Post Description

Irish composer and musicologist Sean O Riada, who put traditional music onto the concert stage in 1960, remarked about (Irish) ceili bands: The most important principles of traditional music - the whole idea of variation, the whole idea of the personal utterance - are abandoned. Instead everyone takes hold of a tune and belts away at it with as much relation to music as the buzzing of a bluebottle in an upturned jam jar. Maybe, the Scottish counterparts avoid some of the pitfalls. There are no drums and dull advance-and-don't-care-for-casualities, the legacy of performing for dancers with non-existent amplification, but tight playing and good tunes instead. Though around since a decade this is MeanTime's debut CD. A traditional Gaelic ceilidh group, based on accordion, fiddle, highland and lowland pipes, guitar, and piano, playing marches, barn dances, waltzes, jigs, strathspeys and reels. This has not so much to do with the modern meaning of the word `ceilidh' as a dancing event, but rather, as in the old times, visiting the neighbours, gossiping, and let the music play. You can hear a lot of humour between the lines. "Big Fran's Baby" has been written by Clint Eastwood for his film "A Perfect World". 

Label: Own label; 
Year:  2002; 
Playing time: 59.25 min 

Meantime are:
David MacLennan (guitar, bass, banjo, vocals)
Malcolm Munro (piano accordion, melodeon, keyboards, vocals)
David Boag (fiddle, harmonica, vocals)
Norman MacArthur (pipes, bass, guitar, vocal

Tracklist
1) 2/4 Marches
2) The Birthday Waltz
3) Pipe Jigs
4) David's Strathspey & Reels
5) Ann
6) Dannsa Rathaid
7) Teann a-nall / Clachan Ghlinn Da Ruadhail
8) Meleoidean, tromb & fidheall
9) Orain air a' phiob
10) Shiela's Set
11) Air an Oidhche
12) Retro Argyll Set
13) Glen Esk
14) Pipe Barn Dance
15) Zulu Dhomhnaill Ruaidh: 
16) Big Fran's Baby