The Dark Island - An t-Eilean Dubh

[Jif]

This was a tune that we played at my recent visit to Gartcosh, one of many we did on the round Robin. I liked the feel of the song and decided to work on a version of it. Donny kindly sent me the BIAB version he had put together. I used that to get a start and structure of the song and then developed my own version of it.

Written originally as a poem before being put to music. First known as 'Dr. Mackay's Farewell to Creagorry, and also Dr. Mcinnes's Farewell to South Uist composed by Iain Maclachlan of Benbecula about 1958. It is essentially about the authors love of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.

The video footage was taken on a trip Janice and I made touring around the Hebrides, we fell in love with the islands and the song reflected that feeling of mystery and outstanding scenery including the most amazing silver sand beaches composed of broken down sea shells over thousands of years.

Anyway, this is for all the guys at Gartcosh who always make anyone attending most welcome. Hope you like it.

[Mcneilwaeasteel]

This is a wonderful arrangement of “Dark Island” with your steel being set into an orchestral background thus proving the versatility of pedal steel and how it can be used as a musical instrument in orchestral settings especially when played with emotional feeling.
Your video footage also captured the mood of this wonderful tune and added to the pleasure of listening to it. I had to use headphones to get the true sound from this track and achieving the final results from this video is no mean feat on your part!
You even managed to include some of your family members in the cast and the ending with your family pet was very fitting!
Thanks for giving me the pleasure of listening to one of my favourite tunes set in a very different and enjoyable way!
Best wishes to you and Janice for any future videos.
Cheers Robert
P. S.
Tell Janice to sup more porridge, as that new loudspeaker is going to be heavy!

[Uncle Roy]

Geoff, I casted your brilliant video onto my TV screen , very enjoyable viewing of great scenery plus your nice steel arrangement of Dark Island which I understand was the late queen mother’s favourite tune.
Well done that man!

[Jif]

This is a wonderful arrangement of “Dark Island” with your steel being set into an orchestral background thus proving the versatility of pedal steel and how it can be used as a musical instrument in orchestral settings especially when played with emotional feeling.
Your video footage also captured the mood of this wonderful tune and added to the pleasure of listening to it. I had to use headphones to get the true sound from this track and achieving the final results from this video is no mean feat on your part!
You even managed to include some of your family members in the cast and the ending with your family pet was very fitting!
Thanks for giving me the pleasure of listening to one of my favourite tunes set in a very different and enjoyable way!
Best wishes to you and Janice for any future videos.
Cheers Robert
P. S.
Tell Janice to sup more porridge, as that new loudspeaker is going to be heavy!

Thanks Robert I enjoyed playing it. The family pet makes a hell of a mess around the house and recently he has been getting a bit horny worrying all the other cattle in the neighbourhood. Looking forward to getting the speaker, despite the weight, hoping it will improve my tone. Think I'm going to sell a few of the speakers I have lying around, you can't move in my house for speakers, (and the cattle ).

Geoff, I casted your brilliant video onto my TV screen , very enjoyable viewing of great scenery plus your nice steel arrangement of Dark Island which I understand was the late queen mother’s favourite tune.
Well done that man!

Thanks Roy. We really enjoyed that trip around the Hebrides. We were lucky to get decent weather with a lot of clear days with sunshine, not often the case in the West Coast of Scotland. We've just returned from a recent trip to Skye and the weather was atrocious, horizontal rain with strong winds. I had hoped to get the drone in action but the weather put paid to that. Ironically it was a heatwave back in Fife while we were in Skye, typical.

There's a path/road in Harris called the Coffin Road, which coincidentally is where Stanley Kubrick filmed the area from a plane and used it in his film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. He processed the footage to create the psychedelic scenes near the end of the film. We decided to walk this road thinking it was about a 5k walk, turned out to be around 20k. Exhausted at the end of it but it was an enjoyable walk. There are a couple of clips from the area in the video from 3:07 to 3:29.

Finding info on where this song came from was hard to find and often confusing. I had read somewhere online that it was originally a poem which was eventually put to music. It turns out that this was incorrect. A fellow Scot has corrected my error in a comment on the video which I'm grateful for. The info below is what he provided,

Dark Island was originally an instrumental, originally entitled Dr Mackay's Farewell To Creagorry. Iain Maclachlan was stated to be the author of the tune in around 1958. It was used as an accordian melody for a BBC theme tune for the 1962 TV series 'Dark Island', a spy thriller, re-titled for the TV series, there were no words to it. Several writers from about 1963 added words, including Glasgow writer David Silver whose famous 'Away to the West', words about Benbecula were then added to the tune to create a song. These were then translated from English into Gaelic.

[Donny Johnston]

Hi Geoff, Just had a rattle round The Dark Island and was really pleased that you saw something in it which I didn't. Seeing lovely parts of the Scottish scenery was a joy. The only disappointment was, it didn't develop into a JETHRO TULL classic. Maybe you could have another think and come up with a more rocky / driven version, it's all there. a nice slow start, do 12 bars like that, then blast off. GEEITSUMWELLIE. AWERABESTDONNY.

[Jif]

Cheers Donny. I'll need to practice playing flute with one foot up on a knee before I could get anywhere near Ian Anderson, in fact nah, I couldnae get anywhere near how good that guy is. I'll get the overdrive pedal in action though for the Heavy Metal version.

Hope you're keeping well Donny.

[JohnDavisStringsHere]

Everything the other guys said.....

[Jif]

Everything the other guys said.....

Thanks John. The next version will be with the JBL