Spread em again

Ah, another UK championship, and another round of piping judges with ranking spreads stretching far and wide.

Thanks to the RSPBA’s exhaustive and timely online results spreadsheet, the punters can analyze and over-analyze every microcosm of soggy score sheet detail.

To be sure, credit goes to the Grade 1 piping judges, who were never more than three placings apart.

But in Grade 2, Torphichen & Bathgate must be wondering what’s in store for their season, with an alarming first and seventh in piping. And a second and a seventh to Glasgow-Skye must have that band shaking its collective head.

But the most intriguing must be Grade 3A, where some of the spreads are Grand Canyonesque. Take Kintyre Schools: a second and a thirteenth.

And then there’s most glaring one of the day, Pride of Murray with their eighteenth and second. That’s 15 places separating the judges in an 18-band contest. Is the pipe section pushing Grade 2 standard or are they looking at relegation? One has to wonder what the bus ride back to England was like.

Obviously, discrepancies arise in a subjective event. One judge’s fancy can be another’s pet peeve. But, really, what’s wrong with judges getting together to hear each other out and perhaps find some common ground? The benches at the world’s most important solo piping events have been doing that for centuries.

Going Home, Going Home

Poor Melinda. She sings circles around everyone for three months and gets sent home by the discerning American public.

And how often do we see this in piping competitions? Quite a lot. Bands and soloists are clear winners to everyone but the judges. The winners are happy, of course, and it’s not their fault that they were awarded the prize. Meanwhile the runner-up who deserved the award has to regroup and fight another day.

Subjective competition can be a tough, sometimes soul-destroying effort. Competitive pipers and drummers are a very strange lot: they keep coming back for more hoping that their next performance will get the benefit of the doubt and the top prize.

They say that hack golfers will have at least one shot per round that is as good as any golfer on earth can make. No matter how pish they are, they will keep coming back for more based on that little thrilling bit of hope that says, Yes, I can play this game.

Pipers and drummers cling to that one part, or even that perfectly-played phrase that compels them strap on the kilt again the next weekend, bound for personal glory.

Steady on

At the Livingstone Invitational on Saturday a friend remarked that it’s now usual for professional-level solo competitions not to have a single player make a serious blunder, much less a breakdown. This is true. I can’t remember listening to a big event in the last few years where someone has completely lost the bottle.

Competitors don’t necessarily play to a higher technical or musical standard, but they do avoid “shooting themselves in the foot,” as the person said. The eight pipers at the Livingstone “got through it,” as they say, with relative ease. Some were clearly on edge, but never to the point of crumbling.

And this included a few very young players, like Will Nichols, Jacob Dicker and Lionel Tupman, all of whom showed up ready to play their best. There was not that much, really separating many of the competitors

The professionalism in professional-level solo piping continues to rise. Solo pipers today mean business, and they’re not going to let mental blunders due to nerves or lack of practice put them out.

Listen to the dissin

I’ve done about 70 full-length interviews over my 19 years of putting together the Piper & Drummer and pipes|drums. I do them because I am personally interested in what the interviewees have to say, and I have some compulsion to make sure that at least some of their first-person thoughts are preserved for historians.

I gain at least some new different insight from every one of them. Part 1 of the current Fred Morrison Interview is no exception. He opened my eyes to the perspective of many, many people, and caused me to think of competitive solo piping in a slightly different way. Here’s the excerpt I’m thinking of:

FM: But I’d absolutely no intention of going out there and playing controversial music that would put people’s noses out of joint. I mean, there’s absolutely no gain in that in me. It’s not respectful. If I were going to go round the games, I know the crack and I know the style of music that’s required. And, to me, it’s not the only style of music, but it’s a style of music that I’m going to acknowledge and do and play to the best of my ability.

p|d: Your point about respecting the music is very interesting.

FM: Yes. Those great guys are sitting on the bench and I have heard them giving great performances themselves. That’s the style that they were brought up in and I was brought up in and I’m not going to go and start harassing people. I acknowledge what they’ve done and if people like solo piping, great, because it’s a great thing to get in to. I’m not going to start criticizing a great scene. I know the style required and, if you go to the Northern Meetings, it’s a great, exciting event. It’s fair enough to play in that style.

For me, that is a fascinating debate. Is it disrespectful to introduce a new style to a tradition? Is the task at hand simply to imitate what’s been done forever? Should judges be the keeper and protector of the tradition?

There are many, many enlightening aspects of Fred’s interview, but, for me, this one point hit home the most.

Ceol less

You have to applaud the Piobaireachd Society for making the Senior list all modern tunes – or at least piobaireachd written after Queen Victoria died, which is “modern” in ceol mor terms.

The intention I assume is to open things up a bit more, to get some different stuff played, and perhaps legitimize new compositions. There’s no doubt that the Piobaireachd Society’s “authority” stamp is big, bold and Scottish accented. Pipers see these lists and immediately think that the tunes are worth playing, even if you never see non-pipers with them on their iPod.

If the PiobSoc really wanted to have these tunes in circulation they would not be assigned to Clasp-winners to learn. There are maybe 15 of these pipers on earth, and about two of them play at anything but invitiationals or the major Gatherings.

The accomplished pipers who are out there competing the most are those vying for the Silver Medals. The next-most-active group are the Gold Medal players. Rarely heard are the Clasp people, and I guarantee that these players would enter other events with big tunes – the stuff that made them famous.

I’d imagine that the reason for not including modern tunes in the Silver and Gold lists is the familiar saw that the Piobaireachd Society needs to act as the steward for what pipers should have in their repertoires before they win the Silver and/or Gold medals. And that insinuates that those modern tunes are not in fact credible.

Case in point: a similar modern list was set in 1992, again for the Seniors. Did those tunes catch on? Were they heard much more than at Inverness and Oban? No and no. When it comes to piobaireachd, “authority” trickles up.

Freedom vote

And so, Scotland goes to the polls tomorrow to decide its future . . . or at least the future of its future. I’ve said my piece before about where I stand on the independence issue, as if it matters what a Canadian-American of Scots-Ukrainian-English lineage thinks.

Like millions around the world, I will be watching the results with interest. I don’t live there, but I have hundreds of friends and family who do, and I’m always interested to hear their thoughts on the matter, and especially how they voted.

It will be fascinating to see if all those Scots who have for years voiced their desire for independence will actually mark their X for change.

eBay To Go widget

I’m actually just experimenting with this new “eBay To Go” widget, and picked out a random listing. I have no idea who the seller is, but I do know that the CD’s a good one for relatives who like the pipes, but “think it all sounds the same.”

Let me know what you think of the eBay To Go widget!

Turn and face the strange

A few people alerted me to the fact that Gary West and Iain MacInnes’s BBC Radio Scotland Pipeline program last Saturday included a few marches from a broadcast I recorded in 2003 when I was still at the solo thing. (A bit jet-lagged rushy here and there, but not too bad.) Margaret Houlihan’s selection is stellar, and, if for nothing else, go listen to it for that alone.

But hearing it again got me thinking about how much has changed for me since August 2003. A few weeks later, I would turn 40, and a few days after that, my mother would be killed in a car crash. There are tons of very good things of course that have happened since then, too, and I’m grateful for them all.

It is interesting to hear something you’ve done that is locked in a very specific place in time. Some say that the ephemeral nature of music is what makes it so beautiful. It’s a fleeting muse, and capturing and holding a musical moment and all of the emotion and feeling locked up in it is impossible. That’s what makes it so alluring to so many.

But a simple recording like that has the ability to transport one to a completely different place. It’s the elusive time-machine.

More or less

Canada’s “National Newspaper,” The Globe and Mail, launched its new design on Monday. It’s smaller and carries fewer hard news stories, but more features. As is usually the case in matters like this, there’s no reduction in price, even though I’m getting less for the investment.

I closed down the old Piper & Drummer magazine because it just didn’t make sense. It was too expensive to produce, too cumbersome to coordinate, and too slow to distribute. In the end, it cost about $30 a year for four issues.

The new pipes|drums costs $9.99 for the year, and there is actually far more regular, new content than the print magazine ever had. After about six months, I’d say there’s already twice as much as what the quarterly magazine could produce in a year.

And yet I hear stories about people filching subscriptions from their friends because they’re too cheap to shell out the $9.99. Never mind that all proceeds go back into the site or to worthwhile piping causes.

Further, while something like The Globe and Mail charges just as much for less, pipes|drums charges less for much more.

Go figure.

Crank up the stereotype

There’s a very Canadian chain of hardware-retail stores called Canadian Tire, and I was in one the other day.

“Crappy Tire,” as it is semi-affectionately referred to by semi-frustrated Canadians, has a popular incentive for customers to use cash and not credit: they give you “Canadian Tire Money” in small amounts based on your sale total. You then can use the “money” on your next cash purchase.

Canadian Tire has used a balmoral-wearing, tartaned “Scrooge” character for as long as I can remember. The character I think is intended to denote the qualities of saving and thrift. The character is on the company’s money, and has been featured in its ad campaign. It’s a combination of the Christmas Carol persona and a stereotyped tight-0fisted Scot.

The company’s insinuation is that penny-pinching is good, but the big lesson of Dickens’s story is that they can make people horrible. Old Scrooge, who hoards his money and is distrustful of all, is hateful; the reborn Scrooge, who shares his wealth and learns to love his fellow man, is loveable. Canadian Tire lamely puts a trace of a smile on the character, perhaps to skirt the Old Scrooge issue. This has always made me think.

Why is it okay to stereotype Scottish people as misers? Thrift can be seen as a good thing, but the Scrooge-like, bah-humbug thing is a bit insulting, especially when you remember that Toronto’s population reportedly has more first-generation Scots than the city of Aberdeen.

As I mentioned before, the Groundskeeper Willie Scottish stereotype is pervasive, and it’s used to sell everything from bevy to chuggy. Martinet “Scottish” characters, replete with wild red hair and screeching voice, are somehow okay.

I mean, one doesn’t see ads featuring a Shylock character, encouraging people to emulate a penny-pinching-Jew. That would be the gross and insulting stereotype that it is. People justly recoil against stereotypes of African-Americans, and Don Imus is dismissed for his ignorance. Good.

Maybe Scots are just good at not taking themselves too seriously, and the ability to laugh at ones self is generally a good quality. I just wonder why some negative stereotypes are allowed and some aren’t.

Pedigree and pipes

The news of John Wilson’s MacDougalls realizing (that’s the word they use when describing the sale of antiques at auction) $13,000 in as-is condition should have the piping world talking. Troy Guindon’s acquisition will make any serious piper jealous – not so much of the instrument itself, but its historical pedigree.

That said, I’ve always thought that our best, vintage drones are under-valued. A serious pianist will drop $80,000 or more on a good Steinway or Bösendorfer. Stringed orchestral instruments fetch easily into six-figures. $5,000 for a set of silver and ivory Hendersons is a bargain, considering the passion most serious pipers put into their craft, not to mention the fact that an equivalent brand-new all-silver set easily exceeds that price.

But it’s the pedigree of the Wilson pipes that interests me. The added value of owning and playing a set that produced great music and stirring performances really has no price for those who appreciate such things.

How much could pipes played by our current champions realize? What would Willie McCallum’s silver Hendersons go for at auction? What about Bill Livingstone’s drones, previously played by his father, originally made by Peter Henderson? Or Colin MacLellan’s Lawries? These are all pipers with an even more impressive performance record than Wilson’s, so the added-value of their drones must be even greater, no?

Truth is, pipes like Wilson’s are usually left or gifted to a pupil or, as in Wilson’s case with his uncle, to a family member. Sales of such pedigreed pipes are not usually seen, or made so public, so perhaps our sense of such a great instrument’s value is not as high as it should be.

Until now. It will be interesting to see whether this $13,000 bagpipe energizes the market for vintage drones, and increases our perception of bagpipe-value to a more appropriate level.

Pipe dream

Credit and congratulations to Jim McGillivray and David Waterhouse for convincing Margaret Wilson to sell her late husband John Wilson’s MacDougall’s. These have been moldering under a bed at her home in Willowdale for nearly 30 years, but should be restored to pristine condition, and I hope ultimately get into the hands of a serious and appreciative piper.

I used to live about three blocks from Margaret Wilson, and I actually made a casual offer for the pipes maybe 15 years ago. At that time she was hoping that someone in her family would take up the instrument, so I didn’t push it with her. That would have been the ideal place for the pipes, since they have always been a Wilson bagpipe, what with his uncle, The Baldooser, originally buying them.

It did set me thinking about vintage pipes. My feeling was that the market is not nearly as hot for Henderson, MacDougall and Lawrie drones as it was a decade ago. It seemed to me that modern pipe-making techniques are so good that more pipers are gravitating towards McCallum, Naill, Kron, Strathmore or whatever. So I posted a poll on it, and it appears that a “dream instrument” is still a classic silver-and-ivory vintage set. My perception appears to be not-so-clear.

Add the extraordinary pedigree that the Wilson pipes carry, and I would not be surprised if these achieve $15k or more.

I’ll take two . . .

Unwritten law of pipe bands?

Today I heard about the P-M and L-D of a competing band resigning. Obviously, this happens frequently, but it rarely occurs after February.

I don’t know the circumstances yet, and I’m sure there are a multitude of reasons, but isn’t there an understood rule with pipers and drummers that you don’t leave a band after March? I always thought that no matter what you muddle through the competition season, and after the last contest bow out as gracefully as possible.

Has this ethic changed? Is it now okay to leave a band in a lurch?

You need coolin; baby, I`m not foolin

Our annual April Fool story is always fun, and it’s amazing how many people actually take the bait every year. (Click here if you missed it, but you’ll need a subscription, which I’m sure you have already.) Humour has always been an important and differentiating aspect of the publication. Pipers and drummers are a funny lot, and it’s strange to me that so many other publications are completely devoid of anything remotely (intentionally) comical.

Speaking of funny, April 1 was also the start of the 2007 Major League Baseball season, with the Cardinals rematching the Mets in a reprise of their classic Playoff series of last year. The Mets won, 6-1, but there are many more games to go. Too bad for Mets fans that their team couldn’t have done that in October! Mwaaa-haw-haw-haw!

Seriously, Tom Boswell waxed on about time beginning on Opening Day. The piping and drumming world enjoys the dormant months as much as the sporting world and, when the proverbial bell rings, there’s an air of excitement and hope for all competitors that the new year will bring great things.

May your season include many triumphs.

In rotation

Not much to say these days (i.e., too freakin’ busy to think!), but here are a few songs in rotation, in case anyone’s interested:

1. “Intervention” – Arcade Fire (in fact, the whole damn Neon Bible CD is brill)
2. “Herculean” – The Good, The Bad and The Queen
3. “Sea Legs” – The Shins
4. “Muzzle of Bees” – Wilco
5. “My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg)” – The Ramones (Annabel absolutely loves the movie School of Rock and this great song is in it, which prompted me to look it out)

Always like to hear what other people are listening to, so feel free to fire away.

Idolatry

People who say, “I don’t watch a lot of TV, but did you see last night’s episode of . . .” are invariably in a state of denial. The truth is they watch as much TV as they possibly can. They love TV, but they hate admitting it.

I admit it: I really like “American Idol.” Sure, it’s full of treacly tunes and the whole thing is one giant money-making engine that started with “Pop Idol” in the UK and now is in just about every country with electricity on earth. You can hate it, but you have to admit that the talent is at times awesome. Everyone who has performed on a stage in front of a crowd – and just about every one of you have – knows just how hard it is to deliver a tune to the very best of your ability. And these people do it in front of a gazillion viewers. They have my and my six-year-old daughter’s unconditional admiration. (By the way, my money is on Gina to win it all.)

The judging system is what got me thinking. The panel of three judges provides additional drama with their camped-up bickering and disputes. They (and I’m sure an army of other judges we never see) decide who gets to “go to Hollywood” for the final rounds. Shortly thereafter, the judges give way to audience voting, and it’s the audience that decides who stays, goes, and wins (although we never do see an audited third-party report of all those calls, do we?).

The three judges, though, offer their commentary and expert opinion after each performance, presumably to give the voting audience some guidance. This could work very well in certain piping, drumming or pipe band competitions. Choose the same panel of accredited judges, allow them to tell the audience what they thought of each performance. But then let the audience vote for the winners at the end of the event. It works well for a bazillion people watching “American Idol,” and there’s no reason it couldn’t work well for what we do.

St. Groundskeeper Willie Day

What a strange occasion is St. Patrick’s Day. Everybody loves the Irish and wants to be Irish for one day a year. Being Irish obviously means having a stinkin’ good time, listening to music, and toasting absent friends. In the US and Canada the night is always a money-maker for pipe bands and pipers, who are employed across the continent to provide Celtic music in a loud way.

Scotland just doesn’t seem to have the same thing. St. Andrew’s Day both in and outside of Scotland is celebrated mainly by the snobby country dancing set and St. Andrew’s “Societies” that cater to the upper-crust. The Toronto St. Andrew’s Society requires people buying tickets to their annual hoity-toity dance at the swishy Royal York hotel to take country dancing lessons before they can attend. What fun.

Burns Night is good, and any country that produced a poet that speaks to the world at large can’t be bad. Burns celebrated the common man and wine, women and song, so one would think that the night would be every bit as raucous as St. Patrick’s, but, sadly, it’s not so. It’s never caught on in a big way. (Picture Scots celebrating “Mark Twain Day” or “Robert Frost Night” to get the gist of what I mean.)

There’s the recently conjured “Tartan Day,” but it’s contrived. It just doesn’t have the same zippity-zing as being Irish for a day. Most people like tartan cloth – nice colours and all that, and every year at least one fashion pundit announces that “tartan is in” this spring/fall/winter. But I just don’t know how many people want to pretend that they’re Scottish.

Then again, every non-Scot seems to like to have a try at putting on a Scottish accent. But usually it’s in an angry, sweary brogue. TV commercials have always been rife with uppity Scotsmen going nuts over a spilled pint or wasting money. Groundskeeper Willie is a caricature of the stereotypical Scot in the eyes of North Americans. And who wants to be that, even for a day?

Lightning bolt

The “10 Q’s With . . . Steven McWhirter” piece got me thinking. Steven seems mature beyond his 23 years, but winning a World Solo Drumming title at 23 must be something else. I wouldn’t really know.

Most people know that John D. Burgess won both Gold Medals at age 16, and he was even a legend before that happened. John Wilson (Glasgow) and Dr. John MacAskill were also in their teens when they copped one of the medals. More recently, the young Alastair Dunn picked off Aviemore gold last year.

But most people toil away at the big prizes never to actually win all of them. Some of the world’s most respected piobaireachd players – Jim McIntosh, Andrew Wright, and Jack Taylor, to name but three – never managed the Clasp, while others with a fraction of the knowledge gained the prize on the first try and became instant “authorities.”

The picture of McWhirter and Reid Maxwell forces me to think of the 20-odd years that Reid – clearly one of the greatest pipe band drummers of all-time – has not yet won the big solo prize, while his protégé got it after a few tries. But I’m certain there was no one happier for Steven than Reid himself.

My predictions: 1. McWhirter has many more World titles to come, and 2. his win opens the door to other fine young drummers being given the nod.

Springs eternal

Watching spring training baseball is always a great pleasure for a baseball fan. It gets the fan-juices going to see who’s coming up and how teams might look for the season ahead. Baseball teams come to Arizona and Florida with about 50 players vying for spots on the 25-man-roster that will “head north” with the big club. The rest will be assigned to the organization’s minor-league teams.

There are 25 spots on each team. Nine players are on the field at a time, and the manager of the club uses the other 16 players strategically during the game. It’s no different from football, basketball or hockey – or just about any organized competition. Even musical contests.

Except for pipe bands. Bands can be any size and any number of players can be on the field at any time. It is a completely unbalanced competition. I suppose that it’s exciting to some when a giant band enters the field. It’s exciting certainly for those who either play with the band or those who have some predilection towards the band. Everyone else is not excited at all. In fact, they probably resent it.

Pipe band contests are as close to sporting events as they are to musical shows. A compromise needs to be reached when it comes to numbers before another band bites the dust in this survival-of-the-fittest situation. The minor league system works and should be put to use by bands instead of wrapping all players up in a single group, young hopefuls wishing for an impossible spot with the big club. Hope springs eternal.

Vacay

pipes|drums will be a bit slower this week, since I’m on vacation where it’s hot and there are baseball games. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of news right now, except for the usual comings-and-goings of migratory pipe band people. Hope to file a few stories, though, but access and time are limited.

Faking it

The story of the late, “great” pianist Joyce Hatto being outed as a fraud did the rounds this week. Turns out that the marginally talented piano-player became a legend through her husband dubbing the performances of true greats onto records bearing her name.

Her husband claims that he did it out of love. Not quite Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, but it does tug at at least one heart-string, if not real piano strings (which are generally struck, not tugged).

As a ruse, I’ve mentioned to a few people over the years how easy it would be to create an apocryphal pipe band using recording techniques. One talented piper, a great side drummer, an excellent tenor/bass person and some good recording equipment is all you need to make the world’s best studio pipe band album.

You could try to fool everyone and create a legendary “one-time-only” shooting-star band. But who’s to say a pipe band recording couldn’t be legitimately done that way anyway? In fact, just about every studio pipe band recording made lists members of the band who never actually played a note on the album. It’s traditionally a bit of a ruse anyway.

It’s a challenge waiting to be taken up by three people: create the world’s greatest “pipe band” recording through layering and multi-tracking. If pipe band music is indeed marketable to a wider public, this could very well be the way to do it.

Let your dim light shine

Social networking media – blogs, forums, newsgroups, MySpace and all that – have been huge for the last three years or so. They have brought communities together online, and the piping and drumming world is no exception.

The first was the pretty-much-now-defunct rec.music.makers.bagpipe, which started in DOS format back in the early 1990s. It became a wretched cesspool of innuendo and slander, unfortunately spoiled by a few nonentities who discovered that they could shout at lots of people and no one could stop them. But, by and large, online forums have been beneficial and benign.

I know that there are several top bands that have a decree that no one in the band, no matter what, is allowed to post their thoughts online. They are banned from expressing their opinions, presumably for fear that they will come back to haunt their home band in some way. To me this is paranoid and just a little deluded. It’s also completely lacking in fun.

A band that categorically prohibits players from expressing their opinions about their passion is downright draconian. I can understand if some Juvenile band responds to parents’ concern that the kids should not be posting to forums. But a band banning adults from posting their intelligent comments treats its members like children. It says, “You can’t be trusted to do the right thing, and you can only make the band look stupid because you’re too dim to be smart.”

These bands are littered with pipers and drummers who could otherwise provide real insight, and actually make the band look intelligent. The band world needs to stop being so paranoid. Judges judge what they hear and nothing else. If a band is competing in contests judged by anyone responding to posts on the net, maybe they should avoid those events – or use the net to speak out against them.

If a band can’t trust its players to demonstrate and share their intelligence, common sense, and expertise online, maybe it should reassess what it’s all about.

Big MAP attack

Okay, I am going to say it: the whole RSPBA MAP thing is a crock. The more I think about it, the more it does not make sense. I have written positive things about MAP in the past, but I have since changed my mind.

The intent of the Musical Appreciation and Presentation initiative is to train newer pipers and drummers in “the fundamentals.” That’s great, but I have decided that what went on before was training people just fine. The Grade 1 standard today is higher than it has ever been. In fact, standards throughout the grades have risen dramatically over the last 20 years. Yes, synthetic things are making it easier to create good tone, but people are playing better than ever, too. And this has happened without MAP-like dogged adherence to classically boring tunes.

MAP is a step backwards. The teaching trend in piping and most musical instruments is to get kids playing tunes and on the full instrument quickly. My daughter started piano lessons at age five, and was playing actual songs in a matter of weeks, and coming up on two years later is still enjoying it and doing well. The traditional notion that piping students have to spend a year or more on the practice chanter before touching a set of pipes is today considered wrong-headed by most. There’s less emphasis on mastering scales and technique and more on engaging the student in something fun.

Playing “Greenwoodside” all summer is not fun. It’s Jack Bauer-esque torture. Listening to it again and again is even worse. I suggest that MAP is more about making it easier for judges and using fewer of them so as to cut costs, than it is about furthering the art of the pipe band. It’s about some artificial preservation of old standards.

Sound familiar? It will to anyone who competes in piobaireachd competitions. And no kid has ever wanted to take up the pipes because of piobaireachd. Piobaireachd for the last 100 years has been subjected to its own MAP-like doctrine that says it must be this way or else. There is a strong school of thought that the effort to standardize piobaireachd settings was really an attempt to make the judging of the music easier at a time when the people doing the judging couldn’t carry G.S. McLellan’s spats, let alone determine if he played a better “An daorach mhor” than Willie Ross.

I suggest that MAP just begs kids to quit out of sheer boredom. It artificially clings to something that just isn’t. It props up tunes that few, if they had a choice, would seriously want to play, and no one, but no one, would want to play them all summer long with no one else listening for fear that their ears would start to bleed.

I may still change my mind on MAP. But no other association in the world is adopting it. And, if it indeed is the right thing to do, then we will see a huge number of Grade 4 UK bands promoted to Grade 3 next year. Don’t hold your breath.

And pawty every day

There is a point in the great Kiss rock-anthem,”Rock and Rock All Night,” when all instruments stop except a kick-drum, and singer Paul Stanley repeats the chorus of the song: “Ahhh, wanna rock-n-roll all niiiight, and pawty ev-er-ee day.” Live, he usually claps his hands over his head, pulling the crowd along. Then Gene Simmons’s bass line creeps in, Ace Frehley’s power-chord-guitar rejoins, and the band and song are back at full throttle. It’s called a “break-down,” and it’s the hallmark of many exciting pop songs.

A few pipe bands know how this works and the use it to great effect. It started probably in the mid-1970s, when the unlikely band Bilston Glen Colliery made an LP that included “The Hen’s March.” On the record, they took the clever third part of the Donald MacLeod jig, dropped the drums and let the pipe section play a modified version alone. It was simple and effective and by far the most memorable part of that otherwise non-descript album.

Jog to 1988 and the 78th Fraser Highlanders famous “Wise Maid” medley, one of the all-time great pipe band selections. It was made greater by a terrific break-down near the end, where the pipes were left for several bars, and the drum section gradually crept back in, developing this terrific crescendo finish to seal the deal. (Unfortunately for them, one judge didn’t see it that way at the ’88 World’s, and the band narrowly missed a repeat World title.)

Fast-forward to the 2005 and ’06 Simon Fraser University World’s medleys. Here again, Leading-Drummer Reid Maxwell (the common link between the 1988 example and this) spearheads a formidable example of an effective break-down in the jig, “Emancipation.” The gradual build back to full band strength is the centre-piece of the medley.

Pop music has understood for years that break-downs are a way to spark variety through contrast to engage and win-over the listener. I don’t know if these pipe bands (and there are other examples) know that they are using the same technique that Kiss deploys in “Rock And Roll All Night,” but it works in our domain just as well when well done.

Red Speckled Bull