Packing it in

John Cairns’s recent decision to stop competing in solo piping is food for thought. His bowing out at a relatively young age and when his most recent contest was the Glenfiddich Championship probably strikes some as odd. After all, why would someone playing at the top of his game pack it in?

As some know, I’m a firm believer in going out on a strong note. Too many guys keep hammering away at the solo thing after their prime is well past, and whatever reputation they built over many years can turn into a heap of smouldering blackwood after a summer of playing that didn’t meet his or her usual standard. Maintaining a personal standard is an incredibly demanding and pressure-packed thing to do, and more often than not it gets the better of even the best players.

On the other hand, who cares if someone wants to keep at it? If they’re enjoying competing and performing, isn’t that all that matters? Some people seem to like to tut-tut when they hear competitors not playing as well as they once could, but, really, why should they care?

It’s a strictly personal decision. Playing well and exceeding your own standard often results in personal enjoyment. The end must justify the means, of course, and I’m sure that John did what was right for him. I for one will miss listening to his competition playing but remember it well.

Digital meets analog

A work event on Tuesday when Google came to the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, to recruit some of Canada’s brainiest. This sign was just the thing.

Short shrift?

The thought that the Maxville people are suggesting canning the PPBSO’s Professional Piobaireachd event seems to be confusing a lot of people, including me. There are conflicting stories about it, so who knows what will happen?

I do know this: associations need to do a better job of promoting and communicating what they have. Now, I voluntarily sit on the PPBSO’s Music Board, so I’m as much to blame, I suppose, as the next person. But somewhere along the line, if the North American Championship is even considering pulling funding from the most prestigious single solo piping event on the continent, what does that say about us?

The fact that the Maxville folks aren’t already selling tickets for the Professional piping events is an opportunity missed. They aren’t to blame. They probably look at it naturally as an expensive headache with no ROI. The event itself is shunted around the park and for the past few years inhabits a spot under a tree with  toilets on one side and a pedestrian thoroughfare with thousands of people shuffling by not even realizing that the piper playing could be a Gold Medallist or Clasp winner on the other. You gotta see it to believe it.

It’s another example of pipers and drummers and an organization not doing a good job at promoting and marketing its unique and specialized product. Oh, the outrage! Maxville may want to pull the plug on this near-60-year-old event!

Really, now. Who can blame them for not knowing what they don’t know?

Leaving the games behind

I’ve realized that piping and drumming and pipe bands are gradually leaving behind Highland games. Almost all of our most successful and fastest growing and most respected events are those that don’t involve caber-tossing and sheep-herding and little sword-dancers with too-tight-hair and bitchy mums.

And the Highland games increasingly don’t want to put up with the bands and the solo pipers and drummers. Sure, they want the ambient sound of the pipes, but many games are finding that they can get that by hiring a guest band or two and that the Highland dancing piper is enough to make their games appear authentic.

And we bring it on ourselves, too. There’s usually little effort to attract a bigger crowd than friends and family. The desire to do that seems to be there, but the effort’s lacking.

But look at the World’s, expanding every year. Look at events like Winter Storm, the Glenfiddich, the Dan Reid, and the Mastery of Highland Arts concert in Seattle. These are events that are busting at the seams with people wanting to get in. They stand on their own, not a side-show curiosity away from the heavy athletes and Irn-Bru stalls.

I see piping, drumming and pipe bands increasingly going it alone and separating from Highland games where we generally feel we get short-shrift and games organizers feel that we’re too expensive and too much trouble. The RSPBA’s approach to their major competitions could be vastly improved, but it’s on the right track and I think it’s the way things are going.

We can put our music front-and-centre, and people will come. We have proven that it works better anyway than glomming on to the Highland games.

Or, it goes both ways

By absolutely sheer happenstance, stumbled across this

clip

of Bon Scott and a young AC/DC with the pipes in what looks like some place in Australia. Just a laugh.

Useless fact: my cousin was Bon Scott’s bank manager in the UK before he (Scott) met his rock ‘n’ roll end.

Rising, declining numbers

There are new rumblings from Scotland of another Grade 1 band biting the dust due to lack of numbers or leadership or both. The bigger bands get bigger and the also-rans are running out of steam. Grade 1 bands stuck in the lower-tier of the class are struggling to remain viable.

There are two serious and intertwined issues: numbers and leadership. Bands without numbers don’t keep leaders; bands without strong leaders don’t have strong numbers.

Some contend that this is a good thing: let them die and only the strong survive. Others say it’s a bad thing: make the playing-field equitable and competitive by restricting numbers.

I don’t side firmly with either notion, but I do lean towards the latter. As long as bands continue to grow, and the world’s top bands continue to win with larger numbers, other bands will try to put as many players as possible on the roster.

Pipe bands are reaching a quandary: continue to grow in size and eliminate the competition, or put a cap on it for the sake of a more lively and interesting scene.

G’day

Bagpipe marketing

There are more Highland bagpipe makers now than ever before and it seems that new makers come on the scene every week. I was corresponding with one well-established maker the other day and he was bemoaning the fact that there are many makers, but the most successful seem to be those who don’t necessarily have the best workmanship but have the best marketing and lowest prices.

Marketing of course is the make-or-break of any product or business. Sure, you have to have a decent piece of merchandise, but who will buy it if they don’t know about it and don’t hear about credible people using it happily?

Two of the most successful and biggest pipe-makers, McCallum and Naill, have done marketing right by leading with public relations supported by good advertising. They also are both capable of making instruments of the highest order, of course.

But their PR efforts have been spot-on, for the most part: put the instruments in the hands of top players and bands and let them do the talking; offer pipes as coveted prizes at prestigious professional and amateur contests; chalk up first-prizes won with their drones and chanters and publicize them everywhere; and avoid having reps from the company judging competitions.

I feel sorry for some of the smaller pipe-makers that are making finely crafted instruments and charging a premium for them but have no marketing accumen. There will always be a niche market for those best-kept-secret pipe-makers, and perhaps that’s all they want, but success in bagpipe-making is like any other industry: the best marketing wins every time.

No cigar

I’m fortunate to work with a company that provides a ton/tonne of education and training. A few times a month we have lunchtime seminars from various outside experts, and today a professor of marketing from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Business came in to talk about “overchoice” and the science behind offering a multitude of versions of the same essential product, versus offering no choice, versus providing a product “decoy.” Can’t go into detail, but it was all fascinating, particularly the psychological aspects of how we choose and what makes us happy.

But one element of his talk stood out, at least as it concerns competing pipers and drummers. Apparently, scientific studies show that those who win third-prize are actually happier than those who get second. The Olympic silver medallist is almost always disappointed, while the bronze-finisher is almost always very pleased.

The essential reason for this is that the second-prize-winner suffers from regret: If I had only done one little thing differently I’d have won. The third-prize-winner is just happy to make the list.

I see this all the time in piping and drumming and band contests, and have experienced it myself. They say that second-prize is the hardest prize, and it’s scientifically true that there’s more to the cliche than we may realize. There are great pipers who have been second several times in Gold Medal contests and seem to live with a degree of bitterness. There’s always that guy who is the “Best Golfer Never to Have Won a Major,” and the “Best Band Never to Win the World’s” label.

If they finally win the big award, there seems to be more relief than happiness. The golfer or the band or the solo piper are essentially just as good as they were before they won, they just no longer have the millstone of “what if?” around their neck.

It’s all about one’s reference point. If playing well is the goal, then chances are we will be psychologically satisfied with second-prize. If winning is the goal, then second-prize will certainly come with regret and disappointment.

Toronto signage

Apple

One of the best CDs I’ve purchased in the past few months is Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine. It’s understated and different, but still completely listenable. Looking at her you’d assume she’s a gum-popping popstar, but she’s far from it.

She apparently had run-ins with Sony Music over the content of her stuff. They wanted her to conform, and the CD is full of lyrics fighting conformity, like from “Please, please, please:”

Give us something familiar
Something similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady
Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere

But what’s really interesting about the recording is that more than half of the songs are written in 6/8. Pop music generally churns out songs in common time, and few artists stray to compound rhythms. I’m frequently attracted to songs in 6/8 (e.g., REM’s “Everybody Hurts,” The Beatles’ “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” . . .).

I’m also drawn to pipe tunes in compound time and I don’t think bands use 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 enough in their medleys. When played on the beat these tunes roll, especially, obviously, in jig time. Some bands that are masters of jigs interestingly are usually not so great at 2/4 marches and strathspeys.

It’s always nice to be positively surprised by new music, especially when it makes you think about how it can be applied to your own experiences.

The Corrections

On October 31 of last year I put together a story entitled

Scotland’s Joint Committee meets

. It was based on information supplied by several people, including at least one person who was actually at the meeting.

I used to be a dedicated reader of the Piping Times. I’ve mentioned before that my dad when I was kid actually collected them for research purposes, and I poured over them as an adolescent in St. Louis trying to soak up everything piping. I have the entire collection up until about 1998 when I just couldn’t be bothered to read it any longer. It had changed too much for me to want to follow it.

Occasionally, though, friends will copy bits from it and e-mail them to me. So it was yesterday that I was sent a particularly embarrassing (for it, not me) piece in what I gather is the most recent issue. An anonymous writer “corrected” the story above, taking various bits out of context and seemingly twisting the meaning of several lines in the Joint Committee meeting article.

In a style so typical of the bitterness that often spews from the little Glasgow digest, the publication tried to find the negative just to be negative. The amusing list of “corrections” seemed to be another ploy to draw people in to an argument, thus lending credibility to the whole affair. It’s not happening.

I will say that the anonymous writer was correct in his or her first point. I did get the name of the arcane “Joint Committee” wrong in that I called it the Joint Committee for Piping. I amended the story so that it lists the name of the group correctly, as the Joint Committee for Judging.

But what can you say about a publication that thinks it has a “duty” to try to correct other publications, and then can’t even get its own corrections correct? Is it worth the energy to engage it in a pissing match? No. If I’ve learned anything in my 18 years of work on the Piper & Drummer it’s that people just don’t care about that kind of stuff. It’s petty and puerile.

Resolutions

I like making New Year’s resolutions. We can all get better, and, as I learned from Winton Marsalis via a Starbuck’s cup, “The humble improve.” Good thought. (But why can’t Starbuck’s make better coffee?)

I joked the other day to a piping friend that my resolution is to exercise less. But really it’s to telephone more and e-mail less. Done.

Resolutions are a bit like wishes, and my wishes for the piping and drumming world are resolute:

• That bands stop opening and finishing their medleys with hornpipes or reels. Just for one year. See what happens.
  

• That the World Championships’ artists who make the CDs and DVDs and whatever other products possible get a share of the proceeds. Maybe even just enough to buy one kilt or pay one airfare. Not too much to ask, is it?
  

• That no dads, uncles, aunts, father-in-laws, etc. judge immediate family members in any contest no matter what the size or importance of the event. Even the impression of nepotism makes a joke of your decisions.
  

• That no more great pipers and drummers leave us before their time.

Those are a few of my wishes for the piping and drumming world. What are yours?


 

Hot Stove League

Friday night I attended the “new” Toronto Branch’s meeting after our first significant snowfall. There had been a big party in the Officers’ Mess at Denison Armoury so the place was well catered with fresh leftovers.

A small crowd of passionate pipers and drummers came out, just to talk about the art and hear some good playing. Ian K. MacDonald’s hands and pipe were in good form. He plays a mean “Alex MacDonald,” handling the C’s in the tricky fourth part like no one else.

But the other highlight for me was the playing of young Aiden Bowen, who is the son of the famous Tommy “T-Bowen” Bowen, one of piping’s good guys. Aiden’s been on the pipes for only a year, but this kid is going to be something if he keeps at it. He seemed unfazed by performing in front of the likes of MacDonald, George, Campbell, Ed Neigh and other luminaries.

The opportunities for kids to perform just for fun before a potentially intimidating audience are relatively few these days. People older than 40 talk about their memories of playing at the SPA, or the Toronto Branch, or the Eagle Pipers often as turning points in their careers. It makes sense to always let up-and-comers to show their stuff and do their best, especially on a cold winter night when the piping heart could use some warming.

Communicating

I’m fortunate to have a job that sometimes allows me to meet and listen to some very interesting and famous people. The past few days I was in Rochester, New York, a city whose hey-day was in the 1900s but which now is still home to still mighty corporations like Kodak and Xerox.

The event I attended had several guest-speakers. The head of worldwide public-relations for General Electric talked about his company’s fascinating communications strategy. But it was Joe Trippi, the former manager of Howard Dean’s famous presidential campaign who really got my interest.

Trippi is a master of blogs and using the Internet to communicate. He understands the power of online communication, and with that he made the Dean campaign the first really to drive the potential of the net to his job’s benefit. (Ultimately, Dean failed because traditional media was more powerful, but that’s changing quickly.)

Listening to Trippi inspired me. His wasn’t just talk and theoretical ramblings, like so many speakers can be, but real-life experience and complete understanding of where online communications is and is heading.

I’m judging a Toronto Branch solo piping event tonight, and Gary Moore, the president of the branch, has asked me to talk after it about the Piper & Drummer and other piping things. I’m fortunate to have been able to hear Joe Trippi and I plan to add some of his thoughts to my talk. It’s all about communicating.

The Pipe Band

One of my favourite TV shows (along with “Myth Busters” and “Rock School”) is “The Office,” the American adaptation of the UK series. It’s full of office stereo-types (e.g., the vacuous boss, the toady, the back-stabber, the quiet wise person).

It got me thinking that there should be a TV show called “The Pipe Band.” Here are the stereo-typed characters I’d have in it (absolutely not based on anyone I know!):

The Confused Pipe-Major – a person who can’t make a decision and, when he does, it’s the wrong one. Think David Schwimmer’s character in “Band of Brothers.” His biggest talent is having a stentorian voice for the command at the trigger.
Mr. Hard Reed – the piper who constantly brags about how hard his chanter reed is, insinuating that others aren’t pulling their weight. Usually obese.
The Prima-Donna – a piper who thinks he’s much better than he is, clinging to insignificant solo prizes. Everyone laughs behind his back and encourages him to “give us a tune” at parties.
The Cynic – the guy in the band who tries to figure out an angle on everything. Every judge has a motive. Every draw has a consequence. Every tune has to achieve a purpose. He remembers what judges did what when, even going back decades. Remarkably, he can usually memorize tunes after only one play.
L-D BDC – agrees with the pipe-major all the time, then goes and does what he wants. Scores never complement the tunes. Professes not to like the “Best Drum Corps” prize, but is always caught listening intently at the march past/massed bands for the award after the band’s not in the list.
Mickey Can – there’s always one guy who, no matter how important the contest, will get sauced the night before. He averages about one new band every two years. Swears loudly. Every band has one.

Those are a few that come to my mind. Maybe other people have some casting ideas!

Passing it down

Dropping by the George Sherriff contest on Saturday I was struck that Canada is for the first time seeing a substantial number of young solo pipers who are the sons and daughters of famous players.

Alex Gandy and Colin Lee, the sons of Bruce and Jack, respectively, made me think about it. These kids are destined for great-greatness — maybe even greater greatness than their fathers, as hard as that might be to conceive. I would venture to say that these two young men are playing far better and are more accomplished than their dads were at the same ages.

Scotland is on its third or fourth generation of pipers whose fathers and their fathers and their fathers were famous players. Angus MacColl has an incredible piping lineage, as do Willie McCallum and Iain Speirs. For sure, Canada has had a few descendents of good pipers, but never, I think, two kids like Gandy and Lee.

And there are of course more to come in Canada and, in about 10 years from the United States. That will mean that the piping standard at North America’s highest point will rise that much higher with that much more substance. The piping lineage factor has for years been a distinct advantage for Scotland over non-Scottish solo pipers. As these two proteges will prove, that too is changing quickly.

First pipe

An eleven-year-old who I’ve taught the past seven months or so is starting on the pipes this evening. He still has some technique to learn, but my idea is to get him going on the big pipe sooner, since the pipes are competing with the trombone, the piano, soccer, cross-country and who knows what else.

We’re loaning him my wife Julie’s set of Tweedie drones, which are actually one of the last sets that the late, great Jimmy Tweedie made himself. Beautiful workmanship. I played them for a season in a band some time ago. These pipes should be played.

But hopefully the pipes will win over Liam’s attention and time. He’s got a natural gift for seeing and doing perfectly, which is a great ability to have as a piper.

Count Floyd

I acquired my very first Pink Floyd music yesterday. I never thought that I liked the group ever since seventh grade at the harrowing Brittany Middle School, when 13-year-old stoners were into them. That was about the time that Dark Side of the Moon came out. I resisted, thinking that it might make me get into drugs or something, and might get in the way of my under-age drinking with the local pipe band.

But I heard “Comfortably Numb” (a PF song that I always liked) while watching the excellent movie, About A Boy, so I decided to download it and, what the hell, DSOTM, too.

Beautiful stuff, that. Everyone in the Western World will be familiar with the group’s catchier music, but listening to “Time” you just have to admire the work that must have gone in to engineering all those analog tapes. These boys were well ahead of their time.

Question: Is there a pipe band that’s musically ahead of its time? Unfortunately, competition (or, more accurately, the requirements we set for them and the judges we assign to them) keeps the reins on the creativity of bands. Can a pipe band the musical equivalent of Pink Floyd actually exist today and be noticed? I think not.

Top 5 movies

Here’s another list. My top six movies (fill-ums for UK readers) of all time:

• 
  Hannah & Her Sisters – Woody Allen’s crowning achievement.
  

• 
  The Dead – John Huston’s last movie, an adaptation of the James Joyce story.
  

• 
  American Beauty – I will sell this house.
  

• 
  Fanny & Alexander – Bergman’s epic is worth its arse-numbing length.
  

• 
  Apocalypse The Noo – Charlie disnae surf, ken?
  

• 
  After Hours – Scorsese’s often forgotten comedy.

 

List

Like many people, I love lists and rankings. Since I was a kid, I’ve kept lists in my head of favourite movies, books, songs, colours, people, and so on. I think it comes from pouring over the backs of baseball cards and memorizing stats and trivia.

Here are my favourite CDs so far this year:

• Arcade Fire – Funeral
  

• Beck – Guero
  

• Metric – Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
  

• 
  Wilco – A Ghost is Born
  



 

What comes around

The bagpipe-lovin’ Madonna is back with a hit song, “Hung Up,” that, I have to admit is perty dern catchy. And it is very 1980s and has a boom-boxey dance video to accompany it. The beautifully choreographed video looks like it could have been from her first LP. Madge has survived long enough simply to go back to where she started, and that must be a dream come true for a pop star with inevitable fading creativity.

Since pop trends go around and come back around in 20-year cycles, why not pipe music and pipe bands? If that were so then next year should see echoes of 1985 return to the fore.

Let’s see: flannel grey kilt jackets with gauntlet cuffs and waistcoats; 12/8 marches to open medleys (think “Brigadier Snow” and “Up To The Line”); Sinclair chanters, and of course the occasional glutton-for-punishment band wearing number-one dress. The World’s could return to its lottery system draw and the RSPBA could go back to keeping secret who’s judging and what the break-down of results were.

Nah. I think we’re better moving the art forward. Leave the retro music and stylin’ to Madonna.

Who do you cheer for?

A hearty congratulations to the Houston Astros and their loyal fans. They outplayed my Cardinals and Roy Oswalt is indeed brilliant. But that Game 5 was still the stuff of legend.

So, now. It’s the White Sox and the Astros in the Series. Which to root for? Neither, really, for me, but I do know that the Chicago Cubs are the arch-rivals of the White Sox, and White Sox fans generally don’t see eye-to-eye with Cubs fans, ergo I will cheer for the White Sox. I also know that the great Chicago-based snare drummer, Jim Sim, is a Chisox fan. Jim’s a great guy, so he’s waited long enough for baseball glory.

Both the Astros and White Sox have marathon histories of also-running. In pipe band terms, the Astros are like Boghall & Bathgate: probably the best band never to have won a World title despite their consistency. Gotta have a soft spot for them.

The White Sox would be akin to, say, Polkemmet. While Polkemmet is currently a Grade 2 band, they’ve been around forever and have only touched on big-time success for a few fleeting moments. I have a lot of time for loyalty and determination, and White Sox fans, just like the Polkemmet band, have stuck with it through thick and thin.

While we’re making analogies, SFU would be the LA Dodgers (deep organization and the world’s most glamourous place to play); FMM is the Atlanta Braves (consistently rebuilding and making the grade); Shotts would be the New York Yankees (get or keep the best at any cost; the band a lot of people like to dislike); the 78th Frasers would be the Oakland A’s (always trying to do things just a bit differently and usually successful); and SLOT would be the Toronto Blue Jays (often seen as being a guest team at another nation’s games). I could go on.

It will be a great World Series. Go Polkemmet, er, I mean, White Sox!

Just remembered

For some reason I only just remembered now that Paul McComish about 18 months ago inquired if he could purchase Piper & Drummer Online.

After enjoying a few stunned moments of flattery, I told him that I had no interest in selling it, no matter what the price (okay, you know what I mean). Since the whole thing is not-for-profit and simply something that I enjoy doing (most days), selling it or profiting from it have never even crossed my mind. He then started his “news” portion of the Band Room’s Web site, which quickly became woefully out-of-date when it didn’t lift content from P&D Online.

Perhaps what he wanted was some sort of site that the Band Room surreptitiously owned and could therefore control for its own benefit. Right.

Just think, if I’d struck a deal with him you wouldn’t be reading this or about Gary Corkin or copyright issues or, of course, the Band Room shenanigans. You’d be reading sob-stories about how the Band Room and RG Hardie things failed despite best and honest attempts and courageous battles to the finish and other absurd claims that have appeared on Web sites and in print magazines. I wouldn’t have written them, though, but I would probably still be waiting for my money.

The Great Pujols

Awesome. I’ve been a die-hard Cardinals fan ever since the first game I went to in 1971 at Busch Stadium when my sister, Clarissa, was born. Back then the Cardinals would send out a set of tickets to the whole family of a newly born St. Louisan. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the addition of my sister (I am now), but those seats to what turned out to be a match-up between Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson got me hooked for good. The Cardinals marketing ploy sure worked.

Last night’s fifth game of the playoff series between the expansion Houston Astros (a team named after a stadium that they don’t even play in) was great drama. Cardinals fans must have felt the opposite of Astros fans, who went from loud euphoria to shocked silence in one swing of The Great Albert Puljols’s bat.

I know this has nothing to do with piping. But, damn, what a game.