Big sheep, thick beards, sturdy walking boots, misty rain, men painting boats, women called Morag and, of course, folk dancing in clothing made entirely of natural fibres. A bit of Local Hero here, a touch of Magnus Mills there and bingo, that's the West of Scotland sorted.
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Then again, maybe there's more. Colin MacIntyre, AKA Mull Historical
Society, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, was born and bred
on the island. His formative musical experiences were watching his uncle's
covers band rehearsing and gigging around the island.
"I can remember seeing all these guitars and just falling in love with them," he recalls. "I can still see this wallet full of songsheets about a foot high they used. That's really how I got into music, through listening to them playing these mainstream rock classics." Whether it was the environment, or the fact he chose not to pay any attention we may never know. But as he taught himself how to play, then write his own songs, he remained largely impervious to the ebb and flow of music beyond his own patch. He then moved to Glasgow, studied politics, enhanced his footballing reputation and knocked about the employment ladder with no discernable game plan or ambition. A stint at BT doing directory enquiries had a profound effect as he continued to write and record his songs on a four-track recorder at home. "I love the language of BT," he explains. "There's this scary corporate conviction to the company that you can't help admiring, even if you find it goes against everything you believe in. I've kept their mission statement and every time it mentions BT I've changed it to Mull Historical Society." Before Mull was conceived, there was Colin's other Glasgow-based bands, 7-11 and Smells Like Marzipan. Colin remained contentedly stuck somewhere between keen and ambitious, with over 300 unreleased compositions in the bank. Something had to give. |
"I wrote the song Mull Historical Society and thought it was a good band name. I did have doubts whether it was too long, but people seemed to like it. Smells Like Marzipan never really meant anything and I always felt a bit daft phoning people up saying 'Hi, this is Colin from 7-11'. After a while, a name's just a name anyway."
Well, not quite. For a start there actually is a real Mull Historical Society, whose column in the local paper on Mull fed Colin's imagination enough to write the original song. Think of a geographical version of Ziggy, Aladdin Sane or even Slim Shady and you're halfway there.
"With Mull Historical Society I've definitely got an agenda," he explains somewhat cryptically. "As much as my family has a history or tradition on Mull and I grew up there, I don't want to be seen as parochial or twee. That's not part of the plan. Anyway, almost everything I've ever written has been in Glasgow. But people seemed to be intrigued."
So much so, that a 6 album deal for Colin with Rough Trade (later transferring to Blanco Y Negro/WEA) soon followed and finally, after one of the longest gestation periods in musical history, November 13, 2000 marked the release of the first song from the mighty MacIntyre catalogue of bedroom compositions.