January 29 – Many Were Oblivious To Frame’s Talents

Happy 59th birthday to Aztec Camera! Well, actually to Roddy Frame, who for all essential purposes was Aztec Camera and is now sometimes described as “the elder statesman of melodic wistful Scotpop.” The Scot singer/songwriter/guitarist put out six albums with an ever-changing list of backing musicians under the name Aztec Camera and has since put out several well-reviewed but poor-selling albums under his own name, although none since 2014.

Frame taught himself guitar, recalling “I started learning guitar when I was about four…I was just completely crazy about it.” His list of musical influences is long and varied, starting with the Beatles, Stones and Bowie when he was young to Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes when he was starting to create his own music to Springsteen and Dylan when he moved briefly to the U.S. in the ’80s. His records have traversed quite a range of styles but are always strong on melody. He says he’s most comfortable writing “personal one to one songs” but admires Billy Bragg’s politicism. Allmusic consider their debut album, High Land, Hard Rain a perfect 5-star “must-have” album, something echoed by Creem magazine which said of it “the world ain’t perfect but High Land, Hard Rain comes close.” They started their career off with a bang in Britain, with their first five singles all being Indie top 10 hits, including “Walk Out To Winter” and the great “Oblivious”, which was a #1 on that chart and made it into the overall top 20 there. That success got them signed with Warner Bros. and the 1987 album Love, which went platinum in the UK, largely on the strength of the hit “Somewhere in My Heart.” However, despite the critical adoration and heavy airplay on Toronto’s CFNY (their #17 record of the year) and LA’s KROQ, the band never really took off in North America and have only one top 10 hit or platinum record in the UK to show for their talent.

Frame currently lives with his wife in London.  Although he hasn’t said he’s retired from music, his website hasn’t been updated for five years, leading one to be a bit “oblivious” to expect new material anytime soon from Frame and his Aztec Camera

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January 22 – Al Took Us To Another Place, Another Time

The year after the “Year of the Eagle” (the Bicentennial) was the year of the cat? Could be, since Al Stewart‘s lush record hit the American Top 40 on this day in 1977, his first significant radio hit.

The Scottish-born folkie had already put out six albums after his 1966 debut single (“The Elf” which had Jimmy Page playing guitar on it but sold a lofty 496 copies!) prior to his RCA Records debut, Year of the Cat. He became a part of the burgeoning British folk scene in the mid-’60s and was a friend of Cat Stevens and briefly the roommate of Paul Simon! Pretty good foundation for learning to write songs, one would think. The album was recorded at Abbey Road studios and produced by Alan Parsons, a pretty good set of ingredients to add to the recipe of making a hit. The album contained the popular song “On the Border”, but its real standout was the exotic title track. As Stewart later told a Toronto radio station, “if this isn’t a hit, then I can’t make a hit.”

Turns out he could; the single got to #8 on Billboard, and the album went platinum in the U.S. In Canada, it hit #3 yet in his homeland, it missed the top 30 – like all his songs have! He’d score an even higher chart hit the following year with “Time Passages”, but the song about the mysterious woman in the country where they turn back time remains his best-loved and best-known track. It was the only song on the album that he didn’t write entirely by himself. This one is co-credited to Peter Wood, his touring keyboardist at the time (and later a touring member of Pink Floyd during The Wall years.) Green played a piano riff every soundcheck and Stewart says “after I heard it about 14 times, I said ‘you know, there’s something about that. It sounds kind of haunting and nice. Can I write some lyrics to it?” But finding the right lyrics was a bit of a challenge. He tried ones about a comedian who commit suicide and Princess Anne and her horse, but nothing felt right. He says “I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a book on Vietnamese astrology, which is kind of obscure. It was open at the chapter called ‘The Year of the Cat’…I recognize a song title when I see it, and that was a song title.” He was right, and after some unsuccessful lyrics about a tabby that made him crabby, he settled in to watch Casablanca and let his imagination run wild until he had the lyrics that made him a part of music history. The history buff has also referenced everything from Stalin and WWII to Nostradamus in his songs. He continues playing music to this day

January 4 – It’s Elementary… Raff Was The Reluctant Superstar

We remember a talented singer/songwriter who passed 12 years ago today – Gerry Rafferty. He died of liver failure on this day in 2011 at age 63. Rafferty is a talent who’s been compared to Paul McCartney more than once, and had he been a little more outgoing, perhaps might have come closer to the success the latter had. Although with two of the biggest, and most enduring hits of the ’70s to his credit, he didn’t do badly for himself.

Raff was born in Paisley, Scotland to a working class family which loved to sing Celtic folk songs around the table. That, and the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan when he was a youth set the course for his life. He left school early, and although he worked briefly as a shoe salesman and in a butcher’s shop, “there was never anything else for me but music,” he said.

By the mid-’60s, he was busking in London and joined a folk group, followed by the moderately successful (locally) The Humblebums, a folk trio which also featured Billy Connolly – the comedian. Connolly and Rafferty parted ways commercially by 1971, with them wanting different things. Connolly recalls “I wanted success and fame; Gerry wanted respect.” As well, although according to the “comedian”, Rafferty was hilarious and had a great sense of humor, on stage he wanted to be all-business, all-music, while Billy liked to joke around and tell stories between songs (hence little surprise his career would end up going the way it did.) the pair remained close friends throughout the rest of gerry’s life though.

From The Humblebums, Rafferty started Stealer’s Wheel with his friend Joe Egan; that folk-tinged group put out three albums and surprisingly, had 3 top 40 hits in Canada and the UK in 1973; the memorable one being “Stuck in the Middle” which was a top 10 in most markets and rebounded to popularity with the use in Reservoir Dogs. He then went solo, putting out a total of 9 studio albums, with the greatest output and acclaim coming for the first couple of albums after Stealer’s Wheel, City to City and Night Owl. the former includes one of the finest singles of the decade, “Baker Street”, a semi-autobiographical tune that he says UA (his label) didn’t want to release as a single! “They actually said it was too good for the public,” he later noted. Good thing for everyone concerned they relented – the single was a #1 hit in Canada and Australia, hit #2 in the U.S. and by 2010 was one of a limited number of songs confirmed by BMI as being played over 5 million times on radio! Which set Gerry for life. In 2003, he admitted he got about 80 000 pounds a year (close to $200 000 in today’s cash) in royalties from that one song alone.

The success didn’t last that long however. Although he’d score a couple more critically-acclaimed and big-selling singles, like “Right Down the Line”, Rafferty was not a fan of the “industry”, and disliked touring. A very private person, he more or less quit the music business as a recording star by 1982, working now and again through the ’80s with Mark Knopfler on the Local Hero soundtrack and producing records for The Proclaimers (who were among a number of celebrities who showed up for his funeral) and Fairport Convention’s Richard Thompson. Mainly though he lived a quiet life with his wife and daughter on a farm in England, beginning an unfortunate spiral downwards.

His dad had been an alcoholic; Gerry always liked his drink but by the late-’80s, it was becoming a major problem for him, which was putting a big strain on his marriage, which in turn increased his self-destructiveness and over-drinking. She says it eventually looked hopeless to her. “I would never have left him if there’d been a glimmer of a chance of him recovering,” she later said.

Raff had a brief return to form around the turn of the century, being an early embracer of the internet for music (he put out tunes on his own website as early as 2000 and said “I don’t want to be talking to 23 year-old record executives who are just trying to sell their product to 19 year-olds”) . However, while his 2000 Another World garnered good reviews, lacking a big label deal, very few ever heard it.

He was hospitalized with multiple organ failures in late 2010, and passed away from total liver failure weeks later. Among those at his funeral was Alex Solmond, the First Minister (top politician) of Scotland and John Byrne who delivered the eulogy. Byrne is a noted Scottish playwright who also dabbles quite well in art. He’d done the pictures for the covers of City to city and Night Owl for his friend. A year later, his hometown of Paisley named a street after him.

In summing up Rafferty in a full page obituary, London’s The Times said he was “A consummate songwriter blessed with sensitivity and an enviable melodic flair that at its best recalled Paul McCartney.” And he did it on his own terms. Not a bad way to be remembered.

January 3 – Aye Laddie, Scots Rocked America’s Bicentennial

This day in 1976 was a good one for Scottish bands. The tartarn-adorned heartthrobs, the Bay City Rollers spelled out what it takes to have a #1 smash, starting the Bicentennial year in the U.S. on top with “Saturday Night”. The same chart saw Nazareth hit the American top 40 for the first time. The song that put them there was not only their biggest, but one of the first examples of a hard rock band doing a “power ballad”, a tender love song to widen their appeal. “Love Hurts”, but changing your sound up once in awhile doesn’t!

“Love Hurts” was originally written as a country tune by Nashville writer Boudleaux Bryant, but was first recorded in 1960 by the Everly Brothers. It was a well-liked song but never released as a single, and remained largely unknown until the mid-’70s. Then, oddly enough, not only did the Scottish metalheads take a go at it, so too did Cher, and Jim Capaldi (who actually did the best on the British charts with the song, almost simultaneously with the Nazareth release.) Others including Gram Parsons have done it since.

Nazareth were by 1975 a successful touring act and albums band in their homeland and in Canada, where they’d already had three gold (or later, platinum) albums, as well as a few spots in Europe. But U.S. success had eluded them, so by the time of Hair of the Dog, their fifth album, they decided to change that. They had their own guitarist, Manny Charlton, produce the album, and of course, had the aching love song added in to their usual fare compared to Black Sabbath by allmusic. Mind you, record buyers in the States would have a taste of the more usual sound of the group if they flipped the single over, as the hard rock staple “Hair of the Dog” was the b-side.

Although the song stalled at #41 at home, it did indeed break open the North American market for them. It was a top 10 in the U.S. and pushed the album to platinum status; to the north in Canada it was a #1 hit. But no one liked them like the Norwegians. There it was #1 for a record 14-straight weeks, making it chart-wise the biggest hit of the decade. So perhaps Norway love Nazareth, but it hurts that the entire country’s population is barely larger than that of Los Angeles.

Nazareth are still going but only one member of their “Love Hurts” lineup, bassist Pete Agnew is still a part. Singer Dan McCafferty died of heart disease last fall.

September 5 – The ‘Other’ Famous Scottish Stewart Storyteller

Maybe we’ll hear a song on the radio by this guy today. After all, it’s the day of the year of the cat…happy birthday Al Stewart! The literate Scottish folkie turns 77 today.

Last week we mentioned how there were two fine bands – the Proclaimers and Jesus & Mary Chain – that were built around a pair of Scottish brothers with the name “Reid.” Well, turns out there were also two highly successful Scottish singer/songwriters named “Stewart” who came into their own in the ’70s – Rod and Al. Rod sold more records and likely had more women swooning over him, but Stewart may have been the one who won critic’s hearts. He’s put out 19 studio albums from 1967 through 2008 but is best known for the album and single “Year of the Cat.” That album and its follow-up, Time Passages, both went platinum in the U.S. and gave him top 10 hits in the States and Canada with the title tracks. Stewart developed his musical chops as part of the London folk scene of the late-’60s along with Van Morrison and Cat Stevens, Andy Summers (who was in the Police years later) as well as briefly being Paul Simon’s roommate when the New Yorker moved to England. Along the way he played the first Glastonbury Festival, and met Alan Parsons, who produced a trio of his records including the two smash hit ones. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, when he switched producers in ’80 for 24 Carrots, sales dropped significantly.

Stewart’s singles seldom sound like conventional pop hits. He’s said “I don’t like repetition” when it comes to music and while others are singing about love and old Chevys, Stewart has written songs about things like travel (his two best known songs, “Year of the Cat” and “Time Passages” both refer to travel and being in exotic places) World War I battles, the Spanish Basque separation movement, Lord Mountbatten, Kurt Vonnegut novels and the French Revolution. As he puts it, “making a leap forward often entails taking a step backward.”

77 or not, he’s currently on the road, playing shows in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois later this month and in Britain in October.

August 31 – Scotland’s Other Reid Brothers

What does a band who adored the Velvet Underground, Stooges and Siouxsie & the Banshees as well as the Monkees and Beach Boys sound like? Well, according to Paste, like “the midpoint between the Sex Pistols and Modern English.” Or at least they do if they were the Jesus and Mary Chain! They put out their second, and arguably best album, Darklands, on this day in 1987.

The Jesus and Mary Chain is essentially brothers Jim and William Reid, who grew up near Glasgow. Remarkably, they apparently are no relation to Craig and Charlie Reid, another pair of Scottish brothers we know as the Proclaimers. Although the Reids have utilized a number of other musicians in their band’s many years and incarnations, ultimately it usually comes down to just the two who write and sing the songs, play most of the guitars and at times produce their own records.

They’d been fans of the whole punk movement when teens, but didn’t get around to starting a band until 1983. William says “it was perfect timing. There weren’t any guitar bands, everybody was making this electronic pop music.” Well, his fellow countrymen Big Country might take issue with that but his general point was correct it would seem, at least in the north of Britain. At first they went by The Poppy Seeds but they changed to the name we know…although we don’t know where the name came from. They’d suggested it was a Bing Crosby line in a movie, which didn’t bear out , or that they saw a gold-colored “Jesus and Mary chain” offered as a gift for sending in a certain number of cereal box tops.

We may never know exactly where they came up with the name, but we do know they figured their first demo tape sounded too much like the Ramones. So they set out to write songs which were a bit more complex and then add in a lot of feedback and noise. This caught the ear of Indie label Creation Records, which signed them for a one-off single. That was “Upside Down,” and it was a minor hit. The NME, in typical British press form declared them “the best band in the world!”. That coupled with their shows around the UK got them signed to a Warner Bros. subsidiary, Blanco y Negro. Now, their shows weren’t necessarily great, but they were noteworthy. They had a fondness for speed and that paced their 20-minute sets, which often had them standing with their backs to the crowd. This sometimes led to bottles flying and rows taking place, and the press decided they were the “next Sex Pistols!”.

Their first album, Psychocandy, was a distortion and feedback-laced record which did fairly well at home for them. But they seemed to tire of that sound and the labeling, so for Darklands, they decided to lighten up just a little, despite the name. They brought in a drum machine to replace their real drummer, but relied less on sound effects and feedback for the ten song set. As David Hutcheon of Mojo noted, it was “as far as you could get” from their first album – “no feedback, acoustic guitars, audible lyrics” on songs like “Deep One Perfect Morning.” Paste would later declare “time has proven Darklands to be under-rated.” It got good reviews, then and now, with Rolling Stone and Spin both grading it 4-stars, and allmusic 4.5. The latter says “from a distance, this is an appealing, enjoyable record...’April Skies’ made for a great single and the soaring-in-spite-of-itself ‘Happy When it Rains’ was another winner.”

those two singles did indeed bolster the band’s fortunes and put them on the map a bit outside of the UK. “April Skies” in particular got to #8 at home and #6 in Ireland, their best-ever charting song in both lands, #16 in New Zealand and while not making the hit parade, it did get lots of airplay on North American college radio. Added in with the third single, the title track, it helped get the album to #5 in Britain where it went gold.

The Reids still work together at times, putting out five albums since Darklands, although only one of those has come this century. They most recently were in the news last year when they sued Warner Bros. over copyright issues involving Psychocandy. 

July 19 – Pilot Flew Big Hit Over From Scotland

Pilot were flying high! The Scottish band hit #1 in Canada this day in 1975 with their iconic single, “Magic.”

To North Americans it is the most-famous song for the band which many consider a one-hit wonder; the single was also top 5 in the U.S. and went gold in both countries. At home in the UK, however, it got to #11 but they soon had a much bigger hit with “January” (a #1 there and Australia.) “Magic” was off Pilot’s debut album; they’d end up putting out four from ’74 to ’77 before splitting up, with occasional reunion’s since.

“Magic” was indeed that, a perfectly catchy and well-produced single that has lived on on retro radio stations, movies like Herbie Fully Loaded and in ads ranging from Pilsbury rolls to pharmaceutical meds. The spot-on production is no surprise – Alan Parsons was in the studio in control of the dials. The catchy chorus (which shows up four times in the song) was distinctive, and the playing spot-on. It was written by David Paton (who played guitar and sang the lead vocals) and the keyboardist, Billy Lyall. Paton had been in the Bay City Rollers briefly (before they became teen idols) and he and Ian Bairnson from Pilot worked on Kate Bush’s debut album before essentially disappearing from the scene. They might have disappeared, but the song hasn’t. Nor did the title. Within a decade of their hit, Olivia Newton John and the Cars each also had top 10 hits titled “Magic”, all of them different from each other.

March 5 – Proclaiming This Reids’ Day

Today we’d walk five hundred miles to deliver our birthday wishes. Well, perhaps not, but still a big pair of Happies go out to Craig and Charlie Reid, the twins who collectively are The Proclaimers. They turn 60 today. Big Country might have emerged first and Simple Minds might have sold more, but no band of the modern rock era epitomized Scotland more than this band. Their thick accents, even when singing, are as much their trademark as their nerdy Buddy Holly glasses.

The boys were born in Leith, a port city north of Edinburgh, to working-class parents. As much as the city and landscape influenced young Charlie and Craig, their parents did even more. Both of their folks were big music fans, and their dad had a large collection of records, mainly American jazz, R&B and country. Merle Haggard and Hank Snow were as much a part of their childhood’s as haggis and foghorns.

Although as teens they developed and interest in acts like The Clash and the Damned and tinkered around in a couple of local punk bands in high school, it didn’t really represent their musical tastes. By 1983, they’d paired up to form The Proclaimers. The name came about, as Craig recalls, “We wanted something with a Gospel feel to it, that indicated strength in vocal delivery (with) a sort of spiritual element.”

They garnered a bit of a following around their hometown and Edinburgh, playing their folkish music (their own description of their sound is “the netherworld where pop, folk, new wave and punk collide”) in various clubs, but it wasn’t until 1986 that they caught a big break. A dedicated fan sent a tape of them to The Housemartins, who were so impressed they got the Reids to open for them on a British tour that year. This in turn got them booked onto the TV show The Tube in January, 1987. Someone from Chrysalis Records was watching, and only days later they’d signed with that label which in turn sent them into the studio the very next day. A mere nine days later, they’d recorded their debut, This Is The Story. What a story it was!

While the simple, acoustic debut did OK in Britain, eventually earning them a gold record, it was the second release that put them down in music history. Chrysalis liked Charlie’s acoustic guitar and the lads’ tight harmonies well enough, but decided to bring in well-known producer Pete Wingfield and a back-up band, including members of Fairport Convention and Dexy’s Midnight Runners to fill out the sound a little. The result was Sunshine on Leith, released in the summer of ’88. The album was outstanding and again luck intervened, helping it become one of the major British cultural references of the past forty years.

Initially, it was quite well-received. The Guardian, for example, complimented their “thick but melodic Scottish accents” and “unique brand of tuneful old-fashioned pop.” Jim Sullivan of the Boston Globe compared the twins to Elvis Costello, not only because of their short hair and thick glasses but also for sharing his “knack of weaving serious trenchant lyrics into soothing, gently stinging songs.” There was something instantly catchy about tracks like “I’m on My Way” with its upbeat tempo and chipper, sing-along lyrics (“I’m on my way from misery to happiness today…”), and that song was a minor hit in the UK, as was a cover version of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” from it. One might think that there was a little bit of a travel theme going on there, and it really came to fruition with their signature tune, the album’s first single – “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”. Few songs from the Eighties have weathered as well and few people out there aren’t at least moved to tap their feet along when they here “I would walk five hundred miles/ And I would walk five hundred more/ Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles/ To fall down at your door.”

Craig had written the song while passing time waiting to go to a concert. He remembers “I knew it was a good song, maybe even a single, but I had no idea how popular it would become.” No doubt. “Popular” is a bit of an under-statement.

January 3 – Dog-gone, Softer Approach Worked For Scot Rockers

This day in 1976 was a good one for Scottish bands. As we already noted today, the tartan-adorned heartthrobs, the Bay City Rollers spelled out what it takes to have a #1 smash in the U.S. with “Saturday Night” and the same chart saw Nazareth hit the American top 40 for the first time. The song that put them there was not only their biggest, but one of the first examples of a hard rock band doing a “power ballad”, a tender love song to widen their appeal. “Love Hurts”, but changing your sound up once in awhile doesn’t!

“Love Hurts” was originally written as a country tune by Nashville writer Boudleaux Bryant, but was first recorded in 1960 by the Everly Brothers. It was a well-liked song but never released as a single, and remained largely unknown until the mid-’70s. Then, oddly enough, not only did the Scottish metalheads take a go at it, so too did Cher, and Jim Capaldi (who actually did the best on the British charts with the song, almost simultaneously with the Nazareth release.) Others including Gram Parsons have done it since.

Nazareth were by 1975 a successful touring act and albums band in their homeland and in Canada, where they’d already had three gold (or later, platinum) albums, as well as a few spots in Europe. But U.S. success had eluded them, so by the time of Hair of the Dog, their fifth album, they decided to change that. They had their own guitarist, Manny Charlton, produce the album, and of course, had the aching love song added in to their usual fare compared to Black Sabbath by allmusic. Mind you, record buyers in the States would have a taste of the more usual sound of the group if they flipped the single over, as the cowbell-ringing, hard rock staple “Hair of the Dog” was the b-side.

Although the song stalled at #41 at home, it did indeed break open the North American market for them. It was a top 10 in the U.S. and pushed the album to platinum status; to the north in Canada it was a #1 hit. But no one liked them like the Norwegians. There it was #1 for a record 14-straight weeks, making it chart-wise the biggest hit of the decade. So perhaps Norway love Nazareth, but it hurts that the entire country’s population is barely larger than that of Los Angeles.

Nazareth are still going but only one member of their “Love Hurts” lineup, bassist Pete Agnew is still a part.

January 3 – Roller-mania Extended Well Past Bay City

It was the beginning of the Bicentennial Year, and Americans were so happy they wanted to party…like it was “Saturday Night” maybe! So it seemed, since the #1 song on Billboard to start 1976 was the song of that name by Scotland’s Bay City Rollers.

It was more or less the first the U.S. had heard of them, but they’d been a sensation in Britain for a couple of years (in typical British press hyperbole, they were oft-dubbed “the new Beatles!”) and had even invaded the shores and ears of Canadians a year earlier. In fact on their home island, this song remarkably didn’t chart but they’d had two prior #1 singles in “Bye Bye Baby” and “Give A Little Love”. “Saturday Night” had been an afterthought on their first UK album, 1974’s Rollin’, which hit #1 there and went platinum. By ’76 they were on album number four and Bell Records biggest act there. They had lagged in North America though due to lack of representation for one thing, when Clive Davis saw their potential to win the hearts and purses of teenaged girls here too, and signed them to his new Arista label. By then they’d had a few lineup changes (two members had left to form Pilot) and they repackaged some of their existing best material into a self-titled album released in North America. “Saturday Night” was re-recorded, with new vocals from the then-new vocalist, Les McKeown.

With heavy promotion, the cute lads known for their love of tartan pants and scarves, stripy socks and upbeat melodies took the continent by storm. “Saturday Night” went quickly to #1 in both the U.S. and Canada and went gold in both; when they arrived in the States for promotions and shows, they were mobbed by adoring – mostly young, mostly female – fans in scenes that was a little reminiscent of the Liverpool “moptops” a dozen years earlier. They even had a fan in Howard Cosell! The first public playing of the hit was on his short-lived variety show.

Unlike The Beatles however, it didn’t last. Although they did score another #1 hit in Canada (“Money Honey”) and two more top 10s at home, they couldn’t keep up the momentum and by summer, open-shirted Peter Frampton had diverted a lot of those teenyboppers’ attention away from the Scots. They’ve continued rolling, on and off, since but have never had much of the spotlight…rather like the tall ships that sailed into American ports that year.

While many are quick to dismiss them as a novelty act, the Rollers actually were head and shoulders above some other teeny delights. They were essentially founded by brothers Alan and Derek Longmuir (who played bass and drums respectively) in Edinburgh in the ’60s, where they played local clubs doing mostly early rock covers. They became the Saxons, then signed to Bell in ’71 and changed the name. They liked “Rollers” but wanted an adjective, and having a hope of hitting U.S. gold, they threw a dart at a map and hit Bay City, Michigan. Voila! While their music wasn’t deep or heady, they did write most of their material, played the instruments themselves and, yes, they had a knack for a catchy hook! And if you’re of a certain age, methinks you’ve probably yelled out the letters to the title with them a time or two, too. Don’t think so? No less, or no different, an act than the Ramones were fans. They’ve stated their song “Blitzkrieg Bop” was a deliberate attempt to make a song as danceable and pop-py as “Saturday Night”.