The Unexpected Rock

[glenatron]

The last two nights have been very cool. This evening we had an Australian instructor visiting who I think is one of the top teachers in the world and he was excellent. John (our normal teacher) is one of the highest graded british masters, although you wouldn't think it if you passed him in the street, so we do very well anyway but it is always good to have a different angle on things. I am slowly starting to understand how I can work with distance ( which is something that I have particular problems with because I'm almost always taller than my opponents ) and I picked up some really useful pointers today. I also escaped major bruising, which is always a pleasure.

Last night, by way of an early birthday night out, we went (with my mum and my brother) to see hoary middle-aged scot-rockers Runrig play in Southampton. Given their combination of age, middle-of-the-road qualities and epic lack of cool they had absolutely no right to kick even half as much ass as they did. Realising the audience would tend towards middle-age the Guildhall staff had put the seats out but everyone was on their feet and the majority were dancing in the aisles. The band played like a group of outstanding musicians with absolutely nothing to prove creating a big old party for a bunch of old friends, which I guess was kind of what they were doing. New ( not that new, as he's been with them six years now) singer Bruce Guthro was canadian and charming and Malcolm Jones, always an outstanding musician, was playing like a demon, switching from guitar to midi bagpipes and back repeatedly - often within one song. Since I first saw them (about twelve years ago) they have started to cut loose a lot more musically and among the classic songs that I grew up with some of the real highlights where the parts where they were rocking out on old scottish dance tunes. One of those times you just have to suspend all disbelief and give yourself up to the atmosphere of the show. Fantastic!

Comments

[spoondog.livejournal.com]

Bless.

[life-of-tom.livejournal.com]

i just love the the idea of someone going from bagpipes to guitar in one song. In my head, he used some kind of jimmy page-esque bagtar or guitarpipes. glad to see someone i know isn't being affected by the current live music curse that us cardiff folk seem to be living through....

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

It was slightly more mundane because the bagpipes were basically a midi chanter that was wired to a stand at approximately the right height so he would just swing the guitar onto his back and pick that up and vice versa. It still looked damn cool, though.