Kevin Buckle: It’s a red-letter week for fans of Scottish bands

Now that back catalogue sales way outstrip new releases it only takes a few albums that have been unavailable for a while to reappear to help bring people into the shop and boost online sales.

When it comes to a title coming back in stock it doesn’t get any bigger than finally having Frightened Rabbit’s The Midnight Organ Fight back in stock on vinyl. As I’ve mentioned before our top three selling Scottish albums of all time are the first three Belle and Sebastian albums but if any album is ever to break this stranglehold it will be this.

Reissued earlier in the year but with limited stock it was gone almost immediately. I panicked when only three copies of my order arrived but thankfully the promised 47 further copies arrived the next day.

There Will Be Fireworks may not be as well known as Frightened Rabbit but Avalanche has sold hundreds of each of their two albums and both albums would make my personal top 10.

Completely out of the blue I heard from the band that both albums that had long been out of stock on CD had been repressed with plans for vinyl to follow.

Even though only on the much maligned CD I ordered 25 of each. In general, bands should not get too carried away with the hype behind vinyl and when possible have CDs available.

To round off a great week yesterday the Paul Buchanan album Mid Air which was first released in 2012 had an expanded version of the album released om double vinyl using tracks from the original deluxe CD.

Blue Nile fans had waited almost a decade for the album when it was first released and it did not disappoint them. One of Avalanche’s top ten selling albums of 2012 it would feature much higher in our all time chart had it not been unavailable for many years.

Added to all this was a double seven inch release from Perth’s This Poison! Not a reissue as such as the tracks from a 1987 John Peel session have never been released before but much anticipated and indeed my first sale went to a customer from Nice over from France to catch several gigs during his visit.

The single is released by Precious Recordings of London who specialise in radio sessions and whose first four releases were shared equally by fellow Scottish bands The Jasmine Minks and BMX Bandits.

All of this followed hot on the heels of the re-release of the Vaselines album Dum-Dum on milky clear vinyl the week before. Much loved and indeed covered by Nirvana it is a reminder of the influence many Scottish bands have had on the wider music scene. Indeed Kurt would often be seen wearing a BMX bandits T-shirt.

There is an irony in that while the internet has now made it far easier to reach a worldwide audience it is Scottish bands from a time before email and YouTube that have managed to be so influential.

National Album Day is in October and Avalanche will be celebrating some of the classic debut albums by Scottish bands. More news on that soon.