He also keeps his musical hand in as drummer with the on-off collective Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, alongside the likes of Christopher Brookmyre, Mark Billingham and Val McDermid. If you recognise that name, it’s probably because he’s now a successful author. Strachan bowed out after these recordings, but would turn up a few years later in Fence Collective band Northern Alliance, in which she took the occasional lead vocal but mostly provided backup to chief wordsmith Doug Johnstone. These tracks, “recorded at teviot row house and 11 east preston street”(the former a famous Edinburgh venue, the latter apparently student digs – but surely both in line for a blue plaque now) appeared on a 1997 compilation album of Edinburgh bands, “It’s a Life Sentence…”. But if you’d like to hear how it started, this is how. A couple of years passed before Ballboy as we know them made their “proper” debut, with guitarist Gordon McIntyre stepping up to the microphone. This version is clearly not the finished article, although the sound isn’t so far off the first official EPs. I’m well aware that Ballboy are an old favourite at T(N)VV, and already the subject of not one but two excellent ICAs, so I don’t propose to go over that ground again, but I thought that fans might be interested to hear some obscure tracks by an early prototype version of the band, at the time still featuring original vocalist Viv Strachan. One you probably already know, and one you quite possibly don’t. I offer you some tracks from two bands with something, or rather someone, in common.
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