Midgie Bites

My Top 5 Travelling Tunes: David Gow

The Sons and Daughters drummer picks his favourite touring playlist

10 Sep 2009

David Gow, drummer in Scottish band Sons and Daughters, is constantly on the road touring. He tells Anna Docherty what keeps him bopping when he’s travel hopping

Gizmos: Green Special

The best in environmentally friendly gadgets

10 Sep 2009

The key to this whole backpacking lark is to leave behind nothing but your footprints. Here’s our guide to the best environmentally friendly gadgets – all under £20!

Auntie Midgie

Answering all your travel queries

10 Sep 2009

She’s here to answer all your niggling travelling queries and questions. But she’d rather not know about your love life problems …

Our Favourite (Old) Scottish Band: The Proclaimers

We celebrate their upcoming tour in figures

10 Sep 2009

Usually this spot is dedicated to our favourite new Scottish band, but in honour of The Proclaimers UK tour, we’re dedicating it to a Proclaimers-by-numbers special

Auntie Midgie's Guide To: Scottish Cuisine

10 Sep 2009

What’s best? Things like Scotch beef, Scotch lamb and Scottish salmon are real local delicacies and guaranteed to be of superior taste, protected as they are by strict quality guidelines. And many seaside towns offer locally caught fish that is second…

Auntie Midgie's Guide To: Midgies

1 Jun 2009

Tiny little biting bugs that live off human blood, sucking from the skin and causing unpleasant swelling and itching.

Sound Advice - Our New Favourite (Scottish) Band

Withered Hand

1 Mar 2009

The name sounds like it could be the title of a twisted fairytale about a reclusive boy with a deformed limb (or maybe that’s just me?). But upon listening to Withered Hand this sinister moniker becomes all the more fitting, as embedded within the music…

Gizmos

1 Mar 2009

FOOT CLAW GRIPPERS Ever gone power-walking on an icy path? One tends to start off bright-eyed and glowing, but any grace is quickly diminished by the inevitable - and highly mortifying - plummet to earth. But never fear, as the ‘Foot Claw’ is here to…

Sound Advice - 10 Best gigs: Scotland (March–May) 

1 Mar 2009

Franz Ferdinand Thu 5 Mar, 7pm, Barrowlands, Glasgow (H5), 0141 552 4601, £20 The cream of Scottish indie play their home town; it doesn’t get much better than this. The Xcerts Sun 8 Mar, 8pm, Kings Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow (E3), 0141 221…

Sound Advice - My Top 5

1 Mar 2009

1 Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck This is a fantastic driving song and quite possibly my favourite song to utilize the flute, which always gets you extra points with me. It also has some great motorik drumming (a repetitive beat specific to Krautrock music).

What’s in your bag?

1 Mar 2009

Name Radka Simlova Age 37 Hometown Prague How long in Scotland I have visited many times, this time I have been here for 6 weeks Interests Yoga, Knitting, Taxidermy and Social Experiments Donkey ‘I was getting really sick of carrying my…

Auntie Midgie

1 Mar 2009

Q: What’s the best way to explore the Highlands? (Laura, Australia) A: The Highlands are vast, so it helps if you can narrow it down to a chosen area - so do a little research first. Your options are to go it alone, Bear Grylls style; camping…

Introduction to Midgie #2

1 Dec 2008

It's often been remarked that as a small country, Scotland punches well above its weight. Look in any record shop and it's heaving with records from bands that started here. Scan through the history books and you will find that Scots invented Dolly the…

Robert Burns: Rampant Robbie

1 Dec 2008

Seducer, sex machine, womaniser, charmer, bragger and a bit of a bastard. Scotland’s national poet, Rabbie Burns, was a loose-limbed man with one hell of a sex drive. His love life reads like something from a daytime TV show. There are illegitimate…

Homecoming Scotland: Salmond Swims Home

1 Dec 2008

Compared with the Scottish rebel leaders of old, Alex Salmond is a pussycat. William Wallace carried a sword the size of a man; Robert the Bruce was so tough that he wanted his heart cut out after his death, to be taken on a crusade, but Big 'Eck, as…

Robert Burns: Burnie on Burns

1 Dec 2008

I'm in such a mess! I met this guy a year or so ago and really fancied him. All the girls did. He's tall, dark, handsome and writes poetry. Maybe it sounds like a cliché, but when he stares into your eyes your heart starts to melt – and other places…

Your New Favourite Scottish Band: Zoey Van Goey

1 Dec 2008

We live in a world that likes labels. As a result, Zoey Van Goey have often found their sound folded up and slotted into tiny boxes. ‘Sometimes people say they pick up a Canadian indie influence and some have mentioned a Celtic or traditional Irish…

Talk To The Tour Guide

1 Dec 2008

Name James Donaldson Age 35 Hometown Muirdrum, Angus Interests I have a great interest in the history and folklore of Scotland, socializing and, erm, sleeping, eating and working. What do I do with my life again? What sort of…

Rockin' All Over The World

1 Dec 2008

Primal Scream – ‘Swastika Eyes’ You always get to that point of the night where the Scream go on. When we used to tour in a splitter van (a transit van with sections for people and equipment), we'd stop at traffic lights with music blaring and open…

12 Questions: Travis

1 Dec 2008

1. What are you most proud of? My son, Dylan, he is perfect in every way. 2. What do people not know about Travis? That we really aren't such nice guys at all. Behind closed doors we are some of the vilest people you would ever encounter. 3.

The Buzz

1 Dec 2008

THOSE DANCING DAYS Popping and bopping their way towards a hyperactive fit, Those Dancing Days have a boundless energy. All five band members are freshly out of high school and busy making bouncy Swedish pop. Their songs rattle with smoky vocals…

FAQs

1 Dec 2008

This sweet orange fizz is Scotland's second drink, after whisky, and is so popular that this is one of the only countries in the world where Coca Cola is not the biggest selling soft beverage. No one knows quite what it's actually made from. Rumours…

Just what is a Midgie anyway?

1 Oct 2008

For those who have recently arrived in Scotland - as opposed to residents who know these blood-sucking terrors all too well - the midgie (or midge) is a small biting insect that swarms across the Scottish countryside, delivering sharp nips to anyone…

Samhain: The Real Halloween

1 Oct 2008

It’s that time of year again when kids dress up as ghosts and ghouls, some girls dress up in next to nothing and the rest of us, who’ve left it a little late, poke three holes through a white sheet and pretend we’re ghosts. That’s right, it’s Halloween…

12 Questions: Julian Barratt

1 Oct 2008

With the Mighty Boosh stage show soon to hit Glasgow, Julian Barratt (the taller half of the surreal comedy duo) allows Mary Bowers a peek into the forest of his mind. Howard Moon - genre spanner, jazz maverick and Yorkshire’s foremost cream poet - adds…

Gizmos

1 Oct 2008

Solar Powered Backpack: How do you think the Ghost-busters powered their cheesy special FX, sorry, ghoul-killing weapons? The answer’s pretty obvious: with a battery powered backpack. Should you wish to have a few electronic goodies going as you…

Brewing a revolution

1 Oct 2008

It’s a wet Saturday on the eastern fringe of Scotland and my antique Corsa, my rather bewildered boyfriend (lured by the word ‘beer’) and I arrive in the pouring rain to interview one half of the young entrepreneurial duo behind microbrewery Brewdog. In…

Quick questions about Scotland

FAQs

1 Oct 2008

Why's Glasgow so hip at the moment? Glasgow has been one of the UK’s great musical cities for over 20 years. First came Postcard Records, a label that showcased the ‘sound of young Scotland’. Run from a pokey flat on West Princes Street in the city’s…

A brief history of St. Andrew

Patron saint of Scotland

1 Oct 2008

Like his brother Peter, St. Andrew was a fisherman in Galilee before becoming one of the twelve apostles. Following Jesus’ death, Andrew preached in Greece and throughout Asia Minor, eventually being crucified in Patras. We know little about the man…

Spooky Scotland

1 Oct 2008

Glamis Castle Reported to be one of the most haunted castles in Scotland, Glamis is the original seat of the Bowes and Lyons family. The castle is the setting of many a good ghostly yarn, including Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It’s also rumoured to…

Upcoming music

1 Oct 2008

No need to ask what the most eagerly-anticipated album of the autumn is - Oasis’ Dig Out Your Soul is out on 6 Oct, and pundits are already declaring it a huge leap forwards from Don’t Believe the Truth. They say that after every one though, so at this…

Computer Bug

1 Oct 2008

Glasgow has many delights for those that wander off the beaten track, but not even the most intrepid wanderer would expect to find the Brooklyn bridge, the Kremlin and Tokyo city in the town centre.Watch Billy Connelly’s Bullshit Tour of Scotland…

Lykke Li - Youth Novels

1 Oct 2008

There is a sea-softened purity to Swedish singer/songwriter Lykke Li’s voice, and this – her first longplayer – is awash with 80s beats, sparse keyboards and airy, monotone vocals. New single ‘Breaking It Up’ is a playful schoolyard chant sung over a…

Glasvegas - Glasvegas

1 Oct 2008

Glasvegas like to tell stories. Their self-titled debut CD is a little circular storybook, filled with distinctly Scottish tales of city living and working class heroes. Album opener ‘Flowers and Football Tops’ is a tender tribute to the murder of a…

Bloc Party - Intimacy

1 Oct 2008

Bloc Party’s 2005 debut, Silent Alarm, has been a definitive album of the noughties, laying a sonic template for spiky indie-dance with a thumping beat that’s been well observed by bands ever since. Their latest offering, Intimacy, displays many signs…