The first winner is Rachael! She correctly guessed that I was watching Captain America.

Rach looks a lot more pleased about whatever they're looking at than Cap is. I like to think that she's been distracted by a kitten on the floor, doing drawings of unicorns and eating tiramisu. What?

Our next winner is Keith! He correctly guessed (despite very sparse clues) that I was watching The Inbetweeners Movie! Here he is hanging out with the guys.

I think we can all agree this would have been a much better film.

Next up we have a very unorthodox situation. This is the first time that someone has won despite guessing the wrong answer. It’s also the first time I’ve shooped someone into a film I haven’t actually seen before. Basically, after giving the clue “So far there’s been a cringey noooooooooo bit and a genuine laugh out loud bit. That’s about it”, yer man Jamie guessed that I was watching Schindler’s List. That made me laugh so much, he won this:

Surprisingly one of my better photoshop efforts.

Up next we have ANOTHER unorthodox situation. Two in one blog post? In one year? In one LIFETIME? Michty me. I better explain. The other night I recommended to everyone following me on twitter that they watch the film 127 Hours. I recommend the same to you guys, it’s a brilliant film and a truly uplifting experience. However, well-known twitter smarty-pants Colin Bell (he does this thing, amongst other things) tweeted me guessing that I was watching 127 Hours and tagged it #shamblesiswatching. What does he win for his smarty-pants behaviour? Possibly my favourite shoop yet.

lol

I have one last shoop for you, folks. I thought that since technically auld Jampot and young Keith (all age-related adjectives are arbitrary) won the same game, I should give em a joint shoop.

A much, MUCH better film.

That’s all folks!

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

Hello folks! You’re looking lovely today, whatever day this is. If you’re reading this, it can only mean one thing. It means that I only have one copy of my EP left to sell. I’ve been selling these CDs at gigs and online for the past year or so and now it’s finally on the brink of selling out! Who will be the one to buy that last CD? Who will receive the last sent-out-in-the-post-with-a-hand-written-letter copy of Shambles Sails the Clockwork Sea? If you’d like to be that person, there’s only one way to do it (well, unless you’re sneaky that is) which is buying from my bandcamp.

I promise I’m working on new material and I’ll have new things for you to hear and possibly even buy (or steal) and hold before long, but right now I’m really excited that I’ve managed to sell nearly 100 copies of this EP to you lovely people. Whether you bought it because you really like my music, on a whim at a gig, or even just to support me in my musical endeavours, I’m really grateful. It means a lot to me that people take the time to give my music a chance. So, thank you!

Can’t wait to release the next thing!

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

I could explain this, but you're better figuring it out for yourself.

Hello! I know it’s a little late, but, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I would’ve posted earlier, but my birthday is in early January, so I’ve been riding the crest of a boozy festive wave…and that’s me just sobered up. That’s alright isn’t it though? To effectively lose the first week of the year? Aye I’m sure it’s fine. Luckily though, much like the end of the year, things have been going on around me while I’ve been renewing my friendship with Mr. Jack Daniels.

I recently did a wee interview with a chap called Thor (you can see why I warmed to him immediately) for his blog GlasGOwest. We talk music, politics, booze, and there’s even a story featuring a man nearly FALLING off of a THING. Guess who saves the day? Time to find out! Just click here and read it with your eyes and enjoy it with your mind and smile at it with your face!

I also got a lovely surprise the other day in the form of the inclusion of one of my tracks on a great podcast from indundee.co.uk. It’s presented by a chap called Ed and I recommend giving it a listen, as it features some right braw music. Here’s the link! Also, if you like the song of mine that Ed plays, you can download it for free. Where? Oh right below this sentence? Bongo.

For the Would-be Woody Guthrie by ShamblesMiller

That’s all for now folks, anything else I’ve done recently was probably under the influence of alcohol and will probably start to ebb slowly back into my mind as it slowly sobers up for the year ahead. I’ll let you know when I do.

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

Hello folks! Hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas with some lovely presents from Santa and lots of food and drink in yer bellies! I’ve had a great Christmas, but have slightly neglected my blog in favour of almost relentlessly playing Skyrim. I do apologise if you’ve had to hear me ramble about it or if you’ve doubted my sanity on twitter as a result of my #toomuchskyrim tweeting. Y’know, I used to update my blog regularly but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Despite my Skyrim-induced sloth however, other stuff has been happening. And stuff happened BEFORE Skyrim, I just forgot to mention it as I was all caught up in the drinking joy of the festive period. Firstly, this Christmas I played a gig in George Square! I even got a nice festive jumper for the occasion. It was a really fun gig and it still feels pretty amazing as a Glaswegian to be able to say I’ve played in George Square. An actual gig, not just busking round the peripherims across from Greggs! The other acts were great and I particularly enjoyed Tragic O’Hara’s set. As someone who enjoys attempting acoustic covers of hip-hop songs, his version of Shimmy Shimmy Ya was especially braw. As for me, my trusty pal Neil caught a wee video of me singing Rapture, here it’s here.

So what’s been happening round about me while I’ve been busy slaying dragons? Well, I was really excited to find out that I’ve been included in Tom Robinson’s Christmas mixtape on BBC 6 Music! It’s a selection of Tom’s favourite songs of the year and I’m really honoured to have been picked for it. The song Tom picked was “Things That Make Me Angry” which of course is still available as a free download through Strummerville.

You can download the podcast or stream it from this lovely link/entire sentence.

As if that wasn’t flattering enough, I also made it to number 20 in the Edinburgh Man Podcast’s top 50 songs of the year! You can hear/download the podcast at this link right here. The track which had the most votes was Rapture. Yes, the one from that video up there! And this other one over here from when I played Cabaret Voltaire earlier this year! Oh aye and it’s also a free download! Michty me.

Last but not least, since my last post about it, I’ve sold another couple of copies of my EP, “Shambles Sails the Clockwork Sea” and now there are only 4 copies left! I know it’s a long shot but I’d love to sell them out by the end of the year so if you’ve been thinking of getting one, now’s the time! You can purchase from this link here.

A big massive thanks to everyone who has helped me out this year, supported me, bought/downloaded my stuff or come to gigs. It’s been a great year and I hope to make 2012 even better! At the very least, I’ll buy an outlandish hat and strut around wearing it like I’m a PURE SOMEBODY. Or something.

Til next time year!

love Shambles

x

In the meantime however, I thought I’d put up a wee video. I was lucky enough to be asked to play the Words per Minute Christmas show at the Arches recently, where I shared the bill with fellow singer/songwriter Sophie Mackintosh. It only made sense then to perform a fairly ramshackle cover of Fairytale of New York, right? Big thanks to Helen from WPM for catching the performance on video, and of course to Sophie for making the duet sound braw and balancing out my shamblosity (it’s a word, alright?). Hope you enjoy it!

Further thanks go to Words per Minute for asking me to come and perform, I had a great time as always. It’s amazing to be a part of that type of event, especially as I got to see some great writers, including Jamie McIntyre and Sophie Cooke, and had such a lovely reception from the audience. It seems congratulations are in order too, as Words per Minute feature at number 46 on The List Magazine’s Hot 100! Well done folks :)

That’s all for now, more festive fun soon!

love Shambles

x

We’re really proud of the book and can’t wait to share it with everyone. We hope you thoroughly enjoy it and hope to see you at the launch!

Til next time,

love Shambles

x

“electric cigarette, and smokeless cigarette, happens to be an electric apparatus who models the act of smoking tobacco by means of developing a particular taken in mister bearing the particular bricks-and-mortar feel, look and feel, and they sometimes the flavour and tobacco articles in taken in tobacco smoke however without having the odour in tobacco smoke. The gps unit employs heat up, maybe in many cases ultrasonics, in order to vaporize an important propylene glycol- and glycerin-based fluid solution straight into a particular aerosol mister, identical to the method an important nebulizer and humidifier vaporizes answers with regard to inhalation.

A lot of e cigs are created to seem like legitimate smoking tobacco uses, including cigs, lighters, and water lines, many consider the sort of ballpoint writing instruments and tools ever since some of those versions are certainly more practical to deal with the particular things associated. Nearly every one is in addition reusable, by using exchangeable and refillable regions, numerous varieties happen to be non-reusable.

The initial reported using the esmokes is often as an important quitting smoking apparatus, considering that it attempts to give the expertise in tobacco without having, and by using reduced, unpleasant well-being benefits constantly linked to tobacco smoke. Nonetheless, factors have been lifted which use belonging to the apparatus also includes well being, and the it will draw in non-smokers, particularly young children, due to the novel idea, the taste experience, maybe over-stated comments in security.”

Highlights:

• The sentence “developing a particular taken in mister bearing the particular bricks-and-mortar feel“
• GPS unit? Why does it have GPS?
• Repeated use of the word “mister”
• The fact that something which is supposed to be selling a product mentions that it might draw in “young children, due to the novel idea, the taste experience”

Just when you thought this one was going to manage to at least not be creepy, it goes and gets children involved again.

Shambles

x

Hello folks, how the devil are you? Good? Glad to hear it. I’ve written a new song that I’d love for you to download (for free!) but first I want to tell you a little about it. It’s inspired by the fact that recently I noticed some of the songs I was writing were a bit…well…moany. They weren’t all bad, just not what I really WANTED to write. These songs are now mostly forgotten, just occasionally revisited chord progressions and scrap-paper lyrics.

What I really wanted to do was take my anger and my disappointment in a system that seems to be failing, and channel it into my music. I wanted to write about the pride and hope I feel seeing people taking action against said system. I wanted to vent my ire on any number of social and political subjects, but couldn’t seem to focus in on one theme.

This song broke me out of that funk, both by addressing my frustration and giving myself a kick up the arse, whilst harnessing how I feel about these other topics. There’s a cheeky reference to Billy Bragg’s comments on the need for music to get political again (comments that I feel many people have either misunderstood or misconstrued) and as you might have guessed, a nod to Woody Guthrie and his guitar (pictured above), as well as support for the global occupy movement.

Anyway, I don’t want to explain away the song too much, so here it is. I hope you like it.

Thanks for listening. If you liked it (or know someone who would) please feel free to share it. Just click on the little arrow if you’d like to download it and feel free to embed it anywhere you like.

Til next time folks,

love Shambles

x

(When this post was originally published, the version of the track on the page was an earlier demo version. To hear that original, click here)

You can tell from this picture of me and my daft haircut singing a song.

Hello folks! Has your hair always been that colour? It fair suits you. This week I’ve been thinking about twitter and facebook and all this social network malarkey, in relation to my music. You see, recently I met someone who followed me on twitter but didn’t realise I was musician, until a mutual friend brought him to one of my gigs. I was a little incredulous, after all, my twitter isn’t short of tweets about gigs and I do use it to promote my music and whatnot. My twitter avatar is even holding a guitar!

Look, just listen to the song. Don't make me hit you.

I had a similar experience one day in work, when I served someone I used to go to school with. We have each other as friends on facebook, but don’t tend to interact with each other via the site. We chatted briefly about what we’d been up to since school, and she seemed quite surprised to learn that I was a gigging musician, never mind that I had self-released a couple of EPs and was planning a single release.

It got me wondering however, about how many people that follow me on twitter, or who are friends with me on facebook, have actually heard my music. To be honest, I get the feeling that most of my active followers probably do know I’m a musician, but I suspect many of them haven’t got round to listening to my music yet. After all, I’ve often seen a band crop up on twitter and think “oh, I’ll need to listen to them sometime” but I often forget to until someone actually links me to their music. With this in mind, I thought I’d give an updated list of some of the places you can find my music online.

Bandcamp

This is an invaluable tool for unsigned/independent musicians nowadays. Allows anyone to listen to your music, buy it if they want, and offers a very fair deal for the bands/artists who use it. It also allows you to embed the player into other sites, which is why you can not only listen to my music on bandcamp, but also on this very blog, AND of course, on everyone’s favourite evil digital empire…

Facebook

Facebook, sneaky as it is, regularly finds ways to integrate with other useful sites. After all, you post a link to a youtube video and you can watch it right in your facebook feed. Well, you can also listen to music, via the likes of the aforementioned bandcamp, but also using something called Bandpage. Basically, if you go to an artist’s page on facebook, this application will allow you to listen to, share, download and buy music. Both bandcamp and bandpage options are available on my music page, so feel free to check it out.

Amazing Tunes

A digital radio station for unsigned artists? If you’re looking for new music and haven’t heard of either Amazing Tunes or Amazing Radio, I recommend you have a listen. You can listen to songs whenever you like using their inbuilt player, or tune into one of their shows for some great music. My page is here, if that floats your musical boat.

Youtube

I know that nowadays a lot of people just chuck a song title into youtube when they feel like listening to a particular song/band. Well, it’s no different for me. If you feel like checking out some live videos and/or me talking pish, there’s always my youtube channel.

So, lots of ways to stream my music online. You can also buy one of my CDs from bandcamp, or download a digital copy (which is a bit cheaper, if you’re not too bothered about owning the disc). But what if you’re not quite sure if you want to pay for stuff just yet? Well, for folks who like free stuff, you could check out my…

FREE STUFF

Well, funnily enough, all of the previous sites (apart from youtube) offer some ways to download some of my music for free. I also occasionally contribute the odd track to compilation CDs and monthly EPs, so you could keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, here are three of my free tracks currently doing the rounds:

Rapture

This is a little song I recorded recently about the end of the world and chatting up girls.

Things That Make Me Angry

This is the free track I offer through being a member of Strummerville DIY.

This is a live track, from Glasgow’s very own Words per Minute.

That about covers it for now I think! If you’ve never heard my music before, I’m genuinely greatful that you’ve taken the time to read through this, and I hope you’ll take the time to listen to at least one song. Might have even managed to surprise one or two of you who simply thought of me as a daft little cartoon man on twitter.

Til next time folks,

love Shambles

x

I particularly like the sentence “Hallowe’en night, an important pageant that occurs on September thirty-one“, though my favourite has to be the somewhat ominous “a Hallowe’en costume is worn through adults about little ones“. Chilling.

Til next time folks,

love Shambles

x