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Come and Join the Hue And Cry Music Club!
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A place for all Hue And Cry fans to find music, friendship and more! See exclusive video performances of concerts, 'music labs', and on-request piano-vocals. You can also join "History City" - where every gig the brothers' have ever done has its own website, where you can meet old friends (and make new ones!).
Go to http://www.hueandcry.co.uk, and click on the "Music Club" icon at the top of the page.
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48 days ago
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PatBlog: Christmas and New Year Cosmic Top Ten
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1. My daughter home from MIT for Xmas. Wearing Doc Martens, a large floral dress, hair patterned and streaked like candyfloss gone emo, and saying things like 'we were totally hosed on that calculus all-nighter' and 'we did the most awesome V For Vendetta hack on the Harvard statue'. Unalloyed, unproblematic, forty-three year old fatherly joy.
2. Conde Nast Portfolio on how nobody knows how to predict stock market successes. http://www.portfolio.com/executives/... I have a tragic fascination for the higher journalism of American capitalism - sometimes you can catch the Masters of the Universe, musing complacently in their Lear Jets, letting you in on the secrets of their power. This piece is amazing: a financial adviser who realised that every bit of his financial advice to clients was either a lie, or inherently unpredictable. And is now making money out of advising people to do literally nothing with their stocks. We prefer this financial model: buy our tickets/music/stuff. Come back again when we have new stuff. Please, thanks.
3. Willy Maley's poem about his dad dying http://www.spl.org.uk/best-poems/015.htm Willy Maley is an ebullient, schtreet-schmart, Derrida-reading facilitator of so much modern Scottish literature, as head of creative writing at Glasgow University. He also a pal I don't make enough of (New Year resolution No. 303). But after denying himself the right for years, he's now writing himself, and the results are as impressive as I would have expected. (BTW, his Glaswegian dad fought in the Spanish Civil War as an anti-Fascist communist, so you can imagine that in the West of Scotland, Maley can dine out on *that* forever). Other Scottish poems of the year here are well worth reading also. http://www.spl.org.uk/best-poems/ind...
3.5. Anthony Hamilton's Pass Me Over. Greg has been slagging me in various interviews we've been doing recently for the, um, 'lack of eclecticism' in my musical taste. Oh I've tried, bro - bought the last Beta Band album (wanted to scrunch the CD into splinters it felt so *unfinished*), listened with full bandwidth to a Biffy Clyro live performance (and tried to figure out why flat melodies, heavy strumming and a xylophone just doesn't do it for me - great beards tho), even sat for a studious two hours with In Rainbows on stream, and genuinely enjoyed it (though wondered whether megabands get so bored sometimes that song hooks become beneath their lofty dignity). But I broke, my resolve broke, and ended up rushing to this track on my iTunes by the 'soul storyteller' Anthony Hamilton.
Another day, chance to make another chance
a fragile place, runnin on empty,
a smile so faint can barely even break his face
world's on shoulders now
don't be afraid, he who knows will make a way,
his word alone is what has kept me,
born the son, king of eternal peace,
lay your burdens down
I asked Greg to make the backing vocals on Open Soul be vaguely like the gospel chorus at the end of this song. He shook his head, said 'listen to more indie, dude', but did me proud in the end. I'm a militant materialist, folks: but gospel always gets me, as much for the futile desperation of the yearning for a singular Saviour of one's world of troubles. The story? Anthony takes himself to the edge of existence, asks to be taken from his troubles in his sleep by his Maker, and wakes up the next morning. And every morning after that. No shelter from the storm. Generally, very true.
4. Hunter S. Thompson on the music business: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." This is actually a misquotation - originally it was about television - and the last line isn't Hunter S's. http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dub... But 'thieves and pimps run free'... this has to be an album title for
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241 days ago
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GregBlog: Scottish Hip-Hop @ 78 rpm!
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There was once a music bar in glasgow called "Stereo". It was a bit off the beaten track (Kelvinhaugh) but was extremely popular. The band Franz Ferdinand used to hang and play there a lot. One dark & dreich Tuesday night my girlfriend and I stuck our heads in to see what was doing on. The bar had a history of putting on weird theme nights - "Dub & Grub" being a very popular one, "Live Electronica" being another. And that particular night, I had my first experience of "Scottish Hip Hop" http://www.bringdaruckus.com/ It was incredible. There were these kids arranged into separate groups all goading each-other with "rhymes" - like an angry 'n' aggressive poetry club http://www.spl.org.uk/events/other.html. The DJ's were playing some of the funkiest grooves I'd heard in years.
Then one group of guys got up on stage, and the place erupted in a torrent of abuse. But it seemed only to charge up these particular performers even more. Then the show began -- and Holy Shit!! The music was like a marriage between an episode of "River City" http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/tv/riv... and "Trouble Funk" http://www.mp3.com/artist/trouble-fu... It was mesmerizing, hilarious, disturbing, aggressive, soothing - lots of emotions. It had everything, and I was hooked. There's loads of it out there on t'inter-net - go have a look. One that I found was "Darts Messiah" http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm..., I later discovered that Hue and Cry's Guitarist Alan McKewon http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm... was involved in it. This stuff is fronted by John Speirs, who's a wonderful funky bassist. The whole thing? I just love it :-)
Now, unfortunately the "Stereo" bar closed last year, which was a real shame. I miss it. But in its place "The 78" http://www.list.co.uk/article/1715-e... has opened this year. Same building, same mantra, but with an interior makeover and Organic-only beer (frequent uses call it Organ-ACHE beer!). I noticed it had opened one night whilst I was walking home and popped my head in. What I found really freaked me out ... there was a young guy sitting between two Antique Gramophone Players http://inventors.about.com/od/gstart... When one record was playing, he'd been winding the other gramophone player up, ready to "mix" to the other record. He was playing 78 rpm disks .... old Big Band jazz, Bing Crosby, Nellie Lutcher ... it was brilliant.
I grew up with my dad's 78 rpm records. I loved the violence of the mechanics when you played 78's. It scared, but also enthralled me when I was 7 years old. It was like watching real life, being speeded up...! This "Gramophone DJ" played for a couple of hours, and I stayed glued to him. Brought back some great memories.
On our new album "Open Soul", we have a great vibraphone player called Jim Hart http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm... playing on it. Once the recording session was finished I took him down to "The 78" bar for a drink. Now the great thing about this bar is you don't know what you're gonna get when you open the door. It was a Wednesday night -- and Wednesday night is "Jazz Fusion" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_fusion night @ The 78! I think Jim didn't know where to look. There where 5 "DJ's" (2 girls+3 boys) sitting round a coffee table with two decks on it. Whilst Chick Corea was blaring out of the speakers the 5 of them were discussing and analyzing the record covers ... A magical scene. Poor Jim could only stay a while, had a a plane to catch. I stayed. I'd never heard "Jazz Fusion" in a bar before. It was a small but discerning crowd!
Finally... I like jazz. I've always known there is a healthy Scottish jazz scene with my work with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and with Pat and me using the be
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261 days ago
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just visit: 
