Like Trying To Strangle Two People At Once

With Christmas stockings to be filled I would recommend this book to anyone: 

And then there was the time that author Peter Ross encountered Lou Reed (echoes of the late Kim Fowley).

I've also been enjoying Morrissey's autobiography:

"I have attempted a second joke, which must be like trying to strangle two people at once."

I do wish that, back in the pre-Smiths days, the powers-that-were had greenlit his suggested Coronation Street script. Apparently it took to do with arguments over a new jukebox in the Rover's Return, culminating in the episode-closing declaration from Ena Sharples, "Do I really look like a fan of X-ray Spex?".

Two thumbs up for The Queen's Gambit thus far.

"Mission To India" from The Moth is a great story well-told by George Lombardi.

Amazing photos from Russia's frozen north here.

Every once in a while I remember this:

If you like the music of the late Ennio Morricone, you might find this interesting:

You've heard "Home" by Teenage Fanclub, right?

Well, here's a wee snap from setting up for the video...

And I reckon this - from my notebook when we were recording it in Cloudshill, Hamburg - refers to "Home". No ride cymbal until after the second chorus...

Spot The Monkey Competition

Farewell, Diego...

Gary Lineker's anecdotes are worth a watch, if you are that way inclined:

I have been writing prospective trailer music and also composing for a BBC doc that will go out next year.

Tinkety-tonk, Old Fruit and down with the Nazis!

Coming March 5th, 2021...

So...

 The new Teenage Fanclub album "Endless Arcade" will be released on 5th March, 2021

Pre-order here and/or here. 

Here's a spotify link to the single "Home".

And here's a video...

We've enjoyed making this album and look forward to sharing it with the world.

In other news:

"Who are you? And how did you get in here?"

"I'm a locksmith. And I'm a locksmith."

Yes, I've been re-watching the splendid Police Squad!

Also re-watching Gavin & Stacey. Still a gem.

I dug this New Yorker interview with Willie Nelson.

I managed to say hello to Willie outside his tour bus after his show at Edinburgh's Usher Hall in 1994 (I think). I shook his hand and said, "Be sure and come back to Scotland". He fixed me with the deepest brown eyes and said, "I sure will". He was surrounded by fans and a big unsmiling bodyguard. And when he gave you his attention, he gave you his full attention. (I remarked on this to the late Alex Chilton and Alex said that he once met Dolly Parton and she was the same.)

I saw Willie perform at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall a few years later, obviously having revisited these shores on my instruction. Because of the angle of Sister Bobbie's piano - more specifically her piano lid -  some punters at the front and off to one side couldn't see the diminutive Mr. Nelson for the entirety of the show. The US crew looked a bit nervous afterwards as they packed away equipment to the sound of angry Glaswegian heckles, such as: "It's a wonder ye beat the Indians - ye canna even set up a stage properly!"

I think I like the idea of Victorian ghost stories more than actual Victorian ghost stories. I crawled to the end of The Turn Of The Screw, despairing of its turgidly grandiloquent, pandiculation-inducing verbosity. Some sentences read like they'd been cut up and re-constituted by William blinkin' Burroughs.

Anyway. 

I'm now giving this a go...

"Victorian knife-plunging Manchester", you say?

A few years back I played drums at a couple of live shows for Stuart Murdoch's God Help The Girl project. One gig was at a music and literary festival in The Hague. James Kelman read his brutal short story "Acid". It was over in a minute but it stayed with me for years. It's included in the recently published "Tales Of Here And Then"

A little bird tells me that Inside Central Station is coming back for a third series. I enjoyed writing the titles music and being filmed miming along on the piano that sits in the main concourse. And then there was the Christmas Special too, of course...

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Recording my new Christmas Special - “Eric Morecambe’s Glasgow Sleigh Ride”.

A post shared by Francis Macdonald (@francismacdonald) on Sep 4, 2019 at 5:13am PDT

Right. People to do, things to see. I'm offski.