Glasgow Cabaret Festival – Seven Great Reasons To Get Involved

Okay, here’s the thing. Last month I wrote a post about crowd source funding that led very smoothly into mention of an ongoing funding for a project that is very very dear to my heart: the Glasgow Cabaret Festival. Perhaps I was a little too subtle. Perhaps most people switched off at the mention of crowd […]

Bitter birds and Glitter flies

Tomorrow’s a bit of a red letter day. After a considerable length of time (in which between us we managed to produce two weddings, a baby, half a house, a cabaret act and three books), wur band, Murnie, has decided to release some new music. Yay, for us. Now, yes, there was supposed to be […]

Setting ones balls in order

I’m a bit of a juggler. At least I attempt to be. I’m always writing something and I’m always doing something with music, usually multiple things. I tell myself that I can keep all of these balls in the air at the same time, but usually I end up concentrating primarily on one and the […]

Author v Reader

When you’re a musician you learn very quickly to listen differently. You break a track down, listen to individual instruments, how they’re balanced, how they’re played, what production techniques have been used. The song? It has to be really strong to allow you to glimpse it at others hear it, a complete entity instead of […]

August’s books

Fully expected this month’s reading to be curtailed by other activities, but as it turns out I managed a couple of enjoyable (albeit with a slightly higher than usual incidence of author/reader nark) novels and the usual interesting array of shorts. Rule 34 by Charles Stross (Orbit) You know you’ve read a good thriller […]

The sights these eyes have seen

It’s August, which means the Edinburgh Fringe. Which means I’m knackered. de Saw and Finkle have been taking Planet Fringe a little more seriously this year, getting involved with the really wonderful cabaret culture now so prevalent amidst the thousands of options for bewildered, footsore punters in need of a damned good show but unable […]

Making it happen

For my money, crowd funding is one of the things that makes the internet great. In the arts it is increasingly difficult to secure traditional sources of funding for projects – arts council grants are ever more squeezed and sponsors want to be assured of a return on any investment – but to get an […]

July’s reading

It seems I liked a lot of what I read this month, so without further ado: popCULT! by David Barnett (Pendragon Press) – It’s very rare that I’m completely sold on a book by a glance at the blurb, but the second my eyes slid over the words “lost Carry-On movie”, I was reaching for […]

Tea and the Park

So the weekend was spent at Balado. Pretty much over the lack of sleep and the snottery cold I brought back with me. Almost. Well, at my age what can you expect? Very glad I didn’t do the camping – it was only an hour or so’s drive away, and I had a new car […]

June’s reading

Two novels this month: Infernal Devices by KW Jeter – okay so this was meant to be the start of my attempt to take on Steampunk fiction. As a result of my earlier post I had a few suggestions about what I should be reading and I thought I’d start with one of the classics. […]