Wilco
Phillip Selway
Barrowlands, Glasgow
17th September 2010
Category: Live
waltz?
Colin Meloy
Laura Gibson
Showbox at the Market, Seattle
A salutory lesson in why some acts become headliners and others stay support acts.
tray?
Twilight Sad
MakeModel
Eagleowl
Liquid Room, Edinburgh
Bottom of the bill eagleowl make interesting, dirty three influenced, post rock with guitar, violin and double bass. Probably the best band of the night for me, and the only one I managed to take a photo of.
MakeModel make shouty hyperactive ‘guitars and keyboards’ pop. Not my cup of tea at the best of times having a couple of really dislikeable front men really didn’t help.
Twilight Sad were a different experience. They were trying for ‘mystique’ in terms of stage presence to go with their austere post-punk sound. That of course fell to pieces when they ran into technical difficulties and the lead singer started telling stories about accidently calling Stirling a toilet. Musically they were quite interesting, but sounded like they’d not quite managed to a have an original idea as of yet.
gallery?
Neil Young
Pegi Young
Playhouse, Edinburgh
An epic near three hour, 24 track, show (not including the intermissions) by one of my all-time musical heroes in the perfect setting of Edinburgh’s biggest theatre.
As for his wife, it was pleasant country rock with lashings of pedal steel.
dungeon?
Maria McKee
Tom Baxter
Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh
Tom Baxter played an acoustic show supported by a guy with a violin. It was innocuous singer songwriter stuff. Guy’s got a nice voice though.
Maria McKee, however, has an exceptional voice. An enormous talent who has somehow ended up on the musical margins with minimal sales and a determinedly cult audience despite outstanding critical acclaim. Perhaps it’s just that the album that should have made her a superstar, Life Is Sweet, came out at the wrong time or
pocket potato?
Tony Benn
Saint Jude’s Infirmary
Nick Doody
Richard Herring
Get Up Stand Up, The Three Tuns, Edinburgh
It’s not often you find yourself at the very epicentre of extreme cognitive dissonance but I managed it last night.
As mentioned before I’m friends with the guys in Saint Jude’s Infirmary and I went along to this gig because of the early start and finish suiting my commuting schedule. I knew it was a night of comedy, music and politics, but I really wasn’t prepared for how weird it was to watch your friends be supported by Tony Benn?
First off they showed a trite and overly simplistic film pushing the anti-WMD agenda. I happen to agree with that agenda but I do wish that they didn’t talk down to people so much.
Then Tony Benn wanders up to the stage and for the next 45 minutes or so talks about politics. The man is still pretty sharp for 81 years old, but his talk was filled with crowd pleasing rhetoric and very little of actual substance. He took some questions but they were all soft soap stuff. Mind you it wasn’t really the kind of crowd where you could ask him difficult questions about his role in government, etc.
Next, Saint Jude’s Infirmary, who I continue to have no perspective on. It’s hard to be objective when you know people quite that well.
The first comedian was Nick Doody, who was really quite funny with his drink and relationships stuff, I quite enjoyed it.
Last act was ex TV comedian Richard Herring, who did a blue act with an absurd interlude about potatoes, apples, French and English – the pedantic little bugger. I laughed but it wasn’t that great.
So yeah, from left-wing politics to knob jokes via the music of friends in the space of a couple of hours. Really weird experience.