Waking up this morning in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 for the first time in 19 years!

Notwithstanding that unplanned pause, Scottish bands make up a significant portion of my collection and a couple of outfits would be in my top 10 all time.

I estimate that my collection EASILY contains the equivalent of at least song a day from a Scottish outfit for the entire period since I began collecting in 1979. (45 x 365 = 16,425)!

Today is PART I of a 5 days of short playlists I am curating of Scottish Independent artists throughout the punk and post punk era.

Today features releases from 1977 to 1985. That is the year a band from East Kilbride near Glasgow took prominence with their life- altering music (for me) and their provocative and often disruptive gigs that lasted about 25 minutes! [Ed. Note- rex was at one such gig in Toronto in December of 1985.]

The brothers Reid (Jim on vocals and William on distort laden guitar) fronted THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN.

Initially with BOBBY GILESPIE (who went on to form PRIMAL SCREAM) on standing snare drums they damn near melted down pop music with their heady mix of BEACH BOY sounds put through a feedback grinder.

Each day there will be a playlist that should keep you in Caledonia for about an hour.

There will be a tiny narrative as I want the playlists to speak and give you the survey of this remarkable place that has had an out- sized prominence in the history of indie music.

Each day I will select 1 song from the playlist as the SOTD.

Here we go with Part I-

NEW CALEDONIA DREAMS (Part I – 1977-1985)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/j?si=Eg8X7PSbTjGHNTOhST6oGg

And for the song of the day-

(SONG 776)

Play Loud Throughout Caledonia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 [“Caledonia” is derived from the Roman term used to describe the area north of the Antonine Wall- now referred to as Scotland.]

May 18, 2024

[Ed. Note- Today is the 44th anniversary of the death of IAN CURTIS. PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT are playing gigs down under. rex usually posts a JD song but rather is noting his return to Scotland today. RIP Ian.]