There are signs everywhere if you look for them. You see a river of blood coming from the toilet then you know your next pint is best poured elsewhere. You hear the phrase “…the last two songs were by Michael Bublé” emanating from the room at the back and you know it is time to seek your musical salvation elsewhere with, tonight for one night only, the elsewhere being the 13th Note where, perhaps fortunately, Crooked Little Sons, The Heathen Club and Jamie Flett and The Flaming Jets were awaiting the opportunity to display their amplified wares on the basement stage.
Jamie Flett and the Flaming Jets are known for their off kilter folk influences but tonight red meat had clearly been consumed and they instead deployed manly guitar riffs and depraved untidiness as the means of supporting the ethereal, at times psychedelic, Flett voice. The direction may be different but the message remains the same.
More mainstream in their musical direction were The Heathen Club and, being four strong and local, they wasted no time in adding enough rock star attitude to their straight to the point muscular songs that they made it easy to forget it was Monday night. Given enough beer and volume, they might even make you forget the rest of the week too.
Then the showmen came to town. Disguising themselves as mere four chord punk rockers on the lam from the southern reaches known as Exeter, Crooked Little Sons treated the Monday night audience like they were a full house at Glastonbury and, as a further mark of their quality, were such a tightly focussed musical frenzy that even a magician would have had trouble slipping a sheet of paper between them. The compact and bijou stage was simply not big enough however and, as the power chords punctured your ears, the one called Josh took it upon himself to take the music to wherever he could get his microphone conquering the floor and a table in the process. Should anyone ask you why live music is essential for your spiritual wellbeing then you can answer them with three words. Crooked Little Sons.
Outside the rains falls. Or rather, outside the rain falls once again for this is, after all, Glasgow.