Rockall

Quotation of the day:  Anon ~ Scottish by birth, British by law, Highlander by the grace of God

From Wikipedia: Rockall (Irish: Rocal, Scottish Gaelic: Rocabarraigh) is an extremely small, uninhabited, remote rocky islet in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Here's a picture of it:

Looks pretty bleak, eh?

The reason it comes up, though, a bit convoluted, ackshully, bear with me, is this:

That's a CD cover, an album by Calum & Rory MacDonald, and it's one of the best of the year so far, (IMFFHO).

There's a Scottish folk-rock group called Runrig.  One of my all-time favourite groups, as a matter of fact.  Loads of stuff up on YouTube (if you're interested). Calum & Rory are members, but as there hasn't been a new Runrig album since 2007's "Everything You See" -- at least, i don't think there has --  this is a pretty good stopgap.  In fact, it sounds like Runrig without its lead singer.

Its original lead singer was the brilliant Donnie Munro (now a member of the SNP, i do believe).  But Runrig is one of the very few bands who survived and throve after the departure of the singer.  (AC/DC, Marillion, and Pink Floyd did, too  -- there are a few others although i can't think of them off the top of my head.)  Runrig's current singer is the brilliant Bruce Guthro -- from Nova Scotia of all places -- and the band literally wouldn't have survived without Bruce.

You can buy "The Band From Rockall" here: http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/index.html

Highly recommended!