Hi Folks

So glad to have some blog response. To George (we’ve met so many times, George and it’s nice to talk again) I fully take on board your request…send it in to the prog too so my producer sees it too!

I hadn’t realised I was going head to head with Gorgeous George Galloway on a Friday night. What a prospect! So glad George remembers me as fondly as I recall times with him. George and I once travelled to Edinburgh to join in a rally to support the call for a Scottish Parliament. The rally was organised by a very disparate group of people who, if not fully paid up members of the club called “Hippy”, had certainly considered membership. By the time Lorraine and I arrived on Calton Hill Gorgeous had sussed out that the occasion wasn’t going to threaten anyone’s memory of Martin Luther King’s march on Washington. There were around twenty people there and a couple of dogs. The “organiser” had informed George G that there was no formal plan and that speakers should make use of the “open mike situation.” As George informed us of this conversation he shook his mane sadly,”I told him,” he said “that this, in my experience leads to an open space situation.” He wasn’t wrong.

The thing I like best about all this radio malarkey is the chance to play some things on air that I never hear otherwise. Needless to say this has involved getting in about the CD cupboard in a major way. When I’m there I start to find the most amazing things that I’ve not played myself for years, never mind heard on the radio.

Last night we played Rachel Yamagata’s Jesus was a Crossmaker (written by the late Judee Sill), Freda Payne’s Band of Gold and Oh Patti by Scritti Politti.

The good news is if you like any of these songs you can, almost certainly, find them legally and download them for a very small price. In the old days I used to hear a song on the radio and know that the only certain way to hear it again was to go to Bruce’s record shop in Reform St (Dundee) and ask the boy behind the counter to put it on. Most of you know that this task is beyond the emotional development of a teenager so the track would not be heard until a few months later when I’d saved up enough money to buy the album. Going to the boy behind the counter and asking him to put on the record led to the “minter” – a full blown red-face full of embarrassment.

There was one other option to this: you just hung around the record shop in the hope that it might come on. We spent days in record shops – not that there were many. In Dundee, until Bruce’s arrived we used to to go to Boots! (I ask you!) In Bruce’s one day in November 1975 I heard an entire album from beginning to end. It was Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. I have owned that album on vinyl, CD and now the remastered version sits pride of place on my shelf. That afternoon probably changed my musical life for good. Sometimes it’s worth just hanging around.

Good Morning,

It’s the morning (Tuesday) of the night before. The Late Lounge opened last night. I wasn’t over nervous when I went in, but by the time the show had finished I was a poor, trembling wreck.
It’s my professional opinion that any time you trust your livelihood to technology it will repay you by jumping up and biting you hard in the bum. Once when I was a student teacher I decided to opt for taking the, decidedly non-academic 5th year Christmas leavers, class. This, to my mind gave me two huge advantages 1) Only half of them turned up 2) I wasn’t going to have to test my limited knowledge of English literature. On the day of my crit lesson the technology I’d decided to impress them with failed spectacularly. All my lesson plan evaporated and a great formless void of 40 minutes had to be filled with me yakking on about nothing in particular – cue my entry in to the business we call show!

How, I hear you say,does this relate to The Late Lounge, Rick? Computers. The BBC have now decided they want computers controlling everything. Anyone who’s ever had to use these dam things know that they always fail. To help the situation I had three nervous looking people in the studio with me. For most of the night it was like any scene you can remember from Apollo 13. – “OK we can’t play Jimmy Cliff but we’ve got a ball point pen, a paper cup and two old scripts, let’s see what we can build.”

Anyway, it all passed with only the two moments of technological disaster. Which isn’t bad, but about the correct ratio for the amount of gigabytes being used. I once looked on in horror at a song writing workshop/performance as Pete from Duke Special entrusted his piano sound to a fragile looking laptop which he was assuming would understand that the next 15 minutes of his life were important to him. His trust was entirely misplaced.

Tonight I’m prepared. I’ve got some CDs in my back pocket and I’m going into town to buy a hard hat. When they tell you the computer does it all for you they are always right, unfortunately the computer doesn’t have to explain itself to the audience. Speak to you tomorrow if I’m still alive.

This is my brand new blog to accompany my late lounge show on Radio Scotland.