Saturday night and it was basement time again. This time the venue was Maggie Mays and appearing amongst the peroxide, heels and GHD straighteners were Tasty Jailbait, The Dirty Violets, Good Bad News, The Beagle and Richard Kerr. Let the words flow…
First on was Richard Kerr. The sight of a man with a beard and an acoustic guitar normally fills me with dread as there would be a high probability of a set of strumalong songs about how he can’t get a girl. Or maybe a boy. Or even a Shetland pony. However, Mr Kerr proved to be the exception with a mature, well judged performance consisted intelligent, if sometimes sentimental songs (he even dedicated one of his songs to his girlfriend) that deserved a better response from the audience than he got.
Also doing the beard and acoustic guitar thing was the artist currently known as The Beagle. Whilst I’m not entirely sure how he got his moniker, I would hazard a guess that it could be because of his dogged determination to do songs that sound like they would work better with a band behind him. Either that or he likes to smoke cigarettes for a living. Whatever the real reason, he gave a good natured, crowd pleasing set.
Next on were Good Bad News. New to my ears, this three piece rock band made a very positive impression. Alternating vocal duties between all three of them showed that there were no weak links and melody driven songs were the order of the day with “Last Train and “Wish List” standing out as having real commercial appeal. The real surprise, however, was just how tight and tidy a band Good Bad News were with the kind of skill levels that are increasingly rare in Glasgow.
Also impressive were The Dirty Violets. It had been a while since I had last encountered them and it was obvious that they had improved. Not that they were bad before but this time it was equally clear that they had moved away from their previous catchy indie rock incarnation to a more inventive but still mainstream rock sound with singer Craig McInnes sounding just like a good front man should. It’s good to see a band develop and improve and The Dirty Violets have certainly done that.
Last on were Tasty Jailbait. The audience had well and truly thinned out by this point and, with only their dedicated fans left to support them, this perfectly respectable indie rock didn’t stand much of a chance. The more over enthusiastic of those fans soon, quite rightly, attracted the attention of the bouncers and that pretty much killed it for the band. Singer Tam McLeod looked just plain embarrassed by all this and I’ve little doubt he and the rest of the band would deliver a much better showing in different circumstances.
Another night over. Time for another kebab.