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Dangerously good form
A tale filters through of rumours circulating last week that Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) had been booked into the Holiday Inn, on the night of his Celtic Connections 100th birthday concert – a tale that turns out to contain more truth than might seem possible. Checking into the hotel ahead of the show was a senior executive from the main US record label involved in the Guthrie centenary – only the receptionist couldn’t find her reservation. When it was eventually traced through the system, it turned out that the room had been booked and its key-card printed in the name of Woody Guthrie – presumably by a non-music fan of relatively tender years.
Read More...The Celtic Triangle
It being Thursday - and thus a full week into Celtic Connections 2012 - Apollo 23 reopens its portals tonight as the Festival Club, beckoning you in to another dimension of experience altogether. The scarily small three-way radius between there, the Concert Hall and the Holiday Inn positively invites comparisons with the notorious Bermuda Triangle – both being hotspots for major glitches in the time/space continuum, where time, objects and people mysteriously vanish and reappear in unexpected places. In the club, these temporal irregularities and elasticities frequently result in exchanges like this: “Hiya! How’re you doing? Long time no see.” “No it’s not: I had a long conversation with you last night. And the night before.” It also gets to the point where you’ll be talking about last night, when in fact you actually mean yesterday morning. (Think about it.) The intermittent mobile signal in Apollo 23 doesn’t help matters either, what with texts often taking a couple of hours to transmit, and neither does the fact that all four faces of ‘sculptor’ George Wyllie’s running-legged clock outside the bus station are permanently stuck at midnight.
Read More...The Number of the Beast
A slightly spooky moment in the blog bunker yesterday, when we glanced at the last instalment’s wordcount just before posting it up – and saw that it was exactly 666 words long. And it was Day 6 of the festival.
Read More..."A town to keep me movin', keep me groovin' with some energy"
Louisiana legend Aaron Neville has enjoyed a rich diversity of experiences in his 71 years – but today was nonetheless surely the first time he’s had a birthday cake piped into his dressing room, ahead of his Main Auditorium show tonight, this extra celebratory flourish coming courtesy of Finlay MacDonald, who reports, unsurprisingly, that Neville is “one serious dude”. All in a day’s work...
Read More...Enter our competition!
There seems to be a broad consensus that Celtic Connections 2012 enjoyed a pretty spectacular opening weekend, on a variety of fronts. Reports of amazing five-star gigs were flooding in from all over, with recent dispatches including Blair Douglas’s landmark Gaelic Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral on Saturday, and Sunday’s thrilling world première of Sally Beamish’s fiddle and harp concerto Seavaigers, collaboratively written with Chris Stout and Catriona McKay, who performed it with the massed strings of the Scottish Ensemble. Plus of course the monumental buzz engendered by the first Bring It All Home show, in memory and celebration of the late Gerry Rafferty - to be continued tonight.
Read More...Survival tips and soup
As Celtic Connections survival tips go, Cathy Jordan’s reflected both long-seasoned experience and true devotion to the cause. “So my work here is done,” she told the audience at the end of her headline gig on Friday, having triumphantly launched her first solo album All the Way Home. “So I’m going to write the name of my hotel on the back of my badge – so you’ll know where to deposit me if you find me.” In fact, she was still due to perform with Dervish at Le Vent du Nord’s inspirational 10th birthday bash the next night, but clearly that didn’t count as work – and neither did sitting in with the Turtle Dukhs on bodhran for a sizzling Festival Club set later on.
Read More...Too much fun
Sidling into the Festival Club about 1.30 last night, Donald Shaw surveyed the scene with mock suspicion and commented, in his best affronted-Highlander fashion, “There seem to be rather a lot of young people enjoying themselves in here.” There certainly were, along with plenty of those old enough to know better, as Irish banjo ace and singer Damien O’Kane, flanked by the trusty figures of John Joe Kelly on bodhran and guitarist Ed Boyd, powered through his second stonking set of the night – taking in a brilliantly cheeky blast of the Muppets’ theme tune - after opening for the fabulous Cathy Jordan at the Tron.
Read More...Festival firsts
It was an opening night with a few salient differences, but which kicked off Celtic Connections’ orgy of musical magic and hedonistic mayhem in typically full-throttle style. The UK debut of Béla Fleck’s reunion with all the original Flecktones may not have been officially designated as the Opening Concert – a deliberate departure from previous years’ specially commissioned inaugural shows – but nonetheless it was, complete with nonetheless gala atmosphere. The effervescent 1300-strong crowd was comprehensively in raptures – complete with standing ovation - the Flecktones’ famously flamboyant and seminally pioneering percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten was in pirate costume (as is his wont), and the band was joined by a glittering constellation of mainly Celtic guests: singers Kathleen MacInnes, Karan Casey and Abigail Washburn, guitarist John Doyle, Mike McGoldrick on flute, whistles and pipes, Martin O’Neill on bodhran and US fiddle genius Casey Driessen. A spectacular and seamless 20-minute medley spotlighting each of these in turn, exquisitely backed by Fleck and his men, will be lodged in many people’s permanent musical memories. Washburn also brought the house down with her paraphrasing of a Chinese love-song, whose lyrics segued from dreamy romanticism to graphic pragmatism with an abruptness apparently characteristic of that tradition: “She’s so lovely, she’s so beautiful, I wonder if she’s good at making babies?”
Read More...Lorries, logistics, divas and discount deals
As the final hours ticked down to today's opening concert, with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and their various special guests already arrived and in rehearsal, the atmosphere at Celtic Connections HQ was described by one key member of the team as "part well-oiled machine…and part flat panic." The behemoth lorries bearing the requisite tonnes of hired-in PA equipment had been and gone, their contents loaded in around town to complete the kitting out of this year's record 20 venues – and festival staff were already fielding the last-minute phone-calls from musicians that always put the icing on the multi-tiered Celtic Connections cake.
Read More...One last blast!
Are we gluttons for punishment or what? I'm specifically addressing the fellow diehard faithful who – after 18 days and nights of this nonsense - saw out the Festival Club right to the death at 4 o'clock this morning. And most specifically of all, I'm addressing (with suitably awed admiration) a certain Mr Findlay Napier, who – after closing down the last of the Late Night Sessions he's been compèring all festival, at 3am – legged it down to the Art School not, as you might imagine, to relax with a well-earned pint, but to get up on stage with a horde of partners in crime and round off the night's (morning's) entertainment.
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