Monday 29 November 2004

CDs have suddenly taken over. The Red Red Rose arrives at Delphian Records tomorrow, so I've been preparing mp3s for this site and a group email to encourage some pre-Christmas sales. Today I was interviewed for Radio Scotland's Songlines programme (I think) about the title song, and managed to squeeze in a bit of melodica playing too. And yesterday I finished off the edit of the Kellie Castle material for the Kellie disc, and also bumped into the director of a rather well-known festival who expressed interest in us playing there in 2006.

My thesis about Red Red Rose (developed in the taxi on the way to the interview) is that Burns fell out with Urbani not because he didn't like his singing or because Urbani stuck a string quartet onto Burns's song, but because Urbani allowed his ego into the process. Burns didn't accept any payment or even much credit for all his editorial work on the Scots Musical Museum.  So for this Italian to be using the same Scots traditional songs to further his singing and publishing career would have left a bitter taste with the self-effacing Burns. Well, it's a good taxi theory.