Don’t Forget, The Clocks Go Back!

Obviously, as this is a music blog, we need to warn you that the clocks go back on Sunday.  (Ok, we didn’t have to but imagine if you turned up to a gig an hour late.  You would curse our very name.)  This means that we will once more return to the familiar grounds of GMT.  Wahey!

 

Celtic Connections! Highlights from Mike Harding!

Tonight (Wed 11/02/09) Mike Harding will be replaying some of the highlights of the 2009 Celtic Connections Festival on his show.

Quite how he’s going to shrink a 4 week festival into 60 minutes remains to be seen but if we’re talking the best out of that lot then we are talking about a very high concentration indeed of very good music.

For the benefit of readers from the recent future, you can listen to the show again on his main page.

 

Grammy Goodness!

It was the Grammys the other day!  We had a fistful of nominations (click here to go through them) but most of them got beaten by Robert Plant & Alison Krauss.  We used to distribute Alison Krauss’s albums but not any more.  She’s dead to us now.

Anyway, a couple of our artists prevailed:

BEST BLUEGRASS ALBUM

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder – Honoring The Fathers Of Bluegrass: Tribute To 1946 And 1947

BEST TRADITIONAL GOSPEL ALBUM

The Blind Boys of Alabama – Down in New Orleans

My preference is the Blind Boys album.

Click here for a full list of all the winners and nominees, courtesy of The LA Times.

 

Irvine Welsh Film

Hi there.

I’ve just come back from London where I was down seeing a screening of the new Irvine Welsh film Good Arrows. I’ve got a couple of songs in the film. It’s a mocumentary about a Welsh Darts player who suffers a loss in confidence and it’s a lot of fun. There’s some good music in there too including Alabama 3 and Colin MacIntyre. It will be on ITV in the UK on Jan 30th.

I’ve got my Celtic Connections show on Saturday at the City Halls in Glasgow and my Spring UK tour is shaping up nicely.

So America has a new man at the top. About time! Here’s hoping he can deliver all that everyone expects. He’s got a tough job, but seems like the right guy to do it. Change HAS to come to the US.

I like Obama and what he stands for and if he’s allowed to do things his way then change will come. But I for one believe things’ll change when they do!

Cheers for now

Dean

 

HMV to buy some Zaavi stores and move into live market!

After the collapse of their supplier EUK, HMV are to buy out some of the stores.

They are also moving into the live music area.  Err… that’s about it.  I read this on the BBC’s website, where they have more information which i shan’t plagerise.

 

Happy New Year!!!

That’s right, dear readers, we here at Proper would like to wish you a happy/merry/excellent/fantasmagorical New Year!

I’ve had a quick word with 2008 and 2009 about the upcoming event and these were their reactions:

 

Proper TV on YouTube!

We’ve set up our own Proper TV Channel! At the moment we have the gobsmacking, mesmerising TV adverts which we’ve recently been putting on.

Gaze at Karine Polwart!

Swoon at Kathryn Williams and Neill MacColl!

Gawp at Martin Simpson!

Gander at Lau!

All of these adverts have been really professionally produced, with no dodgy voiceovers to be heard and no tasteless motifs from large internet suppliers in sight.

And who knows what sort of naughty treats we’ll have for you in the future? The only way you’ll know is to keep looking at the website! Why not make it your homepage?

 

East Coast Music Awards

No not Norwich, but Fredericton, New Brunswick. So that’s Canada calling and inviting us over to attend the explore the music of the Eatern half of that huge country for 4 days of solid gigging and show cases. As part of a small google-eyed gaggle of British delegates I was mightily impressed with the scale of the event, with nearly 200 artists appearing across a dozen venues. It may have just been luck, but everyone I tried to see came on at the advertised time despite considerable snow and a serious minus 15 overnight low. Obvious highlights included a couple of spell binding turns from the gorgeous Catherin McLellan and the poetic Old Man Ludecke (whose CDs we already have on the books). A host of new names such as Tom Fun Orchestra (coming to these shores soon), Hey Rosetta (passionate and intense), Dave Gunning (classy songs and a killer Long Black Veil), bluesman Matt Anderson (as big as a barn with the personality to match) and the wily Nathan Wiley also impressed. I should also mention two bands that seemed impossibly young for the talent quotient namely Two Hours Traffic and Chucky Danger. Both should have The Shins looking over their shoulders. Watch this space for news of any deals that get struck!!