This, though the picture does leave a little something to be desired, is my first attempt at Fish Pie. Sounds kind of weird huh? It tastes great though; it is basically haddock that has been baked in milk which is then mixed with butter, parsley, and a few other ingredients to then be topped with a layer of mashed potatoes and cooked until it gets a little brown on top. I thought the recipe didn't sound to difficult and that I would be able to have it on the table in well under an hour - wrong. I accidentally bought haddock that had not been de-boned thus resulting in twenty minutes or so of foul language while picking through the fish after it had been baked - oh well, the dish tasted good enough that it was worth missing the first act tonight.
Right after dinner we were of to see the show.
This is the first band we caught. They went by the name of the Dead Beat Club - unfortunately we missed the beginning of the act so we do not know where they are from. They were quite good, the lead singer (sitting wearing the trucker hat) had a deep, raspy, throaty voice that really harmonized nicely with the tambourine playing female vocalist. Other instruments included a harmonica player, a keyboardist, and a mandolin player; the mando guy really added some flavor to the music.
These two played under the name of the guitar player, Alex Hodgson. This was a pretty cool act, the guitarist had a great sense of humor and liked to tell jokes between songs. Probably the funniest thing that we heard was a story about a guy who works at one of the monuments in Edinburgh finding a 'wee poo' on the top step of the monument after closing one night and rather than carrying it all the way down the stairs to dispose of it decided to throw it out the window at the top of the monument, at which point it landed on a floodlight. Upon leaving work that night the man was said to notice something that looked like the Batman symbol being shown on the monument - the best part was that the guitar player took this story and wrote a song about it, I must say I never thought I would laugh so hard at a song about 'poo.'
Ryan Young is probably one of the most impressive acts that we have seen so far, I doubt that he could be much over 14 years old and was a positively amazing fiddler. He did three sets of tunes, a few of which he had written himself, the music coruscated throughout the room. Literally amazing playing; we think he might have won BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2006 (this is yet another concert in the Celtic Connections Festival) - and if he didn't win last year he should have!
Last and, in my opinion, least we have CAL. Cal is the guitar player at front and center, apparently his band mates think he's so cool that they decided to just name the band after him. But really, this guy was so full of himself it was almost scary - he threw guitar picks out to the audience after they finished playing (something I thought reserved for bands like AC/DC). The music was not bad, but not spectacular either - think Steve Millar-esque with Pick Floyd style synthesizers all while maintaining a near extreme level of Scottish nationalism. It felt as though Cal might have felt a little bit more at home in the mid 80s than in the new millennium. They did have their moments though, the song that got me was one that sounded eerily like poison and which the chorus ran 'your my Scottish rose in the heather without a thorn' - it would have been even more funny if they had meant for it too be humorous but unfortunately I don't think that was the case. One more thing that Trish felt I should relate about the evening occurred when these guys were on stage, but as she can probably tell it better than I can here she is:
Well... there was this odd women and her four daughters there having a picnic of junk food. The mother was definitely trying to be more of a friend than a mother and was really irritating all through the show with the food paper wrappers and trying to get her daughters to pay all sorts of attention to her. But then it was Cal's turn to hit the stage. She sent the girls off to sit in chairs (as others had left the room due to Cal's noise.) It was then that we noticed that her shirt was sooo low that the "girls" were about to jump out with any fast movements. (And she wasn't a slight woman by any means, which meant there was even MORE cleavage.) Next thing we knew she was just a few feet from us, up against the wall, shaking her groove thing. One of the daughters even came up to her, and good old mom sent her back to her seat. We think she was trying to find a new daddy for her girls.
2 comments:
I just looked up Ryan Young. He is 15 and has Lomond Folk Festival Young Traditional Musician Contest twice.
These sound like amazing shows, glad you can get to them. Mike, nice job writing, you're welcome to any time, you know!
I've got to know though, did the lady's girls come out to play??
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