More Than Seven Wonders ….

Tags

Dundee, Dundee United, Football, History of Dundee, Jim Mclean, John Quinn, Juteopolis, Kenga Kuma, Mary Shelley, Mary Slessor, Music, Music Album, V&A Dundee, William McGonagall, Winston Churchill

John Quinn. To answer that question? In a nutshell? NO. The album came from two things. A chance meeting outside a supermarket with a very talented local musician I know, Paul Fitzpatrick, a few years back now, and the fact I am a sometimes poet.

‘I write music,’ Paul said, ‘But I can’t get past June, moon and spoon when it comes to words.’

Me now? Write music? Not for toffee. I sent him a few of my poems fully expecting him to do a runner. But instead he came back with the Ballad of Peter Black. For those who don’t know about Peter Black, he was a local lad from across the water in Newport-On-Tay…….

There’s more about him here.

https://shehannemoore.wordpress.com/2014/11/11/down-some-cold-field-in-a-world-outspoken-peter-black-and-the-newport-war-memorial/

Anyway, maybe we weren’t Rogers and Hammerstein but that was the beginning. Paul brought a load of Dundee musicians onboard, singers, guitarists, string and accordion players, you name it, all of whom gave their time for free in the hope of putting together an album about the city and its people, past and present that would be sold for charity. It took a while, given the logistics of that AND the fact that yes, we paid for some recording studio time and were helped in this by a local Dundee businessman, but the rates were reduced, so folks came together when they could and when the studio could let us in.

John Quinn That must have been an oversight….. Of course if we had known of Donovan and his great talent…….

John Quinn –-okay guys don’t fight amongst yourselves. Of course I didn’t overlook it but the fact was, there were no Dundee hamsters that..that I knew of. The songs are all about different things. And people, people who were players in the city in some way, for example Jim Maclean, a Dundee footballer and Dundee United football manager, who put Dundee on the world stage, as you can see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McLean

Mary Shelley—-who hasn’t heard of Frankenstein, right? William McGonagall the world’s best writer of bad verse. Winston Churchill? Why is he here? Because the last man to take him down before Joe Biden, was Eddie Scrymgeour the phohibionist MP elected by the ‘drunkest city in the British Empire, just to get Churchill, who they also served maggots in kippers to, out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Scrymgeour

Mary Slessor, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Slessor. Dundee mill lassie and missionary in Calabar. So far as I know no Dundee hamsters went there or of course, I’d have made the song about them.

Many of these people had been depicted in my play O Halflins an’ Hecklers an’ Weavers an’ Weemin. So much so that this album also includes two songs that Shey and myself wrote the words and music for. Mother of All the People and No Pasaran, Albert Square. But there’s also a song about Kenga Kuma, who designed the V & A Museum here, as you can see from the back cover, with your typical Dundee bairn, more interested in his mobile phone than any stunning vista!

But it’s not only people who were players that these songs are about.’ In Juteopolis’ was inspired by Annie Golden my Irish born great-grandmother. By the time she was ten she was having her boots packed with jute so she was big enough to stand at the loom in a jute mill!! No Passeran is the story of the Dundee men who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, and never returned. Peter Black I’ve mentioned already. The title and title track are a slightly surreal take on the stunning view of the city and the river from the top of Dundee Law. The Giza Pyramid may be in Egypt but here ‘Gie’za’ means Give me a, so it’s Giza Pyramid, Gie’za V&A.

John Quinn. There’s every style, rock, pop, folk, Spanish, quite a bit of metal in McGonagalls’s Ghost. Paul’s son Michael, did an acoustic version of the title track, recently at home, just to keep things ticking over, given that like everything else right now, this has been delayed by Covid, and put it on Facebook. Bear in mind it’s not the official recording.

John Quinn. Well, believe it or not, it was quite hard to get a charity onboard and we didn’t want NOT to have them named on the cover.

Yeah, but finally we did and a very good charity it is at that.

In fact the Archie Foundation is the official charity of Tayside Children’s Hospital at Ninewells, who look forward to the pressing and to selling the CDs online.

I have set up a Just Giving page to which many of you have already very kindly donated, so we can go ahead and get the pressing done. But if anyone else feels like putting in any sum at all, believe you me, it’s hugely appreciated.

https://t.co/E0PYmY78Mi?amp=1

ABOUT JOHN QUINN

John Quinn’s  Twitter profile tells him he’s a persistent Dundonian, left footer, ex-teacher, global justice worrier and “wid be scriever.” His poetry has appeared in numerous publications including Poetry Scotland, Northwords Now, Mind the Time, and Lallans. He has performed his work including slam poetry in various places ranging from public parks to coffee shops and pubs. However, unlike his Dundonian predecessor, Oor Wullie McGonagall, he has found that to date, people have only thrown words at him. He is also the author of the play ‘O Halflins an Hecklers an Weavers an Weemin’ about the history of Jute and its impact on the City of Dundee. In 2017 and 2018 the play was performed in the High Mill at Verdant Works Museum accompanied by the music of Michael Marra. And again in 2019 at the Hamish Matters Festival (The Hamish Henderson Festival) in Blairgowrie, Perthshire. His book, The Eyes of Grace O’Malley is published by Black Wolf Books.

John Quinn lives above the River Tay with his wife.

Find John Quinn here.

https://t.co/ZZ5lUTQVII?amp=1

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004436284172

Music to Write Books By

Tags

Music, Music to write to, Playlist, Playlist for the Writer and The Rake, Romance, sci-fi, Shehanne Moore, The Writer and the Rake, Time-travel

 

 

 

https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/carrotranch-writeprompt-pies/

Brittany. Oh God, not you lot again. Darlings, don’t you have a cage or something to be in? Your little balls to play with? Hmm?

Brittany. All the better to amuse yourselves with then darlings. Now  then  what is it you want to know? So long as it’s not will I ever be  a nice Georgian housewife,  how to instruct a servant, or can you have one of my fags, or any of my booze, we’re good.

Brittany . But I do, darlings. So? Playlist? Well when she was writing the Viking and the Courtesan which I understand  is about my granddaughter Malice…

Shey listened a lot to the first  piece on this list, probably because she plays and has taught it several times too.  So obviously when writing more of the series  it was her starting point, just as Mitchell and I are. I think she found  the epic scope of it inspiring, although our story was not nearly as epic as all the things Malice went through, a shipwreck, a convent raid nearly being burned to death in a Valhalla style funeral in Viking times, being kidnapped, locked up and then incarcerated in a lunatic asylum in Regency times, all the time just trying to find her way to where she wanted to be. 

The rest though? Well, these were ours, pure and simple.  As to why darlings? Well, you’ll just have to listen won’t you? Any lines about smiling like you mean it which I do all the time, sort of anyway, being far apart on this old carousel,  and people rather being lonely than being by someone’s side, are of course incidental….

 

 

 

Music That Means Something Challenge.

Tags

Dishwalla, Music, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Paul Andruss, Sally Cronin, T.Rex, The Beatles, Winnie Shaw

 

Right dudes, that’s enough. Paul Andruss, in the short time I have known him,  has proved to be a wonderful author and a very kind and supportive friend. I love his blogs. They are fun and informative and I’m enjoying his choices

http://www.paul-andruss.com/

Paul is also writer in residence over at Sally Cronin’s blog

Writer in Residence- Paul Andruss https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/writer-in-residence-writer-paul-andruss/

The posts are always a treat.

So? Without further ado, here’s my five and why out of all the music I’ve listened to and loved– and music has always been a huge thing in my life– I have chosen these pieces. The first I’ve got here twice because the first vid is only the tap dance–I can’t find the whole thing. But the tap dance? Well, let’s just say they don’t do them like this any more. AS to why I have really chosen this…read on.

Why did I choose this piece? It’s not of my era at all. Because the music I grew up with was these oldies. We lived in a tough sink scheme and we had an old gramophone

No, it wasn’t. Shut yir gub. It kinda looked like this.

And piles of old 78s, which the wee boy next door and me, used to drop paper and plastic astronaut figures from the Rice Krispies box on and watch them spin to see what would happen.  ( Usually a whack.  )  Yeah of course vinyl was invented but these oldies were the background to my life. People had very little. My dad, who was high up in bomb disposal, had come out the army.  He’d come back with my mum and sister from what was probably quite a glitzy life in Hongkong, to nothing.  No job. No house. This music reminds me of my mum and dad who originally belonged to THIS 30’s glamorous era, at least on the surface when in fact they were from far, far, worse tough and harder, than what I grew up in. It was an era where cinema was  a great escape and my hometown had a ton at that time.

Not long before my mum died, I had complimentary tickets to a special showing of Top Hat and I took her. I’m glad I did because she was enthralled. Before I get too sloppy..

‘I’m sorry I ate your fish,’ she said to him one night in the middle of a heated row after he’d weaved home from the local with a fish supper.

“So am I. I hope it chokes you,”  said he.

It’s that dynamic I try to get at in my books.

Next.

Let us NOT underestimate this NOT written by The Beatles song when it was sung by them. Forget everything they went on to do. Imagine that we have NEVER known of them and what they gave the world. Okay? On that same ‘Radiogram’ Elvis was banned. We were not allowed to listen to ‘certain’ kinds of music. The staple diet was, ‘Bali Hi’ ( WE LISTEN EVERY NIGHT, EVERY DAY) ‘Shall We Dance,’ –nothing wrong with that as I once helped demonstrate to a hall full of kids to the horror of my own when I re-enacted that scene for a giggle. AND to quote the words in that musical, our staple diet was etc etc., and crooners.

SO my big sis goes away for the summer to work and she comes back, having met her future hubby, an art student. (Get this, the now world famous photographer, then just another art student, Albert Watson,  was the best man at that wedding. ) And she whispers , ‘Come here.. .listen to this… You HAVE to listen to this. THIS is what is out there.’   And she puts on this sound that I have never heard –a very quickly snatched and scratched sound when our mum came in. I have to tell you, laugh all you like, but it was like a window on another world.

Talking windows, I include the above.  It’s music that means something after all. I preferred T. Rex in their folksie days but then you could not dance with your pals when your folks were out, the music blaring, the lights down, the neighbours complaining to the police,  to that. Hot Love and Jeepster now? A few years back at a Hogmanay Dance I bumped into a  friend I have known since I was 6, (CLEARLY FROM THAT ERA) but don’t see often and the DJ was asking for requests. So I gave him those for a laugh. And know what??? Yep. My pal rushed over and we got on the floor. I like to think folks stepped back cos we could still do all the steps to both, from those days. Hell. Once danced, never forgotten.  We did it for a challenge.

It was like how  you will always be certain things inside, no matter what. Not always easy in life but vital as breathing. Forget that and you forget everything. I still love to blare out Jeepster when I am cooking and do all the steps, with the carving knife and all……. Doot, doot, doot, chopping the veggies. ( Neighbours can complain all they like. Big mistake.)

Give this next choice a moment…

Ok. So sometimes life takes a hard twist. Hell, show me the straight path and I will laugh. That is why I won’t bore you with the details. I have two versions here because it depends if you like  noisy-ish or quiet.-Let’s just say I found something in the words and the tune.

So now we move on.  Talking dark twists, Nick Cave’s life has had a few. A few years ago my younger girl came to me one night and she said, ‘I have something to tell you and I don’t know what to do.’ And I couldn’t be happier or more blessed about what she did do, despite being in the middle of a law diploma, despite having no money, despite her partner just having set up for himself and having no work.  I have a lovely wee grandbaby who leaves me breathless every single time I see him. (And not cos he is a powerhouse.) He stills everything in me.  AND, the funniest thing? He first heard this favourite of mine on my last birthday, where he came in shouting ‘Partay!’ and jammed the Cd player up full volume (can’t think who he takes that off at age two and a half )  and he went, ‘Nina, we dance,’ and every time he hears it, he goes, ‘Nina, dance wi me,’ and he stands there and takes my hands. He has had my heart since I first saw him at half past three in the morning of the difficult night he was born. He always will.

Nominations? Please. All of you try boiling your life to five songs, cos in a way that is what you are doing, have a go  and post your choices. it is harder than you think. Even the dudes have shut it for once.

 

Dale J. Gordon…The truth is out there.

Tags

Dale J. Gordon, Digital Wiccan, Ghost Candy, John Rapp, Music, Musicians, The Chris Brake Show

Oh now, what is it?

 

 Dale’s not scary.

No, he doesn’t.

Given you’re not exactly a lady, what’s the problem?

Oh well, I will just have to interview Dale on my own. What a shame when he’s a guy and you love interviewing dudes. Flint anyone?

Well, then there’s hamstahs week….

But there. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.  

And what this girl is doing today is welcoming to The Spooktacular the very special, the wonderfully talented, the ONE and ONLY……

But you don’t want to do them, or mention our other Spooktacular guests. So.

Dale–music man extraordinary, you’re originally from West Virginia, have been homeless in Nashville, oh and there’s Trenton.

Any truth in the rumour you faked your own death?

DALE. I was born and raised in “extra-rural” West Virginia yes, I did ten years in New Jersey’s state capital. A month before a well planned move to Nashville TN, I had a house fire that complicated the move and therefore left me without housing before my departure and well into my arrival, that’s the long and short of that, stay tuned for a book on that whole “chapter”…whooo.

 I’ve never had enough spare time to fake my own death. No.

Shey.  Seriously Dale–as we get here anyway–how long have you been involved in the music biz?

Dale.  I first started recording when I was nine years old,

got an actual musical instrument around fifteen, wrote, recorded on various tape machines,  did several albums in high school. I played guitar in a bar band when I was sixteen up until graduation. I first recorded an album in a studio when I was eighteen, did all the art work, pressed it, sold it. DIY ever since.

Shey.  Oh and then, the next year …obviously…..you got in tow with John Rapp from The Chris Brake Show.

No. He’s not.   How did that happen  and what’s with this biz of you being the ‘dreaded frontman of the grunge band, Pats!e.’ You’re not dreaded are you?

Dale.  I met Chris and John while they were touring through the Northeast, been friends ever since, that was 2008 I believe. PATS!E was a band that I started in high school, it ate and spit out many members over many years since 1999, lots of recordings and shows and stories and gray hairs, stay tuned for a bio pic. Dreads?…..Ah, those were like the bell bottoms of my generation a few years back, I still pull em’ out of the closet to show to company sometimes, “If those dreads could only talk….”

Shey. Seriously…I do like to be serious..not….how many albums have you recorded since starting out?

Dale .I really cant give you a straight answer or number, Yes, there are many albums and recordings, bands and short lived collaborations over the years. Its best to leave this in the air for now.

Shey. Can it. Not you Dale…Sylv. The man don’t want to talk, the man don’t

want to talk. What’s  been your main musical influences?

Dale. A. W.H. Auden, Miles Davis, Mark Twain, Robert Johnson,The Dead Boys, Captain Beefheart, The Butthole Surfers, Franz Lizst, Tom Waits, Billie Holiday, Black Sabbath, John Prine, Jim Carrol, Nirvana, Suran Song in Stag, Bill Hicks, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Murphy, Malcolm X, Frank Zappa, Howlin’ Wolf, Blood Cow, The Melvins, Neil Young, Mack Lindsay, J.T. Habersaat, Doug Stanhope and (early) Alice Cooper (the band)……I’ll stop there for now.

Shey.  Wow-how-how.

 

I’ve been listening to  a few of your tracks–courtesy of the fab John Rapp and your equally fab self and I have to say in addition to totally agreeing about your ‘soaked in booze and cigarettes’ amazing voice, it’s hard to pin down your style, which is brilliant. You say Americana but it’s far more than that. It’s a touch of just about everything. 

For someone who has never heard your work, but say may like a certain type of music—they like Zappa, for example, or maybe they like Tom Waits, which album would you suggest they listen to? I ask cos I urge you folks reading this blog, to give Dale a try. His voice, words and music are something else. And there really is something for everybody in his work.

Dale.  Oh, For a Tom Waits fan I guess “Ghost Candy”-2008 would be a good start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi0USiP2bCA

Shey. Suitably spooky.

Dale. For a Frank Zappa fan “White Trash Jazz”-2011 or “Digital Wiccan”-2010 may suffice.

Shey. Honestly though I haven’t heard two tracks the same in your work. Is it a love of various music genres that means you like to write in different ones, or do you do it cos you like a change, or being hard to define?

Dale.  I have a very varied musical “diet” so I suppose that it shows up in my work. Sometimes I may run with a certain style for a while, perhaps for the duration of an album, other times it seems that every other song could be considered a different genre, I also have always enjoyed doing instrumentals and “sound collages” and skits. I’m sure there is a doctor out there who would say “Now, thats ADD if I’ve ever seen it” But it really is second nature to me now, to change and adapt when and where I see fit.

Shey. Oh don’t come crawling out the pumpkin now dudes cos you’re worried about Hamstah week. Dale, tell us about your new album?

Dale.  This album will be mainly acoustic guitar and vocals, A very stripped down, straight to the point type sound to properly represent the live show ; I’m sure I’ll manage to make it “strange” somehow. Hope to have it out and about by early 2015.

Shey.  Dudes……what did we just say? Where does your inspiration come from?

Dale. Ah, Thats more of a “the question” than “Will you marry me?”

Reptiles, bugs, mammals, family, friends, contemporary artists, performers and bands. Bookers,

history (in general), de-construction, disection, photography, film, sanity/insanity, the wee hours of the mornin’, and coffee of course.

Shey. Are you still between jobs, girlfriends, haircuts and houses?

Dale.  No,No, I have ONE good job after having worked two jobs for nine months, FINALLY found a flat here in Nashville after quite an exhausting hunt, Not sure that what is on top of my head constitutes as a hair cut but it seems to be getting the job done just fine thus far. That between jobs bit was the opening line for my stand up act just so ya know, not entirely rooted in truth.

Shey. What’s next for Dale J Gordon?

Dale. Explore Nashville, Press this album, Play lots of shows, hit the road, keep writing, and try to learn how to “take it easy” every once in a while.

Shey. Sounds good to me.

http://reverbnation.com/dalejgordon