2011 - A Review In Music!

So, that'll be the end of 2011 for The Shine... Last gig played at the mighty Finnegan's, time to stick on the Santa hats, uncork the wine and get pissed for a fortnight... And reflect on the "happenings of 2011"!


What a year it's been! There's been very good, pretty bad and some changes within the band. And still the monster of The Shine rolls on throughout Scotland. I thought I'd take the chance to just have a wee recap from my point of view...

Before we "hit the road", we had a pretty unique opportunity back in February when we were invited by Ewen Cameron and Cat Harvey to perform live on the Real Radio Breakfast Show as part of Scotland's Got Real Talent! Very surreal experience playing live at 7.30am but we did a pretty cool version of our stripped down "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers - me on 12 string acoustic and vocals, Andy on 6 string acoustic and vocals, Stevie on bass and plumbing and Iain on his newly purchased thunderbox and vocals. If you want to see how it went (and the insides of Scotland's premier radio station), check out our Media section! All I can say is this was possibly the most nerve wracking performance I've ever done! Get it wrong and potentially millions of listeners could go "Ha, he fucked up"! But we didn't and it was an amazing experience! Many thanks to Ewen & Cat!

Round about the early part of the year personally I wasn't in a good place as a bad dose of the flu triggered a case of Bell's Palsy - a pretty debilatating condition which paralysed the left side of my face. Thankfully I caught it in time with steroids but still spent a good few weeks with the paralysis - one of the latter weeks coinciding with a gig in Skye. Thanks to the advice of a good friend of mine George Futter, we just pressed on with it and everything was fine.

Talking of Skye, this was another highlight of 2011. Following the demise of our previous Skye venue, the King Haakon, we were honoured to form a new alliance with a venue which turned out to be in a completely different league - Saucy Mary's in Kyleakin. As someone posted on the KH Facebook page (not me I hasten to add) "F*** off you dead viking". Couldn't agree more! Saucy Mary's is just amazing, great people, professional and an absolute pleasure to play with no bullshit!

Perhaps related on a tangent to this, new venue / new band member! On a fairly amicable basis we parted company with Stevie around the middle of the year and welcomed John Petrie in on bass - within 48 hours! John's an absolutely stunning addition to the band (with a gorgeous stable of basses), an old friend of Iain's and within minutes became a soulmate to Andy and I too. The great thing is John didn't experience King Haakon, so Skye at Saucy Mary's was just fantastic! Not only a stunning player but John is just such a lovely guy!

On Stevie, great guy and left a legacy of humour, great laughs on the road and a fine collection of live videos. Worthy of mention from the " Stevie days" is a certain visit to Oban when we decided to go for a Chinese before the gig. An oyster mushroom fell off someone's plate and, from it's appearance, Simon the Slug was born! It looked exactly like a wee slug... So we gave it eyes made of rice, fed it some Chinese greens, took some photos and laughed until the tears were running down our faces!

And so, the end of 2011. As posted below we finish the year off with a stonking gig at the mighty Finnegan's Wake in Edinburgh.

All that remains is to thank everyone who's come along, sang along, danced and made every night a party with The Shine during 2011. By our Reverbnation stats, I reckon that's about 4,500 of you! We're now approaching our 8th year together and all our favourite venues and all the audiences make it so worthwhile - it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on (optional)!

Finally to Andy, Iain and John - thanks for just being yourselves! You are a great bunch of guys and a tremendous bunch of people who I'm proud and honoured to call mates!

To everyone, have a brilliant Christmas, New Year and hopefully see you somewhere on the road in 2012!

Peace, best of luv and stay alive!

Neil 

So Here It Is.... Merry Christmas!

What a way to finish a great year for The Shine, Finnegan's Wake a week before Christmas!

We had an awesome night last night (17.12.11) at Edinburgh's finest - and the one opportunity this year to play Christmas songs. They really don't work too well in June!

Arriving about 7.30, we found the venue absolutely jumping - and a strict door policy obviously in place. It seemed to be, no tits, no entry! Works for us!!

For once we had the chance to have a pretty detailed set up, no pressure to throw the gear together - and by God it worked. All the equipment worked first time (apart from the monitors because, for the technical, I inadvertantly plugged the monitor send into the desk return).

Taking the basis of an "Andy Cheese" set and making it even more crowd pleasing, we ripped into set one. It's hard to pick out one highlight as the band, the playing and the sound was awesome from the start. We had a great selection of rocky stuff, indie stuff and crowd pleasers which catered for pretty much everyone. If I was to pick a highlight, it'd be "Walking On Sunshine" - a new inclusion which we'd only rehearsed once but OMG it worked and felt so good!!

Into Set 2 and a gamble for the kick off - AC/DC's Thunderstruck. Again, worked a treat! The rockers in the audience were down the front giving it laldy! About 4 songs in we got the inevitable request for a Christmas song - time for a quick rejig of the set order and bring out Slade "Merry Xmas Everybody". It's actually a shame we only do this track once a year as we really do it justice!

Storming on to the end, we actually made it on time this time - Heroes and the band intros got a full airing. I just love playing this at Finnegan's, especially with Danny's strategically lined up footage of Mr Bowie playing on the video screens!

So, in the words of the song, Finnegan's Merry Xmas Everybody! Have a great time and see you all next year!

Peace & best of luv,

Neil

Back to Edinburgh's finest!

Good evening Finnegan's Wake!

That's now about 6 years solid we've been playing Finnegan's Wake in Edinburgh and last night proved why this venue remains one of the jewels in our crown and why we value it so much! The place is absolutely amazing!!

With an Andy compiled set of classic rockers and mature cheese, we were set for a good night - and boy did we have one!! Resurrecting Another Brick to kick off, we were off and running great style. Strangely, this was followed by The Darkness "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" and the audience seemed to go into fever pitch! As we powered through the first set, we totally loved the reaction and response - as usual this feeding us to go on giving it 150%! Quite seriously, as a band there is nothing beats a fantastic reaction to make you play your socks off and by God we got it last night!

Rocking into the second set and we kept the momentum going with more great tunes and more great reaction. Andy and I had a great time leaving the stage for a bit of a walkabout and mingle with the audience. If anything, in fact, this was actually quite difficult as Finnegan's was packed to the rafters! Didn't stop us doing the obligatory floor slides and duck walks (Andy) and lie backs (Me).

Despite continuing sound issues (John's temperamental Trace and Iain bursting a snare tape) the sound "out front" was awesome and so powerful! 

Funniest thing for me on the night was Andy in the middle of "Song 2" announcing "IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!". OK Noddy!

However, next time out it IS Christmas!! We're back to our favourite City Centre venue on 17th December so bring your mistletoe and pucker up for a chocolate Santa!

Thanks again and best of luv!

Neil  

Good Evening Saucy Mary's!!

And indeed it was!!

We made our long awaited return to Skye's finest on Saturday night, Saucy Mary's in Kyleakin. For some reason the couple of months since we were last up seemed much, much longer - must be the anticipation of heading back to this awesome venue!
The trip up was interesting and educational - one topic of conversation was "inventive means of murder through the years"! John won that discussion with his description of a copper pipe up the jacksie followed by a red hot poker up the pipe! We then observed a 45 second silence as we passed Sir Jimmy Saville's house in Glen Coe - one second for every degree he is buried at!

So,Saucy Marys..... Sammy was in Glasgow at the Chilli Peppers gig (boo....) but Laura was there, Ali was there and Danii came down to see us!

Our welcome was absolutely amazing, with Laura coming round from the bar to give us all big hugs! Then, just as we were about to set up, Ali arrived - more hugs!! Getting to like this.... 

After a fairly rapid set up we thought we were ready to roll at about 10pm, until John discovered there was still a problem with his bass amp! Shit! Quick dismantle of the frontage but still couldn't get to the root of the problem.. Plan B - bass went through the PA again. In terms of the PA, in the confusion, I'd plugged in one of the main PA leads wrongly so more panic! Couple of minutes of sweat and we were ready to roll.

For this gig, we'd decided to record the whole thing and thank God we did!! It sounded awesome!! A hot, rocking, non-stop performance went straight on record. When I say hot, particularly for me as the leather trousers were brought out again in honour!! 

Musical highlights of the night for me were the first outings of two new AC/DC tracks - Andy's feature "Thunderstruck" and "TNT" especially for Danii. Both felt fantastic and, listening back, sounded even better!

The night ended at bang on 1am - halfway through the band intros and before we could get into "Heroes" as two cars of Northern Constabulary's finest were sitting outside! One of the things The Shine have (in addition to rock prowess and unfeasibly large genitalia) is respect. There was no way we were going to put Saucy Mary's licence at risk or cause Laura grief - so just killed the gig dead! It's just not worth messing about with the licence or reputation...

Quick towel down and strip down of the gear and it was time to chill out for a few minutes. Huge thanks again to Laura for accepting the dates (all on the planner section of this site) for next year! Then, during our chill out chat, we discovered someone who might have been worth trying the copper pipe / poker experiment on.... :-)

Anyway, this gig (which DIDN'T result in the inevitable killer hangover like last time) is dedicated to Laura, Ali, Danii and the picture of Sammy from stage left and all at Saucy Mary's - God bless her and all who sail in her!

Until next time, best of luv!

Neil 

Happy Days!

What a great day! I had the pleasure of bumping into and chatting to the legend who is Bongo Terry in Stirling today (Ewen & Lynne not included this time)!

In case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about, Bongo Terry was on Real Radio "Scotland's Got Real Talent" with Ewen & Cat a couple of days before us.

Edinburgh Rock

Edinburgh Rock - soft, sweet, sticky and only seemingly bought and "enjoyed" by tourists...

No, we're talking about The Shine's latest return to Edinburgh's finest - Finnegan's Wake last night!! And what a night it turned out to be!!

We picked up a message on Blackberry just as we were heading out that we couldn't get on the stage until 9pm - turned out there was a CD launch by a Celtic group. As we were on the road, we got there at about 7.30 to find various hooching and chooching going on - and an extremely weird (and that's being kind) looking German bloke called Basil Wolfsbane doing their stuff. Basil was.... OK, nuff said... Suffice to say he looked like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull circa 1971, in a kilt and couldn't sing for, well, Edinburgh Rock.

Stage vacated, we did a massively fast set up and were ready to roll by 10pm. Prior to set up we were pretty nervous as Finnegan's Wake was fairly quiet other than people associated with the CD launch. By the time we were set up, it was starting to cook and really pretty well full.

We launched into our first high energy set and, as the guys agree, had the audience in our palms from the middle of the first song - the inevitable Another Brick In The Wall. The energy, dancing and fantastic reaction continued right through our first set with no let up.

Quick break at about 11.20 and, quite seriously, the closest I think we've ever - both collectively and individually - been to being mobbed. This reaction was just outstanding!

Back on at about 11.30 and kicked off with John's earth moving bass intro to Jet's "Be My Girl"... Set 2 just rocked to the rafters with the crowd, very well behaved (no stage invading / falling on gear) and dancing in the aisles.

All in all, a fantastic visit to Finnegan's and testimony that this line up of the band absolutely rocks!!

Vote of thanks time... I was chuffed that my old friend David Mathieson came along and did us a favour by taking some outstanding and quite arty photographs! Cheers David! Also, in addition to all the amazing audience - from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Wales etc - a big shout out to Linda, Jaide and Amanda who came up from Coldstream to celebrate Jaide's birthday in Edinburgh and dropped by to see us! Cheers guys, you rock!!

Until the next time...

Best of luv,

Neil  

Saucy Mary Rocks Our World!!

Well, as the rats continue to gnaw their way through the discarded food scraps at the King Haakon, we made our journey up to Kyleakin on Saturday night (3.9.11) to a fantastic new venue for us - Saucy Mary's!

From the minute we arrived, we were made really welcome by Laura and her team. Straight away the whole attitude was different, friendly and professional. After a quick tour, bags chucked in the bedroom (a scene of much messiness later on...) it was down to the bar for some well needed food after the four hour drive. On this score, the food at Saucy Mary's is AWESOME!! Where else can we fuel up before a gig on venison???

Dishes cleared and a quick wander off to take some stunning photos by me, it was time to start rigging up for the gig. Fantastic set up facing the bar, we were ready to go at 10pm. Slight problem with the lights during the first set as the sound to light switch had been nudged in transit - I must build a wee box for this rather than just chucking it in the tote box. All the gear line checked and working 100% (110% in the case of my Marshall with it's new valve!) we were ready to go...

In the usual manner, we kicked off with the long intro version of Another Brick In The Wall - synth and guitar delay setting the scene of what was to come... This being the first time at Saucy Mary's there was a wee bit of trepidation as to how the audience would be, would the material be right... The audience was absolutely stunning! With us right from the start, we took that energy and turned it into a high energy set of sound, light and plenty of wireless running about! From Another Brick, through The Darkness and onto a range of older and modern classics, we fed from the energy and appreciation - the band was on fire!!

Quick break around 11.30 to get towelled down by some freshly scrubbed virgins and we were off again into Set 2. This was the gamble set (before we headed for Skye) as it was the higher powered rock set - AC/DC, Guns n Roses, The Fratellis... They were all in there! Should we have worried? God no! There was dancing in the aisles, dancing on the tables, dancing outside and even at one point a bloke dancing on his arse on top of my frontline gear!

As 1am came round, we finished with the inevitable Heroes - dedicated after the band intros to everyone at Saucy Mary's. As the feedback delay rang out and I said "Thank you, Goodnight", it was obvious we weren't getting away that easily! Mindful of curfew, we came back on for an encore of Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop - then it was off for good.

After a quick 5 minutes to let the dust settle and thank Gordon from Plockton for his brilliant photography, time to strip the gear down. 45 minutes later everything was cleared and stored away - time for a quick drink and chat with Laura and the team! What a laugh!! We had a great chat in great company (in my case tanking a full bottle of wine in the process - which I'd regret in the morning!). It was then upstairs for the now obligatory late night Malt session and disection of how the night had been. Eventually at 5am our alcohol soaked bodies gave up and had to collapse for what was left of the night!

All I can say is, can't wait to get back up to the AWESOME Saucy Mary's on 12th November - and hopefully hook some dates for next year!

Finally, this gig goes out to two different dedications - Firstly, this was John's second gig with us on bass and first induction into the overnight debauchery of The Shine on the road. He survived well, is a stunning player, is a fantastic bloke and I dedicate the night to him.

Equally, the BIG dedication goes out to Laura, Danii, Sam & Ali at Saucy Mary's - the ultimate cool people!  Laura, the conversation about Original Source Mint & Tea Tree shower gel will stay with me for a LONG time!! Also a mention to Dani who used to work across the road and came out specially to see us. To all of you, we love you to bits!

Until the next time, Kyleakin you Freakin' ROCK!!!

Best of Love,

Neil