Live at Troon this Saturday 5 September and The Beatcroft Social Volume 11

I didn't think I was going to get to the Tom Morton's Homecoming Sessions gig in Troon on Saturday night due to that pesky heart business, but recovery has well and truly set in and I'll be toddling along to hear JJ Gilmour, Ashton Lane and Nicky Murray and Chloe Rodgers, at the South Beach Hotel. Full details here. 

JJ, Ashton Lane and Nicky all feature on the latest Beatcroft Social Cloudcast, volume 10, which you can listen to here:

The Beatcroft Social Volume 10: Bruce without Springsteen, or very nearly by Tom Morton's Beatcroft Social on Mixcloud

....and there's also a Spotify playlist here.

The last record shop

Clive Munro's record shop has always been the last in Britain, or at least the northernmost. It has been my favourite, too, for the quarter of a century I've known and used it.

That was mainly due to Clive himself, the same age as me, with similar tastes in music. His recommendations could be trusted. His tendency to stock obscure Nick Lowe box sets, not to mention every jot and tittle of the Costello oeuvre, was wholly admirable. He is one of only two people I know who can talk knowledgeably about the work of Californian singer-songwriter Peter Case.

I  helped Clive with his stall at a couple of early Shetland Folk Festivals, watched vinyl vanish from his shelves (the second-hand tapes he once dealt in at two previous,  tiny locations, had already disappeared) and was happy to spend cash when he moved to large Commercial Street premises, where computer games and DVDs featured heavily. A branch in Orkney opened and closed quickly. But Clive's in Lerwick would go on forever, surely? On our remote archipelago, we needed, deserved a great record shop. How would we get the good stuff otherwise?

Then came Amazon. Then came iTunes. Play.com. A big new Lerwick branch of Tesco. And now Spotify. For me, deluged with free CDs due to the radio show, and with a Spotify Premium account as well, my CD purchasing fell away to almost zero. Clive announced that the shop would operate using half its floorspace, concentrating on specialised material, local folk, country and with a range of new vinyl too.

But it didn't work. History is against shops like Clive's, and especially in Shetland, the internet has revolutionised shopping. Now we can have DVDs and CDs winging their way from one island (tax-free Jersey, where Play.com is based) to the Greater Zetlandics in a flash, and at prices less than Clive was paying wholesale. Or we can stream  and download, listen and forget in less time than it takes to say: "How much diesel will I use getting into town and back?"

So it's nearly over. The shop doors will soon shut forever. There's a closing down sale, but I've been avoiding the place, because I didn't want to look like some kind of scavenger, having spent so little there in recent months. Today, though I went in, bought a DVD, and found Clive in positive mood, looking forward to a new start doing - well, he knows not what, as yet.

He has been a musical mentor and guide, a shaman for hundreds, maybe thousands of Shetland's music fans. He has stocked indie releases by local bands, put up posters, sold tickets and been a crucial force for all that's good in the world of twangy guitars and great lyrics.

The last record shop in Britain will be sorely missed. But not enough, and by not enough people, for it to remain open.

The death of print, and the Spotify model for news...

This was originaly written as a forum post at All Media Scotland, in response to an article by Professor Brian McNair.

Prince's Lovesexy? Hmm...

First CD I ever heard was at a demonstration evening in the old Albany Hotel. Inevitably, it was Love Over Gold by Dire Straits.

I still remember the guys from Linn Products' militant refusal to accept that the eerie lack of hiss and scratchiness implied superiority to vinyl. CD was 'less musical'. Analogue, they claimed, would always be 'better'. Bigger dynamic range, lack of edginess, etc etc. Now, of course, they make some of the best CD players in the world...

Brian's interesting piece brought all this back. But his assertion of vinyl's disadvantages in favour of CD, coupled with a defence of newsprint's thoroughly 'analogue' advantages over online, surely misses the real lesson of how digital technology has affected the consumption of music.

Because it's not CD that we ought to be looking at, but online music distribution systems. Not even the likes of second-stage digital gubbins like ITunes, but more to the point the painfully zeitgeisty Spotify, which puts constantly available, unlimited streamed music onto every computer for the price of a few adverts.

The killer app of said app will be its availability on mobile phones. We're weeks away from that. Soon you'll be carrying access to all the music in the world with you, all the time.

We're not far away from already having access to everything newspapers can offer through our phones. Brian's listing of newsprint's benefits (tearing bits out, flipping back and forward, lovely touchy-feely analogue notions that already reek of nostalgia) can be replicated online (see The Scotch Malt Whisky Association's online magazine, Unfiltered, for example).

Making it work effectively, making it comfortable in the pocket, is the key. The Kindle Reader and its competitors are halfway there. Merge that with an iPhone and some smart software, and newspapers will only be for hacks and luddites.

And yet... it's there, surely, that we'll see both the end of newsprint and the beginning of a longing for its finger-licking inky advantages. Because just as Spotify has fuelled in me a desire to own vinyl and enjoy the (yes) superior sound quality, better artwork and sheer tactile pleasure, maybe mobile phone news consumption will spark off a longing for fumbled broadsheets and smeared tabloids.

Like those newspapers-from-your-birthday gift offers, they'll come in presentation boxes, possibly, and be pored over with little sighs of pleasure. They'll be about memory, not news.