For Moral Absolutists Only? Maybe

There's nothing like spending a Bank Holiday relatively quietly at home, not switching on the television, iPlayer or radio, staying well away from social media and catching up with some quality music listening. I'd recommend it to anybody. We ourselves should do it more often. Well, that is indeed what we did two days ago (19 September 2022 for the benefit of anyone who finds this piece via random Googling circa Christmas 2025) and here's a brief summary of what we listened to. CHARLES STEPNEY: Step On Step An emotional photograph, that cover. From my perspective it could be my father at some stage in the sixties or seventies. More emotional is the rear cover with the track listing which displays the same photograph minus the gentleman standing in its centre. Charles Stepney was a genius. Not a competent craftsperson, but a genially mould-broaching genius. His art expanded orchestral maximalism perhaps to one good extreme - in one of the many reminiscing conversations whic...

It would have been late May, 1977, coming towards the end of my second year at Uddingston Grammar. On balance I’d say that was my favourite year there. In the first year you’re all nervous, trying to figure out how the thing works. By year two you’re used to it and know how to work the thing. Apart from the fact that we had to pick out which subjects we were going to do for our O Grades – determining our future lives at an age when we really shouldn’t be asked to make such major decisions – there wasn’t any pressure. When spring arrived and the streets of Uddingston (or street; there really is only one Main Street) felt brighter and warmer, there was a slight swagger to one’s sense of freedom. You could saunter to class in a red Adidas T-shirt with the white stripes on the shoulders – most of the boys did so, anyway – and not worry about such oblique concepts as “The Future.”   I could get away with anything in English class. It helped that I had a great teacher that year, Mr...