Days was released. It does make me wonder if The Charlatans will record again. My gut says that they will. Tim's Twitter Listening Parties have helped so many people across the world over the last few years. I love his energy, attitude, taste and style and I'm enjoying his new album.

Evan Dando hasn't been very prolific over the last couple of decades. Certainly not in terms of releasing. The last 2 Lemonheads albums have been covers (I am particularly fond of Varshons 2), while it's almost 20-years since the release of his only solo album, the stunning Baby I'm Bored. Evan tours regularly and played in Glasgow this week for the 30th anniversary of It's A Shame About Ray. I could watch and listen to him playing acoustic guitar all night long. BLOG HERE.

A real highlight of mine since I started the blog was finally getting to see the Stone Roses live; Amsterdam, the Sunday at Heaton Park, Glasgow Green and T in the Park.  And the 30th anniversary show of Primal Scream playing Screamadelica in Manchester was one of the most mind blowing shows I've ever experienced. Jim Lambie's visuals were a real trip. 

It's been nice to take some time to reflect on things I've been involved in, bands I've fallen for, gigs I've been to and friends I have met. Lots of highlights, lots of great memories. My blog has documented quite a lot! 

However my most personal highlight has been watching the development of my sister Carla as a songwriter, artist & performer over the history of my blog. With Futuristic Retro Champions, TeenCanteen, as a solo perfomer and with her new band Poster Paints. She's a wee gem, works super hard and has an amazing talent for words and melodies. I  hope she gets a bigger break sometime soon. 

I'll end with a few things I have learned along the way, just in case anyone reading this is considering writing a blog, or recording a podcast, or whatever young kids do these days!

1) Write/Talk about what you genuinely love and care about - it will help you stick with it

2) Don't expect many views/listens early on. Especially if you are writing about a band that attract an audience of 15/20 to a local show. They might go on and do something, but if they can't get a crowd of their mates interested, the chance are no-one else will be either!

3) Reviewing shows sharply helps. The turning point in my blog was when I reviewed an Echo and the Bunnymen show at the Royal Concert Hall.  I was shocked by singer Ian McCulloch's behaviour and wrote about the incident(s) that occurred when I got home. My tweet quickly gained traction and my blog had over 1,000 views in a couple of hours. So I always try to review gigs sharply while interest levels are still high - and I can remember everything! The flip side is that there are memorable gigs that I haven't reviewed. I've started a blog, or left it a day or two .... and then the moment has gone.

4) Building content helps. It takes time, but having a good bank of content ensures that people will find your blog while searching for band/album/single/gig reviews. I have some 'steady performers' like Nirvana covers The Vaselines

5) You'll sometimes be surprised by what blogs do well. Another one of my steady performers is a review of BiS and Cloth playing at The Old Hairdressers. BiS have an incredibly loyal fanbase and Cloth were really developing as a band. So there was a lot of curiosity about them and BiS have a loyal fanbase across the globe. That blog has almost 3,000 views.

6) A bit of luck helps with views. So Hot Chip, Gerry Cinnamon or Britpop Memories retweeting my blogs hugely helps with views. 

7) But.... don't worry about views. Going back to point 1, write about what you genuinely love and care about. I write because I enjoy it. These days I sometimes just post the blog and don't bother to tweet about it, or post about it. People will find it if they are that interested. But thank you so much to my loyal readers!!!

8) Having regular features helps with content. I have tried a few things over the years including; 5 for Friday, Three for Thursday or Magic Motown. But I've now settled on;

• My Never Ending Mixtape - a monthly blog with a link to a playlist. 
• Trust Me - a monthly feature on songs I discover or old favourites.
• Cover version of the month - a monthly blog on cool cover versions. And maybe the odd dodgy one (David Haselhoff covering The Jesus & Mary Chain!) as well!

It means I always have a minimum of 3 blogs per month, complete with playlists.. I'm also up to #17 in a series called Anything Goes & Everything Flows where I create a 60-minute DJ mix/playlist. But I don't want to commit to that forever!

I now tend to average 7/8 per month. We'll see if that continues as I'm not getting out to quite as many gigs as I once did!

So ... 1,000 blogs. Loads of good memories. I enjoy writing, so who knows how many I'll get to, or how long I'll keep it going for. 

Thanks so much for visiting.

As always, I hope you discover something new to fall in love with, or rediscover an old favourite.

Here is an old blog on my 10 favourite songs ... at least at that time. Most of them still are!

Take care & very best wishes

Murray

Flower Power

Me, in Lisbon, summer 2022

HMV

Between 1994 and probably until 2004, I must have spent a high percentage of my lunchtime's visiting HMV on Sauchiehall Street. My first job in Glasgow was along at Charing Cross so I'd skip along at lunchtime to browse and buy. I then moved to 301 St Vincent Street to work in the huge Abbey National building and befriended a couple of other music nuts and Monday lunchtimes would see us religiously head to HMV to check the latest releases.

At the height of Britpop I'd be buying 2 or 3 releases a week, often singles due to the sheer volume being released at that time and also due to the cheap pricing. 7-inch singles tended to be 99p in the first week of release to get a chart position. I even picked up very limited 7-inch vinyl by the likes of Elastica who pressed 500 or 1,000 of some of their first singles. Bargain!

The 90's was the era of the CD and for £1.99 you could pick up a 3 or 4 track CD single/EP. B-sides meant something, Oasis had gems like The Masterplan, Fade Away and Rockin' Chair on them, other bands used it to experiment or play covers.

I don't recall buying many vinyl albums from HMV. I tended to buy them from Missing Records on Oswald Street or when they moved to larger premises on Washington Street. I don't know why, Missing always just felt like more of a vinyl store for me. Although I did buy a lot of 7-inches from HMV.

And it was always HMV for me. Tower Records was an occasional treat, usually after a few drinks in town killing time before a train back to my home town of Carluke, but it was too expensive. And I never really spent much time in Virgin. HMV was conveniently placed close to my work and it just became the place I went to for music.

I still have all my CD's. I must have spent thousands and thousands of pounds on them, so even though they are pretty worthless (in monetary terms), I refuse to throw them out due to the memories and the fact that I spent so much time with them and money on them.

It must have been years since I set foot in an HMV, let alone buy something. In 2004 I changed careers to start working in the voluntary sector and moved out to work at Maggie's first Glasgow centre at the old Western Infirmary, near the foot of Byres Road. So I wasn't in the city centre  that much, I tended to head up to FOPP in Byres Road for releases and around that time I really started buying a lot of older vinyl second hand. I didn't fall in love with as many new bands so I really didn't have a reason to visit HMV.

FOPP were also selling back catalogues of artists like Neil Young for £5 a CD album. They quickly became my record/CD shop of choice for a while.

There would still be the odd venture into the Sauchiehall Street store but then along came the likes of Monorail where you could browse, discover, buy and then grab a beer and/or lunch.

The world was changing and I was older. Where I once religiously bought the music weeklies Melody Maker and NME, listened to the Evening Session and Peel and bought things on the strength of a written review, I was now digging more into Uncut and Mojo magazine and discovering older music, also record shops like Mixed Up Records on Otago Lane - a cracking record shop with a fine selection of second hand records.

I never got into file sharing or Napster. Firstly, they were illegal, secondly, the music world seemed to be against it. I was on the side of the musicians.

So much was changing, along came MySpace and all of a sudden artists seemed fine to have their music out there for everyone to stream and download for free. It helped to break artists like Lily Allen and the Artic Monkeys, but people were still buying physical copies.

I moved out to work in Springburn, so I was in the city centre even less. That was in 2011 and I think I must have rarely set foot in HMV since then. The days of walking up a few lunchtimes a week were long gone, now my record shop of choice was Monorail and I went through a long period of visiting a couple of Monday's a month after work before playing five-a-sides.

My friends and I used to (half) joke that it was impossible to visit Monorail without buying something. I would rarely visit without spending a minimum of £30 on CD's, vinyl or the occasional ticket.

iTunes came along, Spotify, Amazon, Discogs, Bandcamp .... there were more ways than ever to discover and own music. And I haven't even mentioned Ebay! I went through a big Ebay phase, tracking down records I couldn't find in shops.

In some ways the ease of which you could consume music hurt me. A record collection and a knowledge of music really meant something. And I had invested in it! Vinyl, cd's, bootlegs, imports, magazines, books, videos .... now someone could stream, illegally download and view on YouTube. They could read about an artists history, reviews, setlists, access press releases ...

That ease was one of the reasons I refused to explore Spotify for a long, long time. I stuck with iTunes and downloaded legally, I still bought CD's and vinyl on a monthly basis and supported artists by attending countless concerts and buying merchandise at their shows.

Then Spotify, which had been kind of illegal for a while, became legal. I thought I would check it out although I was extremely late to the party. And ... to my horror ... I really fell in love with it.

Now if I am reading a book, let's take Meet Me In The Bathroom, a book about the New York scene from 2001-2011. I can check out a song or artist that is mentioned immediately. My thrill back in the day of FOPP selling back catalogues for a fiver an album was now replaced with the fact I could check out entire back catalogues any time I wanted!

Spotify, for me, is user friendly and for £10 a month I have more music at my fingertips than the teenage me could ever have even dreamed of. A friend and I used to wish we could work at Missing Records and access all their music all day long at work, or even just buy the store. Now I had access to even more music than Missing could ever have held.

I've always loved making mixtapes or cd's and giving them to family and friends. Now I can share mixtapes (playlists) with the world! Speaking of which, I hope you have checked my regular Never Ending Mixtape playlist on Spotify which I add to and blog about monthly.

I do still buy the odd CD and record, but nowhere close to the volume I once did. My peak vinyl/CD buying years were a long time ago. Now, with two kids and a busy job, it is a treat to actually get time to go to a record store. Whereas once upon a time visiting HMV was convenient for me, then FOPP and then Monorail, now it is convenient for me to stream. I'm guilty as charged! Some months I don't buy any physical releases at all, it's my £10 a month for Spotify that keeps me in music.

But enough about me, enough about my history with record shops and buying or listening habits.

HMV looks like it is going to close for good. God bless HMV and all who have sailed in her and God bless the 2,200 staff currently sailing who are set to lose their jobs.

I hope it can revive itself to keep going, but it's not looking good. It's great that vinyl sales continue to rise, but CD and DVD sales are not enough to keep HMV in its prime retail space locations open, nor is their move into the headphone, speakers, t-shirts and accessories market.

Many have shared memories about HMV online, but, very sadly memories are not enough to keep their stores open and relevant. Maybe a knight, or knights, in shining armour will appear and refresh this once great brand to keep it going.  But, for me, the competition is simply too fierce and it looks like it will be R.I.P HMV.