End of Year Com-Pan-dium

There’s been a rush of traffic to these pages in the past few days since the airing of Mayflies on the BBC. Keith Martin, the real-life Tully, was a true character of the Irvine music scene and beyond and I watched from the periphery as he and his close-knit gang of pals whipped up a storm of creativity and ideology around them.

John Peel famously played Keith’s band, The Big Gun‘s Heard About Love. “I must say, I like that immoderately,” he said at the time. I bet you read that in Peel’s laconic drawl too…

The Big Gun – Heard About Love

Had Irvine been Manchester or even East Kilbride, I daresay we’d have had our very own scene on our hands. Well, we did, but no one knew about it until now. Those times really deserve a dedicated piece of their own, something that I should look at putting right in the new year.

When Keith died back in 2018, I wrote a piece that has been visited many times over, even more so this week. If you missed it, you can find it here.

Other articles worth a second look, or a first look if you are but a casual browser around here, follow below. Call them 2022’s Greatest Hits if you like.

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Read about Khruangbin and their whacked-out desert blues here.

If real-life Berlin Wall escapees and Cold War paranoia is your thing, click here.

Akin to Mayflies and the glue of friendship, here‘s the story of mix tapes, dirty magazines and going to see Primal Scream in Ayr.

That time when, along with the Trashcan Sinatras and Gideon Coe, I was the headline act at Aye Write.

Just how great were Buzzcocks?

Busking at the British Open. Guest appearance from Tom Watson. True story here.

The definitive article on The The, here.

Grand plans for Flaming Lips‘ Do You Realize? here.

Some writing about people-watching in New York City, here.

An article on Frankie Knuckles‘ Your Love, the greatest house record ever recorded.

Hopefully you’ll find something new, or rediscover something you read previously and then disappear down a rabbit hole of words and tunes. It’s all about the words and tunes. Always. Thanks for reading.

Back in 2023.