Monday 30 January 2012

Fanzines / This Scarlet Train

What were you doing the night Princess Diana died?  Me, I was on a transatlantic phonecall to Andrew Prinz of the ridiculously good Michigan group Mahogany.  We were supposed to be doing a little interview for the Glasgow-based cut'n'paste fanzine Boa but ended up talking for hours about the breaking news.  Those were the days before 24 hour terrestrial TV news in the UK so I was following it on Teletext.  Andrew, of course, could follow proceedings on CNN.  I hadn't thought about that night for years until an excerpt from the (giddy, breathless) interview showed up on a Japanese blog of all places.  If I remember correctly, we didn't get the interview done so I had to phone back the next night which contributed to the single biggest quarterly phone-bill my folks had ever seen.  Ouch!   


Wind on 15 years and there's a far less giddy and breathless (guess I just got old!) Not Unloved piece in the 2nd issue of Great Shakes! zine.  Great Shakes! is the handiwork of Calvin Halliday, drummer from Water Wolves, Glasgow's brilliant response to the whole Captured Tracks/Hozac axis of garage jangle. 

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Not Unloved's contribution is a paragraph or two on Falkirk, Scotland's almost entirely overlooked/forgotten This Scarlet Train:


The easiest way to get a copy is probably to email Calvin. I've yet to see inside a copy but the cover looks smashing. Big thanks to Calvin for giving me the opportunity to give some belated recognition to a group who made one great record a quarter of a century ago and then disappeared.

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