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'Cold Granite' by Stuart Macbride


Lemonade

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L nought Cold Granite on hardback last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, local setting not withsatnding.

Stripey, chill man!

What's your beef with things that don't adhere to your high-brow intellectualised regard? Read, listen and watch before passing judgement. I've learned to do that.

After reading Cold Granite and giving Rankin's Black and Blue a dusting down and a further read for the umpteenth time, it made me boot up the laptop to retrieve the manuscript I've been working on for quite some time and get back in to the story I one day hope will get finished and (hopefully) published.

For you lovers of crime fiction let me recommend Caleb Carr's The Alienist and the follow up Angel of Darkness. I also recommend A J Holt's Watch me.

I dislike the term unputdownable but these three were the epitome of it.

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It's ok' date=' having grown up in Aberdeenshire I'm quite used to the type of anti-intellectual conformist mentality the likes of you so easily succumb to, so I don't think your inability to respond to a genuine opinion without resorting to personal insults warrants any further discussion.[/quote']

You talk of personal insults....

fuck crime novels, I absolutely despise these lowbrow trashy entertainment products because they abuse and cheapen a truly beautiful artform. Crap like this is nothing more than a disgusting, worthless layer of shit which obscures the true nature and value of literature and tricks the uneducated into believing they are reading something that matters. The same can be said of american cinema, and pop music. Everyone is free to read, view or listen to anything they want, but as long as there are idiots around to consume this cultural effluent, the arts will suffer and as a consequence so will society in general.

but its ok for you to call me an uneducated idiot....

Ok here's an insult, you are a pretentious, Superior arse.

Some people (most) dont look to educate or stretch their mind when they read a book watch a film or listen to music, they do it to relax, to escape, or just for fun.

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It just means I would empathise with him more' date=' but I'm not going to cry if he likes Pallas.

If Sherlock Holmes was on the go just now who would he be listening to (hopefully NOT his distant relative David!)?[/quote']

Probably Babyshambles, he'll have heard the demos when Pete, Kate and himself were in the studio "clearing snow".

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It just means I would empathise with him more' date=' but I'm not going to cry if he likes Pallas.

If Sherlock Holmes was on the go just now who would he be listening to (hopefully NOT his distant relative David!)?[/quote']

Pallas need every fan they can get .... even fictitious ones.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest bluesxman

Asda are currently selling it for 3.73 if anyone wants it.

Who are APB? I saw Chilli mention them in connection with The Strokes being an APB tribute band recently....

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This is from 'Lost Bands of the New Wave Era' site...(they were originally from Ellon, I believe)

"Sometimes I don't consider some bands for this site because I feel they are too well known. Many times I am wrong. I'm sure most of you have heard Aberdeen, Scotland's APB. Then again, maybe not. They were very popular in the New York City area due to airplay on the legendary WLIR and "Screamer" status for the song "Shoot You Down". There was a lot of college radio support as well. They never got beyond that in the U.S. APB began recording singles filled with intense, funky bass and wiry guitar in 1981 and a compilation of those singles was released four years later called "Something to Believe In" (Red River, 1985). Their first full-length album, Cure for the Blues, was released the following year, and in 1986, the band released their last recording, a four-track EP "Missing You Already". In 1996 "Something to Believe In" was released on CD along with some bonus tracks and quickly fell out of print. It once had been listed for sale on Amazon for $2500.00. Currently it goes for $119.00

APB was:

George Cheyne - drums

Glen Roberts - guitar

Iain Slater - bass, vocals (now with Pablo)"

Kind of punchy punk/funk...the singles were great, but apparently the album wasn't so hot (although I never heard it).

They supported James Brown in New York, and the book about Aberdeen pop music, "Fit like New York?" was called after their first words at that gig. ( Still miffed I never got a mention in said book, but it came out before I started gigging).

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Guest bluesxman
This is from 'Lost Bands of the New Wave Era' site...(they were originally from Ellon' date=' I believe)

"Sometimes I don't consider some bands for this site because I feel they are too well known. Many times I am wrong. I'm sure most of you have heard Aberdeen, Scotland's APB. Then again, maybe not. They were very popular in the New York City area due to airplay on the legendary WLIR and "Screamer" status for the song "Shoot You Down". There was a lot of college radio support as well. They never got beyond that in the U.S. APB began recording singles filled with intense, funky bass and wiry guitar in 1981 and a compilation of those singles was released four years later called "Something to Believe In" (Red River, 1985). Their first full-length album, Cure for the Blues, was released the following year, and in 1986, the band released their last recording, a four-track EP "Missing You Already". In 1996 "Something to Believe In" was released on CD along with some bonus tracks and quickly fell out of print. It once had been listed for sale on Amazon for $2500.00. Currently it goes for $119.00

APB was:

George Cheyne - drums

Glen Roberts - guitar

Iain Slater - bass, vocals (now with Pablo)"

Kind of punchy punk/funk...the singles were great, but apparently the album wasn't so hot (although I never heard it).

They supported James Brown in New York, and the book about Aberdeen pop music, "Fit like New York?" was called after their first words at that gig. ( Still miffed I never got a mention in said book, but it came out before I started gigging).[/quote']

Cheers sir :up:

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Guest bluesxman
This is from 'Lost Bands of the New Wave Era' site...(they were originally from Ellon' date=' I believe)

"Sometimes I don't consider some bands for this site because I feel they are too well known. Many times I am wrong. I'm sure most of you have heard Aberdeen, Scotland's APB. Then again, maybe not. They were very popular in the New York City area due to airplay on the legendary WLIR and "Screamer" status for the song "Shoot You Down". There was a lot of college radio support as well. They never got beyond that in the U.S. APB began recording singles filled with intense, funky bass and wiry guitar in 1981 and a compilation of those singles was released four years later called "Something to Believe In" (Red River, 1985). Their first full-length album, Cure for the Blues, was released the following year, and in 1986, the band released their last recording, a four-track EP "Missing You Already". In 1996 "Something to Believe In" was released on CD along with some bonus tracks and quickly fell out of print. It once had been listed for sale on Amazon for $2500.00. Currently it goes for $119.00

APB was:

George Cheyne - drums

Glen Roberts - guitar

Iain Slater - bass, vocals (now with Pablo)"

Kind of punchy punk/funk...the singles were great, but apparently the album wasn't so hot (although I never heard it).

They supported James Brown in New York, and the book about Aberdeen pop music, "Fit like New York?" was called after their first words at that gig. ( Still miffed I never got a mention in said book, but it came out before I started gigging).[/quote']

Original CD of Something To Believe in is currently on Amazon for minimum of 100, however a 20th anniversary re-issue going for 7 pound odd on import, think I shall try it out....Peel sessions compilation upcoming too it seems.

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The drummer from APB now works on the art floor of the RGU Garthdee library. Former grays Graduate and apparently he won Aberdeen Artists a few years ago. A painter I believe.

Hey, what did I say! But since you mention it, you're right, he works with my da', which is why I have the inside-track on all things APB

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The last line on the bio page made it quite plain. "Cold Granite is his first novel". Sorry if that pissed all over your pretentious reply.

:up:

Where was the pretention? I know it was his first novel, I just meant that it was obvious in the standard of his writing.

Nothing has been pissed upon because there was nothing to piss on in the first place.

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I haven't read it, not really a fan of crime novels, but I remember getting slightly wound up by how I was getting stick for daring to write about the seamier side of Aberdeen and yet this book, immediately before the first chapter begins, says "And by the way, Aberdeen isn't really as bad as I make out" which seemed a very strange thing to tell your audience just before telling them a story.

Still, I haven't read it so I can't comment beyond that!

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