Pinch and a punch

And so it begins. It wasn’t far (6km), it wasn’t fast (5:23/km), but it was running and that’s what counts. The Frenchman will try and tell me otherwise, but he’s just increasing his risk of an early injury. Perhaps he’s never heard of the tortoise and the hare.

Enough of that though. Continuing on from yesterday’s list of albums that I listened to most last year, I thought it’d be interesting to try and get a list of the artists I saw live. This’ll be partly from memory and partly from Google Calendar entries. Numbers represent multiple gigs. And so…

• Dave Hause (2)
• Franz Nicolay (3)
• The Streets
• The Queers
• Dee Cracks
• Murderburgers (3?)
• Gogol Bordello
• Laura Cantrell
• Drive-By Truckers
• Frank Turner (2)
• Iron Chic
• Low
• Abigail Washburn
• Andrew Jackson Jihad
• Dananananaykroyd
• Yo La Tengo
• Bad Religion
• Cheap Girls
• Lemuria
• Flogging Molly
• Revival Tour (Dave Hause, Brian Fallon, Chuck Ragan & Dan Andriano)
• The Cat Empire
• Cake
• Lau
• Chris TT

I’m not going to rank them, but there are definitely some standouts. Anything that took place in the basement of The 13th Note in Glasgow is always fun because it’s so close and intimate. The only one I saw there that wasn’t so good was Iron Chic and that was only because I couldn’t see anything, rather than the band, who were amazing. The AJJ and Cheap Girls were both incredible.

Flogging Molly simply blew me away. Turns out they have one of the best live shows I’ve seen, if only because of the crowd. I have never heard singing quite so loud at a show. During one track, Drunken Lullabies I think, they drowned out the band. Part of me wanted to head downstairs and jump in the pit, but I’m happy keeping out of it these days.

The Cat Empire, Frank Turner, Drive-By Truckers and Lau all put on their reliably great shows. They’re all acts that I don’t think twice about before buying a ticket.

Seeing The Streets on their final tour was an eye-opener. For that one I was down in the pit because, to be honest, I hadn’t figured there would be one. However, Mike Skinner can really get the crowd going and we danced and danced for a couple of hours. Bruises and smiles.

The year was pretty muck book-ended by Franz Nicolay. In January I saw him play with Dave Hause and The Murderburgers at the City Cafe in Edinburgh. He then supported Frank Turner in May and played in Dunfermline again in November. The November gig was a bit strange as it was completely dead. I’m not sure if there were even half a dozen paying punters there. However, he and Chris TT are professionals and still put on a great show.

Low was great as it meant I got to bump into a friend before he left for Australia. Cake was great, apart from them rushing through The Big Single which ruined the encore. I really hope that Abigail Washburn and Kai come back again this year.

Ah, The Queers. I’ve been wanting to see them nearly a decade and finally, finally, I would. It was an all-day punkfest through in Glasgow with six or seven bands and The Queers on last. By the time Joe and co. took to the stage, a lot of the crowd were drunk and rowdy. The venue had a really low ceiling and people were bouncing off it and hanging onto fixtures. Then one of them held on a little too long and rigging started coming away. Naturally, the gig stopped as we held the offending bits of roof aloft until it could be fixed. The Queers came back on, we were warned that there would be no more crowd surfing tolerated, and five minutes later it was all over when someone went flying.

All in all, it seemed appropriate. I got to see them play a dozen songs or so, the other bands were good, and I left swiftly before the cops turned up.

Kicking The Tyres

What more stereotypical post could there be to check everything’s working before I embark on 31 days of Janathon blogging? It is, of course, the top ten for the year! Handily, last.fm provides me with plenty of data for such a post so let’s have a look at that.

Before we start you should know that I scrobble everything that I sit down to listen to. Everything on my ipod is recorded and submitted, all of the applications that play music on my laptop are linked to it (Spotify & Banshee), and the first thing I did once my new Sonos box was working was get it linked to last.fm. I have no guilty pleasures.

So, which albums have dominated? Well, have a look. It’s not totally accurate, as the cloud was generated from number of tracks scrobbled, so if an album has a lot of tracks it’ll be weighted towards that. Make sense? No? Never mind.

Well, it’s pretty clear from that that one in particular has dominated. From the track stats, Speak Now has almost twice as many scrobbles from it than any other album. Course, it helps that the one I’ve been listening to most is the deluxe which has extra tracks. I won’t lie, I love this album. It’s great to sticking on in the background while working or driving, it’s perfect for humming along to and, when in the safety of the car, belting out at top volume.

Coming up second is one that was new for me this year: Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor. I first heard it mentioned on The Org’s roundup of 2010 but I didn’t immediately reach for it. However, when Jacob then mentioned it at work I gave it a spin and, clearly, I’m glad I did. In the same brath, Jacob also mentioned Fang Island which is the musical equivalent of a room full of people high-fiving each other. If 2012 wants to do right by me it’ll have new albums from both of them and tours as well.

At number three, and belting out of my speakers as I type is Mr Frank Turner with England Keep My Bones. I saw him twice this year in completely different settings. The first was a solo, acoustic show in Dunfermline and the second was a full band extravaganza (with Against Me!) in Glasgow. Both were amazing, he’s a real talent and I hope he lives up to his promise to keep on doing it until the day he dies.

The fantastic Wir Sind Helden at are number four with their latest, Bring Mich Nach Hause. I hope they do another UK gig at some point, otherwise I’m just going to have to arrange a holiday around a mainland Europe tour.

At five, more country with Miranda Lambert’s Revolution. I wasn’t so fussed about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but this one is much, much better. Similar to Taylor Swift, I find country music great when I’m at work, possibly because I can phase in and out with it, not needing to pay too much attention, but not finding it distracting if I need to think.

Six is another album from Wir Sind Helden, and their first, it’s Die Reklamation (not on Spotify). No, I don’t really much of a clue what they’re singing about, but they’re still pop-tastic.

At seven, the hard-working Dave Hause (as in pause) with Resolutions. I say “hard working” because he’s come over to the UK twice this year and it would have been three times if Matt Skiba hadn’t broken his foot, causing the Alkaline Trio gig to be cancelled. It’s a great, great album, and one that I used to good effect to keep me going on the last leg of this year’s Coast to Coast Challenge. The second time was with The Revival Tour which was quite possibly one of the highlights of my gigging year.

More Miranda at number eight; it’s this year’s album, Four The Record. Another cracker, and if you like it then you should definitely be listening to The Pistol Annies.

It’s not all German pop in the top 10, there’s French as well. Alizée’s Une Enfant Du Siècle is, according to Wikipedia, a concept album about the life of Edie Sedgwick. If you say so, it just sounds nice to me and continues the tradition that with each new album I listen to the earlier ones less. Psychédélices still gets the odd play, but it’s very much consigned to second place.

And last, but by no means least, we have the amazing Mixtapes with Maps. Please, please tour over here.

 

Anyway, looks like the blog still works. I’ll be back with the first dull post about running tomorrow.

 

Porage

And so it came to pass that just one day passed between the completion of Juneathon and my next foray into playing silly buggers. You can insert your own exclamations of “has it really been a year since the last one?” but yes, it really has.

We, the faithful, gathered in Kircudbright for the start of Summer Porage 2011. There were fewer people than usual that I knew but is always the case with races it didn’t take long to learn a few names, shake a few hands and swap a few stories. The Friday night was a very relaxed affair as I’d taken the day off to pack and travel meaning that I turned up, pitched the tent and was ready to ride in an hour. All that was left to do was eat, have a drink and get to bed.

On that last note, while I love my wee tent, it’s low hanging ceiling means that it can get really warm in there during summer months.

However, it’s still a beaut. The being woken at 4am by the sun and birds wasn’t so great, but I managed to get at least some rest before the sounds of a waking campsite got my up just before seven. A cereal bar, a banana and a coffee and we were gathering for the initial bike ride to The Island.

There were checkpoints on the island and, thankfully, no sign of any plugs or polar bears. After that it was all bike for the next 90km. We went up hills and down them again, through Gatehouse of Fleet and along Old Military Roads. Up the Kirroughtree red to McMoab (no, I didn’t manage it) and then back down Route 7 to the Galloway Creamery. A long ride on a hot day and I loved it all.

It wasn’t my best ride ever, that I’ll admit, the strains of Juneathon were showing as after the second bag drop and with 30km to go I lost all energy. Two gels couldn’t revive tired legs and I struggled to keep up with the pelaton I’d fallen in with, resigning myself to knowing that they weren’t that far ahead and allowing myself a cheer whenever I caught up enough to see them before they disappeared around the next corner.

All in all, another cracking Porage. I wonder where winter’s will be.

Full gallery.

Juneathon #30

I can’t tell a lie; this one hurt.

I always wanted to finish the month on top of Arthur’s Seat and I’m so chuffed that I could do it with so many friends. Big thanks to Jacob who’s been out running with me most of the lunchtime runs and who, not as part of Juneathon, has passed the 160km barrier this month.

Doing this challenge has been a hell of a lot of fun and I’ve found once again that I have no idea where my physical limits are. I’m not claiming for a second that I’m not tired, but if you’d told me I’d be out running for 28 days out of 30 I’d have scoffed. But I adopted a new running pose and I shuffled round the courses with nothing more than a couple of blisters for my troubles. I even managed a half marathon at the end there. I’m not going to be modest, I’m pleased with myself.

Today was definitely the last one though. My legs felt like lead as soon as we hit the upward slope. The run back was uncomfortable but I was riding a high of achievement.

Congratulations to everyone who took part in this crazy escapade, thanks to everyone who sent me a message of good luck, it was all appreciated. A day off tomorrow and then I’m on the mountain bike for a race. I might retire early if someone offers me a coffee.

Final total is 258km in 24 hours of running which means I ran around the 6min/km mark for the whole month. That’s not a bad pace at all. Here’s to Janathon.

Juneathon #29

It’s late, I’m just home, I’ve been watching terrible movies with the zombie club. I just need to muster up the strength to do it once more….with feeling!

Juneathon #28

Still 10km. I need to make it to 250km and Jacob needs to hit 100 miles. I was definitely struggling towards the end which is undoubtedly a combination of speed and the fact that we talk all the way around. I’ve got 14km left to go before 250 and I think the Arthur’s Seat run will be around 10, so if I just do the 7km loop tomorrow I’ll definitely pass the 250 mark and stand on top of the trig point.

Bring it.

Juneathon #27

If I’m going to hit 250km then I need to keep up the distances. Today was a regular 10km loop and I was very surprised at how well my legs held up. No pain, no stiffness, and a decent pace all the way round. Thursday’s going to be a run up Arthur’s Seat so here’s hoping this dreich weather buggers off before then.

Juneathon #26

In which Ross runs a half marathon. It was always going to be a run that was for distance rather than a PB, but I had it in my head that I still wanted to do a sub-two hour time. This would match the first one I ever ran in Alloa, several years ago.

It was a dreich start to the day and I wondered if I was going to end up cold and wet, but thankfully the rain passed on leaving us with an overcast and reasonably warm day. I knew this was going to be slow and ponderous so I was toying with the idea of running with headphones and getting through some more podcasts or audio books, but ultimately decided that this was not the time to start experimenting.

So, as usual, I turned up in plenty of time, warmed up, and then realised I had twenty minutes to go. Luckily it passed relatively quickly and before too long I was off and running, keeping a close eye on my Forerunner to try and stick to around a 6min/km speed.

There’s really not much to say about the majority of the run; I plodded round, had a bit of banter (though not a lot due to the fact that half of the pack seemed to have headphones in), and then decided I needed to put on a push. You can see this at the 1:38 mark on the graphs as my speed leaps up and I started passing a lot of people. I managed to do well on the few downhills and just let myself go, which scared a couple of girls as I went passed them at an almost out-of-control speed.

Once I was back in the park I realised I really didn’t have much time left to make it in under two hours. In fact, it was going to be very, very close. I dug deep, found a bit more energy and sprinted for the line. According to my GPS I passed the line with 15s to go, but I’ll keep an eye on the official chip times and see what comes out of it.

Four days to go. I’d really love to hit 250km but I’m not sure my legs would cope with that. Whatever happens I’d like to finish with a run up Arthur’s Seat on Thursday.

Juneathon #25

Sorry, a retro post. This was a really short run to fulfil obligations. A bit like this blog post.

Juneathon #24

I actually managed to a short run today, only 6km. I’ll do the same tomorrow before the half marathon on Sunday. Must dash now, another trip through to Glasgow. So, so tired.