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Headin’ For a Gig

Here’s the video I shot for Scottish pop legends Hue & Cry (aka Pat and Greg Kane).

Hue And Cry – Headin’ For A Fall

The tune – Headin’ For A Fall – is a slab of 70’s-Stevie-Wonder-style funk shot through with that same sense of righteous anger Stevie was once able to summon up, before the lurid clothing got in the way.

The song was written and recorded before the current economic woes, which marks Pat out as a very prescient comentator. Or perhaps simply recording the song and the sound drifitng out of the studio and wafting across Scotland’s skyline became the butterfly’s wing that started the media hurricane that’s largely got us in to this mess. Hmmm? I wonder.

The guys are gigging in the new year in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Birmingham and London. Sure to be dynamite shows with a mix of new material from the latest album Open Soul, classics from their incredible back catalogue (Labour of Love, Looking for Linda, Violently) and a couple of covers including Beyonce’s Crazy in Love.

Dates and tickets here.

see me

Just finished two little spots for a Scottish mental health ‘anti-stigma’ campaign called see me. It’s 5 years since I made the first see me commercial and a lot has changed in that time. The campaign has been tracked in widescale public research, and there’s been a definite shift in knowledge, attitudes and behaviour around the issue of mental health.

The brief this time was to move the campaign on to a more positive footing. (The previous work – while trying to avoid finger-wagging – tended to focus on ‘stigma’ and the consequences of negative actions.) The aim was to show ‘the calm after the storm’ – most people do recover from mental illness and the understanding and support of friends and family can make a difference.

The difficulty, naturally, is that good news is not necessarily so dramatic. Equally, we didn’t want to be seen to gloss over issues that can be distressing, persistent and sometimes intractible.

So, we set out to make the spots as natural as we could while accentuating the positive. We also wanted to challenge the visual stereotype of people with mental illness looking ‘a bit odd’, unkempt or downtrodden.

In preparation for the shoot, I filmed a bunch of interviews with people who had first hand experience of mental health problems – either their own problems or as a supporter. The results surprised me. The stories, sometimes told with the benefit of distance, were often delivered almost casually, as simple matter of fact or with self-deprecating humour – even when the events were overwhelming, hurtful, or just downright terrifying.

We devised the scripts by taking strands from different people’s lives to create ‘true’ but anonymous stories. Initially, we’d talked about using ‘real people’ but – as always – I felt it was best to ‘get actors to pretend they are real people’. 🙂

In rehearsal, I felt it was easier for the women to be more open, do the confessional ‘friends’ stuff and seem natural. Men’s relationships tend to be more disguised as banter – mutual respect hidden by humour and gentle insults. For the guys, I was worried that it could veer towards ‘ham’ – or be so underplayed as to come across as “water off a duck’s back” .  So I  felt the guys needed more help to ‘internalise’ the enormity of what could happen and its emotional impact – even if that background didn’t really appear upfront on screen. So we devised a ‘back story’ from their different perspectives – woven from the true stories we’d been told. You can read Vince’s story and Johnny’s story and get a sense of what (I hope it comes across as if) they are not talking about.

Johnny’s story

Bryan Larkin as Johnny

“Must have been about  3 in the morning. I was spark out. The phone goes by the bed. I’d had a few beers, bit of a hangover coming on, so I was like – what, what? Gave me a fright. It’s never good news in the night, is it? And…

And it was him. Garbled like. Sobbing. But, basically, saying he was going to kill himself.

Vince’s story

James MacAnerney as Vince

“It started off as nothing. I met my mate Tony for a beer. I felt great. Really clear in my mind. Hadn’t seen him in ages. He’s got a new wife, kid on the way, doing great. Had a few beers, nothing much, a great laugh, and then, at closing time, we said cheerio in the street and he went off to get the train.

It was raining a bit. And I turned the corner, and the street was dark and empty. Then it just hit me. I started wailing, tears streaming down my face. And, even as I was doing it, crying out loud, this strange broken sound, even then I wondered if Tony could hear me…

Manhattan vs Manchester

My old street in DUMBO, NY

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

So good that drunks sing about its postcode every night. Yes, a lot of people ♥NY. And, as Woody Allen would say, “What’s not to like?” They don’t let their dogs foul the streets or their smokers light up in public places.

Indeed, the sheer size of NY means there is, inevitably, lots to like. The mass of glass and steel makes the city highly photogenic. (Probably more so from across the water than in Manhattan itself.) The streets have energy, mostly expended in horn-honking it sometimes seems The sound, like a city’s mating call, seems to attract young people: many still travelling hopefully even years after they arrive.

>>

The city has everything you’d want, and plenty you can’t afford. But it’s popularity reminds me of a crowded bar in my home town, way back when. It was nothing special, but you’d be barely able to raise a glass to your lips for the crush. I wondered why we didn’t head for better, less-packed pubs nearby. The truth is everyone was there, because everyone else was there.

So, join the throng. Go to New York for a weekend, go for a week, go for a fortnight. But, before you think about moving from any major European city to Manhattan, read this.

Headin For A Fall

Just finished the first of a couple of pop promos for Scottish pop legends Hue and Cry. A strangely prescient slab of 70s Stevie Wonder-style funk from Pat Kane and his bro Greg.

Great fun working with two great musicians – tho Pat is at pains to point out that he ‘famously can’t play an instrument’. No, he’s just a great singer. As JB the DoP – director of photography – said, it was spine-tingling to be six feet away from Pat as he’s belting it out.

Hue and Cry are doing a charity gig at Edinburgh’s Hard Rock Cafe for the Caron Keating Foundation on October 15th. Tickets here. Only £10 – bargain.) My pal Shona saw them live recently in Aberdeen and said they were awesome. (The boys are also supporting the legendary Al Green in Glasgow on October 30th. Tickets here.)

The track – headin’ for a fall’ – should be dedicated to all those over-confident, ‘big swinging dicks’ in the financial markets.* (The promo will be available to view, exclusively I believe, on the band’s Music Club website here.)

(Lehmans were actually one of our clients in New York in 2003/2004. It’s odd, but any time I’ve ever come across clients whose decision-making seems founded on arrogance and idiocy – delusions of competence combined with an unpleasant self-regard for their own ill-founded opinions – I’ve usually felt it’s been stupidity masking cupidity. I’ve always thought ‘One day they’ll get theirs’. Not necessarily wishing them ill, (though sometimes that too) but more generally just thinking that the ‘truth will, like murder, out’.

And the weird thing is, they always do seem to get found out. (Sometimes it just takes a bit of time and it’s too late. But what the hey…)

Just a Northern Soul

Legendary Scottish pop combo, Pat and Greg Kane aka Hue & Cry released a new album in August. We were going to make a pop promo for the track The Last Stop – a catchy confection of light Philly grooves, Muscle Shoal horns and Pat’s unmistakable vocal stylings. The treatment was going to be ‘trains and northern soul’.

Then the guys changed their mind and we did Headin’ for a Fall instead. But I’d done the research on Northern Soul – so here it is.

The idea was to combine a Love Train/Soul Train/Wigan Casino sort of thang with, um, train stations…

While our track isn’t exactly a Wigan Casino stomper – we planned a sort of homage to Northern Soul. For the youngsters among us, it was a strange dance (and record collecting) cult that sprang up in the UK in the 70s. The dancing echoed energetic James-Brown-style steps with spins and backdrops, married to often obscure sub-Motown tunes with straight down the line thumping beats. Adherents wore ‘baggies’ (Oxford bag trousers – like big flares only parallel, if you know what I mean. And leather-soled shoes to help them glide on the dance floor) The scene was most famously linked to ‘all-nighters’ at Wigan Casino.

While Northern Soul moves from the clubs in the 70s were a bit more individual, I guess the ‘movement’ has ossified into a style that is a bit of a pastiche of itself – though charming for all that, as you can see from these Japanese kids who are ‘keeping the faith’ and teaching each other the steps in a Tokyo park. Whoodathunkit?

So, here’s the Japanese breaking it down 🙂

Basic dance steps: The first clip gives a lesson in the most basic steps – tho it seems to me that the girl’s feet/ankle movements are better than the teacher’s…

This kid seems to be the leader of the Northern Soul gang in Tokyo. With a nice louche style – even tho he appears to be dressed as Marcel Marceau – he demonstrates:

How to spin and backdrop: tho he starts by doing the splits!

And how to spin more:

Anyhow, their picnics look cool.

Though this looks more authentic Northern Soul to me – from, I guess, around 1975/76: the guy’s t-shirt says P-FUNK, a reference to George Clinton’s Parliament.

Here’s how it’s become more ‘formalised’ in this competition in Alfreton in 1999. Surely, part of the problem is that it just doesn’t look right in skinny trousers?

And then there’s comedy Northern Soul. It’s an idea / dance style that’s plainly held in great affection by many people, perhaps because it’s recognisable and doable, even if you appear to be very one-footed and end up going round in circles. I’m not sure why guys in high-vis jackets enjoy Northern Soul dancing, but there you are – there’s a few workplace clips on youtube like this.

Keep the faith, y’all

Nana’s Eulogy

St John’s RC Church, Perth. Wednesday, 19th March 2008

Requiem for Margaret Martin

29th April 1929 – 12th March 2008

With your forbearance Father, I’d like to start in the Irish tradition and take just a little time to talk about our mum and the great good she achieved in this life. Maybe just one word per good deed. So I reckon we should be done around midnight, if that’s alright?

So, does everyone have a handkerchief? Or a tissue? Then please – blow your nose and dry your eyes. Tears will not rain here. For, to misquote Shakespeare, we have come not to mourn Margaret but to celebrate a life – a life so rich, so rare in love, friendship and accomplishment that her memory can only be illuminated with a smile – like a ray of sunshine breaking through clouds of darkest grey.

So, gladden your heart and mourn no more. When you think of Margaret, all the millennia that rolled by before she was born, and all the eternity to come after she has passed away… As our Universe expands and cools in infinite night, oceans of unending space… her life seems like the flash of a lighthouse in the engulfing dark: Too brief – – and without that guiding light, how many would have been lost and wrecked? So, we are here to celebrate her shining example and the brightness she brought to the lives of others – love and commitment for her own family and extended circle, inspiration for the young, advice for the grown-ups, aid for the sick – and even prison visits for strangers.

Famously, she once visited a young man in Perth prison. He was due for release and was worried about finding work. So she asked what skills he had and he explained that he had worked in a garage spraying cars. She said ‘That’s great – at least you’ve got a trade to go back to when you get out.’ ‘No,’ he replied ‘That’s what I’m in for.’

So, her life was testament to her faith in people as well as in God. And yet, she would have been the first to say she was not without faults. One of the last things she said to me before she bade me ‘goodnight’ was: ‘We are all sinners’.

She believed it – but I struggled to figure out the flaws she thought she had. I wondered… maybe, just as the grain of sand creates the precious pearl, if her faults were so inlaid with her strengths that they rounded out the beauty of her character? So, I thought about her weaknesses.

Maybe, you know, at one time in her life, she enjoyed a cigarette or two. Not much of a vice. But Capstan Full Strength with a nicotine kick that could fell a horse. Yet, it only reminds you how “full of strength” she was.

Strong enough to bear six children and be the best mum you can imagine.

Strong enough to bear disappointment and be the biggest support you could wish for.

Strong enough, even, to bear political office for 10 years, and be the greatest councillor Craigie ever had.

Yes – with 58 years of marriage, 13 grandchildren, 3 great grandchildren, decades of community service, countless acts of kindness and endless prayers – she gave and gave and gave – but never gave in.

If you’ll forgive a footballing metaphor, for Mum was a great Celtic fan, she played the game. Forget the packs of John Players. She still had the puff to go beyond full-time, to take this fancy foreign outfit Carcinoma into extra-time, and then – and only then and only narrowly – was defeated on penalties. So, when the man in black blew the final whistle, she went without complaint, and defied death with a laugh.

In recent weeks, Papa came back from church and told her that Mr Penicuik senior, our local undertaker, had been asking after her health. ‘Ooooh,’ she replied. ‘That can’t be good.’

So, perhaps sometimes too, she could also be honest to a fault. Through thick and thin, in word and deed, she stuck to her principles and always tried to do the right thing.

Born Margaret Kelly almost 79 years ago in Bailliestoun, she left school at 14 to work in Sloan’s Department store as a cashier. And when she became life-long friends with Elizabeth… she did the right thing.

When, after the war, she met and married a wee Glasgow boy called Adam who was fresh from an extended holiday in Burma with the RAF… she did the right thing.

When she put her socialist principles into action as a director of the Co-op and it seemed like the only pay was a pint of cream and a Madeira cake at Christmas… she did the right thing.

When she sent us to deliver home-made soup to the lonely, struggling OAPs who lived nearby… she did the right thing.

When times were tough at home and her mealtime motto was ‘serve small, serve all’ – she did the right thing. And you only realise in retrospect that, till all the family were fed, she ate least and last and, you suspect, sometimes not at all. How many of us can truly say that we put ourselves last?

Not everything turned out as she hoped I’m sure. But, if trying to do the right thing was a crime, she wouldn’t even have bothered to plead the 5th amendment.

‘I’m not always right,’ she’d say. ‘But I’m never wrong.’

Is this kind of confidence the rock on which unfailing faith is built? Is this the kind of courage that can see you through the darkest hour. Or is it just one of Mum’s little jokes? You decide. But I’m here to say there’s one thing you cannot question – and that’s the certainty with which she followed her spiritual path. For I am my mother’s son – and I am always right.

And so, finally, I come to this conclusion. That Mum’s special qualities are too numerous to mention. Humour, kindness, grace and generosity, humility tinged with justifiable pride… and yet there is one quality that she passed on that I cannot pass over. And that’s her commitment to education.

As a person, parent and politician, her unswerving dedication to social justice and self-improvement placed tremendous importance on learning. Not for nothing two of her daughters became teachers.

For me, for everyone in our family – whether it was a simple game of Scrabble or praise for a good pass-mark – she bestowed a love of learning and culture. She was a great reader herself and loved the theatre – which she passed on to me and even more so to my daughter Rebecca. But Nana also had one final secret weakness, and I can barely bring myself to mention it.

She loved musicals.

The last show I went to with her was Chicago with Marty Pellow in the lead, for goodness sake. And then, there was her favourite – Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers. How many times did she see that show? And who went with her to Miss Saigon, Guys and Dolls, Les Mis, Cats, even Sweeny Todd? Own up. She’d seen them all and loved them all. So, what can I say to sum up – as the mediaeval poet says – the perfect pearl that is Margaret – rare, radiant, without compare and, search where you may, you will not find another? She will be so missed by so many.

That question has been going round and round in my mind like a fairground ride. And there is one musical we’d been to see together at Perth Theatre with one particular song, that for some strange reason held a special place in her heart. As we started in the Irish tradition, I thought we might end in the Scottish tradition – in the words of Perth’s own poet William Soutar as he lay bedridden in Wilson Street ‘gang doon wi a sang’…

It’s a sort of secular hymn that sums up the commitment she brought to her life and the courage and dignity she showed in its ending. So, if you’ll join in, I’d like to close my tribute to Margaret with a few lines from Rogers & Hammerstein’s musical ‘Carousel’.

When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm there’s a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Tho’ your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone,
You’ll never walk alone.

Sell-out Scotland

Brandrepublic reports that a significant Scottish client is searching for a ‘London ad agency’. Which is depressing. And not just because they are one of our clients.

In a week in which one well-regarded Scottish agency folded, a few of the more (ahem) senior figures in Scotland’s shrinking adland fell out. The sniping with misfiring antique blunderbusses made playground taunts look like Olympic markmanship. It was counterproductive, dull and incredibly childish. As another bit of business goes south, the spat is also completely irrelevant to the deeper issues facing Scotland’s creative industries.

At best, the debate could be said to centre on whether, over the years, the positioning of a few creative shops as ‘your local London-style agency’ – and the kind of work that was produced – prompted clients to head down south for a wider choice of the real thing. I doubt it personally. The issue is more deep-seated, more complex and further-reaching than that.