Phew. That was a busy week, in which blogging just hasn’t been near the top of my list of priorities, so sorry about the lack of posts recently. As well as doing some decorating (yawn), I went to see Grizzly Bear/Beach House (which was an excellent excellent gig – see Evil Stu’s review for more details), played my first gig as ‘Famous Drunk’ with my friends Iain, formerly of Private Jackson and Chris, formerly bassist for Arab Strap and currently playing with the Gothenburg Address. It was a total shambles of course,  but I was very grateful to them both for helping me play some of my songs, and I think we’re all keen to do something again in the future but with more than one rehearsal next time, which I am delighted about.

All the other people who performed were brilliant, especially the poet Paul Birtill who possibly has the most bleakly brilliant sense of humour ever (he is John Cooper Clarke’s favourite poet) and a fair bit of cash was raised for the charity Great Little Libraries.

Then it was off to Anstruther in the east neuk of Fife (or Anster as it is known to the locals) for the annual Fence Homegame festival. As with last year, it was a brilliant laugh, with highlights being the Friday and Saturday nights in Legends where Findo Gask and the Silver Columns (as well as DJ sets by On The Fly and John Maclean from the Beta Band/Aliens) got everyone whipped up into a pulsating frenzy of boogying with a little help from the crazy dancing Frenchmen from Francois and the Atlas Mountains. Other stand-outs were a rare and compelling live set by the Lone Pigeon alongside the Pictish Trail, Withered Hand, and a wonderful fireside performance by King Creosote on accordion in the Smuggler’s Inn (as well as witnessing the recording of his 8th bit of strange which was very special indeed).  Anyway I will probably write more on both Homegame and the Grizzly Bear/Beach House gig for the next issue of the zine, if not for the blog in the next wee while.

Worth checking out is this great Homegame slideshow done by Billy and Su of Under The Radar which has a great atmospheric soundtrack too – though steel yourself for the photo of Mel and I watching an impromptu live performance by Men Diamler outside the Anster Town Hall, as we were pretty hungover at that point on Sunday afternoon!

And the dry part..

The empty bottle of whisky pictured at the top of this post was a special blend made for this year’s Homegame, and very nice it was too. But it is also special because it is the last drink I will be having for a while. I’ll be taking it one day at a time, and my first aim is to give up for a month. But ideally (and perhaps over-ambitiously) I’d like to stay off it until next year’s Homegame which will be closely followed by our wedding. That could be extremely tricky though so let’s just see how I get on this month – the most difficult occasion to be sober in the near future is likely to be the Hinterland Festival, but I am determined to at least last the first month out.

I know it may seem an extremely antisocial goal to have, but in actual fact I’m hoping it helps me develop my social skills better, as I have in the past been quite reliant on the booze for socialising. I actually relate to the very first part of this extremely sobering account of being an alcoholic in terms of how drinking brought me out of myself to begin with at school but then led to me basically being a bit of a dick and making some terrible decisions at college, though luckily things have never got as bad as described here.

Anyway, that’s what I meant by Home and Dry. And I will be blogging a bit more regularly again so please subscribe so you don’t miss my blather.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, because I’ve been really busy at work, and with getting other shit sorted, which is pretty annoying as I’ve got loads of things to post – so hopefully the frequency will increase a bit in the next wee while. 

I turned 32 on Thursday, not the most momentous age, but evidence that time waits for no man, and that while I mess about trying to work out what I’m doing with my life, time is ticking on. Still, compared to how I felt when I turned 30, I felt pretty good this year.

Tantrum Man – I Hate Being 30

Night Out – Overtime & The Burgh

I didn’t even celebrate my 30th birthday, so down in the dumps was I, but this year I had a brilliant laugh. The picture above is from a birthday card kindly made for my by my pals Sharon and Colin, who joined me and a bunch of others for ‘Overtime’ at the Electric Circus, expertly DJed by DJ B Burg (I believe) and my pal John-Paul Mason (who does a show on Leith FM every Sunday) with just the right mix of cheesy classics and er.. very fucking cheesy classics. And yes, I even danced to Simply fucking Red. Before that we went for a meal at Vittoria’s with our friends Danny, Ruth, Laura and Alison and met a bunch of other people at Edinburgh’s best karaoke dive bar, The Burgh for a feast of ridiculous karaoke and dancing and fun was had by all. 

Spotify Playlist inspired by the night:

Thirty Fuckin Two, where have the years gone?

Leith Tape Club – Men Diamler, Animal Magic Tricks & Ian McKelvie (The Colourful Band)

In order to try to retain some of my musical credibility (ok I’ve probably failed..) on my actual birthday Mel and I went to the Leith Tape Club (which is organised by Fence Collective member Little Pebble) to see Men Diamler and Animal Magic Tricks, in one of the most intimate settings ever seen for a live gig, in a wee room above the otherwise unassuming Iso Bar. Also playing was Ian McKelvie of the Colourful Band, who I’ve not seen before.

It’s not every gig you go to where each latecomer is greeted personally by the performer in between songs, but when we arrived to an extremely hushed room, Ian said hello to us and others who arrived after. He went on to play a delicate set that had the select crowd of not much more than 30 people transfixed. Then, the beguiling Frances Laura Donnelly aka Animal Magic Tricks played a strange and wonderful set that was unfortunately plagued by a few technical problems, meaning that a song about the sex scene in Don’t Look Now came to an abrupt halt just as it was about to come to a dramatic (and no doubt satisfying) climax.

Men Diamler was trying out some new material too, having just written, in ridiculously prolific fashion, 35 tunes in the previous week – and some of it was dark and horrifying, and some of it was daft and dramatic – and the poor man seemed exhausted by the effort, but then as a peformer there’s very few who put in as much effort as him as the below youtube video shows. So all in all, it was a bloody good birthday!

Yes I have finally experienced the Fence Homegame in Anstruther and it was well worth the wait. The above video diary shows a few of the bands we saw, a lot of which have already featured on the podcasts. I only had very limited space on my wee digital camera so didn’t manage to capture everything, e.g.Viking Moses leading us in a mass singalong of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Lover Lover Lover’, Pictish Trail doing a lovely cover of Hot Chip’s Boy From School, James Yorkston doing a great live version of ‘Woozy with Cider’ and numerous other perfect moments.

In fact, because so much was going on simultaneously in different venues, we totally missed loads of special events like the Three Craws (the hall was full by the time we got there), Ichi who many said was their highlight, any other secret shows that I didn’t have a ticket for like James Yorkston doing Daniel Johnston covers.. the list goes on. I have to say I would be gutted to miss those things if I didn’t have such an amazing time at the things I did go to. 

I can see now that Fence is all about the Homegame experience, and the rest of the year I will be just biding time for the next one – it has to be the friendliest, most laid back festival I’ve been to. But it looks likely that next year’s event will be a smaller one, so good luck getting tickets if you fancy going…