Holy moly it's been a while. I blame this mostly on the laptop problems mentioned in the last post. However since then I have rectified said problem which means I can once again keep you all updated with musical happenings that take my fancy. As well as staying up far too late amusing myself with lolcats. Fuck yeah.
Right, well my return article is going to be about a gig I headed along to last Friday night, which was in fact the first gig I've been to in AN AGE. It's a good job I frequent one of my local pubs, The Islay, a fair amount, or else I wouldn't have seen the poster for this cracking event. Titled 'Stripped Back For Malawi', this was a charity gig in raise funds for an Orphanage in Malawi, where two Scottish nurses and many underpaid and overworked nurses based in the country itself are doing sterling work for many disadvanted children. I won't get into that too deeply though because I'll just trip over words and cliches and end up sounding like a terrible Red Nose Day advert. Music is what I can write about though and let me tell you this was some show.
Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap fame (whose exploits I encountered in Nice & Sleazy's a while back) took the stage and proceeded to run through a number of his equisite pieces of Scottish poetry and prose accompanied by nothing more than a drum machine and a mystery keyboard type instrument which I wish I knew more about. "Speaking of children, this song is called 'Cunts'" said the heavily bearded hero as he knocked out one of I Can Hear Your Heart's more oath filled moments. It was a short but sweet set and the crowd reacted warmly to Moffat's frank ditties. Great stuff. Former 'Strap colleague Middleton followed, and he was fantastic when playing the acoustic led gems 'A Brighter Beat', 'We're All Going To Die' and 'Blue Plastic Bags'. A drum machine and some backing beats joined in for the later tracks and these were slightly poorer, but it did sound like perhaps Malcolm was only just working these arrangements out.
Then was the guest appearance of Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub fame, a band who I've never quite got round to listening to, but on the basis of just 3 songs played I have a feeling I'm going to find this band essential soon enough. The first track was a cover of a georgeous song called 'Oh Caroline' by the legendary Robert Wyatt but the 2nd and 3rd were old and brand new Fanclub songs, both sweet and melodic in a perfect way. Finishing up the evening were the legendary Vaselines, who I suppose most people will of heard of indirectly owing to the fact they were Kurt Cobain's favourite band and Nirvana covered a couple of their songs. Most prominently 'Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam' which the duo opened with tonight. Classic pop cuts such as 'Son Of A Gun' and 'Molly's Lips' are just brilliant and like Teenage Fanclub it's about time I really listened to more of this band - not there's much to be going on with in the Vaselines' case!
The rest of the evening proceeded with me getting hilariously drunk and watching an episode of The Inbetweeners, which was rather awesome. Hinterland this week, and I should hopefully have a little piece about the Friday night up later this week - after my show-stopping live performance with the Futuristic Retro Champions of course! Yep...
