I have diminishing confidence that there willl be a ‘normal’ pipe band season in 2022. If I accept that the reasons for this year’s wipe out were social distancing, masks, money, foreign travel then, I become even more sceptical. The UK government has indicated that, despite the easing of lockdown, ‘baseline’ measures such as masks and distancing will stay for another year. Foreign travellers coming here will be subjected to…

It was touching to read and study the photographs in Avi Bloomenstiel’s piece last week, featuring, as it did, two of the greats of piping we have lost in the past few months, Jimmy McIntosh and Iain Morrison. I spoke to Jimmy shortly before he died and later received an email from him regarding Iain’s passing: ‘My health and head are catching up with me. I saw you had a…

Yesterday’s cancellation of the Worlds and Scottish completed a rout of all major championships for two years in a row. Don’t be so sure that there will be a return to normality for pipe bands in 2022. The reasons for the call-offs were financial, organisational, musical and international. Smaller crowds, distance controlled crowds, would have meant less revenue at the Worlds and numbers would have been impossible to control at…

Thanks to reader Dave Rischmiller for this colourised photograph of the Govan Police Pipe Band from the 1890s. As everyone knows this band was the forerunner of the Glasgow/ Strathclyde Police band. They made what we believe to be the world’s first ever recording of a pipe band. You can listen to it on the PP Archive here. History buffs will know that Govan at one time covered a large…