Music
Take the Lead
This year is the tenth anniversary of the release of a film called Take the Lead starring Antonio Banderas. I was fortunate enough to work on some of the soundtrack of the movie. Director Liz Friedlander and New Line Cinema needed a piece of music to make a crucial scene work. The scene was a …
T in the Park Stories
In 2001, I won a battle of the bands. The prize was to appear on the T-Break stage at T in the Park. The following year, I was invited back to DJ between bands at the same stage. The year after that, I was asked to be DJ for the Radio 1 / NME stage …
Memoirs of a Minor MTV DJ
At the height of the bootleg / mashup trend (2003/04), a bunch of music producers, including myself, were caught up in the phenomenon and getting work out of it. In one month in particular, I spent three consecutive weekends in other countries, returning to my day job each Monday with an increasing feeling of “what …
Memoirs of a Minor XFM DJ – Post 4
I’d been McSleazy as a DJ / producer since the late 90s. (It was pronounced like the Scottish Mc- prefix, and not M.C.) Around the station, I was usually just Grant. On one occasion, however, I was introduced to the ex-singer in Marillion in what turned out to be the most ridiculous conversation of my …
Memoirs of a Minor XFM DJ – Part 3
One of the best things about the show I did was that the listeners were often making tunes that ended up getting played out. The bulk of those tunes were remixes or bootlegs (two or more songs mashed together). I had run a website called GYBO (Get Your Bootleg On) from 2001 where amateur music …
Memoirs of a Minor XFM DJ – Part 2
As a newbie, the XFM studio looked like it was lit like the spaceship at the end of Close Encounters. Buttons, faders, meters and the like connected to carts, cd players, decks and to trigger the adverts. I was going to mess up, 100% guaranteed. No doubt about it. There was a lot to learn …
Memoirs of a Minor XFM DJ – Part 1
Many years ago, there was a radio station in the west of Scotland called Beat 106. Its remit was pretty much dance music, and it was popular. As a bootleg / MTV DJ at the time, I was asked to do a few guest mixes over a year or so, which was a lot of …
Speaking Music
I’ve been writing music for films and games for many years, but always remotely. I live in Glasgow, and the people that I’ve written music for don’t. The first film I worked on was a movie for a big Hollywood studio. It was a baptism of fire. Because of the distance and time difference, there …