History: Argyllshire Gathering 1981, Part 2

We continue with our article from the Oban Times of early September 1981. It is by Alfred Morrison, their piping correspondent at the time. He continues his examination of the performances in that year’s competition for the Highland Society of London’s Gold Medal….. The next player was P/M Gavin Stoddart who has had a successful a successful season as a competing piper. He was asked to play the Fingerlock. He…

History: Argyllshire Gathering 1981

This article is from the Oban Times of early September 1981. It is by Alfred Morrison their piping correspondent at the time. Alfred, affectionately known as ‘old Fred’, was the father of the Gold Medallist and bellows piper supreme, ‘young’ Fred Morrison. Alfred was a native of South Uist. It was there as a young man he received his piobaireachd tuition from visiting instructor RB Nicol, one of the Bobs…

Editor’s Notebook: Band Sizes/ Piping Centurions/ SPA Professional/ Duncan Johnstone/ CLASP Results

I hope the RSPBA AGM devotes a good bit of time to a serious discussion on band sizes…or at least appoints a working group to examine properly the reasons for the decline in the number of pipe bands in Scotland. With only six Grade 1 bands and reductions further down the pecking order, this is not something that should be dismissed lightly under the banner ‘it’s all been tried before…

RSPBA AGM – Order Paper Analysed

Our experts have had a trawl through the order paper for the RSPBA’s 95th AGM to be held this Saturday, March 14. This will be a hybrid meeting both online and in-person at Washington Street HQ. All bands who have paid their subs should have received an invite……… The order paper gets off to a bad start – the date on the front cover is 2025. The same applies on page…

Dysart Drumming Title and Amazing Success

Last week’s feature on the Dysart had merely suggested their drum corps had won the Worlds in 1975 at Corby, I tried to confirm this through a 2023 publication by a pretty reliable source and found it given as Shotts & Dykehead, writes Iain Duncan However authoritative responses to the original article suggested otherwise, so to confirm this one way or the other I contacted Joshua Baird at RSPBA Headquarters…