Dan G

Awesome glad to hear it! I was gutted I didn't go to that one - had all intentions of going when it was announced but my first child was born in February, so priorities and all that. I did see them the last time they played in glasgow on the failed states tour (with comeback kid who I also love). That was amazing - I was up in the front row screaming all the words and generally pretending to be half my age for one of the first times I can remember since I was actually half my age*. *Misery Signals at king tuts in 2005 was probably the last time I did that, but being 22 back then I guess it was acceptable.

Drummonds and Tunnels were my favourite venues to play between 2006-08 - might have been as much to do with the promoter, sound engineers and crowds that were there at that time as much as the venues themselves though. Played Lava/Kef tonnes of times with various bands between 2002-2005... good memories, although never thought the sound was great on or off stage, it was overly dark, sticky and creaky floor, and my overriding memory of that is Paul Lava's "Four local bands...£8 please" door policy. Still had some great times there and is probably the venue, along with (Dr) Drakes that I am most to thank for giving me live experience with bands in formative years. I'm turning this back to the ab-music memories thread aren't I...

I'm 100% with you on both Iteration (great song) and the production of TETA - I've read a good couple of interviews with Chris where he's said he tried to be too controlling yet didn't know what he was doing, and retrospectively hates the likes of the guitar sound on that album. Although one of the reasons I enjoy the more recent albums is the duel guitars...coming more from a background of prog and metal, I'm a fan of layered recordings, complex arrangements etc and Supporting Caste onwards naturally fits towards my personal tastes. And yeah I was also exactly the same regarding 'Lower Order'... on first few runs through of an album I normally focus on the music as it's far easier to take in the riffs and melodies, rather than concentrating on every word. And when it got to that song, much like you, I'm thinking "oh great, a major key, clean, happy song". But on about play 4 or 5 I start listening to the words, and I remember driving in my car - eyes glazing over, lump in throat about how palpably heartbreaking it was. From that, the lyrics made the music make sense and now I think it's actually my favourite song on the album! Crazy. There are hardly any other songs in the world that can make me shed a tear, and in fact the only other one that comes to my head is Potemkin City Limits; Chris paints such an amazingly vivid story about Frances the pig running away from the slaughterhouse... like a darker Disney movie (although having said that, Lion King and Bambi etc were pretty savage).

I do quite like Todays Empires and Potemkin City Limits, but find both albums have about 40% that like you with Failed States I could take or leave. Both have some absolutely awesome songs on though (Back to the Motor League, A Speculative Fiction, Rock for Sustainable Capitalism to name a few). The last 3 albums I love from start to finish however... was initially disappointed with Victory Lap and then 5 listens in I was like "Oh NOW I get it" and love it. You're right with Supporting Caste though - just sublime and one of those genuinely life changing albums.

PROPAGANDHI - the albums Supporting Caste, Failed States & Victory Lap Propagandhi are the best punk band of all time imho - I say that as someone who comes from a metal back ground too. Great songs, super technical but never unnecessarily flashy/wanky, and incredible lyrics. They are probably the only band other than Tool whose lyrics I REALLY make a point to listen to and analyse.

Bristol still has the likes of Southampton, Birmingham, Exeter and Cardiff within that 2 hours drive time. Aberdeen only has Dundee within that sort of range. It may feel a little isolated - but I drive past Bristol (to Devon) every year and although it's a bit coastal - it never feels like it's miles away from everywhere. Furthermore, touring bands will stop by Bristol because it's on the way to (or at least in the vicinity of) other places nearby. There's almost no reason to come to Aberdeen because from there you are just going straight back down south. Unless you want to drive another 3 hours north to inverness, on shitty roads and in shitty weather just to play to somewhere that's barely worth playing if you are a even vaguely established band.

Yeah completely agree - and you could actually even 'tour' by working during the day (maybe leave an hour early), play the gig and drive home at night, and repeat in another city the next day. No need to worry about finding a place to crash or sneaking 5 guys into a single Premier Inn room. We once did a one-off gig in Manchester too. Except we didn't know it had been cancelled until we got there... absolutely savage. And as you'll be well familiar with, the time to drive a distance in a tour van is nowhere near the same as a car. Organising 5 people, loading in gear, van being slower etc. Aberdeen to manchester via car = 6 hours. Via van it's what...9-10?

Played to 2 people in a dive bar in Torquay once. Probs wasn't worth what was essentially a 500 mile round trip.

The internet/streaming/downloading has changed things drastically. (Kind of the equivalent of what Facebook has done to this place - although I'd say that the decline of a music scene has also contributed) Regarding the internet; firstly - on the plus side, if someone from Aberdeen was supremely talented then there is a chance that with the right exposure they could get noticed. Of course this would likely lead to a best case scenario of a million youtube hits or spotify streams, so unless they were to start touring it's unlikely that any form of internet fame would lead to a financially viable/sustainable career. However on the downside, music is far more expendable now. People don't buy CDs or hang around record shops because you can have whatever song you want right here, right now, for free. There will always be people into music, buying vinyl and attending gigs, but that doesn't necessarily make it viable for venues to stay open. I don't think it's a coincidence that Our price, Fopp, One-up, Virgin and Zavvi have gradually disappeared over the years, with the music venues having done similar. If people kept going to gigs like they used to, venues would still be open and bands would still be playing them. Possibly this is down to indie and rock scenes not being what they used to, whereas computer-generated music is as popular as ever? Unless I am mistaken, this is the first time there isn't a form of band-based music that is a trend/in vogue right now... that hasn't been the case since rock music took off in the 1960s (classic rock, punk, hair-metal/new-wave, grunge, brit-rock, pop-punk/nu-metal, emo etc etc came and went...what is there now?) I'm rambling - but I'm sure there is a good argument in there somewhere.

What about the X-Certs? Sure they live in Brighton these days, but they are from Aberdeen and spent their formative years plying their trade at all the venues here, back when there was plenty of venues to do so. Although the fact they had to move to Brighton to make-it says it all... Aberdeen music scene used to be great - but it was also very insular. Back when I was more heavily involved in it 10-15 years ago there were plenty of bands that built up strong fan bases in Aberdeen but who didn't often venture outside it. I'm sure there are many factors why, but geographic location is by and large to 'blame'. From my point of view, here's why: My own band at the time started to get a lot more serious around 2005 and we began playing a load more shows outside Aberdeen - frequently playing the likes of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee and Inverness as well as using all our holidays from our jobs to do week or 2 tours of the rest of the UK. After a few years of doing this we were signed to a good label, had an album out in all major retailers and were starting to get mentioned in magazines etc - although let me state now I wouldn't so much as dare to say we even came close to 'making it'. However I would say we could have made a lot more of the band if we were based down south. The main reason is because it is a massive amount of effort and expense to play one-off shows outside Aberdeen (the fee you get paid probably won't even cover your petrol costs). If you have a job and bills to pay, it just isn't feasible to regularly take an afternoon off work to drive a 6-hour-minimum round trip to Glasgow on a week night. We used to do this as often as we could, but not enough to get to that next level. On top of that, from Aberdeen you can only really go South to find a big city to play - and even then there's only really Glasgow that is of major significance (Edinburgh's music scene/venues were nowhere near as good as you would expect from a city of nearly half a million, at least from my experience - and even though I'd say it's totally worth it, you aren't gonna make it from playing Dundee and Perth on a regular basis). Compare this to being from (say) Manchester, you have the likes of Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, and Birmingham a 1-2 hour drive away! Put simply, if you are from Aberdeen (and assuming you are talented enough to make it), you need to quit your job and go full time or relocate down south. And if you are dedicated enough to do the former, you might as well do the latter anyway. (This is just my experience, which is based on playing in the metal scene in the mid-late 2000s. I fully appreciate if this doesn't apply to other genres or eras)

Will Tool finally get round to releasing an album this year? I'd bet more on Rune having his ban rescinded and popping up on here again. Is it too much to ask for both?

I'm now interested in who your recommendations are for the latter category? (off the top of my head, I'd put in a vote for Gina Linetti from Brooklyn 99...)

ha! I love this, and it's so true that people can't understand the difference between subject and target. Ricky Gervais actually addressed this in his latest stand-up when he was taken to task over a rape joke. He demonstrated how the subject isn't the target with the following: A woman walks into a police station, goes up to a policeman and says "help, help, I've just been graped!". "Don't you mean 'raped'?" the policeman asks. "No" she replied "there was a bunch of them" I had a similar experience on a different forum. Years ago I used to be an avid poster on COYS (Tottenham supporters) forum. There was an incident regarding the former Chelsea physio who was an attractive lady, and I made some smutty, double entendre style comment. Whilst at worst my comment could have been seen as childish, it couldn't have been construed as sexist given there was no prejudice involved, and any objectification of women was only implied rather than literally stated. Furthermore the whole point of it was to ironically take-the-piss out of the neanderthal "lads, lads" football culture. Anyway, I got threatened with a site ban from some humourless mod with the phrase "there is no place for sexism on COYS". I pointed out that whilst my comment was; a) no sexist and b) meant sarcastically, there indeed WAS a place for sexism on COYS, given they had an entire sub-forum dedicated to pictures of semi-naked celebrity women, followed by streams of comments along the lines of "I'd love to destroy her farter".

The scene when Arnie is cutting out his eye in Terminator is as dated/unbelievable as anything in Star Wars*. I find that scene takes me out of the story more than any other moment in either film, including all the puppets in Star Wars. You could write a zillion page document on why Star Wars is arguably the greatest piece of cinema ever, or at least why it's the most popular - whether it's on the basis of characters, storyline, effects, score, groundbreaking-ness, quotability etc... however I fully appreciate that some people simply don't get it - usually those who didn't grow up with it, or who's parents didn't like it. * I say that as someone who's favourite movies are the first Star Wars trilogy, and the best imho 3 Arnie films (T1, Predator, T2). I'm not at all disagreeing with you that Alien(s) and Terminators 1&2 are absolutely superb films - effects in Alien especially holds up today in the way that Jurassic Park also does. Pisses all over the CGI laden films that started to dominate in the 2000s.

snakes and ladders

Smiling Politely supported by Amnesia (Stuart Maxwell's first band) at the old Student Halls at Kepplestone, year 2000. Swiftly followed by Tar, at RGU union, during freshers week (also 2000).

My grandad, Jim, used to go to all your gigs back in the day but he always said you were probably nearer the eight or ninth best garage band that he'd seen in the early 80s. Though to be fair he did say he only ever saw 8 or 9 garage bands in the 80s. He did tell me the story about you guys NEARLY getting in trouble for making too much noise though...said it was up there the raucous behaviour of the Norwegian black metal church burnings of the early 90s and the crazy stuff Ozzy Osbourne used to get up to back in the day. Sadly he's dead (Jim, not Ozzy. Although to be fair, the latter is just a matter of time)

The song you are thinking of is "Get Away, Get Away" by Aunt Bessie and the Milky Bar Man.

Between the Buried and Me - Automata I Rivers of Nihil - Where Owls know my name Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth There are my 3 favourite albums of the year so far.

I gots to pay for it somehow!

About a year ago, outside HMV on Union Street, an obvious crackhead gave me the same old 'I'm pregnant/been kicked out by my husband' story. She was balling her eyes out asking for money for a bus to Stonehaven/the hospital (it wasn't overly clear). I told her no, and that I didn't have any change - which was a) true, but b) I also would have said no if my pockets resembled Scrooge McDuck's basement of doubloons. As soon as she realised I wasn't buying it, her mug went from greetin' to normal* in a split second and she stormed off, to repeat her efforts to someone else. *By 'normal', I mean normal by crackhead standards.

Wife walks in from the door after a long day, looks around the house in amazement everything's tidied... But remembered waging a bet she'd give her husband the blow if he was to tidy up for once. She creeps into bed thinking about her plan to do the deed now while he is asleep, so she can get it over with without the gloat and smug from her husband. After she finished, she heads across the hallway to the bathroom to clean up... In shock... To find her husband coming out of the shower. 'What the fuck are you doing in there!?' She screams, in shock, confusion and disgust. "I know", he says. "It would make far more sense for me to shower in our bedroom ensuite. By the way, you've got some spunk on your face"

Moving to somewhere it costs £87 for a pint doesn't sound like the best plan for an alcy.

That's a relief!

Shit - Craig passed away? I don't think I knew that, but that's sad. I'll share my 'textbook Craig' story... Standing outside ToGo kebab shop after a night at Moshulu. Craig obviously steamboats, goes and order a doner kebab. Once it arrives he walks outside and immediately drops it on the pavement. Heaving a heavy, pissed sigh, he goes back in ToGo and repeats his order. Steps outside with doner #2 and repeats the same as before, kebab splattered all over the pavement. At this point I see the cogs turning in his brain, and he's alternating his blurred gaze between the pavement and the kebab shop. He ultimately decides the best course of action - rather than to splash out on a third kebab and risk it happening again - is to scoop his dinner off the salubrious cobbles of windmill brae, piece it back together and shameless scoff it down.