The West Indies cricket team, back in the UK for another series against England, has endured a spectacular fall from grace since the mid-nineties, having been the dominant force in world cricket for the best part of two decades.

Despite the often dismal standards to which they have slipped, I will always have a soft spot for them. This is mainly because I first got interested in the game by watching their great side of the mid-seventies, featuring magical players like Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Gordon Greenidge, Clive Lloyd and the incomparable Viv Richards. The swagger with which that man made his way to the crease seemed to put the opposition in its place before he had even started to unleash his outrageous and devastating variety of strokes. To see Richards at the top of his game -a rapid, ruthless and stylish accumulator of runs- was to witness the essence of cool.

The 1976 series between England and the West Indies had infamously been preceded by England captain Tony Greig’s remarks about hoping to make the West Indies ‘grovel’. It was an unfortunate remark to have made at the best of times, but coming from a white South African, those words seemed –at best- to have been catastrophically ill-judged. It would be an understatement to say that Greig’s remarks gave something of an edge to the series. For that alone, one might have been inclined to support the West Indies, but I had another, more personal reason for getting behind the visiting team.

When I was in my early teens, there was a lad who, every summer, used to come up to Glasgow from Manchester to spend a big chunk of his school holidays with Scottish relatives. Let’s call him ‘Mike’. He was a junior member of Lancashire County Cricket Club and an avid England supporter. He was rather less than fond of the West Indians and used a variety of derogatory terms to describe both individual players and the team; his favoured epithet for the West Indies was ‘the bus conductors’.

In modern terms, I suppose he’d be described as a bit of a racist. I didn’t mind the fact that he supported his country, but there was something about the way that he couched this support in terms of sheer hatred for the opposition that seemed just too ugly to be comfortable with. Enforced exposure to Mike (who, in everyday aspects of social intercourse, was by no means a pleasant young man) meant that it just seemed kind of natural for me to support whoever was up against England.

The first two matches in the series had been drawn, with England making a pretty good fist of it against the supremely talented opposition. By the time of the third test at Old Trafford in July, Mike had arrived in Glasgow for his annual sojourn. I recall him boasting, on the eve of that match, that Lancashire’s Frank Hayes, playing on his home turf, would ‘sort those fucking bus conductors out’.

I didn’t know anything about Frank Hayes, but was not –at that point- inclined to wish him well.

In the first innings, the tourists posted a modest 211, with Gordon Greenidge making a remarkable 134 out of this total. The home side went in late on the first day with high hopes of establishing a first innings lead, but endured a vicious battering from the West Indian pace attack. By the time Frank Hayes arrived at the crease on the second morning, England had four wickets down with only 48 on the board. The home crowd would have hoped that there was perhaps an opportunity for their hero to dig in and help turn the match back in England’s favour, but one ball later, poor Frank was heading back to the pavilion having failed to trouble the scorers. In attempting to fend off a vicious short-pitched delivery from Andy Roberts, he had been unable to do much more than send the ball lobbing in a sad arc of surrender to Clive Lloyd in the gulley. Around half of the crowd sat in stunned silence, while the other half let rip with whistles, hooters and what sounded like a bewildering variety of percussive instruments; those West Indians sure knew how to make a noise. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, at least one wee boy probably shouted something like “get it up ye!” at the TV.

According to Wisden:

In eighty-five minutes England were all out, the last eight wickets, in fact, going in an hour for 25 runs. Holding, who took five for 9 in 7.5 overs was the leader of a fearsome trio. Some balls lifted at frightening speed and Greig and Underwood both had narrow escapes from what could have been serious injury. Woolmer and Hayes received balls which were all but unplayable and even the greatest of batting sides would have been severely taxed.

Dismissed for 71 in that first innings, England went on to lose the match by the small matter of 425 runs. I had no gripe against Frank Hayes or English cricket, but young Mike’s ugly mean-spiritedness made me take great pleasure from the way that Clive Lloyd’s team dismantled England over the course of that summer. The 3-0 series defeat seemed comprehensive at the time, but worse, far worse, was to come; over the next fifteen years, that all-conquering West Indies side would go on to wipe the floor with all available opposition and would twice hand out 5-0 series thrashings to an utterly hapless England.

When I was growing up, there was no great level of interest in cricket among young Glaswegians. It was (and, for some, still is) seen as a boring English game played by, and for, effete posh boys from private schools. I count myself lucky to have first sampled the game at a time when a magnificently talented side was somewhere near the beginning of an upward curve that would see them dominate world cricket for many years. The dazzling ability of those West Indians sowed the seeds of a love that has endured to this day.

Something happened today which gave me some cause for some concern, so now I’d like to run it past the finest minds on the planet to see what they think.

A kid in school was boasting about having ‘found’ a very expensive phone. He claimed to have ‘found’ the phone then ditched the SIM card so that he could use it as his own. He was daft enough to let several people hear these boasts.
Eventually, the lad was challenged about this and persuaded to hand the phone over to the authorities. It would be something of an understatement to say that he was reluctant to hand the phone over. The lad has previous, which is not necessarily relevant, but it may have had an impact on how the ‘finding’ of this phone was interpreted by the school’s leadership team.

I was taking a class of around 20 kids when the lad was called out of class to return the ‘found’ phone. After the lad was removed, his classmates were in a state of agitation. The belief among the vast majority of the kids was that if you found an expensive phone, you were entitled to keep it. When I was asked what I would do, I replied that I was 100% sure that the right thing to do would have been to hand the phone in. Only one child in the entire class agreed with me. These kids are all 15 and they didn’t (or couldn’t) understand that this was a simple case of right and wrong.

I’m confident that me and Mrs. E have brought up our own kids to know what would be the right thing to do in such circumstances, so what surprised me was the 19-1 vote in favour of ‘finders-keepers’.

Is that vote evidence of an absence of empathy for the person who has lost the phone or wallet or purse? Is it evidence that 19 sets of parents have been unwilling, or unable, to inculcate their kids with what, in my book, is a pretty basic value?

Am I wrong (or naïve) to have been surprised?

This looks like it was filmed at a fan convention at a community centre in Poland. There can't be more than 30 folk in the audience and the sound quality isn't that great. But it's still lovely ...

No club outside of the Old Firm has won the league since Aberdeen’s triumph in 1985, so it is little wonder that the battle for the Scottish Championship has been compared to two bald men fighting over a comb. But with Rangers likely to be forced to downscale their financial operations, the ‘race’ for the title in the next few years is probably going to look more like one bald man forever finding the same comb in the pocket of an increasingly threadbare suit. If you thought Scottish football was boring before, it might be about to get a whole lot worse.

As a neutral football fan, I’m delighted whenever one of the so-called provincial teams can triumph over the two-headed dog of the Old Firm, but even the use that kind of phrase has, for some folk, become rather contentious. I’ve been ticked off a couple of times recently by Celtic supporters when I have used the term the ‘Old Firm’ to describe the Celtic-Rangers duopoly. This Old Firm Denial Syndrome (O.F.D.S.) is quite a new phenomenon, albeit one that is obviously an aspect of the perennial one-upmanship that goes on between these two clubs. I suspect that some Celtic supporters enjoy nursing a grievance almost as much as they enjoy winning trophies, so when you conflate Celtic and Rangers by, for example, using the phrase ‘The Ugly Sisters’ in the context of any discussion on sectarianism, you are likely to cause something that they would attempt to pass off as 'offence'. Some of these supporters believe that should Rangers go under, Celtic will survive and indeed thrive in their own right. "There is no such thing as the Old Firm" they say. "Don’t lump us in with that lot".

Thank goodness, Peter Lawell, their chief executive, has put an end to this nonsense. His recent comments about the voting issues in Scottish football make it clear that he recognises, and is comfortable with, the symbiotic relationship between Scottish football’s big two.
Lawell is seeking to preserve the ridiculous 11-1 voting structure that was foolishly agreed by the member clubs in the Scottish Premier League. The gerrymandered voting structure means that to pass a qualified resolution among the SPL members, the Old Firm have to be split. You’d think a simple 7–5 or an 8-4 majority would be enough to carry the vote; but no, not even a 10-2 majority is good enough. Could there be any clearer illustration that Celtic and Rangers work towards a common interest and that that interest is not, as they claim, the good of Scottish football? They have hitched up their skirts and fluttered their eyelashes at the English Premier League (or the mythical North Atlantic League) too many times for anyone to believe that nonsense. The Old Firm’s ‘common interest’ is in exerting and extending their dominance of Scottish football.

"The Icelandic and Welsh leagues are competitive, but it is the presence of the Old Firm which makes Scottish football different" says Lawell. He is upset because “not being invited to the recent meetings of the other 10 clubs is disappointing and disrespectful, given what Celtic and Rangers bring to the game”.

It is clear that the other clubs in the SPL are attempting to take advantage of the financial strife at Rangers to try and bring about some kind of change. Most clubs are run on the basis of self-interest, so I’m not naïve enough to imagine that all of their intentions are strictly honourable. I do, however, wish them luck, because they have an important principle on their side. How could anyone reasonably object to a 10-2 majority carrying a vote among any organisation with twelve members?

Peter Lawell is absolutely correct to point out that the Old Firm are the key players in Scottish football, but his statement merely serves to remind us of the brutal reality. For their own good, those fans with O.F.D.S. need to be told: The Old Firm are, indeed, two cheeks on the same arse.

For most of the year, I’m able to pass myself off as a laid back, happy-go-lucky sort of chap, with a reasonably pleasant disposition and an inclination to accentuate the positive things in life. There is, however, one annual event that forces me to raise my head above the parapet to reveal my secret identity as a middle-aged curmudgeon, stewing in a fug of grumpiness and embittered scorn. Exposure to this event, for even a fleeting moment, has me swooning with nausea and plotting violent, old-testament revenge on some of the most feted people on the planet. I’m talking, of course, about the Oscars.

It’s difficult to feel anything but indifference and antipathy to this horrible event. And no, there isn’t a contradiction between the ‘indifference’ and the ‘antipathy’. I’d be quite happy to maintain the indifference, in the way that I can maintain indifference to figure-skating, crossword puzzles, The Archers, cooking programmes on TV, horse-racing and the music of Coldplay. But sadly, it gets harder each year to stick with mere ‘indifference’ to the Oscars, because the wretched thing is all over the telly, newspapers, internet and radio and will remain so for days after the prizes are handed out. My natural (and perfectly logical) antipathy for the Oscars, therefore, is further fuelled by its sheer ubiquity; it denies me the option to be merely ‘indifferent’.

There are three main reasons to despise this annual orgy of self-congratulation:

1. The Oscars present a generally unedifying spectacle in which a bunch of needy, overpaid, over-rated ninnies will get to feel even better about themselves by celebrating their various 'achievements' and by picking up thoroughly unmerited accolades and prizes. If you’re already paid humongous sums of money for your work and you are generally adored by the people who consume that work, why on earth would you need further reward? If you’re a film star, you’ve already won the lottery of life; are the wealth, the fame and the adoration not enough, already?

2. Hollywood being what it is, some of the winners won’t be able to resist the temptation to use the occasion to pontificate on matters of which they have, at best, a superficial grasp. This, I suspect, is because they know –in their heart of hearts- that they are criminally overpaid for the essentially trivial work that they do and so feel the need to make statements about, y'know, really important stuff. Eight years ago, when the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was murdered for his art, nobody at the Oscars cracked a light. No mention was made of an artist whose executioner actually left a five-page note with the murdered body, declaring explicitly that he had been killed precisely because of the art he had made. No-one at the Oscars in 2005 thought that the murder of someone in their profession for carrying out that profession might have been worth a sentence or two in commemoration; they were too busy being ‘brave’ in their acceptance speeches by having digs at that fish-in-a-barrel target, George W. Bush.

3. The Oscars themselves are awarded on the basis of matters of opinion. It's not like sport, wherein contestants actually compete and (usually) stick to an agreed set of rules, allowing the person or team that out-performs their opponent to win. The so-called ‘competition’ of the Oscars is decided by anonymous people sitting in darkened rooms declaring, in effect, that “we like this film better than that one”. Why should we care what other people think is the best film, or the best supporting actor, or the best foreign movie soundtrack? It’s merely an opinion and, as such, has about the same value as any other opinion. When it comes to judging artistic performance, at least X-factor and Strictly Come Dancing seek the views of the consuming public. The Oscars judges don’t take anything as vulgar as mere public opinion into account. I suppose they must know better than the folk who pay actual money to watch films.

I’d like to see the Oscars replaced by something altogether more egalitarian and entertaining. If, for instance, the ‘best supporting actress’ were to be decided by throwing darts, potting balls or taking penalties, we’d be able to witness a clear and transparent process, leaving no doubt as to how and why each winner came to triumph. Or better still, we could dress the contestants in sumo costumes and make them tackle an assault course, before immersing them in a huge vat of custard.

Now that would be a competition worth watching. In terms of judging methodologies, it would certainly beat a bunch of folk sitting in a room, arguing over cinematography. And, better still, it would probably cut down on the need for speeches.

This morning, in good faith, I settled down in front of the telly with a cup of coffee to watch the Australian Open Final between Maria Sharapova and Victoria Azarenka. I had to turn it off after about twenty minutes, because I couldn't take the noise that the two players were making. Sharapova's grunting is bad enough, but the high-pitched howl emitted by Azaranka before every shot is way beyond the pale. It sounds like something you'd hear in a wildlife documentary, the kind of noise some unfortunate mammal would make as it is being devoured by a hungry cheetah. It's nothing less than flagrant gamesmanship and it should be addressed by the authorities.

Here’s a ‘Merry Christmas’ message from perhaps the most under-rated band on the planet. Only folk of a certain age will be able to recall their glory days in 1976, when they broke down the musical barriers in a way that Aqua, Black Lace and Radiohead could only dream about.

I’ve long considered it to be a travesty of lazy criticism to have pigeonholed The Wurzels as a mere novelty act. Their number one single from June 1976 'I've got a brand new combine harvester' celebrated the arrival of new technologies at a time when the industry was trying to arrest the decline precipitated by the Devon strawberry famine of 1973, while the follow-up 'I am a cider drinker' was a serious study of the effects of alcohol abuse on workers in the Cornish agricultural industry.

Even today, rock historians are split on the topic of The Wurzels. Their music is multi-layered and full of delicious lyrical ambiguities, but they have also suffered for this cleverness. Some of you may recall the late-seventies controversy when their albums were banned in the southern states of America after lead singer Tommy Banner claimed that God was over-rated. He later retracted the statement by claiming that he had merely said that ‘cod’ was over-rated, but by then it was too late. Who will ever forget those frightening images of hundreds of bible-bashers burning piles of Wurzels albums outside Walmart? They were strange days indeed and you can’t help but wonder whether the young John Lydon would have been influenced by those anarchic events.

It’s probably fair to say that the band never really recovered from that setback. In his seminal work on the band 'Adventures in Cider Space', Charles Shaar Murray traced the start of their decline to the ill-advised decision to re-launch themselves by jumping on the short-lived 'Scrumpy and Western' bandwagon in the mid-eighties.

The release of this Christmas album gives at least a glimmer of hope that the glory days may yet return. The blogosphere is currently in meltdown with tantalising rumours of a forthcoming collaboration with Lady Gaga. We can only live in hope.

One of the charming things about watching the TotP re-runs is that you can’t help but notice that you didn’t have to be all that good-looking to be a pop star in 1976. You could be riding high in the charts with average songs and below-average looks; or, in certain cases, you could get away with being plug-ugly. Take, for instance, the Kursaal Flyers. Their hit song ‘Little does she know’ was pleasant enough, but blimey, those lads had faces that only a mother could love. The singer looked like he’d come straight from running the waltzer franchise at a fairground in Skegness, sporting the peacock hairstyle and spiv moustache of a man not unfamiliar with the company of what used to be called ‘jailbait’.

His dental regime truly was a sight to behold. Imagine, if you will, that the average mouthful of teeth is something that is routinely installed by respectable construction companies, operating under licence and to strict professional guidelines. Not so, alas, for your man from the Kursaals. His gob looked like several cowboy builders, each determined to pre-empt a messy legal case over property rights, had gone ahead and started work without the necessary planning permission. In fact, each rogue firm, in its desire to get the job done and move on to the next act of civic vandalism, had gone ahead without any ‘planning’ at all. His upper east side bore no aesthetic or proportional relationship to his lower south, while his menacing lower east side could best be described as ‘untamed’. Nowadays, the only kind of pop singer who might conceivably get away with that sort of dental regime would be the kind that turned up in the early auditions for X-Factor, probably accompanied by a social worker.

The Kursaal’s bass player, who didn’t look like he had skipped many meals in pursuit of his craft, had the look of drunk rotary club member on a package holiday, invited up onto the stage at the end of the night by the house band. His dancing was every bit as good as you’d expect from a drunk 54-year old man with no sense of rhythm and an overwhelming need to visit the toilet. To be fair, the song was pretty good and any band that was willing to perform in front of a row of washing machines, as they did, must have had a sense of humour. And not many folk write lyrics like these anymore:

When she finished her laundry, she was all in a quandary, and made for the street like a hare.
Her escape was so urgent, she forgot her detergent, and dropped all her clean underwear.
Little does she know that I know that she knows that I know she’s two-timing me.

Will we ever see a band like this in the charts again?

Uzma Naurin was shot, along with her husband Saif Rehman, three weeks ago near the city of Gujrat in Pakistan. The couple lived in Glasgow, but were on holiday when their car was ambushed by gunmen. Every report I’ve seen, heard or read has used the term ‘honour killing’ in connection with this crime. The BBC website currently reports that: “The former in-laws of a woman killed in Pakistan in a suspected honour killing have been questioned by police.”

One of the frustrating things about the mainstream media (not to mention our abject political class) is that they don’t trust us, the great unwashed, to have grown-up discussions and disagreements about matters of race and culture. In polite company, people -for the most part- are afraid to express anything less than complete approbation for the tenets of multiculturalism, for fear that they might leave themselves open to accusations of racism. I would suggest that if you compel folk to walk on eggshells to that extent, all you will do is build up a store of resentment that, sooner or later, will find an outlet.

This incident should have been named, shamed and condemned as a crime and reported accordingly. When the mainstream media use the term 'honour killing' they give the murder a status it did not deserve. By using the ridiculous nomenclature, they acknowledge that there is a cultural /religious aspect to the killing. They then compound that mistake by disallowing any debate on those cultural /religious aspects for fear of offending those who belong to that culture /religion.

The mainstream media can't have it both ways. If they report stuff like this simply as 'murder,' it can be put in the same file as other horrible crimes of a similar hue.
If, however, they insist on using the term ‘honour killing’ (and it doesn't matter whether or not they put inverted commas around it), they have to be big enough to accept that people will want to talk about the cultural /religious aspects of that term.

There are several rock and pop artists who have been hailed by critics as ‘great’ lyricists. Dylan is often quoted, as are Costello, Morrissey and one or two others. Talented as these fine folk might be, I’d suggest that none of them can match the surrealistic genius of They Might Be Giants. These two lines, taken from their magnificent 'Someone keeps moving my chair' encapsulate the existential crisis of early 21st century alienated urban post-atheistic humankind:

"Do you mind if we balance this glass of milk
where your visiting friend accidentally was killed?"

The lyric appears to suggest that anything is permitted, appealing to our sense of the absurd. But on condition that this is not taken in a vulgar sense, it can be interpreted either as an outburst of relief or of joy, or perhaps a bitter acknowledgment of a 'fact'.

Or if not a 'fact', then a tenuous certainty of the absence of 'God' (represented in this case by the 'glass of milk') somehow giving meaning to our lives far surpassing in attractiveness the mere ability to behave badly (namely, 'balancing' the hypothetical 'glass of milk') with impunity.
The choice, of course, would not be hard to make. But there is no choice, and that is where the bitterness comes in. The 'glass of milk' does not, in fact, liberate us; it binds us. It does not authorize all actions. Yes, we are permitted to balance this 'glass of milk', but what has become of our 'visiting friend'?

Scotland fans - Pick your preferred method of elimination and heartache for tomorrow night.

Would you prefer:

a) A plucky 1-0 defeat to a late, deflected own goal
b) To draw 1-1 with Spain, only to have the Czechs be given a dodgy penalty in the 6th minute of injury time to clinch a 3-2 win from 2 goals down
c) Get a proper 4-0 humping, with the Spaniards scoring early on to ease the tension and stop us getting our hopes up
d) To beat Spain, but have two of our players fail after-match doping tests so that we get disqualified by UEFA.

It's a tough call.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have complete confidence in the ability of the EU leaders to come up with a cunning plan to subvert the pesky laws of economics. If anyone can find a way to keep us printing, borrowing and spending non-existent money for another few decades, then Sarkozy, Merkel and company are just the lads and lasses to do it.

In fact, I think we should go all the way with the Euro boffins and adopt another one of their wizzard schemes. I’d like to see the UK move over to the ‘metric’ time system used in some parts of the Eurozone. Over there, I am given to understand, they have 20-hour days (in two blocks of ten), an extra day in the week and a 'rollover' 32 extra hours each month that you can use for holidays and special occasions (or you can 'bank' them until your retirement). It may sound a little complicated, but it’s really a much fairer system than what we have now. Why, in this day and age, should we be shackling folk to the social construct of an old-fashioned calendar and to the oppressive restraints of strictly ‘linear’ time?

Under the metric system, the extra day (Euroday, added on between Thursday and Friday) is made up of the 4 hours that are taken from the 7 ‘old’ days in the traditional calendar. That leaves 8 hours extra per week, or 32 per month. If you want to 'bank' your extra hours until retirement, you can apply for a special licence from the EU time commissioner. Or, if you are happy to use those 32 extra hours at the end of each month, you simply notify your employer in order to qualify for the time off. The current ruling is that no more than 66.6% of this ‘extra’ time can be used to augment the normal weekend allowance. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled on several test cases involving folk who have tried to use only a few of the 32 hours (carrying the remainder over to the following month), but the administration involved in maintaining that kind of system would be nightmarish.

I understand that the EU time-boffins are currently drafting an updated version of the legislation, to allow for more flexible ‘time-banking’ arrangements.

It should be ready by 2015, or maybe next Tuesday.

Bluesbunny.com is a Glasgow-based website devoted to promoting new and undiscovered artists from around the world. It's not all about the blues, despite what the title suggests.

The latest ‘Under the Radar’ podcast features an interview with Matt McGowan, editor-in-chief at the site.

In addition to talking about the perils of trying to promote small gigs by obscure overseas artists, Matt offers some interesting views on the local (and international) underground music scene.

He also introduces us to some very fine artists, including Matt Collar and the Angry Mob, Brigid Kaelen, Louise McVey and the Cracks in the Concrete, Suzanna MacDonald, The Ballachulish Hellhounds, Super Adventure Club and Chris Dovsky.

Discerning listeners are sure to find something of interest.

How many people on this forum are making music without the prospect of financial gain? Songwriting and performing are subjects close to my heart, perhaps because I’ve written literally dozens of hit songs and played to thousands of people in fantastic venues all over the world.

No … wait a minute, I was thinking about someone else there.

Over at my website, I regularly post a ‘song of the week’, which is usually accompanied by a few brief notes designed to illuminate some of the musical and lyrical aims of each piece.
The idea for the latest featured song (it’s called ‘Novelty Act’) came to me while I was driving home to Glasgow at stupid o’clock, having played a gig in Aberdeen to not very many people. At that time in the wee small hours, faced with the prospect of dragging myself into work on a meagre ration of sleep, it seemed like rather a foolish way for a responsible adult to spend his time, an idea conveyed in the opening line: “To get right to the point: it’s looking bad.”

Up until sometime around your mid-to-late twenties, it’s relatively easy to maintain the enthusiasm, energy and belief required to play in a band. The combination of wide-eyed innocence and exuberant ambition can be intoxicating if you're on the inside, but also quite endearing for the observer. At that stage, you are pretty resilient (in fact, you’re close to being bullet-proof) because, essentially, you believe that your big break is just around the corner. As the years pass and you begin to realise that you are still quite some distance from becoming the next U2, you’ll wonder, sometimes, why the hell you are still doing it. Your friends and relatives, once full of enthusiasm and willing to turn up in numbers at your gigs, will start to withdraw, perhaps puzzled and slightly embarrassed as to why, in the face of all the available evidence, you’re sticking with it.

From that point, a peculiar brand of resilience is required to maintain your efforts, but it’s a brand that may lead those friends and relatives to write you off as being -at best- slightly eccentric, but more likely drifting somewhere on the outskirts of Delusionsville, just a few short stops away from Nutter Central, where 55-year old postmen can turn up at the X-Factor auditions believing themselves to be the natural heirs to David Bowie or Jon Bon Jovi.

Anyway … to get right to the point. I concluded a long time ago that people should make music because they want to. If they are 'successful' (whatever that means), then good luck to them. If they are not 'successful', who cares? If you’re getting something from playing music, you should continue to do it. That 'something' could be peace of mind, catharsis, the sheer joy of making some meaningful noise, or perhaps the admiration of three slightly drunk folk at a midweek acoustic gig. Your 'something' might even be the deranged notion that somehow your genius will one day be recognised by the rest of humankind. Whatever.

Making music might occasionally lead to heartache and humiliation, but it’s still better than lots of other activities I could name. And that, despite the fact that my annual earnings from music would barely feed a family of field mice for a month, is what maintains my faith in the creative process. What about you?

The latest edition of the ‘Under the Radar’ podcast features an interview with Robert Fields, rock promoter and author of ‘Minstrels, poets and vagabonds: five decades of rock music in Glasgow.’

Robert has some interesting tales to tell about the glory days of venues like the Dial Inn, the Muscular Arms and the legendary Burns Howff. He has an insider’s take on the excesses, betrayals and episodes of sheer bad luck that plagued a number of Glaswegian rock acts and also reveals why he still can’t walk down the street where the Glasgow Apollo formerly stood.

Robert’s backstage chat will be a treat for anyone old enough to remember, or to have attended, the late, lamented Kelvingrove Rock Festival. The featured music comes from Logan, Monkey See, Subway and the Black Cherry Group.