SALON 23: Just Sitting Between a Dalek and the Tardis, Watching Musical History

JUST SITTING BETWEEN A DALEK

AND THE TARDIS,

WATCHING MUSICAL HISTORY

From Tumbleweeds to Thistles
Maybe it’s an old military brat thing. Or an American baby boomer thing. Or just a teenage – or human – thing. But, for me, music was like a big hook that pulled me into life as an adolescent, and I have stayed hanging on that hook ever since.

Many are the childhood memories of having just moved into a new town in the summer, before school began, and not knowing anyone to play with yet. Often we moved into new suburban houses, in developments that were not finished yet, mud abounding and only saplings planted here and there. My dad often drew the straw of being assigned to places we kids thought were boring – middle-America (and, no, that’s not like Middle Earth!). So I spent a lot of time with a transistor radio during those summers. We sure could have used headsets and CD players and all the newest gizmos back then! I won’t even pretend to know the names of all those tiny gadgets my stepdaughter carries around that hold the whole universe of music on them.

Anyway, back then (early 1960s) there were many summer nights with crickets, open windows, the transistor radio clapped over my ear and the pillow over that, to muffle the sound. I would play it so very very low that the adults would not hear, but it was right in my ear. I recall, from places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, listening to Dick Biondi, “WLS Radio in Chicago”. I was too young to know anything about Chicago but I knew it was a big city and far away from me, so that made it exotic enough. Such scintillating tunes as “Drifting along with the Tumbling Tumbleweed”, “Corina Corina”, “Ring of Fire” and “Don’t Fence Me In”…well, I am giving away my milieu here.

Fast forward to me, in my late fifties, an adulthood of my own eclectic musical favorites. Relocated to Scotland. Tuned into the radio real fast, to get my bearings, find out what is here. What’s the music.

This Guy on the BBC

In truth, it was long before I actually relocated to Scotland that I began listening to Scottish radio. My fiancé, a Glasgow boy and musician himself, sent me a link by email to listen to “this guy on the BBC”. The idea of listening to music on one’s computer was a novelty to me, back in 2003. I began listening. I checked out the website. You could send this Iain Anderson an email. I did. Five minutes later he read my email out loud to the whole planet! I felt so connected, suddenly, with this tiny country 6400 miles away from where I was then (New Mexico). I began listening as often as I could (it was afternoon when I listened, late at night in Scotland when the show aired live). My fiancé and I would send emails to Iain and he’d read them and we all got some humourous interchanges going.

Anderson is a Shakespearean actor with a fantastic smoky voice. He plays American blues, soul, rock, country and UK the same genres, and some Celtic folk, lots of stuff from the 70s, 80s and contemporary. His selections are phenomenal – there is a peculiar magic about the way he groups his choices. Sometimes I think it’s almost diabolical the way he can pied-piper you down some alleyway with a sequence of selected music! On his show I also find out about a lot of old and new artists I didn't know about before, especially from my own culture!

Goin' to see Dougie

Anyway, so the Sender-of-Music-Llinks and I got married and I hauled myself and dog (who loves blues harmonica, Bob Dylan specifically, in the key of B Flat) over the pond. And have continued to listen to Iain Anderson on the BBC Radio Scotland. Iain and Stewart Cruikshank, his partner in radio crime, even came to our wedding - thus we all met face-to-face. When his show had its 5th-year anniversary this past spring, we went to the celebration party in Glasgow. Stewart proudly showed us a map on the wall with stick pins showing all the new listeners around the planet. So many countries were represented! And lots of Americans, a lot more than a couple years ago. I like to think I helped create that a bit. I sure sent the link to everyone I knew!

Bob and I attended a live broadcast of the Iain Anderson BBC Radio Scotland show in Glasgow this past September. It was part of a celebration of the new BBC Scotland’s home, Pacific Quay, a huge glass building overlooking the River Clyde. We particularly wanted to attend that night’s program so I could finally see Dougie MacLean live and another Scotland great, Michael Marra.

For me, MacLean has been an important connecting point with my new husband and even an affirmation that I should go ahead and move to Scotland in 2005. During one of those “should I or shouldn’t I?” and “who is this guy and can I trust him?” times back in circa 2004, when my Scottish fiance and I were courting long (long long long) distance, in an email one night he asked if I had ever heard of Dougie MacLean. Hmmm, I thought, that name rings a bell and I’m seeing it on a cassette, perhaps, handwritten in Rick’s script…a cassette he recorded off someone else’s cassette. I said I’d rummage around, the name did ring a bell. Bob said he was a very important Scottish musican and a particular favorite of his.

I began digging through the New Mexico music collection but found nothing. Still, that name kept bugging me. Later that evening I stumbled across some old videos and there it was, “The Land: Dougie MacLean”. And then I remembered.

In the late 1990s, a friend brought my first/late husband Rick this bootleg video of “a Scottish musician”, knowing what a Celtophile he was. I recall us gathering to watch it on a snowy day in the Jemez mountains, and being completely enthralled with the music, the man, the land. I know that video lit a wee flame in Rick to get himself to Scotland someday.

Now I was totally stunned at this connection between my two men, and took it as one of many signs to “go with it” with my strange cross-pond courtship.

So when I heard that Dougie was going to be playing live at the Pacific Quay, hosted by my favorite Scottish radio personality/music presenter (Iain is much too dignified, with his classical stage voice and presence, to be called a “DJ”), at night in a glass building overlooking the lights and water of Glasgow, it sounded a bit too perfect to me! We emailed for tickets, they arrived promptly in the mail and off we went.

Intimacy, Familiarity and Coorying Doon…
Inside the lobby of the building, BBC Radio Scotland had set up a series of broadcasts of live music. The small seating area – for about 50 people – was near the windows overlooking the River Clyde. In one corner was a Dalek from the very popular TV show, “Dr. Who”, and at the other end was the Tardis – that telephone booth that doubles as a time machine. And there we sat, with an assortment of viewer/listeners – from their twenties to their seventies – and experienced musical history. Things were happening musically here that would never be repeated. It felt very important to me.

The thing that keeps striking me about the music scene in Scotland – at least the bits of it I have so-far experienced, through Iain’s show and our local pub – is the intimacy of it. Even in the presence of a nationally important musician and personality, there is the feeling that this is just a local favorite son, accessible at any time.

It has something to do with the smallness of the country, what they call “wee” here. If there is a known entertainer here, he really is known and not just to a small sector of the population. To help Americans get a perspective on this...if you can imagine whatever small town you grew up in, or live in now – unless you live in a big metropolis of course - and think about the local bands, some of whom will stay right where they are and others of whom will move on to the big lights…but you know who they are and can nod on the street when you pass them. They are part of your landscape and you can’t really say you are in awe of them but you appreciate them and support them.

It feels that way to me here to a large degree, that Scotland is just one “big wee town” (with, of course, several parts each having their own language, food, traditions, etc.) and the musicians here – whether they are only known here or have an international presence – are familiars, comfortable, accessible. It’s a good feeling and the sensation is that you are not so removed from their work by “the industry” the way you feel removed from the big names in America. Of course you can buy a pricey ticket and go listen to these Scottish musicians in a concert hall, or buy their CDs on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk – but you can also just jump in your car at 10:00 p.m. and drive to Glasgow, park in a huge, mostly empty parking lot, and walk into a great glass building and sit down a few feet away from them and listen to Iain’s brilliant conversation with them in between songs, watch them tune their guitar. And if you smoke you can stand outside rubbing elbows with some of them on a cigarette break!

I think it also has something to do with the coorying doon quality of Scotland, something I wrote about for The Jemez Thunder a few months ago:

“Coorying doon is what my husband told me we would do here, on the winter nights. Meaning to keep close to the hearth fire, snuggle, stay warm and cozy in our wee cottage. Another form of coorying doon, of course, is to walk to the corner pub and share a pint and chat (haver) with your friends and neighbors. Coorying doon is in the language, in the faces, in the attitudes. The awareness of the bigness of the weather in contrast to the smallness of the land makes the humans scurry together for warmth and solace. And yet they love their weather, much as they complain (it is standard on a sunny day here to say 'Aye, we’ll pay for this, we will!'). They thrill to the grey fog and the harshest of weather, as much as New Mexicans thrill to the stark sunlight and amazing turquoise sky.”

Live at the Pacific Quay! (11 September 2007)
Dougie MacLean is a very coorying doon kind of singer. He’s also a songwriter, guitarist and fiddler – and an institution in Scotland. Some consider his song “Caledonia” to be an alternative anthem for Scotland. His wee concert on Iain’s show was intimate, funny, powerfully beautiful, totally satisfying. He has a voice that soothes and just about breaks your heart with an urgently gentle emotion. One song was about his father and I'm sure it reminded us all of our own fathers as we listened.

Then there was a small news break and a scurrying of stage hands. Suddenly appeared a close-shaven man, spry and craggy, at a piano down front, singing in a voice that was reminiscent of Tom Waits. There was something about the song, the man (Michael Marra) the moment that was pure magic to me. It was folk but it was rock but it was jazz and the man was audacious with a twinkle in his eye that gave himself permission to be dark and funny all at once. It was unique, it was entirely his own – not only his own voice and music and lyrics but a quirky “take” he had on reality. I was happy to let him take me on a tour of that perspective.

Also that night we heard the Endrick Brothers who are described as “a Scottish Americana/rock band originally from the Stirlingshire area” who borrow their name from a river that flows through their village and have made Glasgow their musical home. I loved the way the lead singer of the Endrick Brothers approached the microphone when he sang the song “Thorns on Every Rose”. (In fact, you can even watch this yourself! Check out the video on their Myspace.com page, from their February 2007 performance in Den Bosch, Netherlands) He had this way of gathering himself slightly off-center of the stage, then blindsiding the mike with a full assault. A lot of sexual energy and charisma from this group.

Kirsty McGee and Matt Martin…at her website she describes her music as “songs of vagrancy and restlessness played by raindrops on a tin-pot banjo”. Obviously the woman is a poet, a poet with a compellingly beautiful voice. The evening ended with her anti-war song “gonna cry like a crow in some dark corner of the road”. This was a merging of voice and lyric and anything else going on during that song was just invisible. I could hardly get up out of my chair after that one!

My Gift to Share With You
Well, now I feel pretty high from writing this and re-listening to these fantastic musicians in my headphones while I did. Because, wonder of wonders, you can hear all these folks for free right now! Below are the links to their websites. Each website has either a place to click and listen or a link to their myspace pages and you can listen there. (As Joni Mitchell's lyrics say, "...playin' real good for free!") You can consider this my gift to you all this season. I hope you really will check them out and enjoy these very soulful talented musicians.

http://www.dougiemaclean.com/
http://www.musical1.com/bands/1/photo.php
http://www.endrickbrothers.com/v2/
http://www.kirstymcgee.com/

And be sure to click on and listen to Iain Anderson’s show anytime…send him an email and he will no doubt read it on the air a few moments later.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland/programmes/iainanderson

Just a couple of clues: (a) Usually his Friday night show is pre-recorded, so you can’t get a live interaction that night; (b) You can listen to his shows for a week after they air, at the BBC Radio Scotland website, so if you miss a show it’s not too late; and (c) Please tell him Michelle2 and The Mad Scotsman sent you.

Forces of Evil, Time Machines and Spider Webs
Oh, in case you were wondering about the Tardis and the Dalek and the cobwebby image of the radio tower…there is method to my metaphoric madness. When you sit in the midst of music, when it is given as a gift…you are sitting in a space between the forces of evil and chaos and the gift of suspended time, timelessness…

As for the spiderweb - that’s what music is to me, and this particular salon. A web of sound, of sharing, of wishing-you-were-here and making it so!

IF YOU WERE THERE OR HAVE EVER HEARD THESE MUSICIANS LIVE OR WANT TO COMMENT ON THEIR MUSIC, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT! WE WOULD LOVE TO BE FURTHER EDUCATED ABOUT THEM!

Spread the threads, share the music, forward the links and…

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen (C) 2007
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com/


(Thanks to Iain Anderson and Stewart Cruikshank for letting me rave on, and welcome to any of their fans and listeners. Please take a moment to leave a comment and say where you are from, on the planet!)

PHOTOS BELOW: You can see some of these better at the relevant websites, these are just thumbnails. Some child listening...Michael Marra...Kirsty McGee & Matt Martin...Iain Anderson... Dougie MacLean with the Dalek and Tardis.