After yesterday's tourism, I decided that today I'd do something similarly adventurous but on the firmer turf of Glasgow. I'd thought of a couple of things I wanted to do whilst up here, alongside the usual round of music, relaxing and watching the city go by in which I usually indulge. One of these was to link together my wanderings with something I'd be reading about for years - the closed Botanic Gardens station. Setting out lazily late, I took a bus along Great Western Road and disembarked after Byres Road. A quick skip across the carriageway and into a side entrance to the gardens, and I was suddenly plunged into a quiet, green world. The sky was still pretty clear, but with swift-moving grey clouds which occasionally threatened a touch of rain.
Stumbling around in the rose garden, I was ashamed to have to use the GPS on my 'phone to locate the station remains. Strangely enough, I must have passed by them many times before - either on the road outside or on my very occasional trips into the park over the years. In a dense thicket of trees, not far from the perimeter fence along Great Western Road are two rectangles of railings, with the station platforms still visible down below. A modest plaque confirms the station's fate. It had been mere feet away all along, but I always assumed it would take climbing gear or trespass to see it like this.
After a break for refreshment I set off on foot towards Kelvinbridge. The slog uphill around Hillhead took it's toll on my foot and my breath, and I paused a the top only to find myself surrounded by students. The aim here was where the Kelvin winds under the main road, and the remains of the railway can be seen clearly. I soon found my way to Otago Lane, with the strangely rural appearance oft the river, despite it's urban setting, still visible. It was a little wet here in these dilapidated but charming streets and I lingered a little longer than I meant to. The line of the railway along the river was clear, and as it disappeared under the road, I dashed expectantly to the other side. A high wall made it difficult to see, but sure enough there was the mouth of the tunnel which would, eventually lead to Botanic Gardens.
Heading back into the city, I contemplated that despite being a tourist, I was uncovering little bits of the city every time I visited. The secrets and things I'd only read about in books and articles were here to see. While I'm often ridiculed for my love affair with Glasgow, I don't think I'd want it any other way.
I don't usually write much about my wanderings in Scotland. Mostly because these are my holidays - properly relaxing breaks away from home, and away from the usual high-speed dashing around the rail network even. When I'm up here, it's a case of being somewhere unreachable, immersed in place and music - two of my favourite things. In a sense, as once hinted at by a former friend, what happens in Scotland stays in Scotland. Not that anything particularly lascivious or damning does happen - just that it's nice, just for a while, not to be analysing it. But today was a bit different, today I undertook a trip I'd been thinking about for some time and became, for a little while at least, a tourist.
The plan was simple enough - with an extra day or so up here by virtue of my travel arrangements, I could afford to spend most of a day through in Edinburgh. Setting off directly after the morning peak I had time for a leisurely start to the day, and also to lounge around a bit with coffee when I arrived. I'd thought about heading to Avalanche Records first off, but after wandering down to the Grassmarket to find them closed and due to open a bit later, I decided to do something rather unusual - something in fact, I don't often do until I'm fairly comfortable with a city. I took a ride on the tour bus! I don't do this on first arriving because I feel a need to grasp the geography before I fully appreciate it. Also, one of the key things for me is knowing how to get back to some of the spots - something you can never quite assess without a bit of prior knowledge. It also provided a means of getting a painfully dodgy foot back up some hills later!
After doing a full circuit of Holyrood, the New Town and sites in between, I found myself back at Grassmarket and skirting the drama which was being filmed and which was causing all sorts of traffic trouble, I walked around the corner to Greyfriars Kirkyard. About now, the sun came out and I found myself sweating up the slope into the surprisingly bright, open churchyard. The tombs were of a typically Scottish style, with only some of the more distant corners being inhabited by a small number of pretty mangy looking drunks. Skirting the edge I found the locked entrance to the Dissenter's Prison, and nearby the Black Mausoleum. Having read the spooky tales and claims made for these, it was hard to square them with this quiet bright spot - an oasis of calm in the bustle of Edinburgh.
Walking back, I called in at Avalanche and listened-in to a strange conversation about the 'youth of today' which could have come from the Daily Mail, before hopping back on the bus to Waverley. The clear blue skies over Arthur's Seat and the view of the city as we climbed Calton Hill were rather wonderful. I thought about heading for Leith, or maybe out to Stocksbridge - but that can wait for another visit. The important thing was that I made my peace with Edinburgh in some ways today.
Whilst my heart remains in Glasgow, I am rather looking forward to coming back soon.
Wounded Knee, Ian Nagoski, The Family Elan - 13th Note, Glasgow
Posted in SHOFT on Wednesday 15th February 2012 at 11:02pm
I arrived in Glasgow yesterday to find a city in chaos - a rail strike, the impending financial implosion at Rangers FC, and perhaps worst of all a city in the grip of Valentines Day. Also, the sudden realisation of the impact that devolving licensing of free events to Local Authorities may have on small arts and music events has stirred up something of a grassroots rebellion in the past day or so. In a sense tonight's show at The 13th Note is just the sort of thing which may well not happen if authorities decide to charge for such licenses. So, having skulked in my room last evening to avoid the deluge of nervously overdressed couples stalking the streets, I was eager to get out and about tonight, and this offered the ideal opportunity.
Having encountered Wounded Knee several times on record, not least on the really excellent "House Music" cassette at the tail end of last year, I was keen to see Drew Wright perform live. He took to the stage alone, with just an electric guitar. This was deployed as much as a percussion instrument as anything as he strummed out a hypnotic rhythm and started to sing. On record, there is rarely any instrumentation in the traditional sense to detract from Wright's vocal - and this was true tonight also, as his voice climbed and dipped around the rhythm. The lyrics of this extended first song seemed attuned to this too, with their reference to "the strumming of the strings of defeat and salvation". The small audience showed a great deal of appreciation to Drew's apparent surprise and delight as he continued with his setting of Burns' "My Love is Like A Red Red Rose". In the hands of Wounded Knee this became a strangely moody two string blues, full of menace and portent. Perhaps a highlight for me, unsurprisingly given my occasional theorising about music and place, described a series of walks around the countryside which rings Edinburgh as Wright observes "I am alone/never lonely". Referencing "The Highlands in miniature in your doorstep" the song revolves around a list of bus routes which make these remote country edgelands accessible. Given the themes of land, place and identity which thread through "House Music" it was good to hear this expressed on a local scale, with a genuine connection to the places clearly expressed. Wright closed with "The Deadly Wars", an old song unearthed during his residence at the School of Scottish Studies and again based on Burns. This short set was entrancing, magical and genuinely intimate in the tiny setting. Most of all, Wright's deep, resonant voice echoing around the room will stay with me for some time.
Sticking with the theme of place and displacement was Ian Nagoski. This was something of a different proposition, and one which could all have gone badly wrong with a testy and hard-to-impress Glasgow audience. The basic premise is Nagoski talking us through his development as a record collector. It will be a familiar story for any zealot or specialist - you start out feeling it's impossible to carve out a niche, and end up a specialist in a tiny area of expertise which is yours - and often pretty much yours alone. For Nagoski that specialism lay in the foreign-language 78s produced in dizzying number by the major recording companies in the US during the early part of the 20th century. Far from being a nod to a diversifying USA it was, even then, a commercial proposition - giving the Ottoman Diaspora something of home. As Nagoski admits, it was just as often schmaltz, rather bloody-handed patriotism or cheap titillation, but his breadth of knowledge of the lives of these long-dead and obscure artists brought the scratchy, aging recordings to life. It's easy to dwell on technical aspects when describing the unfamiliar in music, but Nagoski takes the social, political and geographical context and builds his stories compellingly around it. I sympathize entirely with this approach, and the concept of weaving new discoveries and their back-stories into your own narrative. I sympathised too with his thoughts on the nature of obsession and the need to create. I never dreamed I'd be sitting in the basement of The 13th Note listening to the thoughts of a quietly-spoken American enthusiast, punctuated by scratchy, pained wails transported from the distant past. If you told me I'd be here, I'd have speculated it wouldn't work. But, strangely - and compellingly - it did.
Finally, Nagoski departed by introducing The Family Elan. A three-piece focused on the multi-instrumental talents of Chris Hladowski which seemed to channel those disembodied, disenfranchised voices from their gramophone horn and deliver them afresh through thoroughly modern loudspeakers. On paper the band should be a bizarre proposition - heavily amplified bouzouki, electric bass guitar and in Mark Hearne a versatile and dynamic percussionist who is, for me, perhaps the hero here. The Family Elan are tight, taking the shifts in pace and geography in their stride as they switch between an Azerbaijani warning that you "cannot cross the mountain" and equally "must not stand on the pomegranates" alongside a trance-like, almost psychedelic take on Bollywood tunes. It's interesting to think about all those times Eastern music has influenced western - not least in the meandering 1960s love affair with mysticism. But now, oddly the reverse is true as Hladowski hefts his bouzouki, soloing like a proper rockstar and applying distortion and phaser to weirdly queasy effect. Their final track tonight, apparently from the north coast of the Black Sea ploughs a traditional enough furrow until it breaks down into a slow, trashy distorted grunge epic. It's either abject genius or superbly silly - but either way it's quite brilliantly played and hugely appreciated here.
Tonight was far from a normal night in many ways - but, it shows that no matter how diverse or eclectic the subject matter, the nature of musical or literary obsession is pretty much always the same. Whether it's expressed through a connection with a distant life, or as Ian Nagoski put it via a non-denominational 'prayer' to make things different to how they currently are, it's comforting to know I'm not alone in my approach. And given the rapt and respectful audience tonight, I think I may well have been in good company.
Delifinger, Withered Hand, King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - The Fleece, Bristol
Posted in SHOFT on Sunday 5th February 2012 at 11:02pm
Many, many years ago I wrote a sort-of-review of a Lambchop gig at The Fleece which I suppose was the beginning of the kind of inconsequential-wittering-leading-to-a-review style I seem to have adopted here. Having been involved with their very earliest UK releases - something I was fairly proud of, but never really thought about until then - I found myself getting riled by the audience as we waited to go into the venue. Later I got equally upset by someone who's girlfriend didn't like trombones. At least, looking back, I can say I've been a consistently - as I put it back then - "irksome little shit". Arriving at The Fleece tonight after watching a fairly glorious sunset in Bristol while the rest of the UK shivered in a cold snap, I find myself next to someone being just a touch overbearingly smug - perhaps, I pondered unrealistically as I regarded the gent concerned - it was even the same guy from 2002? As I waited I was treated to a hilariously inaccurate potted history of King Creosote's career. Various albums were mentioned, and concerns about being "too folk" quickly dismissed as there are comfortingly "very few duff songs". Apparently "they" insist on promoting Fife which is ironic and amusing because it's the "arse end of Scotland". Quite aside that Scotland goes on quite a bit beyond Fife, and that actually the East Neuk is one of the most beautiful places I've ever spent time I'm prepared to forgive them. They're here because of the Mercury nomination, and y'know "four stars in the Guardian and all that". It's wrong of me to judge, and I realise I'm drifting into the kind of elitism I claim to despise - but, if you're going to mess with the stuff which matters to me, which sustains me and keeps me sane in troubled times, please, please do get the geography right at least. That said, the fact that there are people here who don't share the almost fanatical devotion to the Fence cause which the label regularly inspires is testament to the power which the utterly remarkable "Diamond Mine" had over an unwary public last year. It was going to be an interesting night.
First up was Delifinger moonlighting in his solo guise tonight away from OLO Worm duties. Matthew Lacey takes the stage, a slight and rather quietly unassuming figure assisted by two silent assistants who manipulate all manner of technology to produce the various beeps, squeaks and shuddering basslines which shore up Lacey's delicate twist on casio-folk. On recordings Delifinger manages to create some truly unsettling tales, just odd enough to produce collar-loosening discomfort, but never outright disturbing. It's a neat trick which is in evidence on the first couple of tracks tonight, where he drifts from unnervingly off-kilter ballads to a sort of neo-Formby strum. Somewhere mid-set, it hits a bit of a strange slump where several of the songs are paced about the same and feel a bit pedestrian and listless sitting together. It's a shame, because I know there are Delifinger songs out there which this receptive, unusually welcoming Bristol crowd would respond warmly to. However, it all fits back together in time for the last track - a sinister, discordant beast which lumbers and thumps along while it builds in tension. It was never going to be easy facing a sell-out crowd, many of whom are here solely for the main act, but despite his visible unease Delifinger managed to get a fantastic reaction. Perhaps a more intimate setting and more time to explore a wider range of material would have made all the difference here?
From my usual apologetically out-of-the-way-at-the back vantage point, I surveyed the crowd between acts, only to see an equally apologetic Dan Willson struggling through the crowd, with his guitar in hand. Eventually he found his way onto the stage, assumed his position at the microphone and managed to create an ear-splitting explosion from it! This is Withered Hand, where what might seem ramshackle, a little uncoordinated and sometimes plain disorganised suddenly drifts into sharp focus to produce some of the most lyrically incisive, truly original guitar music you'll find right now. The set settled mainly on favourites from 2009's "Good News" album, including "Cornflake", "Providence" and "No Cigarettes". Hearteningly, there was some recognition for these tunes in the bit of the audience around me, and some genuinely smitten people as Dan's self-effacing stage presence and ability to suddenly launch into these wonderful songs kept them amazingly silent. That really almost never happens at The Fleece. Some new songs were in evidence too, including "It's A Wonderful Lie" where the middle-class angst must have struck more than a few chords in the audience tonight. For me, any human being who can somehow contrive a couplet which pairs "kids with degrees" with "fake bonhomie" is a candidate for sainthood. Throwing in two personal favourites in "For The Maudlin" and "New Dawn" before a rapturous closing take on "Religious Songs" and I'm beginning to think that this is something special which might just catapult Willson into the spotlight somewhat. Later, I hear someone whistling "Religious Songs" in the gents. That has to mean something significant - but I'm not sure quite what yet?
Finally King Creosote and Jon Hopkins take the stage to the gentle piano introduction of "First Watch". Hopkins alternates between harmonium and piano, with a little electrickery thrown in to create the lush, sometimes barely present shimmer of sounds which threads through "Diamond Mine". The plan is to play through the album with a minimum of fuss or interference, and despite a microphone hitch which would throw a less experienced performer off their stride, they do just that. The audience responds with genuine warmth and enthusiasm for this material - and it's good to hear the record played live once more, which gives it a fresh lease of life for me yet again. The strength of compositions like "Bats In The Attic" and "Running On Fumes" is reinforced by Kenny's remarkable voice which sounds even better than when I last heard it. The biggest reaction is reserved for "Bubble" which someone whispers beside me "just gets me every time" before adding "I hope I don't cry tonight". For the already established fan, the question is what delights will be slipped into the remaining part of the set by an ever mischievous King Creosote - and tonight we get a set which stays fairly faithful to his previous work with Jon Hopkins starting with a trio of "Bombshell" era tracks including "Cockleshell", "Spystick" and the utterly sublime "And The Racket They Made" which practically ends up with me in tears. I pretend it's an allergy as Kenny throws in a surprise cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" before another teary goodbye to the strains of "My Favourite Girl".
Once again, it was a privilege to hear King Creosote perform and an absolute joy to see an audience who in many cases had come with a single-minded wish to hear a specific set of songs go away having had just the briefest insight into the much wider, more intriguing and delightful world of Kenny Anderson. But, having finally seen him play a set of reasonable length, without being ill or experiencing technical troubles, I'd say that Withered Hand might just have stolen the show by a whisker tonight. In any case, it was a memorable evening - and I don't think I'll see The Fleece that busy again for quite a while.
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
