Marillionboy

Forums are just ace aren't they, thanks for all the input folks. I always used the MD at the gym and walking about, thought it was the perfect thing! Wow, recordable vinyl....I seriously like that!!!!! I wonder if it will be possible to still buy the blank vinyls after 2009!

Plenty of people suit glasses, but I certainly don't. I don't even suit sunglasses! I had a contact lense check last week and was convincved I was gonna be told my eyes were no longer able to tolerate them and I was already thinking I'd have to save for laser treatment but thankfully all was fine... Savced again as Genesis once said. But Hog you've nothing to worry about, can see you suiting them, my head is just all wrong for glasses.

Won't be able to record onto Cd though...

An MP3 player is no use to me as I don't have a PC (use a work one) yet and also I want a medium I can store stuff on long term and listen to elsewhere as well as on an MP3 player, eg radio programmes. Thought minidisc would be perfect for that but I think good old fashioned audio tape is winning out.

Aye I mean CDs were supposed to be resisitant to you spreading jam on them...yeah right! April, thanks for your reply, that's explained the problem. The ones that have buggered do have a little...and I mean a little! dust inside...the trouble is the thing that protests them from dust breaks off quite easily! Recordable vinyl...it ain't gonna happen now is it?

Alas that isn't it, because it happens on lots of different discs. Are minidiscs supposed to be fragile or indestructible? Cos mine ain't! And the disc freezes, won't play on, you have to skip to the next track.

The one thing I will concede is that classic music, especially choral stuff, is more suited to CD, as it requires absolute purity and cleanness of sound.

Is it just me or are minidiscs actually a load of rubbish? Every one of my minidiscs now sticks on certain tracks. Does this hapopen to anyone else? I don't thinkn they can just have got dirty, and if that is the reason they are impossible to clean! Could be my player but the faults are always at the same places on the discs whenever i play them that seems unlikely...

Someone once described Diamond Lifde by Sade as the al;bum the CD was invented for and that was pot on...soulless, even music for soulless even yuppies. I actually do quite like that album now although I hated it at the time but to me its the only sort of music that can actually sound any better on CD because it has so little variation in tone, mood or spirit. No sudden snares crashing in!

Thing is, people tell me it'sa yearning for the old days...the old days thing isn't really the issue. People assume it is, because at one time vinyl was the only medium. The reason why kids of 17 choose vinyl and why house DJs go for it is not because they yearn for the days whern Nursery Cryme was on display in shop windows in a gatefold cover, but simply because it is a muso's medium for what of a better term. The sales are low due to vinyl being pushed out of the market deliberately by the industry, but unlike video being replaced by DVD it is not a change for the better. The industry makes so much money it should spare a thought for retaining a more sophisticated option for those who don't just buy the latest Robbie Williams album and leave it lying on the out of its box. Vinyl scracthes won't affect playback like CD scratches will and vinyl these days is a lot more durable thasn it was. Album artwork also is now not to the same level due to the lack of detail discernable on a cd cover. I just hate the things, their only advantage is size and tapes and MP3s and minidiscs take care of that now anyway. I know the average person doesn't really mind but I think the industry should continue keep the more soophisticated option available as they do currently. Vinyl costs more which i'm happy to pay but the low sales are a strange thing for them to bring up considering a vinyl costs about 2p to manufacture and probably has the biggest profit margin in the business! it ain't crippling them!

Vinyl is not only my favorutie form for music but one of my favourite things in the world. Like Ms Bodast said I largely buy old stuff but anything new that appears I will always hunt for it on vinyl first, recently picked up Doves, Mercury Revs Beta Band etc all on vinyl. CDs do have "better" or clearer sound but that is to me part of the problem. They are sterile. As Roger Daltrey said, when a generation moved over to CDs it lost more than just a format. You inhabited vinyl, you had a large piece of cover art, a gatefold to study, a scratch that made a click at a certian moment that was personal to you. Also Cds encourage lazy listening, they get shoved on and then play in the background. Watching a needle drop on a record and SEEING it journey across it is an exciting thing. CDs were pushed into the market and to em the only advantage of them pushing vinyl out was being able to listen to music on the move and also back cataloguer stuff becoming more readily available. But when they appeared they were supposed to be indestructable. They are shit, they scratch easily and jump. Vinyl well looked after is much hardier, and also has a liver sound. Nothing picks up good drumming as well as vinyl. Thing is barely anyone even buys it nowadays anyway, most people I know are surprised it even exists for anyone except DJs.

That's a terrific tale! It's a brave man who punches that bloke!

Its so true. ALso the harder you work the harder you play: when you're unemployed its a seven day weekend with no money and you are permanently lethargic. When I left Uni because I'd decided I wanted to write I took a summer out to do nothing but that, but got bugger all done apart from sleeping and drinking. Got a job and wrote three plays in a year.

Thanks so much Flossie. I'm currently reading about three books at once (I always do this!) while writing one of my own, but when all that is done I'll definitely seek out the other McLean tomes!

Aberdeen is a terible place to be unemployed in. I'd go for the employment agencies, Manpower etc first as they'll find you something immediately. I think its always easier to start a proper jobsearch and type CVs up and stuff when you are already working, it makes you more proactive.

I actually can't remember but suspect it was in the local pub and was shit. My life didn't start getting brilliant until later on.

Hey we should all share a few in The Ship sometime! Incident was something to do with meeting a guy outside the Ship whose mother came along and dragged him away saying he was told not to drink because it wasn't a good idea with the cancer treatment he was having and the mother and son started to get rather raucous in the street. Sorry can't remember the precise details beyoind that but it was in the daytime: what was your post-gig story?

Fine by me as well! So you an Elgin lad then? I haven';t been out drinking in Elgin for absolute yonks, where's a decent place to go nowadays as I'm gonna be through in a couple of weeks.

Nice one Wish the bloke would tour Field of Crows though and play more of the tracks on it in the process!

Fish actually told me about an incident that occured on the day he last played at Banff where he met a local loony in The Ship...Banff is full of those! My folks live in Fordyce, I tend to drink in either The Shore Inn in Portsoy or occasionally The Boyne, or The Three Kings in Cullen when I'm through. Or in Banff which is good, never been to any pubs in Whitehills... Sorry to hear about the funeral...

Thanks for this, very interesting. Will have to seek out his others, how do they differ from BM in themes and so on?

I totally agree about the money thing, a London cabbie once refused to accept a Scottish tenner saying there was no way of telling if they were fake. Huh!??!?

Sure mate, and also to be honest I think its much better now, I'm talking more 80s/90s when the divide was more prominent. Is it me or is Aberdeen a calmer, happier city now too generally? How do you mean about not accepting our money?

Actually I wasn't be unpatriotic, I am Scottish so knocking the country isn't something I tend to do. Its just a funny feeling when you are considered English and realise how much shit English people have to take individually for situations that they have nothing to do with. "When did English people get the shit kicked out of them on Justice Mill Lane regarding football?" At least five times when I lived in the city after big games. "And how do you know they had the shit kicked out of them for the simple reason that England won the football?" Phrases like "fucking English bastard" being yelled while people in supporters gear were kicking the crap out of them. "That example, and your brush with a dickhead, does not seem significant evidence to condemn the Scottish nation." I wasn't condemning the Scottish nation, just that like any other countries its got some racist people living in it too, and unlike most other places the racism is considered okay because its twowards people of the same skin colour and supposedly over political things.

Best reply I ever heard to this was "at ma father's funeral"