Over Our Garden Wall - Music Podcast

It was touch & go for a while there, however we now have a list of the 30 Greatest Scottish Albums, as voted on by our music friends on X. You may/may not agree with the albums on it or the order they are in, however we believe that it represents much of what makes Scottish music great. Therefore, on our final podcast we chat about the Final 30, and we compare this to a “Critics 30” that was put together in parallel. We also announced what the best albums cover art is, and the panel gave their own personal recommendation for a Scottish artist album that everyone should own a copy of. And, we also had a couple of initial ideas as to what our next podcast series subject matter might be ( it involves the M8 - no, really). We’ve had so much fun doing this one, and a personal thank you to Caroline, Colin ( and Donna) for adding both the glamour and the guile. See you all on the other side….

The Crossing by Big County has had a lot of love throughout our Greatest Scottish Albums debate - and is a worthy finalist.Therefore we were keen to get a bit more insight into the album from someone closely involved with the recording. And who better to talk about it than the producer of the record Steve Lillywhite ( who joined us all the way from Bali!) Steve shared lots of feedback and general love for both the album and the band, which included a marriage proposal, Stuart being better organised than Bono, and why Steve thought the band were a bit proggy ( in a nice way). Oh, and we also discovered what’s Stuart’s party trick in the studio was ( not for the faint hearted) We can’t thank Steve enough for taking the time to talk to us, and it was lovely to see how warm his recollections were. Enjoy and stay safe  

We reached the semi final stage last weekend, and our polling on X proved to be both busy and eventful ( we ended up running 3 polls for only 2 ties - no, really). Therefore, this podcast was mainly about picking the bones out of that lot. We also chatted about the upcoming final, nominating artists for the 'Over Our Garden Wall Music Prize' , and re-visiting the age old question of when is a Scottish band not a Scottish band? Answer: well it all depends....Enjoy, and stay safe

Another winter weekend, another Greatest Scottish Albums poll on X, this time to determine our four semi finalists.And, as per the last few polls we have carried out, we ( and everyone else bar one person on X!) didn’t predict the four albums that would go through. Plenty therefore for our podcast panel to chew over, which they did, and then some. We also made the draw for the semi finals, discussed persuading the winning artist onto the last podcast, and gave the voters some advice on how best to maximise their own fav album’s chances when the polls kick off ( it involved fully utilising all family & friends to max effect, especially when they leave their phones unattended) All fair in love and war, sometimes…Enjoy and stay safe

Another weekend's voting on X ( last 16) - and yet nother cliffhanger vote, with the winner in the 98th minute! We talk about this and the other seven results on the chat. More importantly, we made the draw for the quarter final ties, and we reckon 3 out of 4 are coin tosses. We also had our first offer of bribery for a favourable draw ( in return for hot x buns). Tempting, very tempting....Enjoy & stay safe

Our ' World Cup' style knockout format proved very successful, so why change a winning formula! Therefore, on this episode, as well as discussing the results of the last 32 album match ups (with one of the votes going to the last minute after 36 hours!) - also had a live draw, where our panel ( sans Rod again) did the honours.8 outstanding ties, with at least 3 of them Ali v Frazier match ups....Onwards and upwards

After 3 years of podcasting, we had another first on this episode - a live draw!. We didn't have a drunk Rod Stewart to do the draw ( maybe next time), however Caroline & Colin coped admirably. 32 artists. 32 albums. 16 match ups ( and one which is an absolute) belter. All in 15 minutes. Only a matter of time before Premier Sports start a Premier Music channel and give us top billing. Enjoy, and stay safe

This podcast was recorded after the Group stages of the polling were completed. In theory, we had the 32 albums albums we need to move onto the knockout stage. However....Our podcast pals stated discussing whether there was merit in restricting any artist to a max of one album. Bearing in mind that there were nine artists in the 32 with two albums each ( and all belters too) - agreeing this would be a very controversial decision. On the upside, it would mean nine other fantastic albums get their chance in the final 32. What decision did they take? Click the button to find out...Enjoy & stay safe PS. We also, for the first time, have a super cool intro/outro jingle, courtesy of our friend Stephen Peebles.( check out his band The Morning Early if you get the chance) Top man.

So...after 20 Voting Parties on X voting on around 150 albums, we now had a full list to discuss. Which, of course, we did. And, coming out of our discussion, we have a list of 56 albums that will be voted on in the next stage using a ' World Cup' format - 52 that got over 50% in their respective polls, and 4 very unlucky losers who we felt deserved to be in the mix. We also for the first time, did a live ' adopt and album' draw ( that would have went better if the host could match up the numbers properly) - and had a proposal to create a mascot for our podcast/music page etc. 30 minutes that you will never get back, but hey, life's too short Enjoy, and stay safe

We are 75% of the way through polling of the long list of nominations for our 40 Greatest Scottish Albums challenge. Therefore seemed a good time for a podcast check-in with the panel on progress to date. They had a few moans and groans, but generally speaking it was a happy school. So happy in fact, that Colin McCredie was being VERY constructive with his go forward polling suggestions ( inc a World Cup proposal) Its a 30 minute bundle of facts, fun and a wee bit of festivity Enjoy & stay safe

Its the first episode in our quest to create our 40 greatest Scottish Albums list. Therefore there is a bit of scene setting, rules of engagement chat etc. However, we also had time to look at the 30 albums voted on X already ( with Zoom cutting half of the hosts head off screen!) , extract some 'die on that hill' Top 5 nominations from the podcast panel, and get Mike Scott from The Waterboys to confirm that, he is indeed, Scottish!This is the river, who knows where the sea is....Till next time. enjoy and stay safe.

It was all going so well. Voting Party's going great on X, lots of love in our virtual room, some amazing songs getting voted through to the Finals. And then....we get to the 2000-2025 nominated songs. In a word, carnage. 107 songs voted on, only 14 voted through. Lots of big hitters missing out, and recriminations aplenty amongst our music friends. It is with this backdrop that our latest podcast was recorded, with our resident BCP panel member Caroline Binnie & the ( award winning) writer Julie Rea tasked with steering our music boat into calmer waters. Did they succeed? In a word, no. The panel did manage to vote 4 songs from the 2000-2025 'red' list back into the Finals ( all bangers too) - however, they also insisted that our ' max 2 songs per artist' remains a hard backstop. This in turn means that songs from four of our very favourite bands will have to be voted on again ( Julie & Caroline kindly gave us their suggestions) However, we finished the chat on a high, by agreeing how we should get from our current position of having over 100 songs in the Finals, to arriving at our Final 30 ( and ultimately our overall No1). Whatever the final 30 looks like, you cant say we didn't have a go...Until next time, enjoy & stay safe.

We have reached the 1990s! For this episode on our quest to create a list of the 30 Greatest Scottish Songs ever- as well as our resident Bay City Poller Caroline Binnie, we were joined by our friends, the actor Colin McCredie & Station Manager for Cumbernauld FM Gerry Duffy. In addition to the panel re-stating how great the 1980s nominated songs are ( all 42 of them!) we had a proper discussion on both the songs that have been voted into from the 1990s list, and more important those that weren't! Thankfully, all 4 panelist used their jokers wisely, adding a quality song each back onto the list. We also got Gerry & Colin to give us their ' die on a hill' Top 10 Scottish song nomination, and ended the chat by sharing some Wham trivia that aged us all in real time... A mighty fine time was had by all, hope that comes across when you have a look/listen. As ever, enjoy & stay safe

When we recorded Episode 1 of this series, we mentioned inpassing that the 1980s looked like being a particularly challenging decade toagree a Top 30 on, and so it proved!  Episode 2 is pretty much taken up with chatting through the 1980s songs that did make the cut, those that didn’t, and those that did but then didn’t.Confused? Join the club.  We also managed to adopt another couple of bands into our ‘Scottish’ family, although we remain unconvinced that even the bands themselves would agree!  As well as Brian & Caroline, we were also joined forthis episode by our special guest the writer, activist & mum Donna McLean, who was 10 minutes late joining us, due to a combination of all three of these priorities all landing on the same day as the podcast recording. No, really. Oh, and of course Zoom wasn’t particularly happy to beworking over the festive season and made sure that our screen formatting wasn’t quite what we wanted it to be.  That Sony Award is feeling further away than ever…. Onwards and upwards Enjoy, and stay safe

When we finished our last music podcast series that took us almost 18 months! (101 Greatest Albums), we had no plans to do another. However, after some pub some chat with friends we concluded that, although there has been plenty of discussion on great Scottish albums, there has been very little on what a great Scottish songs list might look like. So…..we asked our Twitter/X friends for song suggestions. And,5000 nominations later, we are now having a go at working through a quorum of them. Episode 1 reflects all of the above, where we are joined by some of our resident podcast panel. It also covers off the online discussion we had about how you would define a ‘Scottish’ artist. On the basis that none of Big Country were born in Scotland, it’s not as easy as you think. This series will take us a while to get through, however we can categorically assure you it WONT take us 18 months! Number 1 priority at the moment – we give this new series a title it deserves…. Enjoy & stay safe.

Just when we were beginning to think that we might never give this series the send off it deserved......here is the 22nd ( and final) edition of our 100 Greatest Albums series. Episode 1 was actually in November 2022, at a time when we had just changed Prime Minister - and we end at a time when we have just saw another one off - which feels pretty good. Over the last few weeks we have been voting to create our final Top 10, in order, from the 101 Albums we previously selected. And we reveal on this episode what Lisa, John, George and some of our guests/friends have come up with. We are sure you won't be disappointed. We have has so much fun doing these podcasts - and MAYBE, we will do another podcast series later in the year. For now, sit back, enjoy the chat, and when you have the time, get the greatest Top 10 albums EVER on your turntable/streaming platform. It's the very least your ears deserve. Big thanks to out podcast guests for propping us up, and for our Twitter/X friends for the banter... See you on the other side Brian, Lisa, George & John x PS. And of course, thanks to Metallica for being so bad that they gave us our podcast name :-)

In 2023, we spent 12 months reviewing the Rolling Stone magazine 100 Greatest Albums list. After 20 podcasts, we had agreed that 66 of these albums were worthy of inclusion on our own 100 Album list. So....we then decided to get nominations from our podcast panel and our music friends, and held 20 Voting Party's on Twitter/X that voted on circa 100 more albums. ( they were very good fun, thanks to everyone who took part in them) When that was done, we had voted another 40 albums onto our list. This is course meant that we now had 106 albums on our list. This podcast tackled the 106 challenge head on and, as per normal, our panel weren't backwards at coming forwards. And, at the end of our 30 minute discussion, we had reduced the list, but not to 100! ( and we still have to decide what the final Top 10 will be too) Confused, you will be.... Enjoy, and as ever, stay safe. PS If we have now voted an album off the list that your really really love, then we suggest you start your own music podcast....

When we started this podcast over 12 months ago, we weren't entirely sure if we would ever be able to podcast review the top 100 albums from the latest Rolling Stone magazine. Therefore, our podcast panel was especially happy on this recording to be reviewing the final 5 on the Rolling Stone list. And, as luck would have it, this coincided with our podcast Xmas party - cue lots of parallel conversations and wine consumption ( just like any Xmas party) Somewhere in amongst all of the fun - we did manage to discuss, debate and vote on the albums voted No's 5-1 on the list, which were : The Beatles - Abbey Rd Stevie Wonder - Songs In The Key Of Life Joni Mitchell - Blue The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds Marvin Gaye - What's Going On Our Twitter/X polls voted all 5 of these big boys onto the final list - would the Xmas cheer help our panel to do likewise? It was great to have Lisa, George & John all join us for this one - and even better that we managed ( after a year of trying) to get the Scottish author/playwright Julie Rea to join us as well. She was well worth the wait. After completing this podcast, we now have around 70 albums voted onto our ' final' list, which of course means we still have some work to do before we can get to our definitive list of the 100 Greatest Albums ever. We have some plans on how to plug the gap ( which will also involve our friends who watch and vote on each podcast). However, all that's for another day. So, for the last time this year, strap yourself in and enjoy the ride. Special thanks to Lisa, George, John & Stephen for helping us to get this far, and of course to all our amazing guests for adding the va va voom. Merry Xmas, and a Happy New Year. Stay safe

A momentous day in the life of our podcast - when we finally got to the Top 10 albums on the Rolling Stone's list! Being the top ten - we expected, and got some' big' albums to discuss from: Lauryn Hill Bob Dylan Prince Fleetwood Mac Nirvana We proved by voting out Thriller on our last episode that reputation counts for nothing with our podcast panel & guests. And this episode maintained that tradition - when another 'iconic' album didn't make the cut. As well as having John & Lisa on, we were joined again by our friend Ian Smith from the wonderful Last Night From Glasgow record label. All three knocked it out the park - therefore it was real shame that we lost Ian towards the end when Virgin Glasgow had a major broadband outage (which quickly moved to Inverclyde) - however we managed to scramble through these issues like the good pro's we are :-) And, at the end of all of that - we have ended up with 63/95 ( or 66%) of the albums now voted onto our 'final' list, with one more podcast still to come, - hopefully before Santa brings his presents. Once that''s done and dusted - we will then start to have some fun filling in the gaps.... Enjoy, and stay safe

When we ran our Twitter/X polls for this episode, it was the first time that all 5 albums were voted as a yes! So the big question was - would our podcast panel also go for the full house?! The artists on this episode were all strong enough to easily support the idea that their album is one of the best 100 ever, with albums reviewed from :Public Enemy The Rolling Stones Aretha Franklin Michael JacksonThe BeatlesHowever, even allowing for this heavyweight line up, one of them didn't make the cut! We have had a number of firsts on our podcasts - and this one was the first time that we have had two guests on the same episode. Caroline Binnie was back for a second visit ( thank you!) and all the way from Sheffield, Jack Davidson also joined us and a) lowered the average panel age by 20 years and b) demonstrated a depth of musical knowledge for one so young ( must have had great parents :-) ) No technical issues, and because John & George couldn't make this recording, no over 18s language to navigate through the YouTube censors! Mind you, we did manage to get the phrase ' Cocksucker Blues' into the chat - will see how the algarithm deals with that. Big thanks to Caroline, Jack and of course Lisa. And when we next speak to you, we will be in the Top 10! Enjoy, and stay safe Brian