I’ve disappointed a lot of people lately. It seems to have become a bit of a pattern.

Sorry for disappointing some of you by giving up writing my monthly column, music reviews and other things for The Skinny Magazine.

Sorry for disappointing promoters and artists by not coming along to your gig or promoting it on my blog.

Sorry for disappointing all the people who’ve sent me music by not reviewing your record or mp3.

Sorry to disappoint Jim Kerr’s PR company by not agreeing to interview Jim Kerr.

Sorry to disappoint my drinking buddies by not getting hammered and acting like a twat (I have been off the booze for almost 3 months).

Sorry to disappoint my readers by not writing more regularly on my blog.

Sorry to disappoint those who thought I was an ubergeek early adopter by not buying an iPad (yet).

Sorry to disappoint all 5 of you who were waiting on a second issue of the fanzine.

Sorry to disappoint users of Internet Explorer due to the weird glitch with this free WordPress theme that causes the line spacing to expand beyond all reason.

The thing is, for the first time in ages I’ve not felt disappointed in myself. I’ve been doing a lot of things that I’ve had to get done and it hasn’t left a lot of time for much else. An update will follow soon for those of you who have stuck around despite all of the above (I really appreciate it by the way) and a more regular blogging schedule will hopefully resume soon too.

Image: Why The Long Face by foxypar4

Photo by Dylan Matthews: of Meursault at the Roxy Art House Edinburgh

The second in this series of interviews is with Edinburgh-based photographer and blogger and now radio DJ, Dylan Matthews. Dylan’s photos have been published by an impressive list of publications including  BBC Online, The List, The Sunday Herald & The Skinny, and he is of course an integral part of the Song, By Toad team. His new radio show with Ali Millar started last week and runs for the next 3 weeks on Fresh Air.  Cheers for taking the time to answer these questions Dylan!

Hey Dylan. Your blog Blueback Hotrod is focused on your photography. How did you get started taking photos and where did the name come from? (Yes, this is a lazy and obvious and quite possibly inanely stupid question, which you are under no obligation to answer)

I’ve always enjoyed taking photos since I was little. My dad took us on a trip to Disneyworld in Florida when we were little kids and bought me a little Kodak Disc Camera. I remember him commenting that the photos I took on that holiday were quite good – all sort of nicely framed and composed and so on. I remember I was always trying to look for interesting angles and outlooks for pictures even at that point.

Since then I’ve always got a kick out of taking photos, I love travelling partly for that reason, and if you go to any party or gathering you’ll find me on the other side of the camera taking candid snaps! It’s great that the live music scene in Edinburgh seems to throw up lots of really good opportunities for photos.

The name of the site is the most boring thing you’ll ever hear, but you did ask! If you’ve seen the site you’ll know the header has a picture of a little red hot rod car. Well, that I took that photo in the car park of this truckstop off the highway driving through Northern Québec. When I saved the JPEG image into my holiday snaps folder, I called the file ‘hotrod.jpg’. Then, when mobile phones first developed screens that could display images, I decided I wanted the wallpaper image on my phone to be one of my own photos instead of the stock ones the phone came with, and I remembered that photo of the little red car. I cut out the car from the background of the car park and mounted the image on a plain white field, but when I uploaded it onto my phone you couldn’t see the menu commands on the display anymore, because they were in white text. So I changed the backround field colour to a nice pale blue so the writing would show up and christened the new file – you’ve guessed it – ‘bluebackhotrod.jpg’. For some reason that filename sprung to mind when I was trying to think of a name for the blog. Told you it was a boring story!

You also do a lot of different things for the Song By Toad blog/label, including appearing on Toadcasts, editing and writing for the ‘Sunday supplement’ section and the bulk of the filming for the excellent Toad sessions. Why? (sorry I couldn’t think of a better question for this either)

Standard response for any questions relating to Matthew and/or Song By Toad: “I was a bit drunk, [insert "Officer" / "Your Honour" / "Mum" here as appropriate]”

No, seriously, I do owe Matthew and the Song By Toad family a debt of gratitude for introducing me to some great people and giving me the chance to make my own little contribution to what goes on over at Toad Hall. The Toad Sessions in particular have been a real privilege to be involved in. We’ve had some great days hanging out with the various bands who’ve been through the sessions, we all usually end up having a few beers, a good chat and a bit of skylarking, and I’ve made some good friends off the back of that. But aside from that, to have been in the room during some of the performances we’ve had has been just incredible.

I remember during the Eagleowl session we were all just pottering about, setting the gear up and whetever, Malcolm was tuning up his violin, Clarissa was texting on her phone, Rob was petting the cat or something, and I think Bart was browsing through the books on the bookshelf, when suddenly Malcolm latched onto a more coherent riff and – as if by telepathy or something – the sound in the room just swelled and within a split-second the whole band had launched into Blanket. It was seriously – like – a jaw-dropping, breathtaking, hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment. And the tapes weren’t even rolling. I was like “Whoa! Where did that come from?!”.

It was a similar thing with Mumford & Sons – I couldn’t help grinnning like an idiot during that little banjo-led interlude in the middle of Awake My Soul – which has been one of my favourite bits of music since I first heard it (on Song By Toad!) a couple of years ago. Just looking around the room watching them play that within a few feet away was just mindblowing. Sparrow & The Workshop was another standout, they made food for everyone, and Jill played this fantastic version of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. I keep coming back to Found’s stunning acoustic version of Mullokian, too. Ziggy’s twelve-string is blistering on that. (It’s quite funny if you listen to it – you can still download the MP3 off the website – check out Ziggy couting himself in then pausing, and than playing the song at a completely different tempo!)

Yeah – it’s really been an experience to have been involved in these. Long may they continue!

You’re now also doing your own radio show on Fresh Air and have already been praised by random strangers for your dulcet tones and ‘relaxed banter’ with your co-host Ali Millar. What can people expect from the show and how did you enjoy your first show last Saturday?

Last week was a great fun – but it was a bit of a disaster on the technology front! Hopefully we’ll get the hang of it soon. The idea of the show is to link it in with the live scene each week, which makes sense what with Ali doing her promotional stuff with A+E Promotions and me with the photos. Ali’s a cheeky little so-and-so, so there’ll be plenty more banter I imagine, and I’ll have to be gracious about the “dulcet tones” thing and take it as a compliment – not so sure myself!

Dylan & Milo: rather drunk & out of focus

You always seem to be in the right place at the right time (apart from in the above photo obviously)– just looking  at your photos from Homegame you were able to capture some great moments. Any tips for photographers wanting to get closer to the action e.g do you have a special technique to make musicians relax in your presence? (besides plying them with rum obviously or have I just answered the question for you)

I don’t know really. I suppose I’m quite lucky in that I often seem to be taking photos of mates, so maybe they relax a bit more because they know me. I think the trick to taking photos in a close-quarters situation is to just relax, chat to people and help everyone have a good time, then people won’t bother about you wandering around with the camera so much. Oddly though, I feel much more self conscious near the front of the stage during a gig, I keep telling myself that no-one in the room is looking at the photographers, but it doesn’t seem like it sometimes!

I believe you have a day job, do you find it a struggle getting all the other stuff done and being so sociable as well? Don’t you ever fancy a night in watching Taggart or something?

Yeah, I’ve got a very dull 9-5 IT job. I get very antsy sat at home in front of the TV unless there’s either something brilliant on (which isn’t often), or I’m worn out. But I do seem to spend plenty of evenings sitting at home.

In terms of bands/music you are obviously a big fan of the Scottish alt-folk scene is there anything in your record collection that might surprise people? You must have a few guilty secrets??

Oh god, there are plenty of guilty secrets. You certainly couldn’t put my iPod on shuffle and expect the good times to last long! I have to admit to being a bit of a sucker for 1980s power-rock. If I’m drunk and near the stereo, then it’s not usually long before things like Why Can’t This Be Love by Van Halen and Easy Lover by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins come on!

So thanks very much to Dylan for agreeing to be interviewed. I thoroughly recommend tuning into his and Ali’s show on Saturday at 12:30pm, it’s a nice mix of light-hearted repartee and chilled out tunes to start your Saturday in style.

Also worth reading is his recent post on being inadvertently off the sauce for the Song, By Toad Sunday Supplement- it’s nice to know I’m not the only one on the ginger beer at the moment!

Photo: Standing Around Waiting for a Gig by Alaskan Dude

Anyone subscribing to this blog by email or RSS has probably been inundated by a lot of old content over the last day or so – apologies, it’s because I’m transferring the blog from Squarespace to a self-hosted WordPress account.

This means that soon you will only be able to access the blog by the url http://gaseousbrain.com or http://www.gaseousbrain.com and not the old http://milomclaughlin.squarespace.com address.

It’s a bit of a learning experience so please forgive the occasional glitch as I get things sorted. I’m currently painstakingly re-categorising and re-tagging everything so it’s a bit clearer where it all is, and it’s a time-consuming job.

Apologies also for the lack of regular posts recently, I’ll be getting back to a regular schedule soon, honest.

The Kids: they’re laughing at us.

Compared to when I was growing up and a crappy Gameboy or impossible to tune in b&w portable telly were the heights of the technology accessible to the average teen, kids these days “don’t know they’re born” with their infuriatingly flippant use of PS3s, iPhones and what-would-until-recently-have-been-considered-witchcraft wireless broadband.

 Recently doing the rounds is a fascinating US study by The Pew Internet & American Life Project which “studies the social impact of the internet, focusing on topics including health, teens, and broadband”.

 It shows that kids are always online but instead of blogging they are on social networks such as myspace (come on, they’re too young to know better).

But does this herald the end for blogging, or is it just that they’re er.. kids, and  haven’t really got enough life/work experience to blog about yet? Plus they’re not in a boring full-time office job which is the time when grown-ups suddenly discover blogging and spend all day reading everyone else’s blogs and writing their own in a desperate attempt to distract themselves from the pointlessness of existence. Right?

Eventually the younger generation (x, y or z? I lose track) will get fed up of status updates and LOLCats and the like and get the sudden desire to sign up to a WordPress account and vomit out a lengthy essay about a minor indie band or technological development that interests only them for 3 of their mates to skim-read. I mean, why WOULDN’T you want to be a blogger?

They will realise that there is more to life than uglifying their myspace page with more useless flashing widgetry than a Dixons store in the run up to Christmas, and instead do the grown up, professional adult thing and sign up to a LinkedIn account that will forever lie eerily dormant like a cyberspace metaphor for their own stalled careers.

The kids aren’t using Twitter either. Some journalists seem to consider this as irrefutable proof that Twitter is uncool. I beg to disagree – surely it’s possible that us adults, though clearly cripplingly uncool in almost every way, with all that laughable experience, expertise and accrued knowledge, might actually know something that the kids don’t?

Yes that’s adults – that much ignored demographic, which the BBC’s iPhone department have conveniently categorised as:

Mobile First (aged 30-40), Social Animals (18-30), Mobile Lifestyle (25-40) and the Addicted (30-40).

Via The Register  (As The Reg point out, they didn’t mention what happens after 40 – presumably once over 40 people are too preoccupied with their impending death to have any interest in iPhone apps)

You see, these youngsters just haven’t realised the genius of Twitter yet. But they will. They will realise that they have wasted most of their life so far making inane X-Factor orientated chatter with their moronic friends, and instead sign up to Twitter where they can look at pictures of Demi Moore’s ass courtesy of her adopted son Ashton Kutcher or be the first to know that Jordan is auctioning off her collection of Peter Andre’s chesthair on Ebay.

So either you can read the report as:

• proof of a future where all adults will be perma-teenagers content with bullying, teasing and flirting with their peers on social networking sites from birth to infinity and beyond

• or you can see the differences as part of an overall pattern of people growing up and either settling for a cosily predictable Facebook account showing photos of their kids and weddings, or starting their own ineffectual digital megaphones through which they howl disaffected obscenities into the infinity of cyberspace (yes, a blog like this one).

And in the case of both, generally settling into life as a slavering, bedridden, and fundamentally uncool adult person.

Of course the internet is still in its infancy itself, barely old enough in the grand scheme of things to even have a bebo account. So all this is yet more pointless conjecture about what might or might not happen. Which let’s face it, is 90% of what blogging consists of. Maybe that’s why it’s going out of fashion.