Ricky's Radio Blog

general musings

Thanks For Listening

December 17, 2019 by ricky No Comments

It’s been quite a year. We completed the last interview and session last week with Hiss Golden Messenger before signing off for Christmas. I keep notes for all the interviews…(I’m hopeless without them) and our guests make up a veritable who’s who. Ashley Monroe, The Delines, Devin Dawson, Israel Nash, Kathy Mattea, Yola, Brett Eldredge, Lylle Lovett, Ashley McBryde, Nick Lowe, Jaime Wyatt, Michael Ray, The Orphan Brigade, Hayes Carl and oh….Dolly Parton.

I hope I haven’t forgotten too many. We’ve also had our monthly Twang Town check ins from Bill DeMain and met an interesting new voice from Mu

It’s been quite a year. We completed the last interview and session last week with Hiss Golden Messenger before signing off for Christmas. I keep notes for all the interviews…(I’m hopeless without them) and our guests make up a veritable who’s who. Ashley Monroe, The Delines, Devin Dawson, Israel Nash, Kathy Mattea, Yola, Brett Eldredge, Lylle Lovett, Ashley McBryde, Nick Lowe, Jaime Wyatt, Michael Ray, The Orphan Brigade, Hayes Carl and oh….Dolly Parton.

I hope I haven’t forgotten too many. We’ve also had our monthly Twang Town check ins from Bill DeMain and met an interesting new voice from Music City,Marissa Moss. There have been gatherings down in Studio One with King of Birds and William The Conqueror and guest spots from our good friend Tia Sillers. Along the way we’ve heard some brilliant records from returning artists, take a bow Patty Griffin, Jenny Lewis and Son Volt and discovered new ones: Lauren Jenkins, Olivia Lane and Lula Wiles. For all those who have sent in records we haven’t managed to play can I say a huge thank you. Sometimes we just haven’t found time and space, sometimes it feels like the record is better suited to a different show and sometimes it just doesn’t connect with us. That’s not to say we are right about making any of these choices but we think it’s important to curate programmes which reflects the best of what’s around. As an artist who gets played/often-doesn’t-get-played-on-radio I understand this can be frustrating but there is one thing which, after eleven years of Another Country we haven’t changed: we like to think that we listen to everything. So thanks if you’ve sent some music in and sorry if it hasn’t been aired yet.

What’s also evident is there’s a lot of music around. Country (in the widest sense) in the UK is certainly going through a purple patch. American acts are coming over with increasing regularity and many new Country and Americana artists are keen to establish some UK cred before they launch properly back home. There is a host of new soft country UK acts…mainly duos it seems….and within that there is wide range of talent. It’s been exciting to see the career of Ferris and Sylvester moving in all the right directions and we are excited to hear what 2020 brings for them.

That’s enough about the artists. It is you, the listener, who really makes the difference to what we do. We are grateful for your posts on Facebook, tweets and emails. We love your suggestions and requests and we love the feedback we get from you. It’s been great to meet some of you out at gigs although my own business as an artist this year has meant I’ve made far fewer gigs in 2019..so sorry for the ones I missed. There have been some great nights though. The Delines earlier in the year and a wonderful evening with Sam Outlaw are two highlights for me.

There is a lot to be excited about in the new year. Country to Country will be upon us in a few months and we have some great plans to bring you close to the top acts of the weekend. So, as ever, we ask you to keep listening and on behalf of Richard Murdoch, Roslyn McCuish, Laura Seawright and myself a huge thank you for listening. We wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year when it comes.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

You Never Stop Learning

December 10, 2019 by ricky No Comments

You never stop learning; or at least you shouldn’t. I’ve been away for a month or so and on my rather long flight home I grew tired of the idea of watching the films on offer. Flicking through the other options I found, to my delight, I could access the much coveted ‘Country Music’ documentary series by Ken Burns. Over the course of two legs of the journey I got to episode six where it brilliantly closes with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s album, ‘Will The Circle be Unbroken.‘ Highlighting the tensions of racial hate, Nixon and Vietnam it shows how the younger generation paying respect to their elders helped ease some of the division happening in America at that time. Clearly this is a simplistic take on time where strife was never going to be resolved over an extended blue-grass jam, but nevertheless the idea of music being the balm we all need is a point worthy of some reflection.

It was good to be away from the UK when the General Election was taking place I have to admit. After five years of people falling out about almost everything it seemed to me another election was the last thing I could endure. I did tune in a bit from afar but being home for 48 hours I realise that, even as a casual bystander, it’s an emotionally exhausting process. My own therapy has always been music. It helps you celebrate and it allows you to grieve more deeply. It’s the soundtrack to falling in and falling out of love and when it’s great it can make you stop and change direction. Often it’s communal. I realised when we were out playing gigs that there must be a thousand different opinions under the roof of a venue on any given night..and yet…people find a common hope, comfort and sometimes an ecstasy in the songs we hold in common. In that sense music is a great leveller.

It’s often quite a shock to the system looking round an audience of an act you’ve chosen to watch at a bigger venue. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been surprised to find strange bedfellows paying homage to a favourite artist. Any musical combo of merit will have a cross section of the population in the audience. It’s good for us singers too as it stops us assuming everyone agrees with our opinions just because they dig the music…an easy mistake to make.

It’s taken me years and a few bad decisions to learn this, and to take me back to the start of this particular ramble, I have tried not to stop learning. I remember an excitable moment in 1991 when we played in Manchester and United had just won a trophy. My wife and a friend found a cheap replica shirt and encouraged me to don it for the encore. No injuries were sustained but should you ever try to do this make sure they buy a tin hat along with the shirt.

This week on Another Country we can allow our minds to drift away from the political expediencies for a couple of hours and reflect on what we have loved in 2019. There has been so much to celebrate in country music. We’ll bring you recordings from favourite artists like Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris and The Delines as well as our new discoveries, Ferris and Sylvester, Tenile Townes and Logan Ledger. We’ll sprinkle in some Christmas offerings from Kacey Musgraves, The Stanley Brothers and JD McPherson. We’ll do all of this in two hours of radio on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

Tales From Music City

November 11, 2019 by ricky No Comments

Over the next few weeks we are going to bring you some great country stories from the beating heart of America’s Music City: Nashville Tennessee. This week’s blog is an introduction to the forthcoming delights.
On this week’s show we have lots of great new artists and releases plus one of Country Music’s great stories told through the lens of Canadian songwriter, Matt Patershuk. If the title of his song, ‘Ernest Tubb Had Fuzzy Slippers’ doesn’t intrigue you then it’s quite possible that country music may not be your thing. Needless to say, we were fascinated, and we have a little accompanying passage of songs we trust you will enjoy.
We also welcome Michael Ray who stopped in to say hello on the morning after his successful solo show in Glasgow. Since his first visit to Scotland at C2C Michael’s fast building a new audience here. You can listen to Michael’s own story of how he made the journey to Nashville from his native Florida in the second hour of this week’s programme. His current album, ‘Amos’ is named after his biggest musical influence: his late Grandfather, who taught him to play guitar and gave him his first live opportunities.
On next week’s show we’ll repeat the wonderful afternoon we recorded with three great songwriters performing in the round in Music Row’s Spotland Studios. Bob DiPiero, Heather Morgan and Allen Shamblin tell stories and perform the songs they wrote for artists including Tim McGraw, George Strait, Bonnie Raitt, Maren Morris and many more.
In two weeks time you can imagine yourself walking through The Country Music Hall of Fame to see and hear their current exhibition, Outlaws and Armadillos. Peter Cooper, archivist, country historian and as always, songwriter, will take me through the stories of the seventies outlaws as we hear the music of Waylon, Willie, Tompall Glaser, Jessie Coulter and so many more. We’ll compare these outlaws to today’s outlaws and we’ll cross the plaza to spend a little time in The Johnny Cash Museum too. As ever this will inspire some choice cuts from classic country albums.
If that’s not enough our Nashville season concludes with a very special programme with Jerry and Gordon Kennedy. Jerry was one of the guitar playing producers of the sixties who worked with a host of legendary names including Tom T Hall, Roger Miller, Jeanie C Riley, Roy Orbison and….. Elvis Presley. Gordon (his son) has carried on the tradition as a guitarist for (among others) Peter Frampton and Grammy winning songwriter for Garth Brooks and Eric Clapton. It’s a wonderful family conversation which came out of a couple of days I enjoyed in Gordon’s company writing for a forthcoming project. The shared love of music he and his father enjoy as well as their hilarious stories make this show on December 3rd a very special night in the AC calendar.
The nights have drawn in….the leaves are being gathered and we invite you to spend a couple of hours each week with some brilliant people who have created some amazing music. We’ll be on BBC Radio Scotland every Tuesday from five past nine.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Stories From The Edge of The World

November 5, 2019 by ricky No Comments

One of the interesting ways each week unfolds for me is how we end up with our running order for any given Tuesday night. As I drive home from the studio late on an AC night I often wonder what we might play next week. Sometimes there are piles of new things to listen to and on other weeks it seems nothing is really jumping out and demanding to be included. We always say (as it’s true) that there are so many things we don’t get round to spinning and we really could stay on air for a couple of hours longer. This week is no exception.

However there is a session and conversation we’ve been dying to share with you and we’re delighted that The Orphan Brigade‘s visit will be at the heart of this week’s Another Country. As I’ve played significant tracks from their current album for a few weeks I’ve probably bored myself by telling anyone who has cared to listen that ‘To The Edge of The World’ is one of these album where you just don’t want to skip any tracks. It’s full of beautiful surprises and it feels like a very natural successor to their two other albums.

In case you haven’t caught this story yet Ben Glover, Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard are three friends and musicians who like to find inspiration in very particular locations. Their first record took them to a haunted civil war era house in Franklin, Kentucky. So spooky were the surroundings that two of the band found themselves unable to spend the night in the house and took refuge in their car! Next up it was Italy and the caves under the streets of Osimo. This spring the trio headed over the ocean to Ben’s home county of Antrim and the spectacular north coast of Ireland. They wrote in diverse locations including boats, forests and mountainsides and recorded all their songs in a local church. You can hear more of these remarkable stories and some live versions of the songs this Tuesday night and honestly…it’s a great listen.

Elsewhere we’ll bring you new things from The Milk Carton Kids, Clint Black, Dori Freeman and Frazey Ford. We’ll introduce some new names like Kevin Daniels and from Scotland, Keri Watt.

We also reach the end of our year long walk through the Country A to Z. We have tried to avoid all the obvious choices and land on some names you may not have always picked first time round. We hope it gives you a sense of the great dynamic and sheer weight of great singing, songwriting and playing that’s out there in the country catalogue. What I love most of all however is it opens up one of the great stands of this genre – the stories. Country is nothing without a story. So we’ll close the book tonight, as we near the end of the year, with one of the great story tellers and country troubadours whose name is synonymous with the catch-all phrase of Americana. Sometimes that means blues, folk or soul and it’s easy to make the case that Townes Van Zandt had all three. There will be Townes and it will be on vinyl.

As ever we’re on BBC Radio Scotland from five past nine. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Nashville Halloween

October 29, 2019 by ricky No Comments

On a morning like this, crisp, bright and bathed in autumn colour my mind goes back ten years or so to an early visit to Music City. It was mid October in Nashville and on every stoop and porch they were preparing the ground for Halloween. Pumpkins and fall fruit would be scattered over the entrances to the houses of the songwriter as I found my way to suburban writing sanctuaries. The sun was out but there was a little chill in the air compared to my earlier visit in the heat of late spring. In my midtown hotel no-one was seriously thinking of dipping into the swimming pool apart from the odd visitor from Scotland and fires were lit in the grates where dried flowers had been laid months before.

On these early visits to Nashville I stumbled from one writing session to the next. Sometimes the thrill of the experience could be as quickly extinguished by the trauma of the writing session. I’ll never forget my excitement at realising I was to be writing in the Orbison building only to find the session itself made me question everything I’d ever known about the craft. I came back to my hotel room and started to look for the quickest flight home. I was still searching for an exit the next day when I met the great Bob DePiero and he made me feel like I could hold on until the end of my visit. In miniature my experience of these writing days made me understand what many of the artists we play on Another Country experience. Stars in Hicksville Alabama, Georgia or Mississippi; they step off the bus in Twang Town believing it’s where they belong only to find they have to start climbing up the ladder of a lifetime. You may never be convinced about the worth of some of Music Row’s brightest stars but it is only fair to say they have worked a gruelling apprenticeship. All year round they assemble in writing rooms, publishing houses and back bedrooms as they clamber, one song at a time, to the top of the tree.

On this Tuesday’s Another Country we’ll walk some of these streets and cross the thresholds with our very own correspondent who has been in the rooms and knows the city as well as anyone…Mr Bill DeMain. Bill will be telling us a little about that Dolly Parton celebration at the Opry a few weeks back. Dolly, if it needs pointed out, followed the same songwriting career path outlined above and is still the inspiration for so many young hopefuls who come to the city. Bill will give us his own tales from the city live from The Row as well as bringing his tips for future listening.

Listen out too for some spooky things to set you up for Halloween. Also some new songs from Lost Brothers, Ags Connelly, Worry Dolls and The Highwomen. As ever it starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

From The Country ….To Country

October 22, 2019 by ricky No Comments

I’m just back from a week up in The Highlands. It was one of these beautiful times when the weather indulged to give us sharp, frosty mornings and turned mild enough to allow us to be atop Cairngorm in shirt sleeves later the same day. One morning when the frost was even colder I walked through the woods in Abernethy and stood under a fall of leaves that was more akin to a gentle snow fall. It really was a glorious week and (if I’m honest) I really didn’t want to come back to the city.
It’s the space that’s the wonderful part of being in Speyside. Empty roads, wild paths with no travellers and views without crowds stretching every way you look. Getting back to Edinburgh and Glasgow on Friday was quite the culture shock. I remember a family trip to New York five years ago when we decided it would be the place to spend the mid term in October. I have a distinct memory of tramping down 5th Avenue dreaming of Rothiemurchus.
Sometimes music coincides with places perfectly. I remember listening to Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ one cloudless morning driving down to Loch Garten – it seemed we were the first vehicle to break into the bed of fallen birch leaves. Seeing them slowly scatter as Neil’s drummer swept along to the track with floor brush was almost too perfect. This week we drove along to The Orphan Brigade’s ‘To The Edge of The World’ in its entirety and it sounded heavenly.
So it seems ironic that on this week’s Another Country we’ll look forward to one of the busiest gatherings of the year, Country to Country. It is however also one of our favourite weekends too and C2C 2020 is shaping up to be very special indeed. We’re already making plans for our coverage (bigger and better!) and if rumours are true we should be expecting some very special artist on the stage at The Hydro. I don’t want to tempt fate here but I couldn’t help but notice that all those voices complaining about the festival shifting to the big arena have gone rather quiet. Correctly, the Scottish audience have realised that a full Hydro is an exciting space for C2C and the allowance for a bigger audience is only making the likelihood of more acts coming here more probable. More news on who’s coming this Tuesday.
I will also be playing you lots of new discoveries. I’m particularly excited to share new albums by Walker Hayes, Eleni Mandell, Jack Klatt and something new by The Delines. It’s going to be records all the way and expect to be buying some new ones by the end of the week.
As I look out from my Glasgow window I can see all the colours of autumn. It’s a glorious sight. It only needs some music to make it perfect. I’ll try to sort that out for you on Tuesday evening. It all starts at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Deep Cuts

October 8, 2019 by ricky 1 Comment

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was around this time of year and I was a callow 17 year old visiting Glasgow to stay with my big sister. We were round at her friend’s house and we were doing what people did in those days…playing records. ‘Have you heard of Jackson Browne?’ I was asked. Before I could bluff my way round the answer (I’d not) he was pulling the vinyl out of the inner sleeve of ‘For Everyman’ and telling me the story of how Jackson had written this one about his girlfriend getting pregnant. By the time he’d ‘hit an unemployed actor’ I was hooked.

There were so many moments like this: lurking in record shops to find out what the hell was playing because…well you’d just fallen in love, gazing at the turntable and getting dizzy as the record rotated and you tried to decipher the label copy and the obscure gems played on the intro tape before a gig. Oh that we could have Shazzamed.

This coming Saturday is National Album Day and right here we are standing up already. We are saluting the beautiful intervals of twenty odd minutes in which we can experience joy, tears, hope and exhilaration all from the correct sequencing of some (already) great songs. But we also recognise that even the mediocre can be lifted by the right placing on an elpee. We’ll recognise the gems to be found which no one, who didn’t own the album, could ever know about by only listening to the radio. An album was like getting to wander backstage during the interval. It told you, not just what you were expected to know but let you see what they’d been thinking about in the first place. Anyone who loved the long-player at that time held up The Beatles White album as a genre defining piece of work. One thing people probably don’t understand today is that the classic singles people associate with The Beatles weren’t even on their albums, they were recorded to be singles and remained ‘off the record,’ as it were.

The album is alive and may have moved from its status from ‘life support’ but the direction of travel still leaves its status as ‘critical.’ I console myself in a memory of driving round my home town in the seventies when my father used to point to the Bingo halls which populated the city. ‘All these were cinemas’ he would tell me. Interestingly the Bingo halls have almost disappeared and the cinemas have, against considerable odds, risen Lazarus-like to become even more sophisticated palaces of pleasure.

It strikes me that no one wanted to lose the magical experience of watching films together in the dark. So I take heart that the joy so many of us received can’t simply be a thing of the past. Why would we collectively let such a rich tradition disappear into the noise of the static?

On this Tuesday’s Another Country we are going to celebrate the album by playing some Deep Cuts. The surprising track ten, the classic that never was the lead single and the gem from an album of supposed left-overs. Listen out for The Byrds, The McGarrigle Sisters, Willie Nelson, Gillian Welch, Richmond Fontaine and American Music Club. It’s two hours of Country, Americana album-only songs celebrating music that plays at thirty three and one third revolutions per minute. We start at five past nine this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland. Join me if you can.

Reading time: 2 min

general musings

Putting It All Together

October 1, 2019 by ricky 2 Comments

A good friend was telling me how much he was enjoying the newly remastered Abbey Road. It seems even some of the best things can get even better. One of the deep joys of that record is it’s running order. On two very distinct sides it makes perfect sense and even has the obligatory ‘lost throwaway’ track at the conclusion just to prick the pomposity of the grand finale. (I always liked Paul’s ability to deliver the throwaway in style).

I love Abbey Road and I love the stories of how and why it got made. In Mark Lewisohn’s book, ‘The Beatles Recording Sessions,’ there’s a day by day account of each session, and how and when it got recorded and put together. I love the fact that in those days albums were started and finished in a set time. Even with The Beatles there was no open ended recording budget…although they were granted much more leeway than many contemporaries….and they themselves had an idea of how a project might start and finish. But with Sgt Peppers and Abbey Road there was a strong sense that in a matter of weeks the recordings were mixed, mastered with and test copies pressed to play back…and there was no time or inclination to meddle with the work they had made. Oh that it were always that simple.

I thought of this as I listened to the new offering by Sturgill Simpson. It is a classic example of a man who might have taken three albums to get to the Sound and Fury but has decided to get there in one giant leap. One of the most interesting aspects of the album is the sense in which it has been made as a complete concept. Individual tracks can and will be played but part of the thrill of the ride is to hear it as a piece….and it will exhaust you even if it comes in at a good length of 41 mins. The songs don’t so much segue as crash into each other and one can only assume Sturgill wants you to hear this in its entirety. I say all this in the context of someone who is trying to get an album down to a reasonable length with some difficulty.

The sequencing of any record is always a chore that takes up much conversation and endless drafts. I usually start thinking of it even as the songs are being written and old diaries of mine are full of alternative running orders for albums past. Bob Clearmountain once told me he’d been told by David Bowie to ‘put the album together.’ I was young and enthusiastic when I heard this and could find no reason why compiling his own album could not be the most important thing David had to do that or any other day…but hey, shopping calls.

I feel the same way about radio though I leave all manner of running order priorities to my radio other-half, Richard Murdoch. He has a masters in openers and closers and a PhD in how to come out of the news….so I wouldn’t even venture to suggest how to assemble a show…but I know it matters. On this week’s Another Country you will enjoy where we start and also where we finish. There are many delights from the recent Americana Awards and to guide us through them we will have our very own Nashville correspondent directly from Music Row to reveal the gossip from the celebration. Listen out for Bonnie Raitt singing John Prine, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi as well as something gorgeous and previously lost by Lee Hazelwood.

As ever we do all this in two hours and we kick off at five past nine on BBC Radio Scotland this coming Tuesday evening. This coming Sunday Soundtrack features Emma Pollock (former Delgado and now solo singer, label boss and all round good egg), Bob Servant creator and author of new TV Drama Guilt, Neil Forsyth as well as a session and long conversation with singer songwriter Martyn Joseph. All of that starts just after the ten o’clock news next Sunday morning.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

In The Wilderness of Words…We Need Music.

September 24, 2019 by ricky No Comments

One of the problems of playing records on the radio now is the realisation that we are no longer in the business of offering exclusives. There is now, almost, no such thing. I find a notification of a record coming through and I check the usual places…and yep..it’s out there. There is nothing we have access to that the listener can’t hear independently. TV too has gone in the same direction, as you are, no doubt, well aware. A show no longer drip feeds the series on a Sunday at 9…it’s all there from day one. We don’t ask each other, ‘Did you see it last night?’ so much as we enquire, ‘Which episode are you on?’

A good family friend caught the spirit of this on holiday when borrowing the Obama autobiography from my wife. Shouting after her she declared, ‘Now remember…please don’t tell me how it ends….’

So I realise that making radio programmes (with music) is less about what you play than how you play it. Putting one song in the place it works best is probably as good a job as we can do. We, like my father before me, are at best wholesalers….we don’t make the stuff but we help you find where to look for it. So why is it we still love …and reader, I do…. the radio? I think it’s because at its best it shines a warm light onto a piece of music that may have lingered long on the shelf or been crowded out by less worthy album selections. There on the wireless in a wilderness of words, weather and the woe of public voices…a song can stand alone and just be everything that you might well be needing at that point in your day.

I can remember radio moments even now…when Tony Blackburn first played Ain’t No Mountain High Enough on the breakfast show, when Johnnie Walker (second mention in as many weeks JW) came out of NewsBeat with Stevie Wonder’s ‘Misstra No It All,’ the DJ who played The Temptations ‘I Wish It Would Rain” as I drove a car into Sunset Sound studios in Hollywood in 1988 and the time Mr Murdoch and I were driving to Dale Bryant’s house in the sticks in Tennessee one Friday night and hearing Mark Chestnutt on WSM on the Eddie Stubbs show. I guess we could have discovered some of these things ourselves, but would they ever have seemed so good? Somehow the song, the radio moment and the place all combine in memory…and I never want to or can forget it.

And so we hope that each Tuesday night we surprise you with a little of what you know in interesting places and occasionally something you feel you really need to know better. This Tuesday night we’ll bring you plenty of that in the context of one of our very special gatherings live from Studio One at BBC Scotland where we’ll welcome King Of Birds in session. We’ve been playing KOB, featuring the voices and songwriting of Charlie and Stirling Gorman, for a good while and we’re excited to see their debut album ‘Eve of Destruction’ finally coming out. Catch them live in session this Tuesday evening.

On Sunday I’ll have more music on the Sunday Soundtrack as well as Jamie Lawson in session and conversation, poets Hannah Lavery and Lemm Sissay and the man who has brought a poem a day to Twitter, Kevin Williamson all on the programme. Sunday morning from 10 am. Both shows can be found on BBC Radio Scotland.

Reading time: 3 min

general musings

I Remember Hearing Bruce For The First Time

September 17, 2019 by ricky 6 Comments

It was in 1975 and I was sitting in my dad’s car returning to my summer job working in his warehouse. Born To Run came on the Johnnie Walker’s lunch time Radio One show. I was a little deflated to hear him describe it sounding as if ‘his mouth had been stuffed full of old socks’ at the time. I’ve had this out with Johnnie since then and he has no memory of it but as a 17 year old it left a mark. So too did the song. It was the first time I’d actually heard the music having read so much about this mythical New Jersey, new Dylan.

Within a few weeks I found myself lingering in Bruce’s Records in Reform Street in Dundee as they played the whole Born to Run album back to back. I was transfixed. As soon as I had the money together I asked a friend who was going into town to bring a copy back to me. I still remember the smell of the original gatefold sleeve…and what a sleeve. One Saturday I invited a pal over to listen and we got to the climax of Jungleland as the sax solo hit peak volume when my dad stormed in and told me to turn it down. It was peak humiliation, but nothing distracted from the album. A friend played football and was thrilled to discover that one of the lines from Meeting Across The River had appeared in the team sheet of their visitors; Eddie Mann played at left back.

By the Christmas of 75 I’d caught up on the back catalogue and convinced myself The Wild, The Innocent was the apogee of recorded and lyric history so the Springsteen albums were now good friends. However it would be three more years until the next album and at that age six months is an eternity. Punk, post punk and new wave all happened and it was hard to see how Bruce fitted into that world as Darkness on the Edge of Town arrived. It took my pal Doug’s party over the summer and Racing in The Streets when Gary W Tallent hits the first bass note to realise I need to own that album. In the couple of years that followed I started to hear the bootlegs of those endless tours between 75 and 78 which cemented all the myths. I heard the ‘Brooooces’ and thought it was booing, I heard the cover versions and I heard what Bruce did with ‘Because The Night’ even though…I know…he couldn’t find room for that song on an album.

By the time The River arrived Bruce Springsteen was on British radio and he had a hit record and as the eighties passed the same pattern would continue. I’d tell myself I was over Bruce Springsteen then something wonderful would happen and I’d fall back in love as surely as a smitten school boy. I’d hear Hungry Heart and life would be possible again then I’d meet my future wife who’d sing Used Cars and I’d realise that Nebraska was really all that could ever be important in music. Where I came a little unstuck was Born In The USA…hey, but I got over it and rejoiced into the live 75 – 85 album even though my true believer pals hated it for being so edited…they had all the bootlegs.

The arrival of Tunnel of Love however was love at first sight and our wedding band played ‘All That Heaven Will Allow’ as our first dance and I gleefully shuffled around the floor.

In the nineties I’d been a bit disappointed by the twin releases of the 92 albums but found so much to enjoy in ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad’ and the subsequent release of the revitalised East Street Band’s Live album from NYC in ’99. Bruce was on fire.

I’d seen Springsteen a good few times by then, but one beautiful summer night at Old Trafford Cricket Ground in the early 2000s was perhaps the best show I’d seen up to that point. Springsteen – with a new producer in tow – was on a creative roll. Following on from The Rising he made album after album and even went touring and recording with his folk/big band too.

I’ve rejoiced as he finally came to Glasgow and the last time he visited was the perfect evening. Like any artist there are moments I’ve loved more than others and there’s albums I’ve never quite bonded with…but I’ve loved his music for nearly 45 years (a good rock n roll number) and I’m not going to stop now.

On this week’s Another Country we’re going to celebrate Bruce’s 70th birthday by having ‘a rock ‘n’ roll baptism, a rock ‘n’ roll exorcism and a rock ‘n’ roll Barmitzvah. We’re going to do it all.’

Join this Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland.

Reading time: 4 min

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Thanks For Listening

You Never Stop Learning

Tales From Music City

Stories From The Edge of The World

Nashville Halloween

From The Country ….To Country

Deep Cuts

Putting It All Together

In The Wilderness of Words…We Need Music.

I Remember Hearing Bruce For The First Time

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