A Poem and a Few Songs for Burns Night, and ROW80, Including Knitting

Burns Night is coming up!

I've had some posts on this topic over the years.

There was one in which I waxed poetic about discovering lost manuscripts, another in which I shared a photo of Allan Scott-Douglas, who plays Jamie in Outlander the musical, another with Andy Stewart singing Johnny Cope, and one in which I mentioned listening to an LP of Burns' poetry. We left all our records behind when we moved, sadly.

This year I have a poem I just discovered, Winter Evening by Archibald Lampman.


And I've got lots of music!

I've got playlists for two Scottish bands:

Runrig


Idlewild


I've got a few other Scottish artists scattered throughout my playlists, including Big Country, Nazareth, The Vaselines, Orange Juice, Simple Minds, and Donovan.

But I also recently went back to a band I've liked for years, and just discovered that they have a new album out!

Cousteau

This is the tracklisting from the promotional EP through which I first discovered them.
YouTube is helpful when I don't want to lug CDs back and forth to the office!

New song, BURMA (a WWII-era acronym for Be Upstairs Ready, My Angel)


Awesome cover of Leonard Cohen's So Long, Marianne:



In creating playlists for a different story, I discovered that 1983 was an amazing year for music. Every single one of these 60 songs were released in 1983:


I haven't even included everything that came out that year, from AC/DC, Iron Maiden, REM, and more.

Quick ROW80 update: I'm still editing The Handful of Time on paper. Got sidetracked drafting a new fun side project.

And I started a new knitting project!

Do you have any side projects that you turn to every once in a while, for fun?
Stories or art that will never see the light of day, beyond being shared with a few friends or family members?

Comments

Nothing cooler than discovering new music!
Hi Deniz - I'm off to a Burns lunch 'now' and then tomorrow another Burns supper - I might be haggissed out!

Archibald Lampman I see is Canadian ... so I'll quickly look him up and perhaps be able to use it as a discussion link ... and then at some stage I must come back to listen to your music ... love Leonard Cohen - cheers and Happy Burns knitting day - Hilary
Deniz Bevan said…
Thank you, Alex and Hilary!
Argh, I'm falling behind in blog commenting... Must carve out time to catch up.
Though I think I'd rather be eating haggis and visiting with you - both! - at a Burns lunch!
sage said…
I was honored to speak at a fancy Burn’s Nicht dinner this year... I got a few laughs as I waxed on about Clarinda and how Burns might fare in our “Me Too” era.
I like Billy Joel, especially Uptown Girls. It's good to write to music; I've always liked the music that they play at Starbucks, and I think they should make and sell CDs with their playlists. And good luck with the knitting project!
Enjoyed the music, Deniz. I love Scottish bands (Del Amtri is another, even if their signature song seemed silly, the rest of their music was grand).

A Burn's Night dinner... a friend of mine is always inviting us to the ones he hosts, but I've never been. It does sound grand...
Deniz Bevan said…
I scrolled all the way back to when I started falling behind on blog comments!