This was a Charity fundraiser. We arrived to be met by a ridiculously long queue to get to the bar (since when did we start queing for bars?) which degenerated into a mob about thirty seconds before I should have been served.
Looking as if some escapees from Fraggle Rock had mated with humans, The Bluebells came on to a raucous reception and played an unplugged set of hits. Stand out song was The Patriot Game.
I had hoped for Syracuse University or the 12″ Sugar Bridge, but no. After they’d finished and I was exiting the lavvy, Ken McCluskey was posing for some photos with fans and asked me to do the honours. I obliged and snapped happily away.The folk involved then assumed that I must also be a similar, but less recognisable, minor celebrity and insisted that I pose with them also. I affected a Borders accent and suggested I’d left my armour and sword at home, to tantalize them.
Justin Currie performed a set that was pedestrian at best. He looked uncomfortable being there and only performed (if memory serves) six songs, all of them Del Amitri. He had brought along his gurning pal too.
During the set I cast an eye around the place and noticed a tiny figure wearing an Arafat Scarf, lurking in the shadows, and leaning against the sound desk. He was slightly smaller than Little Britain’s Dennis Waterman.
It wasn’t until all the bands took to the stage to sing the finale, an elongated Will The Circle Be Unbroken and invited ’Laydeez ‘n’ gennelmen, a big haun for the man who made tonight possible’ that I realised that it was Hayman the Halfling.
He had to stand on a large box to reach the microphone!!!
As we shuffled towards the exit, I bumped into Fraser Spiers and briefly reminisced about nights in the very early seventies, watching Frankie Miller and The Groundhogs in The Picasso (a deathtrap of a place, just up from where Forbidden Planet in Buchanan St. is now). All was well, as I recalled him rubbing snake oil onto fellow members of the gigs queue’s foreheads, but then my ’minor celebrity Tourettes’ kicked in, I said something a bit off and he sped away into the night realising he was in the presence of a maddie!
Another night at Oran Mor but, once again, not a great one.
James Grant was the big surprise, with Fraser Spiers riding shotgun by deploying a bundle of moothies that he wore on a holster. These were processed/treated in real time, through an effects unit, Very impressive, Frippertronics for the harp!!!
Grant was very droll, telling amusing tales regarding his Da’s wallies and a trip to the Golden Arches while chiding those ‘fans’ who only shout for Love & Money material.
Lighthouse Beacon Straight Ahead 