The Aye Tunes Awards 2008...

...have been in the process of being written for the best part of a week and still aren't finished.
Most likely - barring Christmas miracles - they won't be done before Thursday, but they will be done before the year finishes.

Don't get all worked up though, they aren't really all that worth looking forward to, and are completely arbitrary.

Anyway, all the best to the lot of yeh!

My Latest Novel - Errors - Sons & Daughters: Paisley Town Hall 12.11.2008

VERY quick review of the gig I'm just home from then, for the simple reason that I'm fairly lucid due to Tennent's being both horrible and £3 a pop, reason enough to stay sober at a gig. Somewhat ruined by going to another pub after the gig and drinking real beer though, so it may verge into incoherence.

My Latest Novel: opened the show. It's been a few years since I saw them, last time was at the launch party for their debut album. Oh holy Fuck, this band is brilliant. That was my first impression of My Latest Novel and to be honest tonight just reminded me that. Splitting the set half and half between the debut album and songs from the new forthcoming (I want it NOW dammit) album was possibly a brave move, especially when you are a band from Greenock playing in Paisley (football wise there's no love lost. Me personally? I don't give a toss. Greenock isn't the nicest place on Earth but hey, Paisley is a Hellhole). Disappointing for me was the lack of some songs from the first album, but in a half hour set there's only so many things that can be crammed in.
The Reputation of Ross Francis, The Job Mr. Kurtz Done and Sister Sneaker, Sister Soul are still good enough songs to send tingles up my spine and make me wonder why this band aren't already huge. Scottish Arcade Fire? Fuck off, hasn't that lazy description been passed on to Broken Records now (who it doesn't fit either, but that's a whole other post) Seriously, if the new album is anywhere near as good as the live stuff, it'll be brilliant.
Special mention goes to the first pretty girl of the evening (I know, this is stunningly misogynistic, but still...) Laura you can be entirely forgiven for the over the knee socks and snug backless dress look for the simple reason that your violin skills are undoubted and you are not a bad singer either.
So, yeah. My Latest Novel were very, very good. The only disappointments for me were the lack of a few personal favourites from the debut album, but that is hardly their fault given the time allowed for their set.

Errors Honestly I can't say much about their set. It was good, don't get me wrong, but at the same time it was just kind of there.
Again, there was nothing at all wrong with the band, or their set, and I enjoyed it, but it didn't move me like My Latest Novel did.

Sons & Daughters were great, as always. Pleasant surprise of the evening was Ailidh (please tell me I'm spelling that right) being present on bass. Alaidh recently gave birth to a son who's name I do not know, so I didn't expect her to be back at work quite so soon. I'm never going to get through a Sons & Daughters writ-up without mentioning how gorgeous Adele and Ailidh looked, so I'll go ahead and get that out of the way now. Don't worry, Scott was also as handsome as always too.
On to their set, it wasn't massively different from the last time I saw them in the ABC at the start of the year (Hell, I'm fairly sure Adele had the same dress on, and thank God she wears shorts under it, since Paisley Town Hall has quite a high stage and if she didn't, well, this review might get filthy) Throwing away Johnny Cash as your second song is a ballsy move, but one that couldn't be faulted as the band laid on a cracking set, mostly drawn from the most recent album This Gift. Early on Adele apologised for never having been to Paisley before. On behalf on Paisley I'd like to assure her that's a wise move, but to please come back sometime anyway. Adele & Scott dealt well with a few over eager audience members (although to be fair, I struggled to avoid joining in the requests for Killer at time) and the entire band as always put on a cracking show. My one problem with This Gift is always addressed live, Scott sings more. I miss him on the album, the melodies live make the songs much better.

All in all then, was it worth my £12? Fuck yes. I'd pay that to see My Latest Novel or Sons & Daughters headlining a show of their own, having Errors tosses into the mix late sweetens the deal on my end even more.

Nitpicks? Well, I'd have liked to see My Latest Novel play longer, I'd have liked the beer not to have been so expensive (and horrible, but I just don't like Tennent's) and finally, I'd have LOVED the guy and girl who were in front of me for the first hour to have shown some fucking decency and not (a) chattered through the band and (b) stopped chattering long enough to snog the faces off each other. I dearly hope someone stabs both of you in the eye with a fork.

Finally, a big "Well, I didn't expect that" to the sound tonight. I've been to a ton of gigs in my life and way over half of them have had awful sound, but tonight - even though I was concered by the venue's huge hugh celing - someone out there played a bloody blinder. Sound was perfect throughout, for all three bands. Cheers Soundmen!

Fancy A Pint?

Yep, once again I'm offering my readership of no one a drink.
As i mentioned a wee while ago, Sons & Daughters, My Latest Novel and Errors are playing in Paisley tomorrow at the Town Hall as part of the Tennents Mutual round of gigs. Getting one good band in Paisley is rare enough, three in one show is downright unmissable, so of course I'll be going along.

If anyone else is and fancies some form of beverage, give me a shout.

Sons And Daughters MySpace
My Latest Novel MySpace
Errors MySpace

My Turn

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.

I'm fairly sure that anyone who reads this blog will be familiar by now with the woes that 17 Seconds has recently undergone, as well as a whole host of other blogs, including most recently The Pop Cop. If you haven't, pop along there and have a read, I'll still be here when you get back.

Unlike 17 Seconds and The Pop Cop my crime wasn't posting Glasvegas, rather I got hammered for a positive review of The Fratellis with an MP3 tagged on at the end.

There's barely any posts on Aye Tunes as it is without old ones getting deleted!

PopUp

Should really have done this earlier, but laziness has clearly set in again.

PopUp are playing in the Crow Bar in Paisley tonight. Since we almost never get good bands in Paisley, I'll be braving the wind and rain to get myself along.
If anyone else is in town and fancies going to see them it'll cost you a fiver to get in - unless you turn up early enough that they haven't started charging yet - and there's some other bands on to.

Going? Give me a shout, I'll get a round in.

PopUp - Love Triangle

While I've Been Gone...

(Image nicked from The Vinyl Villain a while back, I knew I'd need it eventually)

Ok then, let's recap. Recently we've discovered that

• I'm lazy
• I don't know what "soon" means
• I just all round suck.
  

Other than that, there's been a ton of releases, some good, some not so much so since I last wrote anything. Attempting to cover them all would be madness, so I'll go for a random selection.
There's was the much written about debut album by Glasvegas, of course, about which I have nothing more to add to what's been said elsewhere umpteen times, other than I'm bummed that Go Square Go reverted back to being more like the demo version than the single version, cause I really liked the intro on the single.

Mogwai today released their new album, The Hawk Is Howling, which is playing in the background as I write this and is really very good, as I'd expected. Also nice (from my point of view, probably not from about half of my readers') to see more quality Rangers baiting from Barry Burns on the Mogwai website.

Manda Rin, former girl from bis, put out her debut solo album My DNA a couple of weeks ago too. I never much cared for bis when they were around at first, but they ended up growning on me in later years. Manda's album is pretty good, I'll try to get back to it later.

PopUp put out an album too, though whether or not you can actually buy it in shops I'm not sure of. It's available on eMusic though and is well worth a listen. If you've not been a member of eMusic before there's usually an offer on to get a bunch of free downloads before you need to pay anything, there's a link over on the right hand side somewhere.

Colin MacIntyre has a new single out today too, Famous For Being Famous, one of the highlights from The Water. There's 2 new b-sides and it's available from eMusic too. I missed his gig in Glasgow at the weekend sadly. I've missed a LOT of gigs over the past few months. In fact, just tonight I missed Broken Records, again.

Speaking of gigs, The Tennents Mutual have announced the first lot of gigs to take place under that banner. I'll be going to Sons & Daughters and My Latest Novel at Paisley Town Hall, so if you are too say hello. If you can make me feel guilty about being a shite blogger, I might even buy you a pint or something.

More catching up later (whenever later may be)

Back Soon!

I'm very aware that the blog has undergone a lengthy spell of inactivity, for which I've got no excuse.

Rest assured I'm still alive and there will be new posts soon.

Cheers!

Hey You Get Off My Pavement!

This Sunday (june 29th) sees Mono in Glasgow put on their third annual Hey You Get Off My Pavement! mini-festival, and for the third year running, I can't go.
I'm fairly sure I'm currently fated not to make it to any of the gigs I want to get to, since they always seem to clash with me being busy elsewhere, or by the time I find out about them, the tickets have gone. That's no reason for you not to go, have a great time and make me feel thouroghly jealous afterwards though.

On the line up this year are Camera Obscura, the quite wonderful Foxface, Stevie Jackson from Belle & Sebastian, some Fence Collective types and more.

Tickets will set you back £18.50, which for a full days entertainment - and a barbeque! - isn't half bad. Festivities kick off at 12pm and we'll hope it stays dry.

More info here.

Camera Obscura - Super Trooper
Foxface - Winners/Losers

Happy Birthday To Me

(There's more proper posts coming, I swear)

I know you don't care, buuuut, it's my blog, so there :P
Anyway, it's my birthday today, pushing me one step closer to being middle aged.
Anything around that I should buy? Recommendations welcome.

Frightened Rabbit

Frightened Rabbit are four blokes from Selkirk, brothers Scott and Grant Hutchison, Billy Kennedy and Andy Monaghan.
Tons of things have been written about them, both in Scotland and beyond, since the release of their debut album Sing The Greys in 2006.
Rather than cover old ground, I'll just add my tuppence worth by saying that they are really, really good. I'm ashamed to add that they'd slipped under my radar until I saw them supporting Sons and Daughters a wee while ago, shortly before the release of second album The Midnight Organ Fight, where they opened the show and were miles better than the second support act Black Kids.
The Pop Cop has a great interview with singer Scott Hutchison here, while JC from The Vinyl Villan has a live review here.

Frightened Rabbit Website - Myspace

Sample Songs:
The Greys - From Sing The Greys
The Modern Leper - From The Midnight Organ Fight
Behave! - Live version, available on eMusic. Original version on Sing The Greys

New(ish) Arab Strap!

The first of two promised download only releases from one of my most favourite bands ever, Arab Strap, is now available from the Chemikal Underground Records online shop.

Titled Music From Rogue Farm, it's a short wee thing, 11 tracks totalling 17 minutes, consisting of instrumental pieces put together for the short animated film Rogue Farm (which you can find out more about here)

It isn't essential stuff, but for a fiver it's a nice little rarity from a fantastic band.

You can buy it here and listen to samples too.

A Brief Diversion...

As you will no doubt know by now Bo Diddley died on Monday. There's a ton of information and obituaries out there should you want to know more.
Bo Diddley is obviously not Scottish and so is somewhat out of the remit of this blog, but his passing does give an oportunity to post the following:

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Bo Diddley Is Jesus
Available on Barbed Wire Kisses

Errors

Right then, time to get started here I think. For the next week or so I might be messing around with the format a bit, but bear with me and we'll settle into something resembling normality soon enough.

Today Glasgow's Errors finally released their debut album It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever on Rock Action Records. It's been a while since we got a release from them, not counting the single Toes a few weeks ago, so it is fair to say that this album is pretty highly anticipated round Aye Tunes Towers, especially since 2006's How Clean Is Your Acid House? EP still gets played to death.
Unfortunatly for me HMV haven't sent me my copy yet, so I can't tell you if it is good or bad. My money, based on previous releases, is on good.

If you are in Glasgow you might like to note that on the 13th of June there's a launch night for the album in Stereo. I'm planning on being there, so if you are heading along, say hi. Details and tickets can be found here.

Errors Myspace

If You Buy One Record:
At this point I'm planning on reccommending an album that you should buy, but since there's only one out, by default I'm going to be saying It's Not Something But It Is Like Whatever. This bit will make more sense when I post about a band with more than one album out, I swear. In the meantime, It's Not Something... is available from some of the shops listed in the right hand sidebar and the usual download type places.

Sample Tracks:
Mr. Milk (from How Clean Is Your Acid House?)
Maeve Binchy (from the Salut! France single)

What Is Aye Tunes?

"Where am I and what do you do here?" I hear you ask.
Well, the simple answer is that Aye Tunes is yet another music blog, storming into the already bloated blogosphere. Unlike some other blogs you won't find and hot new pre-release albums here though. In fact, you won't find any albums at all, unless it is something I've been given permission to post. Instead I'll pick a track or two from each spotlighted artist.

Aye Tunes aims to focus on the best of Scottish music, new and old. "The best" is, of course, a very subjective term, so we won't always agree on the contents. Dissenting viewpoints are always welcome, either in a comment or an email. Also, for a small country, Scotland has a rich tapestry to draw upon musically, so don't expect all your favourites to appear here right away, it'll take me a while to cover all the bases, if I ever can.

As well as established artits, I'd love to put a bit of focus on new, up and coming bands. To do that I'll need your help. If you are in a band, or know of a great one that you'd like to see covered here, do please let me know!

If you represent one of the artists involved and would like me to remove a posted track, that's fine, just drop me a line and I'll pull it as quickly as I can.

The mp3s posted here are for a short time only and are intended for people to evaluate the music, and not as a replacement for buying music. If you like what you hear, support the artists involved by buying the music, going to shows, buying T-shirts etc.

There are some links to buy music in the right hand side sidebar, as well as contained within some of the posts. In the interests of full disclosure I'll confirm that some of these are affiliate links, used to not only promote the artists, albums and websites, but also to help fund this site. The money earned by myself from these is minimal, I won't be giving up the day job any time soon!

If you have any questions, or there is anything else I can help you with, please do email me, I'll be delighted to hear from you.

Launch Date

After a (too long) delay, Aye Tunes will finally be going live on June 1st 2008.