This web site contains some of the musical musings of Mark Toner. Mark is from Scotland where ‘Aye’ means the name of his favourite rock band. So this is the Scottish version.
Mark is the bassplayer with psychedelic prog folk band Arbelos, a project that developed into a new band out of a quarter century musical collaboration. He also turns up from time to time playing a variety of instruments, usually in the Dumfries area.
Now that my main website, here at www.ayesongs.com is now Wordpress powered, I’m hoping to join up my far-flung and oft-forgotten blogs around the web. Tonight is the turn of my old Blogger account, now being animated by the breath of renewed writing.
It’s taken a bit of setting up, but now I can spread the proggy influence further. Here’s to more blogging.
Roger Beep
My band, Arbelos, has been making a slow tour this year. We started in Dumfries back in April and performed in Edinburgh last month. This month we are making our way into outer space from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Glasgow. This is the venue for the Satellite 2 Science Fiction Convention and Arbelos will be playing at the Dead Laika Party on Sunday 26th July.
The weekend of the convention follows on from the actual date of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s lunar landing and the Apollo programme will be one of the themes of the convention. This makes it an ideal venue to continue touring Arbelos’ new suite of Songs Of Apollo’s Children. We also get to play Sunjammer to Colin McInnes, Glasgow’s own designer of solar-sailed spacecraft.
I plan to be there for the full weekend and flog some CDs to help pay for the gig. Noel and Ken will arrive on the Sunday with the PA and other heavy equipment necessary to launch Arbelos towards the Moon.
You can keep posted on the Arbelos Tour Of The Worlds over at the band website. The convention has its own site and you can sign up there for a very reasonable rate.
The bejewelled night
I’ve worked late into the steamy summer night and now I seem to have a new web site. Let’s hope the Wordpress system encourages me to update on a regular basis and perhaps keep my other blogs more active too.
Now it’s time to go off to bed and have a well-earned rest.
Good night. |)
The Tour of the Worlds 2009
Well, Arbelos has become a touring band. I’ll need to gather all the info and get it posted on the Arbelos MySpace and website.
We had a good night entertaining Dumfries Astronomy Society for their Yuri’s Night party and the guys got the performing bug. So we’re playing the Pleasance Cabaret Bar in Edinburgh next month, and the Satellite 2 SF Convention in Glasgow in July (I must look out my spacesuit). Now I’ve teamed up with some friends from the old Dumfries Musical and Operatic Society (now Dumfries Musical Theatre Company) and we’re organising a Christmas show for the Brigend Theatre, Dumfries, in December. I think Arbelos will do a bit of space folk wassailing then and we hope to have Cheryl Easton, of “Tea With Clarinda” fame and a very scary story-teller.
More will be revealed in due course.