Category Archives: Gigs

The Beat Poets,Brel, 29th June, Act#36

The Beat Poets,Brel, 29th June, Act#36

Lured in by the blurb in the Jazzfest advertisement Their own tunes sometimes come spiced with idiosyncratic covers of Monk and Beefheart. – well you would be wouldn’t you? This was a curious one.

The soundcheck sounded great while we were being served by Champion Condescending Barman (West of Scotland Division) in the bar (tonight we were Shields and I and The Professor, Womanly Arms and Jazz Alan, the three of whom had just been to see BrassJaw) however during the gig itself, for such a sizeable line up, they were nothing to write home about, so I won’t!.
A disappointing ‘hobby band’ who, yes, actually played Blue Monk but no Van Vliet.

laki mera, Captains Rest, 22nd June, Act#34

laki

You know you’re really getting old when you go to see a band, notice their rather obvious parents and realise that you’re old enough to be THEIR parents.

Much has been said already comparing this band with Massive Attack, Portishead and Liz Fraser.

While Laura Docherty is certainly an unusual  singer, Laki Mera aren’t any of the above and should be applauded for that. Confident, different and also deploying more equipment than most, if not all, of the bands that I ever saw at The Apollo, they are I feel two bands operating under the one banner.

They either play pumping electro dance music one minute or pastoral & pretty songs, accompanied only by acoustic guitar and the palest of synth washes, the next. During some of the latter type tunes, I found my mind wandering a few times, in one particularly vivid daydream, Elvis Presley doesn’t visit Prestwick, instead it’s a young Georgio Moroder and while there he impregnates a star struck airport cleaner whose offspring are now here onstage today. During another dwam I speculate how a Greek person would greet the band in the morning (Calimera, Laki Mera!) Ultimately I suppose I was disappointed, as I first saw this crowd eighteen months ago in the 13th Note and on that occasion they performed well and showed a lot of promise. Tonight they performed just as well, however I feel they haven’t progressed as much as Spanner and I would have liked/expected.

Miaoux, Miaoux Captains Rest, 22nd June, Act#33

To be honest I could have seen this one far enough, having woken earlier in the morning from a poor night’s sleep I just wanted to get my head down. However I’d agreed to meet Spanner in Wintersgills before the gig.

The Captain’s Rest was a new gig for me and, due to it’s location, I opted to drive rather than put myself in the hands of the The Glasgow Underground, which terminates fairly early of an evening. A good couple of hours blethering, on topics as varied as Seventies progressive music and how hard it is to get a gas boiler maintained properly these days, ensued before we realised the hour and scuttled across the road to the venue.

Despite having a name that would fetch a high score on anyone’s Scrabble board, Miaoux Miaoux  turned out to be just one bloke; a young guy who’s obviously spent too much time in his bedroom playing with his rather primitive sequencers.

Imagine someone from your local BB Troop trying to play Blue Monday after one hearing and you’re close! Layer upon layer of beats and samples were trotted out, however, ultimately, this aural lasagne was hard to digest and went nowhere. The final ignomy followed a shout of ‘G’nite!’ whereupon he ran offstage, leaving his machines spurtling and droning away, before having to sneak back on, upon hands and knees, slightly red faced in order to unplug it all.
miaox

battles, The Arches, 7th June, Acts 31 & 32

After a quick meet with Spanner, in McSorley’s, we repair to The Arches and encounter the support band from Baltimore ’Thank You’ billed as experimental. As someone who views the Freak Zone as easy listening, I consider myself an aficionado of experimental music and these guys are just unimpressive balloons.

A huge area of the bar is corralled off, with bouncers asking for ID before the younger punters can approach the counter. Spanner and I are not troubled with this interrogation!

Battles have recently been reduced to a trio and with this in mind plus the efforts of the inauspicious support act, I was now apprehensive to say the least. This didn’t last long at all. A far more muscular sound than on record and with a bottom end that Wobble would be proud of. All of that and what appeared to be the world’s tallest cymbal!

A seamless, no stopping, forty five minutes with guest singers appearing on large screens at either side of the stage.