Plenty to muse over for girl band political trailblazers

IN my youth when I’d be going to parties alongside, what we then called ‘musos’ – i.e. folk who were in a band – and a singalong got going, it might include something from the charts or even a Broadway musical tune.

My party piece though was always the Jute Mill Song, ‘Oh Dear Me’ by Mary Brooksbank, a song that attested to her gruelling life working in the Jute mills of Dundee, which I knew diddly squat about but sang as if I’d been; ‘Shiftin bobbins, coorse and fine’, for a lifetime!

I blame the job I had as a teenager; working for The International Folk Festival, where I was taught to sing it at the top of my lungs, that and all manner of marching songs. I soon learned you cannot have a proper protest without a rabble-rousing song to go with it!

Back in 2014, in the lead up to the Scottish independence referendum, it felt like politics was the new rock and roll. That was the first time I shared space on a panel, on this occasion discussing the relationship between politics and art, at the Mitchell Theatre with the erudite musician and political activist, Pat Kane of Hue and Cry fame.

At the weekend I was delighted to once again share a platform with him, when he and I were invited guests of the Sunday morning programme The Full Scottish, made by Broadcasting Scotland – a new and exciting broadcaster producing programmes from a Scottish perspective. Access to the station is presently via the internet but they’re aiming to make the move to the Freeview and beyond. We discussed all things news worthy and not; our views on the recent accusations against Alex Salmond and Jeremy Corbyn and how they have been handled by themselves and mainstream media, as well as Theresa May’s dancing. It was a different hue and a far cry altogether from when Pat and I were gigging in our bands in the 80s.

On that note, the members of my band then, Sophisticated Boom Boom, were invited, to Leith Theatre last month, as part of the International Edinburgh Festival; to a night named after Strawberry Switchblade’s number one hit, Since Yesterday to honour the unsung women pioneers of Scottish pop.

It was an amazing gig with an all-female line up, supported on stage by a Supergroup, who in way of an acknowledgement to us being ahead of our time, played the song Courage from the Sophisticated Boom Boom repertoire.

It was all quite unexpected, not least because being in an all-girl band didn’t exactly feel political then; we’d always been girls and being in a band was great fun, but that night showed me how again, music and politics go hand in hand.

The tribute night is all part of a new documentary by musician Carla J Easton and filmmaker Blair Young that will chart the history of those women who broke the mold in Scotland. There was me thinking the only thing I ever broke was the odd wine glass!

And finally...

You know you are old when you hear yourself call the pop charts the Hit Parade.

‘‘ It was quite unexpected, not least because, in a girl band, didn’t exactly feel political