I’ve learned over the years that writing is occasionally less a planned activity than it is a series of serendipitous accidents.<\/p>\n
Consider the BBC’s Scotland Introducing<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n I can’t tell you why, over a year ago, I started listening to this podcast. But I do. Every Friday, I download the new episode and give it a listen. On occasion I’ve found a band that’s intrigued me — q without u, Beatnic Prestige, a couple of others. The big discovery for me was Y’all Is Fantasy Island<\/a>, a Scottish folk outfit that I’ve found absolutely pleasant to listen to, and their albums, especially In Faceless Towns Forever<\/i>, have seen pretty heavy play when I’ve been writing “THOD<\/a>.” More often than not, however, I listen to the episode and forget it entirely.<\/p>\n This week’s episode of Scotland Introducing had tracks from a number of bands. The episode started out as nothing spectacular, but then, about halfway through, I stopped the mp3 and went back.<\/p>\n I’d heard something I liked. Not only did I like what I heard, it reached out through my headphones and shook me hard<\/i>.<\/p>\n It had the right sound<\/i>.<\/p>\n The band? Washington Irving<\/a>. The song? “The Magician.”<\/p>\n What sound was I looking for? That brings us back to “THOD<\/a>.”<\/p>\n One of the characters in the story belongs to a Celtic punk band. Think the Pogues or the Real McKenzies or the Tossers or the Dropkick Murphys. Something in that vein. Except, I knew in my head, the band didn’t sound like any<\/i> of those. I couldn’t put the Tossers’ In the Valley of the Shadow of Death<\/i> in the stereo and get my head in the right “space,” for instance. It didn’t have the right sound<\/i>.<\/p>\n That one track from the Scotland Introducing podcast, that track had the sound<\/i>. I had found the band.<\/p>\n Okay, it’s not exact<\/i>. There’s no bagpipes. Or even an e-bow distorted guitar to generate a bagpipe-like sound (a la<\/i> 80s New Wave band Big Country). And they don’t sound particularly punk-ish; actually, they sound a bit like Snow Patrol-meets-Jethro Tull. But I can fudge that in my mind. Because the rest of the sound is right<\/i>.<\/p>\n I’ve found the band. A serendipitous accident. :cheers:<\/p>\n The surprising thing to me in writing “THOD” has been the influence that Scotland, a place I have never been, has had on the composition. It’s Scottish musicians I tend to put in the stereo when I sit down to write. Whatever the reason, it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve learned over the years that writing is occasionally less a planned activity than it is a series of serendipitous accidents. Consider the BBC’s Scotland Introducing podcast. I can’t tell you why, over a year ago, I started listening to this podcast. But I do. Every Friday, I download the new episode and give itContinue reading “On This Week’s Musical Discovery”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[4098,88,690,4102],"class_list":["post-2458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-music","tag-scotland","tag-thod","tag-writing","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}