Gimme Shelter

This is Worlds week and as usual the city of Glasgow is thronging with pipers and drummers and all kinds of related Piping Live! events. It’s looking like a damp week (to put it mildly) is in store for pipers and drummers. Between “heavy rain showers”, “light rain showers” and “light rain” the cape carriers of the pipe band world will be sure to be under-employed. A good thing a lot of the Piping Live! events are either indoors or under cover.
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Just as I Would’ve Played It

A while back I was going on about how I thought most of us go about listening to music – specifically, bagpipe music. My ramble was around how we should try and get over the discomfort we feel (that’s the delicate way of putting it) when we hear musical interpretations outside of what we’re used to hearing – or playing.
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Dublin Advice: Keep Off the Grass

I had the good luck to be in Dublin for a couple of days in January. Great place. Loved it. Wished I’d more time. Anyway.
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Bring on the Giraffes: Blair Drummond

Have you ever considered, thought about, reflected on, what pipe tune you may’ve have played the most in your life? What melody you, as a piper – or, as an accompanist, a drummer – have played more than any other? Have wiggled your fingers, twisted your wrists, and aimed to be true to the score of more than any other that was ever written? I have. And my burned-on-the-brain, firmly committed-to-muscle-memory, impaled-on-the-hard-drive? Well, here’s a hint: it’s the name of a Scottish “safari park”.
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Rab Wallace / College of Piping Down on Canada?

I was at band practice today and one of the guys mentioned they’d come across a blurb on Rab Wallace’s blog where he slagged off the Toronto Police Pipe Band. How odd, I thought. Rab’s always been nothing but a professional when it comes to providing considered opinion. Anyway, I’m home now and checked out the offending words. And surprise: they’re offending. Here’s one of his entries:
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Poetic Passion

A thought today, just as we enter the fray of the sometimes twisted piping/pipe band “music season”:
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5 Seminal Moments in Pipe Band History

The trouble with trying to nail down a seminal moment is you can only really choose from your own experience – moments you’ve lived through – or – imagine past “moments” in history and choose accordingly. Either way, in picking important moments in time, no matter how thoughtful and reflective you think you’ve been, it all comes down to opinion. And we all know the world needs more of that.

In this list I’ve stayed away from competition winning streaks; I’m not sure record-breaking fits in that well with the definition I’m using: those moments that might be defined as “highly original and influencing the development of future events”.

So here’re my five “seminal” moments; I haven’t cast them in stone, of course, and these could all change tomorrow:
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5 Things that Revolutionized the Pipe Band

I was building a list in my big square head – perfect, I thought, to note here: “Seminal Moments in Pipe Band History”. Anyway, as I started thinking and writing I found two lists developing: “inventions” and “moments”. My “seminal moments” sit in a draft file, the easier list is here. So here, I suggest, are five of the most important inventions, or developments, that went a long way to make the modern pipe band the impressive thing that it is today.
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The Captain (and Me)

Colin MacLellan sent along a few photos this week. All have become instant treasures. Colin was in town this weekend and while the memory is still fresh (in a hazy sort of way) of me seeing him the last away at 4:30 this morning following a post-competition party, I pass it along here.
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A Smart Ashes’ Prediction

The Icelandic ash thing ain’t going away. I wonder how news that makes headlines like today’s “Ash cloud set to close Scottish airspace” will affect the overseas attendance of pipers and pipe bands at the late summer competitions in Scotland?
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