I rather wished that Romesh Ranganathan had kicked off his new Saturday morning Radio 2 show last week with a proper controversial hip hop banger. Something by N.W.A. maybe, or a Geto Boys deep cut.
The son of Ian Dury has carved a distinctive, dark, thrilling musical career that has seen him increasingly emerge from his father’s huge shadow. With its spoken word narratives over funk and hip hop beats, last year’s brief but brilliant album I Thought I Was Better Than You was a high point for his dark, at times dolorous word play.
Edinburgh-based playwright Zinnie Harris’s remix of Shakespeare’s Macbeth returns to the Scottish stage after runs in London and New York.
WHAT’S the most fun you can have listening to the radio? For the last two weeks it’s been catching Courtney Love’s Women on 6 Music. Stripped across Monday to Thursday at the end of each night (all eight episodes are now available on BBC Sounds) the Hole front woman has been telling her life story from childhood to stardom, and from marriage to Kurt Cobain to his tragic death and beyond.
REASONS to be cheerful, let’s face it, are difficult to find in 2024. The world’s on fire, Donald Trump is still a thing, and newspapers are attacking the National Trust over a scone recipe. But at least we have a new record from The Zutons.
So, here we go, 10 Scottish albums worth rediscovering. Of course this is a totally partial, subjective list picked for effect, and on a hiding to nothing. But that’s the fun of it, right?
WE are a little early for our meeting with John Burnside. A week too early, according to his diary. “I’ve got you down for next Friday,” he says as Gordon the photographer and I crowd into his office in Kennedy Hall at St Andrews University and try to find seats amongst all the books.
There was a time when Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck (Brucie and Tarby) were, for some of us, the unacceptable face of light entertainment.
Andrew O’Hagan meets me in the kitchen of his flat on the top of a tenement in Edinburgh’s New Town. The flat is as elegantly turned out as he is. Maybe O’Hagan’s colour palette is a little more restrained than the interior design of his surroundings, but he clearly fits in here.
It’s a history that takes in the Reformation, witchcraft, battles, shipwrecks and the condescension of the author of Waverley and Ivanhoe. The result is a fresh take on the story of Scotland that reminds us that there is never one story.
