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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A terrifying ordeal really isn’t an exaggeration when it comes to this gig. Stick with me for why. First though, the important stuff – all proceeds go to the charity Great Little Libraries, which as the poster says, aims to get books in primary schools in disadvantaged areas of Scotland. And, it’s not a normal gig by any means. The title comes from a book of the same name by the poet Paul Birtill. Birtill has been described as “Bleedin’ fabulous” by none other than John Cooper Clarke (one of my heroes). And having read his book ‘So Far So Bad’ I can tell you that Paul takes bleakly humorous to new levels of both bleakness and humorousness (is that a word?).

Also on the bill is Edinburgh based writer Claire Askew, who writes the One Night Stanzas blog and teaches poetry and creative writing at educational establishments around the city. This interview with her is worth a read, and features an excellent example of her poetry too so you can get a flavour.

And the lyrical triumvirate is completed by a Glasgow poet named Robin Cairns who veers towards the more comedy based stand up/slam poetry side of things. He was interviewed by the List about his involvement in the open mic scene.

Music comes courtesy of Lewis Gibson and the Midas Touch, who were apparently very good indeed at the recent Hidden Door festival at the Roxy Arthouse. Plus Ralf Matrix will be DJing.

Ok, so there’s one more artist on the line-up. Someone very foolish indeed, who didn’t really think it through when he signed up. Not really a musician, not really a poet. But it seems he’s even managed to rope in a couple of other musicians to join him for the first ever live performance by his new Edinburgh band Famous Drunk (have you guessed who it is yet?)

Hope to see you there!