Alasdair Roberts: Dighty Burn

At the start of the year, I entertained the idea of bringing Music Arcades to a close today, on the summer solstice, exactly five and a half years after it began. At that point it seemed feasible, if I restricted myself to buying just the right, small number of new CDs or records between then and now. But sometime in January I found a bundle of CDs that had evaded my count, and that meant I could only afford one new addition to the collection in six months. Once that number was breached, a small flood began — first of additional items like these and these, then in the last few weeks I've gone on a mini buying spree.

It would have been neat to run solstice-to-solstice, dark to light, but neat isn't really what we're about in this endeavour. Sprawl is the thing.

So here's a recent addition to the collection (though already it's not the newest). It was waiting for me when I got back from France last week. Dear Mr Roberts sent me a copy on trust, before I'd had the chance to pay him. His envelope bore a return address in Dal Riada.

I guess I could have asked, but I felt a bit dim for not quite getting what's going on with this combination DVD-plus-7"-single package. Officially Dighty Burn is the soundtrack for a film, Dighty, by Edward Summerton and Michael Windle. Is that the film, there? If so [adopts voice of fuddy-duddy judge peering over half-moon spects] it's a bit like what we used to be called a music video in the old days, isn't it? And if so, what is the additional 17-minute feature — a minimalist, hand-held point-of-view piece of a night walk that I described as Warhol meets Blair Witch — that comes after it on the DVD? Perhaps it's just a bonus track. It has no music on the soundtrack, so it can't be Dighty — but as a piece of film-making I found it more effective than the more crafted piece above. And what's with the "Based on a true story by Irene Haggart"? It's another murder ballad, with a body in a forgotten stretch of water, no?

I have more questions (like, what is this "high-low stair" that has now appeared in two Roberts songs?) But as I say they all leave me with that feeling of just being thick, like I did when we were reading poems in English lessons at school, and the writers were being tricksy and leaving oblique clues instead of just saying what they meant.

Except I often end up finding them irresistibly intriguing. And I hope the advice from Tom Phillips, in this book, is true: "The best rule to remember is that if you have enjoyed a painting you have understood it". I enjoyed the song and the film.

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Comments

[nicola]

it is a true story based on my aunty irenes story ok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whats your problem with it?

[David]

Thanks for getting in touch, Nicola. I wouldn't (and I don't think I did) say I had a problem with the story. I'm curious about it. Because, in the film on the DVD, it's not clear that anything happens. Stories where little happens are unusual and interesting to me, so I'd love to know more. Can you tell me? Is there anywhere I can read or hear the story? Or could you tell me the story briefly in your own words? Thanks again.