Michael Marra is one of those people who makes me proud to be Scottish. He writes wonderful, blusey, rough and ready, foky songs. I first saw him at an "Celtic music festival" on Glasgow Green in the early 90's. Most of the day was rubbish. Van Morrison was a huge bore. But I remember wandering into a tent and hearing Michael Marra playing to a little audience. I didn't know who he was at the time, but I was blown away by him. My sister bought me a copy of his CD "Gael's Blue" for my birthday soon after and I really loved it. I like playing it in the US in the car, as it's such deeply Scottish music.
Seems that he lives in my birthplace of Forfar now, and goes to see Forfar Athletic Footlall club, despite being a Dundee FC fan.
Michael wrote a great song which he played the first time I saw him. He said it should be Scotland's national anthem - it's called "Hermless", I must dig out the lyrics sometime, when I hear it I always think, this guy really understands Scotland.
There was a deal of confusion this week, when we thought Michael was running for elected office for the Labour party in the upcoming elections. But from the pic on the poster we saw today, this is not THE Michael Marra. You would not think there would be two people with an unusual name (I think Marra is an unusual surname), in the same area. From a very quick google and wikipedia search, there seems to be no connection between the two. If they are connected, I doubt if Michael is pleased, I believe he wrote a great line in this song he wrote about the "Shirley McKee fingerprint scandal", that went "even the first Minister must sometimes stand naked". Cool
The real Michael Marra's website is here, it's rather good -
http://www.marra.me.uk/
Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland - April 20 2007
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