Robbie Lesiuk

Since they built the Skye Bridge, that song has lost some of it’s romanticism. I have to say though, that Skye is a lovely place - at least the little bit of it I saw. This despite the weather which ranged from light rain, through heavy rain to hailstones and snow.

 It is also despite a couple of locals who were bizarre to say the least. In particular one chap who seemed to be having acid flashbacks every ten minutes. He was rather friendly, seemed to be telling me how much he enjoyed our band, then started mumbling something about 2002 and how he is going to smash somebody’s head in. I declined his offer of a game of pool.

 It was pretty much worth the entire weekend just for the journey though. What a beautiful drive. If only the weather had been a bit nicer and I had more time to stop and take pictures. As it is, have this photo of Eilean Donan Castle, just down the coast on the mainland.

An eventful weekend in Inverness last month resulted in the following:

After the bar staff made a couple of phone calls, we eventually sourced another PA with which to finish the gig. It just so happened to belong to a band whose guitarist hails from Falkirk originally and used to play in a band with me. What a small world it is.

The reason I am babbling on about this now, is that I finally replaced the mixer today with a shiny new one. I am sure for the professional audio experts out there, it’s not the kind of high quality, highly expensive equipment they would recommend, but we were paying for it ourselves and I am sure it will do the job fine.

I thought I would start this post in the style of a letter to “Points of View”. It’s relevant too, because I have a complaint about television.

It’s not against a show however, but commercials. More specifically, the commercials done in a “Vox Pops” style, but which are rather obviously scripted and played by actors. Clearly not very good actors, as more talented thespians may have convinced me it was all genuine. Also, I’m sure one of them turned up as a prostitute on “The Bill” a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t know why is annoys me so much, it’s not like I believe there’s any great truth to other adverts. Maybe it’s because I don’t care what random idiots on the street think in the first place, therefore why would anyone think actors pretending to be random idiots on the street would convince me to buy something.

I say less fake vox pops and more commercials doing stuff with bits of cars. I like those. 

I recently bought a Macbook Pro. For those unaware of Apple’s current laptop computers, the power cord connects to the machine via a magnetic system - just like the guitar lead I bought a while back.

I have to thank whoever thought of doing it. I have now caught my foot on the power cable on at least three separate  occasions, all of which would have been very expensive if the plug had been more difficult to pull out.

Hooray for people who invent technology that allows spack-handed idiots like me to function in normal life.

the more it makes me laugh:

but it made me laugh, so here it is again. 

since I posted anything here. Partly because I have been busy doing proper stuff and partly because I have been spending my internet time making one of my other websites pretty again.www.spirokeet.com is the place i put all the pictures and animations I have made to post at b3ta.com. It’s mostly puerile and immature, but there are some pictures of robots.

Boredom, plus five minutes of PHP coding gives you:

In any recording of a live concert, or any concert footage on TV, there always seems to exist the same phenomenon. People cheer when the band plays their favourite song. This is a good thing, but what tends to annoy me is that the cheering never seems to start until the first words are sung. Regardless of how long the intro has gone on before it.

Maybe I am biased, because I play guitar, but surely you cheer favourite song at the opening guitar lines? Is the throbbing bass introduction not worthy of your applause? Or do people simply not recognise what song is playing until it is confirmed by the lyric?

One of the most recognisable introductions in the history of pop music has to be the plinky-plonky piano intro to “Close to You” by The Carpenters. I’m not a great fan of The Carpenters, but I am fairly sure none of their other songs begin in the same way. Yet, picture the scene; The Carpenters are headlining Glastonbury 2008, they have yet to play their most famous song, it’s getting to the end of their set… when… “Do-doo-d-do-doo….” the piano strikes up that instantly recognisable hook. Silence. Four bars later, Karen Carpenter sings, “Why do bi…” and before she finishes the third word, the place erupts in an overjoyed spackload of cheers and screams.

Of course, Karen Carpenter selfishly had to go and starve herself to death, so my theory can never be tested. Thanks a fucking bunch Karen.

Zoey Van Goey are a band based in Glasgow, with songs so catchy that I still can’t get them out of my head despite it being a couple of months since I saw them play live.

When I was playing with YIFI, Zoey Van Goey, Alan Bissett and ourselves embarked upon a short tour, which was frankly brilliant. Four nights straight of the Zoey’s tunes being beamed into my brain has left an indelible mark and a bit of a craving for more.

Luckily for me, that craving will be quenched shortly when they release their debut single. In fact, it’s already on their myspace page for a preview listen and I have had it on in the background almost constantly since I noticed.

Go and listen for yourself: http://myspace.com/zoeyvangoey, then once you are hooked like me, go along to their single launch night and buy a copy. I am so keen to go, that despite playing a gig in Motherwell on the same night, I am going to drive like a maniac up the M74 as soon as I get off-stage in the hope of catching at least the end of their set.