Jig Blog

Big Jig video : Strip the Willow instructions

I've finally gotten around to getting the video from the first Big Jig off of 8 digital video tapes. Unfortunately, the tapes seem corrupted somehow,which is quite disappointing... I think I have a "be Kind Rewind" video jinx thing going on...

Luckily, I recorded the audio separately so here's a promo video I put together with some stills (courtesy of good pal Simon Varwell) using the good ol' Windoze Movie Maker. It's hard to capture the energy of your typical Jiggers Scottish ceilidh using static images, but it'll have to do until we get another video made! (maybe the Big Jig 3 beckons?)

Glaswegian translators wanted. Gonnie Geeza Joab?

I noticed this BBC article  last month about a company needing Glaswegian-English translators.

Since running Scotland's best wee wedding music agency seemed like tough work in comparison, I decided to email them my application. 

Hi there. You've got to be kidding, right? Do you really need people to translate from Glaswegian? In what context?

I may be able to assist, having a fairly strong haunel oanna Glesga patois (though I have rarely seen it written). Sometimes I slip into it without realising. Gizza joab, eh?

G’oan yersel’

(Kind regards) etc...

----------- 

Today I received the following reply:

Dear Greg Thank you for your interest in the position of Glaswegian Interpreter. We received applications from a large volume of candidates and have been following a careful process to determine the individual best suited to the job.
Unfortunately, on this occasion you have been not been selected. We appreciate your taking time to contact us in relation to this opening, and wish you the best of luck in the future.
With best regards,

Andreas Schwarz

Trainee Project Manager

todaytranslations ltd

-----------------

Shockaroonie.

Not Very Amazing Motivational Posters

Today's XKCD comic got me reminiscing.

When I was younger, I had this poster on my wall. I thought it would impress the girls.

It did. They thought it was a really impressive poster. They still thought I was a bit weird, though.Which was true, I suppose.

The motivational poster has become something of a cliche in recent years, to the extent that sending them up has become something of a pastime for many.

 I love the quotes of Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. But sometimes, you just need something like this to ground you in cold hard reality:

You know you have dealt with this company. More here

If you can't hire the Jiggers Ceilidh Band, maybe call...

If you're planning a wedding, and you've tried to book a good ceilidh band, but they're just not available...If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... These guys...

The Top Secret Drum Corps performing at Edinburgh Military Tattoo, 2006. Astounding, eh? I don't know if you can actually do a Military Two-Step to any of this, but who really cares? (Hat tip to Ian Barclay from Kilter Ceilidh Band for putting this link up)

Star Wars Uncut: could this be a cult smash?

Made entirely by fans doing 15 second segments each.

Crooked Still & Emily Smith: an evening of unreserved cabaret

Just back from the Fruitmarket in Glasgow hearing the excellent Emily Smith support the awesome Crooked Still.

Emily releases her latest album of Burns (Robert, not Montgomery) songs "Adoon Winding Nith". This should get a fair few spins on my compact disc audio device in the next few days.

(Interestingly, the album includes a glossary of the Scots terms used in the songs, which is handy for all you sassenachs out there...and me as well, to be fair. A good reason to buy the CD rather than download it, I think.)

Crooked Still, if you've not heard them, are a virtuosic 5 piece band of fiddle, banjo, cello, upright bass and guitar/singer. Utterly phenomenal. I used to think I could play the cello until tonight. Now I will never again.

Here they are in their former 4-piece line-up.

Interestingly, the tickets, in describing the seating arrangement (tables, with 6 chairs around) say "unreserved cabaret". Strangely apt.

The Joy Of Spam: Your Dog Will Love It.

((There is a cryptic link with the subject of today's post and this picture. All will become clear.))

I pretty much love Microsoft Outlook 2007. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good software, and much more slinky than gmail or any other online mail service I've used.

And one very satisfying feature that I've learned to have a bit of fun with is the customisable spam filtering options. Yes, I'm a geek.

Basically, my email server already has spam filters in place which marks a message as spam based on some complex criteria which I'm not going to go into (for fear of killing both of us).

The result is that when I get a few emails to my inbox, my spam folder gets 20 or 30.

Of course, not all of the messages are spam. The ones that are not are *usually* auto responders from websites I've legitimately signed up for email from.

So I've set up two spam filter procedures that I run manually on all the mail in the Junk folder. One of them looks for specific words in the subject line, the other one looks for words in the subject and body of the email.

Are you still awake? Still with me? WAKE UP!!! Honestly. This is really cool!

The subject line filter includes terms like "iagr" or "ialis" because any email with viagra or cialis (or common misspellings) is 99% likely to be junk mail. And if it's already suspected of being junk for other reasons, this confirms it. Also, things like "diploma" "masters" "degree" are unlikely to be for me.

  It's different for Jiggers emails, obviously, as we tend to play lots of grad balls in Scotland, so that kind of language is more prevalent. (of course, you can set "positive" keywords, too, so that anything with "ceilidh band" or "wedding Glasgow" in it does not get processed as spam)

So I basically look through the junk emails every so often, look for commonly recurring terms (that I would otherwise never expect in legitimate emails) and add those terms to the list.

The subject line filter can be more aggressive than the email body filter, but the same principle applies.

What it means is that every week, I test the effectiveness of my filters. It usually deals with about 90% of the spam in the junk mail folder. I've cultivated it over time to be that effective. It's a labour of love.

That means it's much easier to do a visual scan of what's left (it's amazing how they eye can be trained to identify real mail from spam, isn't it?). You might have an email client that effectively reduces all your spam to zero, but think of the fun you're missing out on!

It turns something annoying into a bit of geek-sport fun. Anything to alleviate the tedium.

And if you think that's all the fun to be had with spam email, have a look at Spamusement which takes the subject line of spam emails and conjectures some kind of image that makes sense of it.

Hence, the spam subject line "your dog will love it" creates the above picture. You need to go down the list, read the subject line first, and then see the picture. Thoroughly spamusing.

A brief guide to electronic music

I've been spending a few hours enjoying this site: Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music. It's rude, ironic, opinionated and really quite funny. But it provides a fascinating insight into the development of electronic music, and traces stylistic strands and influences across such genres as house, hip hop, disco, jungle, dub and numerous ludicrous subcategories (booty bass and terrorcore to name but two).

Many of the inferences and deliniations will no doubt be highly contested by dance afficionados, but to do that is to miss the point. It documents the chemical reaction of culture, youth, media, politics and creativity over the dawn of the electronic age, and highlights key figures, moments and places in the history of electronic music. It also provides numerous audio samples to let you hear for yourself.

The funny thing is that I seemed to come to electronic music from completely the other end. I've grown up with the pop-ified version of electronic music: only the most accessible, catchy material that made it out of the clubs and onto radio (mine was a relatively innocent childhood!) But I didn't necessarily hear anything I definitely wanted to emulate. My musical training was classical and rock & pop. Guitars and keyboards and verse-chorus-bridge stuff.

I first developed an interest in making electronic music when I discover the sequencing software Logic Audio while studying music at uni. It just seemed to make sense, much more than written scores (I've always been poor at sightreading).

The interesting thing is that most of the electronic music I've made has not been consciously imitating certain artists or style. I had no idea that the drum loop I was using under that synth line meant I was making a breakbeat record. Or that adding reverb to that patch made this section sound like epic eurotrance. So it added a kind of naivety, but also a kind of freedom. You just make the music that sounds good to you, and don't worry about whether it's cool, or whether it's been done before. I wonder whether that stands in your favour if you want to get your music noticed? Does it help to "know" the genre you are working in? Or does it just make you seize up, discarding every idea that sounds a little like something else, because you're on a mission to make something original?

I have to say though, I think my favourite genre in this whole list is what he calls "VGM". Video Game Music. Created using the audio chips from Commodore 64s and ZX spectrums, this music was probably the music I listened to more than any other in my youth, and still creates a soft nostalgic feeling when I hear it. You can hear that influence quite strongly in much of my own electronic music. Go listen: it's on the bottom left of the Techno category.

And another great example of this kind of music I discovered today (on Spotify), listen to this.

Rave on, ravers, as my dad used to say.

The coolest event in the history of music

Stevie Wonder playing "Superstition" on Sesame Street. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anything cooler has happened since the day this was recorded. This was the apex of cool. The music rapture. We find ourselves now on the post-eschaton downward curve of global less-cooling.

And I love how the drummer forgets to stop with everyone else. I do that quite a lot myself.

Brother, can you spare $3000 billion?

Look at this diagram. Do you understand it? Tell me what you think it means in the comments section.

via www.informationisbeautiful.net

Statistics are supposed to be able to speak for themselves. They don't, though, really. I mean, even when it is explained what a billion dollars is, what does the concept "a billion dollars" actually mean? Who really understands economics?

HOW MANY CD's IS THAT, EXACTLY?

My wife tends to work out the value of something in CDs. If you rate a CD at £10 (and right away, our figures are outdated), then a new top might cost the equivalent of 3 CDs. Get one, miss out on the other. It works when looking at comparable luxury items. But what about a meal out? How do you quantify the value of a nice evening with friends? 4CDs? It's a different kind of pleasure, with different anticipation and memory, which in themselves are types of pleasure. Already it's breaking down as a unit of measurement.

And what about getting new tyres for the car? 5CDs? This has to be measured against negative propositions...what would the cost be if I had a blow-out at 70mph? How much is hiring a hearse, these days...and how often do they change their tyres?

Comedian George Carlin has a curiously incisive understanding of the true nature of economics. In the end, it's all just "stuff". (NSFW)

New Adventures In Hifi: volume 2, Oxalis Triangularis

...Following on from yesterday's post...

On the subject of moisture getting into the unit, this is coincidentally what happened when I watered the beautiful but slightly wilty oxalis triangularis plant which I had tastefully positioned atop my living room hifi. I had one of those unfortunate "cup runneth over" moments.

 For a while, you had to keep your finger on the play button to play a CD: letting go would switch off the unit. I envisaged that would prove rather impractical at the next party I held.  A little prodding inside the circuitry of the unit with a screwdriver seemed to do the trick. Now it doesn't work at all.

So...Any suggestions on a good midi hifi unit for my living room? I'm thinking about one of these pretty little things from Sony. Visually discrete enough to not require disguising with an oxalis triangularis. Why do they make hifi's in such tasteless,gaudy faux-futurific designs? And who exactly has black furniture nowadays anyway?

DAB radio review: Pure One Elite

This week has seen some new adventures in hi-fi at Jiggers Castle.

I'm an audio snob, I admit. And daily ablutions need a soundtrack. I addressed these consumer needs after much comparisoning (yes it's a word) and opted to get this wee beauty: a Pure One Elite DAB digital radio. £70 from a rather random website here.

It sounds nice. It has stereo.It has treble/bass controls. It's got a cool function where you can rewind live radio, which is natty. It has reasonable clarity and good volume for a radio of this size. It has incremental volume control, which is a bit annoying, as sometimes I really just want it half a db quieter, not 3db. But then, I'm an audio snob. Everything else is details. I'd recommend it, so far, so good.

Instead of buying the £30 battery pack that you have to recharge every week or so (yawn), I opted to drill a hole in the wall and do what every health and safety manual tells you not to. I installed a plug socket in my bathroom.

To reduce the likelihood of my dying, and more importantly to prevent moisture getting into the unit*, I've taped up the edges of the radio. And the days of a 45 minute shower are over, too. So I guess this is good for the environment over all. Especially if it kills me by electrocution. Think of the carbon footprint that would save!

*For more on this subject, tune in tomorrow...

Tell Marshall Guitar Amps What You Think Of Them

 

Hat tip to Zak McFlimby,borderline genius/fruitcake pillar of the thoroughly irreverent b3ta community ... (note, this link may be Not Suitable For Work. I did say "irreverent")

Planning a Jiggers charity ceilidh

A client phoned me this morning. They've booked the ceilidh band for a big Edinburgh ceilidh fundraiser in the Assembly Rooms for the charity FAIRBRIDGE, which works with young people aged 13-25, helping them "develop the confidence, motivation and skills they need to turn their lives around."

They work with people who are NEET : Not in Employment, Education or Training. I think this is an excellent charity, and it's well worth having a look at their website. Also worth reading some of the newspaper articles that mention Fairbridge, too.

I've always thought it would be so frustrating working for a charity: always asking people to give of their time and money, or discounts on their services. Appealing to good will rather than capitalist self-interest always struck me as a difficult route, but it's certainly a vital part of our culture.

It's no easy thing, running these kind of events. There's a lot of competition out there, especially in Edinburgh, where they go in for ceilidhs in a big way.

The Jiggers ceilidh band do offer discounted rates for charity events, and we do our very best to accomodate and support the charities who hire us. I'm happy to mention any public Jiggers events in the blog or newsletter, too! We've also got useful resources for anyone planning and promoting a ceilidh on our website.

And since we're talking about charity, did you know that the Jiggers plant 5 trees for every ceilidh we play? Carbon neutral ceilidh: it's the way forward.

Map of McDonald's Restaurant in the U.S.

If you're unlucky enough to be a cow in the U.S this map might be useful. For the safety of your family, you might consider moving to the  McFarthest Spot. That is, the area located furthest from ANY McDonald's restaurant. It's 145 miles by car from this spot to the nearest Maccie Dee's. I don't know any cows who drive, so I'm assuming you'd have to hoof it.

It's nice to know that if you ever plan to visit the U.S., wherever you go, you're never more than a couple of hours away from some disappointingly flavourless grilled meat.

HT: weathersealed

England: Where I went (and how it smelled)

Just back from a lovely fortnight down in England. It's a nice place. Do you know it? Just a bit south of Glasgow. I like it down there, even though they don't really do mountains properly,and even if they're a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to knowing how to run a ceilidh.

I like to live a bit of a rock and roll lifestyle, I'll admit. I'm a crazy, thrill-seeking, caution-to-the-wind, adventure junkie kind of a chap. So it's unsurprising that the highlight of our holiday was a visit to this place. That's right. We went on a guided tour of a Perfume Factory in the Cotswolds.

It was actually pretty interesting.

No, really.

Centred around the skills of their master perfumer John Stephen, the business depends on his developing and combining scents to create a perfume which successfully tick the boxes of the remit of a corporate client order. It's hardly glamorous. But please enough people in those marketing test groups, and you could find your secret concoction flying out of the door by the thousands of gallons, appearing on a million different shelves around the world.

 And yet it's basically a business that revolves around one guy's nose. That aspect appealed to me as a music producer and songwriter. You can get all the delivery infrastructure you like,whether it's a factory or a multi-faceted delivery and promotion network. But in the end it all comes down to the core product, whether it's a song or a smell. A riff or a whiff, if you will.

 If you ever intend to visit the Cotswolds (and I recommend you do, just to spend a day in the amazingly quaint Bourton-On-The-Water, which looks as though it should be populated entirely by Hobbits) then do go on the 45 minute tour of this factory.

Scents and perfumes is a market dominated by marketing companies. The brands of perfume you buy are nothing more than that: brands. About 80-90% of the cost of the product is ploughed into marketing. The global cosmetics, toiletries and fragrance industry is worth £6.2 billion.

Not something to be sniffed at.

(re: the pictures...Perfume marketing has a glamorous sexy public image, but I like to think these images uncover the startling reality of the seamy underworld where perfume really comes from.)

9 fun years

The band are out playing at a wedding tonight. I'm not with them, because today, my wife and I (hooray!) have been married for 9 years. I think she's awesome, and they've been the best 9 years of my life so far.

 

How does a musician arrange car insurance?

This promises to be the most exciting blog post about insurance that I'm ever likely to write. However, that is like saying that "4 Weddings And A Funeral" is the best film ever made by Richard Curtis which features a funeral and four weddings.

I hope to spice it up a little by including exciting pictures not really related to the blog, the ceilidh band or indeed anything to do with insurance.

Ready? Here goes.

Car insurance costs me a flippin fortune, despite the fact that I have never had an accident, and a number of years of no-claims bonus built up. I'm 30, so I'm probably outside the "psychotically dangerous" age range for guys. "Nul points" on the license (of course! what are you suggesting?!)

Computer says NO, NO, NO.

The problem (apart from my unsettling knack for honesty) is my choice of career. Tell insurance people that you manage and play in a Scottish wedding band, and it seems to blow their circuits.

"Hmm. No... the computer doesn't have that one. What about 'nurse'. Would you say you're a nurse?"

They don't like entertainers, and certainly not music agents, those insurance companies. There's an impending sense of doom attached to finding out that the insurance people, the most hated of all people, are making judgements about my trustworthiness.

They think I might get famous and do an Amy Winehouse on them. I wonder what *her* insurance costs...

ALL OVER THE INTERNET

Our quest to find a company willing to take our cold hard cash from us took us into some slightly worrying areas. My wife had a most surreal experience talking to someone at "Sheila's Wheels", the insurance company whose name suggests that kind of whimsical impulsiveness everyone looks for in a company responsible for handling fatal accident enquiries.

The woman my wife spoke to, however, seemed to have job confusion all of her own, believing somehow that her role was really some kind of careers counsellor, or maybe a clinical psychiatrist.

"I know what the underwriters are afraid of...they're worried that you'll sign the next big thing and they really don't like celebrities."
"but it's really mostly a wedding ceilidh band called the Jiggers".
"Let me just google them... "
(sounds of big stupid elephant fists mashing up and down on a computer keyboard)
"Oh no no no...they're ALL OVER the internet"

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. So nice to be "famous". I'm amazed that she found us, just by googling, oh, I don't know, "the Jiggers ceilidh band glasgow". What are the chances?

 OK, thanks, Sheila. I think I hear your home planet on the other line. Next?

MY DRINKING PROBLEM

I can understand it a bit...driving late at night from venues where (eek!) alcohol was dispensed. They don't really believe when I say I'm a tee-total musician. "Ha!" They say "How else does he cope with the crushing insecurity, eh?" (answer: I blog.)

Well, anyway, I managed to get a quote from a company called Bell insurance. They actually have "dance band musician" as a legitimate occupation. How validating! Plus, they're happy to insure me to use the car for full business purposes, not just to occasionally nip out to stock up on paperclips for the office cupboard.

The quote? Well it wasn't as much as £700 for fully comp, but it wasn't much less than that.

I may yet become a nurse.

Ominous Music

I'm not a huge fan of horror movies. This is mostly why...
Sudden Ominous Music Heard Across U.S., Nation Panicking

Culzean Castle, Robert Adam and The Jiggers Ceilidh Band

The 2-piece ceilidh band were performing at Culzean castle near Maybole last week. It's on the west coast, south of Ayr. I was on guitar for a change, and Graham on fiddle. One great thing about playing in the Jiggers is that we get to travel all across Scotland and see lots of really beautiful places.

 
 Culzean castle was designed by Scottish archtiect Robert Adam in the 18th century for the Earl of Cassilis. Culzean has been a stronghold for the Kennedy family since the 12th century, and the place is steeped in exciting and often bloody clan history. Whenever we perform there I'm always reminded of the book "The Grey Man" by S.R. Crockett .

We had a ceilidh in the old castle kitchen, which is big enough to hold about 40 or 50 people at a squeeze. It's a lovely big echoey place, and makes for a nice slightly ethereal acoustic for singing Scottish ballads or haunting waltzes. We finished the night with a DJ set, so we had the lighting rig with us, which made for some spooky-looking shadows...

The architect Adam was also responsible for a number of other classic buildings, and hugely influential in his field. The Jiggers have played at other venues he designed, including the magnificent Trades Hall in Glasgow, the Old College of the University of Edinburgh and Hopetoun House near Edinburgh.

Robert Adam is buried in Westminster Abbey. They don't do that for just anyone, you know.

Dancing shoes

If you're attending an event with our ceilidh band, make sure and bring your dancing shoes. We've seen even strip-the-willows done in the most flimsy of footwear, but we don't advise it. Keep those high heels for the catwalks, ladies. Though, on second thoughts...maybe just leave them off altogether...