Craig McAllister
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mrmcallister.bsky.social
Craig McAllister
@mrmcallister.bsky.social
33 followers 50 following 73 posts
Teacher by day.
Writer by night.
www.plainorpan.com
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mrmcallister.bsky.social
Down On The West Side, Away From The Sunlight

plainorpan.com/2025/11/17/d...
Down On The West Side, Away From Sunlight
As autumn snaps itself sharply into winter and the early curtains of dusk draw their way across the gun metal grey skies on the commute home, the music being listened to in the car becomes equally …
plainorpan.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:09 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
The Mike Joyce book. plainorpan.com/2025/11/09/p...
@newmodernbooks.bsky.social
Phone Scrolls, Drum Rolls
I’m a sucker for a music biography (heck, I’ve written at least one) and so found myself at the Mike Joyce book event in Glasgow last week. The most bizarre thing happened before it had…
plainorpan.com
November 9, 2025 at 11:13 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Lou Read

plainorpan.com/2025/11/01/r...
Rickety Lou
It begins with a riff as rickety as the Coney Island Cyclone, a clattering, knuckle-dusted, steel-wound nickel on wood bone-shaking rattle. Lou Reed sounds like he’s just about made it to the…
plainorpan.com
November 1, 2025 at 10:57 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Electronic ‘Forbidden City’

plainorpan.com/2025/10/26/t...
There’s Not A Hope
It’s an accepted truth that Electronic was very much a bit-part project, an occasional coming-together of alternative music royalty in the gaps of downtime between their respective day jobs; …
plainorpan.com
October 26, 2025 at 11:53 AM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Gie’s a brek!

plainorpan.com/2025/10/17/d...
Different-Sized Cogs In The Same Machine
Almost a couple of years ago I met with a publisher with a view to getting the best of Plain Or Pan onto the printed page, which is, as you well know, the only print that really matters. You don&#8…
plainorpan.com
October 17, 2025 at 1:44 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Autumnal

plainorpan.com/2025/10/13/i...
Into The Fall
What is it with bands who need to look across the Atlantic for belonging and acceptance? That clattering Velvety/Stoogey feedback ‘n twang racket that the Jesus And Mary Chain committed to ta…
plainorpan.com
October 13, 2025 at 4:16 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
I didn’t make it playin’ by the rules.

#marvingaye #blaxploitation #soundtrack #tamla #motown

plainorpan.com/2025/10/05/t...
Trouble Funk
Isaac Hayes created plenty of great music. The Black Moses album…Ike’s Rap…his reinterpretations of By The Time I Get To Phoenix and Never Can Say Goodbye to name just some, but h…
plainorpan.com
October 5, 2025 at 9:11 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Neville Staple, briefly speaking.

#thespecials #2Tone

plainorpan.com/2025/09/29/d...
Don’t Argue, Buster!
Gangsters by The Specials… (or Special A.K.A., to give them their full original name). It’s just about the most perfect distillation of its times. Punkish and idiosyncratic with a gener…
plainorpan.com
September 29, 2025 at 8:42 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Es ist unglaublich!

plainorpan.com/2025/09/24/s...
Swell Maps
Plain Or Pan is, and has always been, powered by Wordpress. It’s a technically easy to use blogging platform – once logged into my account, I can write something on any internet-capable…
plainorpan.com
September 24, 2025 at 3:48 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
The ‘heid

plainorpan.com/2025/09/21/i...
Is Not Was
Now not then. Are not were. Is not was. It seems that Radiohead is back, to be spoken of in the present tense once again. Since their last shows a million years ago in 2017, there have been solo al…
plainorpan.com
September 21, 2025 at 8:42 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
By the wall. #bowie

plainorpan.com/2025/09/15/e...
Expressionism
Around May/June 1977, David Bowie and Iggy Pop found themselves free of rural France and in Berlin, doing what any self-respecting culture vultures and gatekeepers of taste would do on the back of …
plainorpan.com
September 15, 2025 at 6:34 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
I don’t think you think like I do. #stoneroses

plainorpan.com/2025/09/08/i...
I Could Park A Juggernaut In Your Mouth
When the Stone Roses went from midnight telly to ubiquity in that couple of short months over the summer of 1989, they could do no wrong. By mid-July, they’d gone from underground to overgrou…
plainorpan.com
September 8, 2025 at 6:18 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
@fatherjohnmisty.bsky.social in Glasgow

plainorpan.com/2025/09/01/b...
Bless Me Father
If you could draw a Venn Diagram of idiosyncratic, well-dressed male vocalists, somewhere in the overlap between the menace of Nick Cave, the melody of Rufus Wainwright and the mastery of Scott Wal…
plainorpan.com
September 1, 2025 at 9:03 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
I’m an Edinburgh man myself.
#thefall #markesmith

plainorpan.com/2025/08/26/c...
Capital Gains
A couple of weeks ago we had a weekend in Edinburgh. We tend to go every year around Festival time, usually as a family, always just for a day and always when the madness of the Festival is in full…
plainorpan.com
August 26, 2025 at 10:37 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Stephen Morris on drums.

plainorpan.com/2025/08/19/w...
Waiting For The Tape To Turn
1978. At the time when Saturday Night Fever and Grease stubbornly refuse to budge from the top two positions on the album chart, just as the whole of Scotland is hypnotised by Archie Gemmell turnin…
plainorpan.com
August 19, 2025 at 5:11 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Adjective to noun

plainorpan.com/2025/08/13/p...
Phrasing
Hey! You! Put aside the dog-eared copy of Absolute Beginners that you’re currently re-reading for the 5th (6th?) time. Lift the needle from the freely-spinning Cafe Bleu on the old Dansette. …
plainorpan.com
August 13, 2025 at 4:14 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
The Classical

plainorpan.com/2025/08/06/t...
There Is No Culture Is My Brag*
There’s no gig goer on the planet whose live music experience isn’t enhanced by the headline act using a piece of classical music to herald their entrance to the stage. Back at a Cult s…
plainorpan.com
August 6, 2025 at 7:24 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong

plainorpan.com/2025/08/01/a...
A Date With Elvis
One of the side effects, if you like, of the current Oasis revival has been the reshining of the spotlight on the music of 30 or so years ago. Even at the time, it was clear that there were only tw…
plainorpan.com
August 1, 2025 at 11:07 AM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Pete Sounds
#peteshelley #buzzcocks

plainorpan.com/2025/07/27/h...
Homo Superior In My Interior
It’s 1981. Buzzcocks come together to begin working on their fourth album, Martin Rushent in the producer’s chair. The band is broke, both financially and creatively. Pete Shelley, stuc…
plainorpan.com
July 27, 2025 at 10:18 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Protest music
#marvingaye #motown

plainorpan.com/2025/07/19/t...
This Ain’t Livin’
I was punishing myself on the cross-trainer of death the other morning, slick rivers of sweat pooling in my hair and under my double chin, a dark, damp South America-shaped land mass of perspiratio…
plainorpan.com
July 19, 2025 at 11:40 AM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
(Un)Easy Read @nivenj1.bsky.social #thefathers

plainorpan.com/2025/07/14/p...
Page-Turners
I’m re-reading Haruki Murakimi’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle just now. Along with Stephen King’s The Stand, it’s become something of a summer holiday tradition; long novels t…
plainorpan.com
July 14, 2025 at 3:00 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Looking forward to Irvine…
nivenj1.bsky.social JOHN NIVEN @nivenj1.bsky.social · Jul 9
The Fathers book tour news…

IRVINE 12th July: SOLD OUT
ABERGAVENNY 16th: SOLD OUT
LONDON 17th: LAST TICKETS

GLASGOW, MONDAY 14th: BUY MORE TICKETS YOU GLASWEGIAN FUCKS
July 9, 2025 at 8:45 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
PW @paulwellernews.bsky.social

plainorpan.com/2025/07/09/h...
Hopelessly Devoted
I was chatting to big Greg a couple of months ago about the lasting legacy of Paul Weller, the pair of us soft shoe shuffling to Shout To The Top as it blasted at ear-pleasing volume in Glasgow&#82…
plainorpan.com
July 9, 2025 at 7:59 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
Jam Jah

plainorpan.com/2025/07/05/j...
Jam Session
I’ve a songwriter friend who once found themselves at a songwriters’ retreat somewhere in Ireland. Above the room where the musicians shared their songs and swapped ideas, someone who w…
plainorpan.com
July 5, 2025 at 7:45 PM
mrmcallister.bsky.social
This week’s slow-burner has been a piece I wrote about Lana Del Rey last year. These big gigs - and the Googling that goes along with them - are great at shining light on old writing. It’s here if y’missed it first time around:

plainorpan.com/2024/05/07/l...

@lanadelreyadd.bsky.social
‘Life On Mars’ Ain’t Just A Song
Beatles or Stones? Bowie or Bolan? Taylor or Lana? Yeah – Taylor or Lana, man? Street-smart Swift clearly takes all the press these days (and all of the world’s money, it would seem) bu…
plainorpan.com
June 29, 2025 at 8:20 PM