Vic Galloway / Ally McCrae / Song by Toad Christmas Party

While retrospectively checking to see who had made the effort to mention our trio of in-stores yesterday I came across this on the Song by Toad blog.

 BBC Introducing in Scotland is going to be undergoing changes in the new year. It was announced a while ago that Ally McCrae from Detour will be taking over from Vic Galloway

Wondering how I had managed to miss such momentous news I checked to find out that it had been announced early November so by the standards of news filtering through to record shops I had found out quite quickly. Though bombarded with emails they are rarely the things I need to know about and useful things like release dates for a band’s album I tend to find out from customers as while it seems to be deemed important to keep every minor journalist or blogger up to date on such things record shops are either thought to somehow just automatically “know” these things or else not be worth telling depending on the band’s / label’s viewpoint.

Anyway not knowing Mr McCrae and believing him to be a young person I thought I had better check out his MySpace to see exactly how he presented himself to the world. Some people tell me MySpace is finished and nobody uses it but I am still constantly refered to it by bands wanting me to “check them out” so until I know better I will continue to do so. Ally is indeed a relatively young person at 23 years of age though any 16 year old may argue about that. His about me starts

Awright, I’m ally mccrae
lets goooooooooooooooooooo

I can forgive the lack of capital letters (just) but the goooooooooooooooooooo thing is a little worrying. A fan of Still Game his radio show is it seems “the banter”. Waynes World is his favourite film and one of his favourite books is “Boyracers by Alan Smith (I think)”. Not knowing the book a quick google came up with Boyracers by Alan Bissett but not Alan Smith so not sure about that. However another of his favourite TV shows is 8 Simple Rules a very funny and much overlooked American sitcom so I am glad to see we do at least have some common ground ! 

Vic has done a great job over the last ten years and I’m sure will continue to be at the forefront of supporting Scottish music both within Scotland and further afield. I can only concur with Matthew’s comments on the Song by Toad blog 

Vic and his producer, Muslim Alim are two of the loveliest guys you could hope to meet. More to the point, though, they are not dicks.  That may sound like a stupid statement, but it actually isn’t; the music industry is full of total pricks.  Whiney pricks, slippery pricks, backstabbing pricks, fairweather pricks, snotty pricks, status whores, fashion whores and attention whores.  The number of times I have been dismissively ignored by people who think what we’re doing might not be fashionable enough for them to be associated with, or by people who have themselves been treated like shit and realise that, given our respective positions on the status ladder, now it’s their turn, is just plain depressing.  In fact it is one of the most wearing parts of being involved in music. So when you meet people like Vic and Muslim who are just absolutely straight down the line, genuine guys it is a complete breath of fresh air, believe me.

In case you are interested I couldn’t find any mention of the in-stores though I did find all the details for the Song by Toad Christmas party. It seems though endlessly banging on about the importance of the shop being given tickets for these sort of events they are only available from Brown Paper Tickets  The first and only fair-trade ticketing company Not sure what that means but for £8.17 you can buy a £7 ticket and have your name left on the door. 

In a perfect world you would come into Avalanche for the Inspector Tapehead album or soon the Savings and Loan album and buy a ticket for the party at the same time. Yes we would charge a £1 booking fee but that still makes us cheaper and you get to support the shop that supports the music. A fair trade indeed !

I should say a big thank you to those who very much took on board what we said several months ago now about the support we needed and have been relentless in that support to keep an independent record shop alive and kicking in Edinburgh. It was this support that gave us the confidence to risk all and gamble on moving to a much bigger shop in the Grassmarket. 

So to sum up within the music industry the bar is set fairly low. Just don’t be a dick or a prick. We should maybe look to raise that bar slightly in the future. I’m sure Ally will look to exceed these minimum requirements. Vic is a tough act to follow and I wish Ally all the best.