Dunaber Music

Halloween, Geisha Girls and Fat Bastard

I like Emily Post’s definition of good manners, “Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use.” I wonder sometimes if the whole phenomenon we know as “political correctness” is a hammer-over-the-head attempt to fill a good-manners gap.
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Can I Have Your Postal Code?

A whinge today. No two-ways about it. That’s what it is. And, a rarity, completely unrelated to bagpipes or pipe bands.
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Michaelmas

Today: A day of note if your name is Michael or you’re a Celtic-y, Druidish, retro-religous type; so I qualify on one count, anyway.
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Karma

One of my favourite proverbs ever:
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When in Rome …

I’ve had to pretty much watch what I eat my whole life. Fries and gravy, pasta and anything and pints stick to me like chrome on a trailer hitch. Maybe you can relate. The buckles on a kilt, or your pants (trousers) don’t lie. It’s probably the way of things for most people, I suppose. Anyway, I generally, sort of, mostly, do my good-intentioned best to keep things right.
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Keep the Flags at Home

The big day has come and gone. The 2011 World Pipe Band Championships will surely stand as the best ever. What fantastic virtuoso performances and delivered, too, by bands across a hugely wide breadth of the contest. Every band seemed to play varying degrees of great.
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Get Your Bag On

No surprise that I’m about to say I believe it’s a special (different, out-of-the-ordinary, etc) kind of person who’s attracted to playing the Great Highland Bagpipe. Loud, brash, hard to keep quiet and sometimes offensive – and I’m talking the instrument and not (necessarily) the player here – it seems to me shy folk are not generally attracted to playing bagpipes. Yes, exceptions to every rule but I say the bagpipe world is full the eff up with “type A” personalities (drummers included, here, too, but they’re another story).
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When the Heat’s On

For anyone who has to regularly play their bagpipes in a place that’s hot, well, you may already know this secret.
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(Tunes for) Summertime

Here’s a few tunes to help while away your day – a holiday if you live in Canada.

Here’s me playing my solo spot at the May 21, Toronto Police Pipe Band show at the el Mocambo club in Toronto.
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Thank You / Gracias / Merci / Tapadh leibh / Grazie

A rare and wonderful thing happened yesterday. At Georgetown highland games we saw a most deserving public thank-you [understatement].
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