Category: Rick Redbeard

This is the single which should have featured last week but I had filed it away in the wrong place and didn’t have time to find it in time.

It was released in June 2012 on a small Edinburgh based label called Gerry Loves Records. It has a song on one side by Rick Redbeard and a song on the other side by Adam Stafford.

It was my favourite single of 2012 but I never ever featured it on the old blog. The simple reason is that the single was released only on vinyl (and mostly by mail order) in a very small quantity – 300 in total – and despite it being utterly brilliant it never quite sold out and while that was the case I never wanted to make the songs available.

But it’s now just shy of two years since the single was released and I’m guessing that anyone who was desperate to get a copy will have one by now.

mp3 : Rick Redbeard – Now We’re Dancing
mp3 : Adam Stafford – Vanishing Tanks

I know these won’t be everybody’s cup of Darjeeling but I am incredibly fond of both songs and indeed just about all of the output these two unique and very talented artists have released over the years.

I mentioned a couple of weeks pack in my apology posting that I had been to a number of great gigs and events this year but had been too lazy/tired to write about them.  One such event was The Duke Street Expo at which Rick and Adam both performed.  Here’s the full details of the line-up that Saturday afternoon and evening:-

http://www.eastendsocial.com/event/duke-street-expo/

While here’s a review from one of Scotland’s leading broadsheet newspapers:-

The Commonwealth-funded East End Social continued to shine a light on a neglected area of Glasgow with its most ambitious and community-spirited event to date – a seamless (and sunny) all-day festival of live music, comprising two ticketed gigs in churches plus a steady stream of free pop-up performances in unlikely venues along a bustling strip of Duke Street.

The Duke Street Expo – Duke Street, Glasgow

* * * *

Roll up for acoustic troubadours in ladies’ boutiques, easy jazz listening in charity shops and shape note singing, guitar and vocal loops and complimentary pakora on the patio of an Indian restaurant. “I’ve never seen the street this busy,” commented one impressed local.

Rapper Kobi Onyame channelled the good feeling through his set at the Everlasting Arms Church, while Rick Redbeard, aka Phantom Band frontman Rick Anthony, provided a healing listening experience.

Admiral Fallow were the headline draw here, but frontman Louis Abbott and co-vocalist Sarah Hayes also performed more intimate solo shows, the latter delivering a suitably fragrant set of folk covers in the local florists – with a single red rose across her keyboard.

As the afternoon wore on, the music got louder and the bijou venues got busier and sweatier. There was risk of a spritz or even a close shave when David McGregor of Kid Canaveral packed them in around the customers at Urban Funk gentleman’s barber shop. Meals were passed over the heads of the crowd at Dennistoun Bar-B-Que as hip-hoppers Hector Bizerk drummed up some festival spirit. Thankfully, the tattooists at Electric Artz were safely wielding their needles in the back room while punk power trio Ex-Wives played the most thunderous set of the day.

The evening concert at Dennistoun New Parish Church was a gentler affair, featuring three sublime voices. Siobhan Wilson, backed by instrumentalist Tommy Reilly, tempered the purity of her vocals with a kittenish edge and deceptive charisma. Like Wilson, Hot Chip frontman Alexis Taylor favoured a mostly sparing backing of beats, effects and guitar for his solo material, allowing his reedy, plaintive voice to work its understated magic.

King Cresote had all but knackered his vocal cords singing in the pub earlier, but with a bit of echo applied to the upper 
notes, he sounded his usual affecting self, rounding off this grand day out with a ramshackle, but lovable, set encompassing old and new songs, some mischievous baiting of the Yes vote and a self-styled cabaret foray into the crowd.

I’m lucky enough to be helping to deliver the East End Social through what I do in my daytime job and I can honestly say I haven’t had as much fun at a music event in years as I did on that day. I wasn’t alone….have a look at what was said across Twitter as things unfolded.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/eastendsocial?src=hash

Loads of great photos too…..I can be spotted in the one of Adam Stafford performing in the patio of the Indian Restuarant….the fat, baldy bloke in blue and white hooped indie style t-shirt!!

Enjoy!!