Stuart Maconie makes for a chatty, amiable travelling companion who would definitely stand a round in the pub and the portrait he paints of contemporary England is, perhaps surprisingly, a quietly progressive one.
RADIO Scotland had a proper big story on Monday morning with the whole will-Humza-resign-won’t-Humza-resign breaking story about the First Minister. How big a story? Big enough to get the BBC’s Chris Mason to hustle to London City Airport to grab a flight to Scotland, Mason told Good Morning Scotland. He’d been planning to spend the day in Milton Keynes covering the local elections in England.
Glasgow is a city full of contradictions. A city with a fine radical past, a shipbuilding city, a city that grew the likes of Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie into the national heroes that they were. A city that welcomed Paul Robeson, welcomed Nelson Mandela, and a city that had an extraordinary arts tradition. Still does.
I rather wished that Romesh Ranganathan had kicked off his new Saturday morning Radio 2 show last week with a proper controversial hip hop banger. Something by N.W.A. maybe, or a Geto Boys deep cut.
The son of Ian Dury has carved a distinctive, dark, thrilling musical career that has seen him increasingly emerge from his father’s huge shadow. With its spoken word narratives over funk and hip hop beats, last year’s brief but brilliant album I Thought I Was Better Than You was a high point for his dark, at times dolorous word play.
Edinburgh-based playwright Zinnie Harris’s remix of Shakespeare’s Macbeth returns to the Scottish stage after runs in London and New York.
WHAT’S the most fun you can have listening to the radio? For the last two weeks it’s been catching Courtney Love’s Women on 6 Music. Stripped across Monday to Thursday at the end of each night (all eight episodes are now available on BBC Sounds) the Hole front woman has been telling her life story from childhood to stardom, and from marriage to Kurt Cobain to his tragic death and beyond.
REASONS to be cheerful, let’s face it, are difficult to find in 2024. The world’s on fire, Donald Trump is still a thing, and newspapers are attacking the National Trust over a scone recipe. But at least we have a new record from The Zutons.
So, here we go, 10 Scottish albums worth rediscovering. Of course this is a totally partial, subjective list picked for effect, and on a hiding to nothing. But that’s the fun of it, right?
WE are a little early for our meeting with John Burnside. A week too early, according to his diary. “I’ve got you down for next Friday,” he says as Gordon the photographer and I crowd into his office in Kennedy Hall at St Andrews University and try to find seats amongst all the books.
