Bagpipes, Banjos, and Rock & Roll: When Rate-A-Record Goes Off The Rails

It was bound to happen eventually

Jane Espie, The Phantom Piper (Image: Dunfermline Press)

It’s been a weird couple of days, to put it mildly. After nine hours of watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday and all the emotions that came with that, I just couldn’t bring myself to write a single word. I got up this morning assuming that things would surely be back to normal and was greeted with this headline on CNN: “Don’t cook chicken in NyQuil: FDA warns about dangerous social media challenges.” That’s on CNN, not The Onion. Lord help us all; Elizabeth’s only been gone ten days and we’ve already fallen into the abyss.

So there I was, frozen in place. I was desperate to finish the final installment of a twelve-part series with a piece about Saint Peter, and all I could think about was kids boiling chicken in liquid cold medicine, tacos (it’s Tuesday, after all), and that heartbreaking bagpiper at the end of the Queen’s committal service.

Bagpipes.

That’s what I need. But not your normal, Paul McCartney “Mull of Kintyre” bagpipes. Something that rocks. Is there such a thing? Apparently, there is, and thanks to YouTube it wasn’t hard to find.

But it turns out bagpipes weren’t quite enough. I needed banjos too, and as you know by now, if two songs…