Writer reveals secrets of Scots
I asked for suggestions for some Scottish music thinking I would get 20 songs. I woke up to 2000
When holidaymaker Jayne Moorby left a post on Twitter asking for the best Scottish songs to soundtrack her road trip through Scotland, she was expecting to make a playlist of 20 tunes.
When she woke the next morning, she had more than 2,000 replies, the route map for an odyssey of Scottish pop and rock and a playlist stretching to
231 songs across seven hours and 27 minutes. Now Jayne and husband Keith are leaving Scotland for home having accidentally forged a playlist pilgrimage for others to follow.
Jayne said: “I’m a big fan of Scottish music and I wanted to make a playlist for our journey.
“I thought I might get 20 replies. I couldn’t believe there were thousands of replies the next morning. “I would normally make a playlist of about 20 songs. But I’ve been working through this one in chunks, and so far it’s at 200.”
Jayne, who works in the defence industry, cites bands like Belle & Sebastian and The Blue Nile as among her favourites. But her tweet introduced her to a wider range of music from north of the border, reminded her of old treasures – and turned their holiday plans into a map of Scottish songs.
She said: “We are both big fans of bands from Glasgow, and we’ve seen a lot of the important Glasgow music landmarks before. We started off in Glasgow and went to Falkirk to meet a contact to buy some records. Then we discovered it was where Arab Strap come from, and we went from there to Grangemouth which is the home of the Cocteau Twins. “Someone told me on Twitter about a bench memorial to Stuart Adamson from Big Country in Dunfermline, so we visited that to get some photos. Then we went to Dundee. I’m a huge fan of Billy Mackenzie and the Associates, and that’s where he was from. Someone told us there was a mural dedicated to him, so we went to see that.” Sadly, their visit to Dundee coincided with the closure of one of Scotland’s most famous and well-loved record shops, Groucho’s. Jayne said: “People told us about Groucho’s, but also Concorde in Perth and Europa in Stirling, so we ended up visiting both of those places, too. “There’s been such a lot of interest. I put a picture of me at Stuart Adamson’s bench on Twitter and it got hundreds of likes.”
The reaction also saw big names from the Scottish music scene get involved with Jayne’s tweet, including Lloyd Cole, Bobby Bluebell, Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian and Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura. The most popular suggestions were Teenage Fanclub, Simple Minds and King Creosote but there were loads more.” Jayne and Keith are big fans of live music but the cataclysmic impact of the Covid pandemic on live entertainment meant their plans to see acts like John Grant and Richard Hawley in the city were scuppered. “We’ve both really been missing live music so this has really helped that,” she said.