Each week The Afternoon Show chooses an exciting music blogger to grace the airwaves and webpages of Amazing Radio. This week presenter Kyle and producer Frankie have chosen to feature Lloyd Meredith and his Scottish music blog Peenko. In the following blog, exclusive to Amazing Radio, Lloyd introduces his blog and tells us what Peenko is all about…
Hello ladies and gents, my name is Lloyd Meredith, better known to some of you as Scottish Music Blogger ‘Peenko’ or to others as ‘who the hell is this?’. At the start of the year I was voted as the Scottish Music Blogger of the year in the Scotblog Awards, which I think shows that I have more friends and family than any of my contemporaries.
I have been blogging for almost two years now. I was inspired to start my own blog in order to try and inform some of my friends about the great music I was listening to. None of them listened, but thanks to the wonder that is the Internet, I soon found myself interacting with fellow music lovers. Originally there was no real structure and I spent the first six months completely ‘winging it’, with random posts on things that I liked or the occasional ramble about something that was on my mind but after a while I started to find my feet. Originally I hadn’t started Peenko to talk about Scottish music, it was just something that I found myself being drawn towards through my own interest.
If I had to pin point a particular point when things changed, it would probably be an article on the Line of Best Fit about a local band called Over the Wall. Part of me was slightly taken aback by this great band from my home town of Glasgow, and another part of me thought ‘why have I never heard of this band?’ It was around this time that I realised the deeper I followed the rabbit down the hole, the more amazing Scottish bands I came across. In all honesty I was hooked and I now use my blog as a platform to stand on my online soapbox and preach about all the great music coming out of Scotland.
To do this I run two features a week. At the start of the week I run a feature called ‘Fresh Meat Monday’, in which I have up and coming bands from Scotland answering a few questions for me. Basically any fresh and exciting band that I think deserves some more exposure get the Fresh Meat treatment. On Wednesdays I post the cheesily entitled ‘Scots Way-Hay’ (a bastardisation of a Rabbie Burns song in case you didn’t already know), this feature is for more established Scottish artists and sometimes I feature bands that I think have something just that little bit special about them. When I first started these features I must admit that I was a bit concerned that I might not be able to come up with something every week. Now I find that I have far too much; at the moment I have a backlog of great stuff that I am just dying to share with everyone.
In addition to posting interviews with bands, I also record various radio sessions. This usually involves me trawling around the internet looking for Scottish bands sessions to record. Friday’s are also pretty special, with my weekly Friday Freebies feature, in which I post an array of links to free and legal downloads that are out there on the Web. For me personally this has been a challenging yet highly rewarding task, as I have come across some quite amazing new artists simply because they have posted some free downloads. Off the top of my head, I can think of amazing artists like the Son(s), King Post Kitsch, Randolph’s Leap and we’re only afraid of NYC who have all really impressed me with the songs that they’ve given away for free.
Saturdays are also a lot of fun, as I post Scottish bands doing covers, having amassed such a large number of MP3s that it would be rude for me not to share them. Some of the songs that bands take on can be quite surprising; take for example We Were Promised Jetpacks covering Bon Iver – now that’s not something that you’d expect to find anywhere else!
Thanks to the reputation (be it good or bad) that I have built up for myself, I have recently found myself doing DJ-slots, managing a band, starting my own record label, presenting a radio show and I have also put on a couple of highly successful ‘Vs’ gigs with my fellow blogger Jim ‘Ayetunes’.
I guess I should try and wrap it up there, leaving you with a few more blogs, podcasts and a few bands which I think deserve your attention. Blog-wise, make sure you check out Ayetunes, The Pop Cop, Song By Toad and Seventeen Seconds. Podcast-wise, you have the amazing Glasgow Podcart, We Sink Ships and Jim Gellatly’s Podcast. Band-wise, there are just far too many to mention, to get you started I would suggest you check out Admiral Fallow, Mitchell Museum, We’re Only Afraid of NYC, Kid Canaveral, RM Hubbert, Meursault, Cancel the Astronauts, Campfires in Winter, Randolph’s Leap and I Build Collapsible Mountains – apologies to anyone I have missed out.
Hear Lloyd chatting to The Afternoon Show’s Kyle Wilkinson today between 3 and 6pm, only on Amazing Radio.
Tags: Admiral Fallow, Amazing Radio, amazing tunes, ayetunes, Campfires in Winter, Cancel the Astronauts, frankie ward, glasgow, Glasgow Podcart, I Build Collapsible Mountains, jim gellatly, Jim Gellatly’s Podcast, Kid Canaveral, kyle wilkinson, lloyd meredith, Meursault, Mitchell Museum, peenko, Randolph’s Leap, RM Hubbert, scottish music, seventeen seconds, song by toad, the afternoon show, The Pop Cop, We Sink Ships, We’re Only Afraid of NYC
