Edinburgh...and Guantanamo Bay

This post kinda flows of from yesterday's...
There's many things I like about living in Edinburgh, Scotland. I like the fact that the weather isn;t usually unpleasantly hot, and when you get those rare, warm days you can wander around the meadows. There's fantatsic pubs and places to go for coffee (my favourite street in the whole of Edinburgh is Cockburn Street, which links the Royal Mile to the station). I like the fact that there's a decent bus service, and I didn't have to need to buy a car for ages (until I had to do a teaching placement at a fairly grotty place about twenty miles outside of Edinburgh).

Edinburgh's music scene is always accused of being inferior to Glasgow's, but there's been plenty of great bands over the years -Fire Engines, Josef K, Idlewild (actually I used to work with Roddy Woomble's sister, not long after I first arrived), Aberfeldy, the Prats, X-vectors, Jesse Garon and the Desperados (and Shirley Manson's from here too, even if the rest of Garbage are from the US)...just to pick a few out of thin air. The Venue has, alas, closed - but I saw some great bands here. Funnily enough, I seemed to see a lot of bands here supporting who would go on to eclipse the headliners... The Upper Room supported Easyworld, and The Kaiser Chiefs supported The Ordinary Boys in 2004, and the following year I saw the Kooks supporting the Dead 60s (wasn't blown away by the Kooks at the time, but both my girlfriend and I have now decided we like 'em after all).

I'm rambling...there's some fantastic record shops - I worked in at least three of them before I gave up my discount to become a teacher. Wandering into one of them to buy The Pipettes album today, I got chatting with the person serving me. (Record shop and person shall remain as nameless as possible - I don't want t be held responsible for someone getting stalked across the net). Anyway, in a shameless attempt to promote this blog I swapped blogsite addresses with them.


The band is called Guantanamo Bay, which will no doubt be too political for some, but I think worth hearing. They're unsigned, but go here and download three tracks.