The National Museums of Scotland film archive have put out some new silent shots of Shotts Highland Games from September 6, 1952. Mostly of smiling faces in the crowd, there are one or two clips of bands. The one up top shows, I think, P/M Tom McAllister Senior leading the Shotts band. Is that JK McAllister right behind him? The other band shown on parade and very smart in their balmorals…
Our North American Correspondent reports a St Thomas Alumni win in Grade 2 at this north Florida games. The picture up top shows adjudicator Ken Eller scoring Dunedin Middle School… In a sun drenched arena, 17 bands took part in the afternoon competition, with over 120 solo performers going through their paces in the morning session. A crowd of around 15,000, with a strong Texan contingent, attended a full day of…
Apart from running Pipe Band Magazine for the RSPBA and reporting on competitions, I have no direct involvement in the pipe band competition milieu. I am essentially on the periphery – the best place for the fourth estate in that fraught world. It was not always so given that I learned piping via the pipe band system in the Boys Brigade and later graduated to Muirhead & Sons at age…
The Piobaireachd Society conference enters its second day today and I must say it has been a roaring success so far. I’ll have a full report later as the there is not a lot of time before the next session on the 2017 set tunes begins. The weather up here in Birnam has been amazing – as it has been in much of the UK. Last night’s ceilidh went on…
I read George Taylor’s letter re swapping arms, writes Duncan Watson. Re Donald Maclean. I understood that big Donald did start playing under the right arm and to conform with others in the pipe band scene in the Army he was ‘instructed’ to switch to his left arm. Counter marching through pipers in a band seemed to a problem with cords getting in a tangle. The late Willie MacDonald (Benbecula) could…
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