Category: Reviews

New World Solo Piping Championship Mooted by RSPBA

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A new ‘World Solo Piping Championship’ group is to be formed with a view to organising an event mirroring the current World Solo Drumming Championship, according to minutes from the January RSPBA Board of Directors Meeting. This would mean piping heats being held worldwide with a final in Glasgow. No details about the proposed championship have been released but clearly the intention is to offer pipe band pipers the same…

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History: A Lament for GS McLennan

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This is from a late 1970s article by journalist Alistair Campsie. Though often a controversial figure, Mr Campsie was a good writer. Some readers will know him through his entertaining but largely discredited book, ‘The MacCrimmon Legend: the Madness of Angus MacKay’. …. Just over 50 years ago, one of the biggest funeral processions ever seen in Aberdeen jammed the city centre with 20,000 mourners, three pipe bands and a…

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History: The London Championship of 1968, John MacFadyen, P/M Angus, Ian Cameron, Bob Brown, Ed Neigh, in the Prizes

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This is from the ‘London Correspondent’ of the Oban Times. The contest was held at Buckingham Gate on April 6 that year. Pictured above is John MacFadyen with the Bratach Gorm….. In the piobaireachd for the Bratach Gorm. the winner for the third successive year, was John MacFadyen, Glasgow, with an outstanding performance of the Red Speckled Bull. Second was Robert U. Brown, Balmoral, with another excellent rendition of Patrick…

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The Missing Majors, Band Sizes, and the Need for an Earlier AGM

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Pressure is growing on the RSPBA for an announcement regarding the 2024 ‘missing majors’. The statement published yesterday on PP about the easement of band numbers referenced the major championships and this has given rise to some optimism that there may well be progress afoot. However nothing has been confirmed and we remain in limbo with only two championships, the Scottish at Dumbarton on July 27, and the Worlds at…

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Remembering the Paisley Band, their Drum Corps and the Great Days in the 1970s

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There have been several features in Piping Press featuring a photo of Seagrams’ Pipe Band under the late Pipe Major Donnie Thompson, particularly when it had its annus mirabilis in Grade 2 in 1992 as World Champions and Champion of Champions, writes Iain White.  I first knew this band in the early 1970s when it was the Paisley Pipe Band, having previously been Paisley British Legion. The Paisley band was…

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