One of the great discoveries we made when we saw Thea Gilmore live was her support act, solo acoustic guitarist Dan Arborise. I bought his album Around in Circles at the merchandise stall because I was particularly taken with his song To The Sea. It is a really beautiful collection of songs which I can totally recommend.
I bought his second album for Helen’s birthday. It’s called Of Tide & Trail. I haven’t got totally inside it yet but it seems a bit more vicious than his previous disc. Some swearing and pointed lyrics in songs like You’ll All Get What’s Coming To You. You have to listen carefully to find them though: on the surface it’s still beautiful music.
Of course you could say the first album wasn’t short of shocking thoughts: “what do you do when you find that everything that you’ve been taught to love is a lie?”.
We’ve been pretty rubbish at doing stuff in the Festival this year. We’ve seen a couple of things and only managed that because Helen’s dad arranged everything. In the last fortnight we saw:
This doesn’t really count as a Festival event because it’s just a film which was on at the Filmhouse. But it was really good so I’m putting it here.
It’s got Eric Cantona guest starring as Eric Cantona, as the fairy godmother/spirit guide for a struggling postman. It’s directed by Ken Loach, and is that typical triumph-over-adversity plot which makes for funny and warming cinema.
An acoustic night at Medina, and all the acts were completely unknown to me. Polly headlining and support from various others including local newbies Mayhew. I’m sure I recognised two of the band members.
The second unknown. I really enjoyed his show, though I’m easily drawn to an artist who’ll sing the intro to a song unaccompanied while restringing their guitar. He played with just an acoustic guitar, and a mixture of floaty, shoegazing songs and angry, energetic songs.
He was a bit pissed and very garrulous, but wasn’t nearly as drunk and annoying as some of the audience. I can kind of forgive Helen and Ken not enjoying themselves so much because of the twerps sitting behind, stomping out of time on the ricketty seats. I had a lot of fun though.
Have you seen any interesting new musicians lately?
We spent the weekend in Glasgow for a wedding — and more on that in a future blog post — but while there we took the opportunity to see Duke Special in concert at the Òran Mór on Saturday night.
I knew nothing of the music before arriving. Helen had played me some a few days before but I was busy doing other things and not concentrating fully. I wasn’t too worried about this. Helen had seen him once before, also without any foreknowledge or preparation (presumably as a support act?) and had really enjoyed it.
And so it was. He turned out to be immensely enjoyable: catchy, intelligent and slightly ramshackle. Just the way I like ‘em. He has a slight air of vaudeville and junkyard band to him, a little bit of Tom Waits’ dark twisted stories and obscure vignettes. Also, gotta love that Northern Irish accent. This is Sweet Sweet Kisses from his new album:
The show was quite early finishing — we were out of there by 10.30 — but the final encore was such a great ending that I really didn’t care. The whole band came off stage, carrying electric guitar (unplugged), double bass and tambourine, and stood in the centre of the hall, with the audience crowded around. Then they taught us Creaky Boat Blues, a sea shanty of sorts, which the whole audience was urged to sing.
Here’s another video from a gig a few days before the Glasgow one, where they did the same thing and someone caught it on video. Enjoy!
Just back from a cracking night at Calistoga, Californian restaurant hidden in a side alley of Rose Street. You know, just down past the ‘sauna’.
We’re away tomorrow and for the long weekend, in Glasgow for a wedding. It’s going to be a bit new. Ostensibly a Muslim wedding but with certain obvious heresies — the groom’s family are Chinese, so there will be pork or chicken’s feet at the meal, possibly both. Because that’s tradition too.
Well, whatever happens the bride and groom are lovely people and I wish them all the best. I hope the events go without a hitch (apart from the obvious one). Here’s some Bell X1 to see you out, extolling the virtues of tea to a Boston audience and singing Flame.
Exactly ten days ago Helen and I went to a house gig at her brother’s house. It was a bit unusual but kinda nice. I’m just sorry we didn’t invite some of our friends along as I know a few people who would really have loved it.
The performers were Steve Lawson and Lobelia (his and hers websites). She does singer-songwriter stuff and he does looping, layered bass guitar songs. They did some songs solo each, and some songs together, including some reworked “cheesy 80s covers”. You know, like a (US) countrified version of You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).
The show was live-streamed to about 190-odd people on the internet, and there were about 18 of us in Paddy’s living room. Here’s one song, recorded from Lobelia’s phone I think. The laughter is hers…
We paid a few quid direct to the artists and even bought a couple of their CDs. Then we went for a curry with Helen’s family and the performers. It was a pretty cool evening. I wonder who else does regular house gigs? Here’s another tune:
Last week I saw Bat for Lashes at the QMU. Amazing. The new single’s not the strongest on the album, unfortunately, but it’s the only one I have a video for!
Helen was away at the weekend and I spent the time making too much bread. But I’ve discovered that Lidl sell bread flour half the price of anywhere else, so that compensates a bit.
Yesterday we saw some old friends and flatmates. They were visiting Scotland for a bit from the uncivilised hinterlands (London). We went to Calistoga and basically had the place to ourselves. It was a Tuesday night but still a bit eerie at first. Some dishes did go through to the other room, so we weren’t the only people in.
As nice a program as Banshee is, they did something really strange during development. At some point they broke everything — presumably for a rewrite — and are slowly assembling it again.
So things that were working well in the early days, like album covers, have become more of a pain with the slicker later versions. If you’re having trouble with album covers here are a few things that might help you.
Dropping a folder.jpg file in the album folder does work, but with a number of caveats.
Album covers are cached in ~/.cache/album-art/. And various subfolders too, for different sizes. It’s best to delete the relevant file from this cache before doing anything. Luckily the correspondence between filename and album is very simple:
$ cd ~/.cache/album-art
$ rm robertplantalisonkrauss-raisingsand.jpg
$ rm */robertplantalisonkrauss-raisingsand.jpg
It should be fairly easy to find the cached images with this naming scheme. Once the cache has been deleted Banshee will pick up the folder.jpg file you added manually to the album folder.
Album names that includes funny characters (parentheses and colons, for example) don’t parse properly. So inserting folder.jpg in the right place will have no effect.
Instead you need to copy the album cover to the cache, ignoring the dodgy characters.
Then it’ll just magically appear in Banshee, in the right place, and all the other resized versions will be generated without problem.
I hope this helps some people out for the more complicated scenarios. Eventually this bug will be fixed and Banshee will not have these problems at all. (Also, interested parties might want to check out that bug thread to see how far down a rat hole one can get with the “simple” topic of album art.)
Spent rather a lot of money on CDs yesterday. Though it could have been worse…
Ocean Beach, Red House Painters. The Red House Painters seem to be Mark Kozelek’s original band. I’ve been really enjoying his other stuff released under his own name and that of Sun Kil Moon, so I chose this one at random.
Flock, Bell X1. Chosen because it was the only album they had by this band. It may be their only album, for all I know. It includes a song which I have on an HMV sampler disc from a few years ago, which is why I bought it. It was a good sampler that one — also introduced me to Death Cab For Cutie.
Edit: It turns out that Bell X1 are the band that Damien Rice left behind when he went solo, though at the time they were called Juniper. Small world.
Carmen Symphony, Bizet. I couldn’t resist this one because it was quite cheap and, you know, it’s got yon Toreador tune.
Movies: The Ultimate Collection, Various. Bit of a silly one this. A 3-disc compilation of various famous themes from the movies. So lots of John Williams, lots of action movies. Mostly recent stuff and unashamedly populist. But it has a high enjoyment factor.
Helen also splurged on similar things — a Karl Jenkins box set (including The Armed Man), The Proclaimers, Stevie Wonder, Simple Minds and some project with Roddy Woomble’s name on it. Lots of exciting new music here!
For her birthday in October I bought Helen the Sharpe box set that was available at the time. Sean Bean as the soldier in Wellington’s army fighting through Spain to Napoleonic France, from the books by Bernard Cornwell. The films (because that is what they are: each episode is 90 minutes long) are excellent fun, but that’s not why I’m here.
I wanted to bring to light the man who plays Dan Hagman in the series, John Tams. He sings the theme song, Over The Hills and Far Away, and incidental songs at regular intervals while the regiment are marching, waiting, sitting by the campfire or burying one of their friends. His aching voice really holds the stories together and makes the viewer feel like they’re there.
John Tams is also, as it turns out, an award-winning folk singer. I stumbled across a compilation of his songs while shopping on Christmas Eve, and it’s been one of the delightful musical discoveries of the season. Have a look for him.
