Swell Marketa and the June Fool

I ordered the CD that the two people from the "Once" movie had made (Marketa Irglova, pictured above, and Glen Hansard), it's called "The Swell Season". I was not hugely taken with it the first time I heard it, but that was in the car heading up to San Francisco. Now I've had a chance to hear it again tonight on the proper CD it is really rather good. Musically it is really beautiful, really pretty, relaxing music. Shame Marketa only gets to sing one song on her own, she has a great voice. There are loads of lovely harmonies she does with Glen Hansard. Marketa sang about three songs in the "Once" movie that are featured on the CD, I wonder why not.


The next CD that I almost grabbed at random made me smile after I put it on. Considering we are only now three hours away from next month (and it's next month already back in Europe) how strange that it's the late great "Madder Rose"'s "Hello June Fool" CD I just put on. I wonder who the June fool I am subconciously thinking about is?

When I left the UK I transfered all my CD's, and some vinyl, to Apple's equivalent of MP3, AAC. I then sold all the CD's on eBay, as I was not sure I wanted to cart mountains of CDs here to the USA. What I've discovered since is how much quality you use when you compress the audio files to make them fit onto iPods. Hearing the original Madder Rose CD again, it sounds great. I hope all the exponents of downloading from iTunes are realising that they are not really downloading music that is really CD quality, but a rather flat sounding compressed file. The audio compression technology is really clever to compress all that data into a 3meg file for a three minute song, but there is no such thing as a free lunch and I've found that you lose a lot of sound quality in the process. Maybe the compressed files are OK on an iPod, but if you play them back on a computer connected to a decent hifi system, the difference between the compressed file and the original is obvious.

Having realised this, I went on a second hand CD shopping spree back in December of last year, and re-bought Madder Rose's finer moments as well as a lot of other old friends. So I feel a bit stupid now, having gotten rid of so many CDs, just to buy them back again 18 months later. So maybe I am the June fool? Problem is that I think I sold the CDs in March.....

Back in Edinburgh

I'm back in my former home city of Edinburgh now.

This is one of my favourite views, it is the central Edinburgh taken from a little hill in the centre, Calton Hill. There is a great Victorian folly at the top of the hill, I think that they were trying to do some sort of Athenian thing there in the 19th century, Edinburgh was called the "Athens of the North" after all. It was sadly never finished, but there are some fine looking columns there that are visible all over central Edinburgh.



I've noticed that LRT (Lothian Regional Transport) are now putting slogans on the back of their buses, I wonder if this is helping reduce car miles driven in the city. The old purple buses were, to me, just a symbol of the city. But sparkly service, it seems unlikely. I was on a bus in Edinburgh yesterday, admittedly it was a "rival" green bus, and the service was as grumpy as ever. I used to think that LRT used to have a training course they put their drivers on to make sure they hit the road, having learnt how to be as unhelpful and grumpy as possible. I used to love the way they would deal with tourists. I thought they used to crank up their accents deliberately to be as un-understandable as possible.

I know it can't be an easy job, but I think the fact that there are never any bus bosses around when they are dealing with the public gives the drivers licence to deal with anyone as unpleasantly as they felt like. Or maybe the 44 is different, they only put the pleasant drivers on that one. My only ever UK lottery win was when I lived in Swindon and, partially as a sign of homesickness, I was using the Edinburgh bus numbers that I used to take to work as my lottery numbers. I think the 44 was in that list of numbers. So maybe not "service with a sparkle", but the 44 did help get me an unexpected lottery win once.

I'd love to know if the customer service on the buses has improved though.



I was in one of Edinburgh's many Macdonlalds yesterday, I don't think I've been in a Macdonalds for about three years, I was becoming suspicious of the burgers they were selling me.

Having asked what their vegetarian option was, I found out that it is really only one thing, it's called a "Vegetarian Melt", or something like that.

I think I'll leave it another three years before I go back. It was cheap right enough, but the "melt" was pretty horrible, soggy and nasty. I suppose you have to be a meat eater to appreciate Macdonalds, but it's pretty much a mystery to me why this chain is popular.



Spent a very enjoyable afternoon yesterday, digitising tapes for the Kirkcaldy bands website. It's amazing that these twenty year old tapes still play at all. I think the average recommended life of a cassette tape is meant to be 20 ish years, so I'm glad we are digitising these now.

I had "The Twist"and "The Ghost Train" on my iPod on my way to the pub last night. I'll upload them to the site when I get back to the US. It was great to hear some of this material again, especially the Ghost Train's - "Waiting for Madness", which I'm listening to over and over again. The soundtrack to the happiest days of my life (so far).



Spent the evening here, as I always do at least once when I'm back in Edinburgh. It's right in the heart of Rose Street, but it's a little oasis of calm in the craziness that is Rose Street. An occasional stag or hen party end up entering Robertson's by mistake, but they generally last only one or two beers. It's really more like a local. Very old fashioned, in a nice way, inside. I'm suffering today though, as I'm not used to drinking strong European beer in any quantity any more. I must just drink Scottish stuff when I'm back next.



I'm staying at the Travel Inn at Morrison Street again. I always seem to gravitate back to this area when I'm back in Edinburgh, as I spent most of my 20's in this area. I always seem to enjoy the Travel Inn, I stayed in a Travel Inn in London too.

Most of the Stag and Hen parties that end up in Rose Street, with their identical T shirts made for the occasion seem to stay here too, but I never seem to hear them.

There was a fire alarm today which was a bit of a pain in the arse, but we only had to stay outside the hotel for about 10 mins. I was annoyed I missed taking a picture of the fire engine though!