Busy week....three gigs and a trip to the Highlands so a chilled Sunday for me.
Monday night went to see newly crowned Mercury Prize winners English Teacher. I bought these tickets ages ago, originally for St Lukes in the East End of Glasgow, holds about 600 but once they won the Mercury the venue was switched to the QMU which holds 900. Thought we'd get in early to catch a bit of support and get a decent place to stand...seemed a bit quiet outside, but it seems everyone else had got there early too as it was rammed, busiest I've ever seen that venue. The band came on, and it took a couple of songs for the sound engineer to get his levels right, but after that it was a superb show. They're a very young band, early 20s I"d think and just at the start of their career but Lily has an amazing voice and captivated the audience. Mrs SM came along not knowing any of their music and thouroughly enjoyed it.
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Friday night and the return of Shed Seven to Glasgow. They've been on the go for 30 years, and have had two No1 albums this year, the second a celebration of their back catalogue with orchestral arrangements. This was at the O2 Academy, not one of my favourite venues in town, but it was filled to the brim, 2500 capacity. Friday night in Glasgow...exactly what you"d expect. A loud, expectant crowd all excited to see this band and a lot of veey drunk people. I've lost count of the times we've seen them, but it's definately in double digits and they have always put on a great show and this was no exception. The crowd singing eveey word of all the songs - stand-out moment when the opening chord of On Standby was played and the crowd sang for about 2 minutes whilst the band just stood on stage and watched with big grins on their faces - spine tingling. The addition of the brass section and strings added to the occassion - what a night.
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Last night, off to the corporate hellhole that is the OVO Hydro - max capacity 14500, although sone sections were cloaed off last night and there were probably 8-10,000 there to see IDLES. I've seen this band several times, fron venues holding only a few hundred, to the middle range with a couple of thousand, so wasn't sure how this would go down. Very different crowd to previous gigs this week, and the Young Team (my son and his pals) came along as well. Was a bit gutted with the support for this one as they had Chalk as support for their Irish dates (seeing them next week) and Lambrini Girls for their English dates but we were stuck with Willie J Healy - I'm not a fan, so we didn't bother getting their early. Thankfully no pro-Palestine protestors outside this week, so nice a quick in to the venue. Looked like it was quite empty until about 2 minutes before they came on stage, when it filled right up. Band were excellent, loads of energy, crowd surfing, a lot of anti-Tory rhetoric, a plea for a ceasefire in the middle east as well as their new chant against the ruling classes.
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Really enjoyed the night, but the venue is not the place for a punk gig....give me three nights at the Barrowlands instead and I'd be much happier!
All in all a good week of gigging - two gigs next week, a double header of SPRINTS and Chalk on Thursday, whilst my sons band have been asked to support The Muldoons at their new album launch party on Saturday night...
