Archive for September, 2010
Rocktoberfest 2010
Sunday, September 26th, 2010
In 2008, I made up a music festival called ROCKTOBERFEST to provide a catch-all name for Glasgow’s customarily chocker gig calendar in October. And I mean ‘made up’ literally – there was no branding, no sponsorship and no marketing other than a solitary blog post that singled out one Pop Cop-approved live concert on each of the month’s 31 days.
Last year I repeated the exercise, thus confirming Rocktoberfest as an annual festival all music lovers could get on board with and not have to fret about tents and wristbands and timetable clashes. And with a healthy number of quality free gigs to choose from, it could cost as much or as little as you want.
So far Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Bob Winter, has resisted my calls to make it a regular fixture in the city’s official calendar of events, but imagine my shock* when I discovered that some Weegie chancers had arranged an eight-band bill on October 31 under the name of Roktoberfest. Just as well they dropped the ‘c’ or I’d find another use for their Oxfam collection box.
That charity concert is one of my top tips for the month ahead in Glasgow, and some nights are so good I couldn’t resist suggesting more than one gig so If you’ve mastered the art of being in two places at once you’re in luck.
* Congratulations if you correctly guessed ‘two hands clasped over mouth’.
Friday, October 1, Mumford & Sons, Academy (sold out)
Saturday, October 2, Music Like A Vitamin featuring Rod Jones, Emma Pollock, Alasdair Roberts, James Yorkston, ABC1 (tickets) / Be A Familiar, Endor, Gdansk, Classic Grand (tickets)
Sunday, October 3, Super Adventure Club, Bronto Skylift, Carnivores, Nice ‘n’ Sleazy
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Monday, October 4, Of Montreal, QMU (tickets)
Tuesday, October 5, The Seventeenth Century, Bloc (free)
Wednesday, October 6, Yvonne Lyon, Brel (tickets)
Thursday, October 7, A Genuine Freakshow, Bloc (free)
Friday, October 8, Roddy Hart, CCA (tickets) / Panda Su, Rachel Sermanni, Bloc (free)
Saturday, October 9, Admiral Fallow, Washington Irving, Bloc (free)
Sunday, October 10, Delays, King Tut’s (tickets)
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Monday, October 11, Yuck, A Grave With No Name, Barn Owl, Captain’s Rest (tickets)
Tuesday, October 12, Brandon Flowers, Academy (sold out) / Bear Bones, Captain’s Rest (tickets)
Wednesday, October 13, Detour live night (secret line-up), Bloc (free)
Thursday, October 14, Kate Nash, ABC1 (tickets) / Kassidy, Astral Planes, QMU (tickets)
Friday, October 15, Cory Branan, 13th Note / Jonathan Sebastian Knight, Tchai-Ovna (free)
Saturday, October 16, Oxjam Glasgow Takeover featuring Blue Sky Archives, Marco Polo, St Deluxe, Isa & the Filthy Tongues, The Lonely Boy, Dead Sea Souls, Any Color Black, John Rush, The Black Hand Gang, Alan Mckim, Sonny Marvello, Must Be Something, St Deluxe, Louise McVey & The Cracks In The Concrete, The Winter Tradition, Vigo Thieves, Cities And Skylines, various venues (tickets)
Sunday, October 17, The Unwinding Hours, The Twilight Sad, RM Hubbert, Oran Mor (tickets) / Aaron Wright And The Aprils, Stereo
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Monday, October 18, Robyn, ABC1 (tickets)
Tuesday, October 19, Steve Mason, Stereo (tickets)
Wednesday, October 20, Hot Hot Heat, Stereo (tickets) cancelled / Maple Leaves, Captain’s Rest (tickets)
Thursday, October 21, Amy Macdonald, Academy (tickets)
Friday, October 22, Feeder, ABC1 (sold out)
Saturday, October 23, Plan B, Academy (sold out)
Sunday, October 24, Yeasayer, ABC1 (tickets)
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Monday, October 25, The Wombats, King Tut’s (tickets)
Tuesday, October 26, Clinic, Stereo (tickets)
Wednesday, October 27, Bedouin Soundclash, King Tut’s (tickets)
Thursday, October 28, The Black Keys, The Walkman, Academy (tickets)
Friday, October 29, Ellie Goulding, Academy (tickets)
Saturday, October 30, Detour Halloween Party, Bloc (free)
Sunday, October 31, Roktoberfest featuring Trapped In Kansas, Penguins Kill Polar Bears, The Darien Venture, ThisFamiliarSmile, Make Sparks, Scores, Bellow Below, So Many Animal Calls, Classic Grand (tickets)
A Genuine Freakshow – Holding Hearts
Cory Branan – Miss Ferguson
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“I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who won Must Be The Music”
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
It’s 10.35am and Emma Gillespie is already exhausted. She had in fact been sound asleep on the open grass of a central London park until I woke her up. The 27-year-old from Dumfries is still trying to come to terms with the repercussions of winning Sky1′s inaugural Must Be The Music programme three days earlier under her stage name EMMA’S IMAGINATION.
The show was conceived as a credible response to the auto-tuned karaoke of Simon Cowell’s X Factor, with Sky eschewing cover versions in favour of undiscovered musicians who possess the creativity to write their own songs and the instruments to play them.
Since her first televised audition appearance on August 15 to her final triumph at Wembley Arena last Sunday, it’s no exaggeration to state that Emma’s life has changed both irrevocably and insanely quickly.
The woman who spent this summer busking for spare change on Glasgow city-centre pavements now has tax-free prize winnings of £100,000 in her bank account and every major label in the land competing for the right to profit from her music.
Her first single, This Day – the graceful acoustic ballad which she played in the MBTM semi-final – became a top-10 hit a fortnight ago, while its more passionate follow-up Focus is set to enter at No.2 according to midweek sales. Immediate chart success may have come Emma’s way but it’s clear her newly acquired fame is going to take a bit of getting used to.
“Definitely,” she says. “I got papped for the first time today which was weird. The photographers were shouting, ‘Emma! Look over here!’. I guess it goes hand-in-hand with it [fame] but I’d rather just get on with making music than worry too much about tabloids. I’m not interested in being in Heat magazine. If you start looking at what people are writing about you all the time it’s maybe not the best thing.”
Although being a full-time musician is now an assured career path for Emma, she is by no means the first starry-eyed young Scot to win a national talent show – David Sneddon, Leon Jackson, Michelle McManus and Tommy Reilly have all been chewed up and spat back out by the same music industry that promised them fame and fortune. So is Emma worried the public might one day just view her as little more than reality TV froth?
“No, because I’ve been writing for years so I’ve got loads of songs to back it up,” she says. “It was great to win the show but I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who won Must Be The Music. I’m a serious artist and I intend to be so for the rest of my life.”
In fact, looking at just how many Scots have triumphed in such contests (and you can add Susan Boyle to the earlier list), it could be argued, quite depressingly, that entering a talent show has become the most effective way for wannabe Scottish pop stars to get noticed by the London-based music industry these days.
“It doesn’t matter where you are from, it’s difficult for all musicians,” maintains Emma. “It depends on what you do. There are so many talented people who are trying really hard and shows like Must Be The Music gives true artists a chance to be in the position to get record deals. But even if I never got a record deal I’d still be writing and performing.”
Although the busking backstory has made for a media-friendly rags-to-riches fairytale, Emma’s Imagination is no stranger to the Glasgow gig circuit. In the past six months alone, she has played shows at Hinterland (April), Pivo Pivo (May and July), the West End Festival (June), King Tut’s (June) and Creative Scotland’s TV pilot (July). She was also on the bill for last year’s Wickerman Festival.
Now, though, she has been thrust into an alien world of paparazzi, major labels, photoshoots and interviews, and the demands on her time are taking their toll on her sleep pattern.
“I’ve been up since 5am so I’m actually falling asleep as I’m talking to you,” she says. “Sorry if I don’t sound very enthusiastic. I am really excited but I’m just absolutely fucked.”
Emma’s Imagination – Daisy Train
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Live review: Two Door Cinema Club @ Oran Mor, Glasgow
Sunday, September 19th, 2010
With the city’s population currently swelled with students arriving for the new semester, this sell-out gig is rammed full of hyper teenagers who give electro-pop Londoners We Have Band the kind of enthusiastic, hands-in-the-air reaction rarely afforded to a support band.
But there’s no questioning where the fans’ loyalties lie when TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB come on stage to a wild reception, with the frenzied atmosphere rarely easing off in the next 50 minutes.
The Northern Irish trio find themselves signed to the fashionably French label Kitsuné due to the subtle electronic bent to their indie-party sound, but the secret of their appeal lies in the way they make catchy guitar-pop look both unfeasibly simple and utterly convincing. Although different in its execution, Franz Ferdinand’s debut was probably the last album that could boast such a similar quality.
Four songs in, a bout of moshing half-a-dozen rows from the front is unceremoniously terminated by a couple of giant bouncers, who put a young guy in a headlock and drag him off backwards before he knows what’s hit him. They would later repeat the ruthless eviction process near the end of the set with another two punters. Welcome to Glasgow.
However, Two Door Cinema Club never break stride in a set that is impressively free of lulls, which is no real surprise given they have an album as strong as Tourist History to call on plus stupendous b-sides such as Costume Party that most groups would regard as single material.
Frontman Alex Trimble, just 20, barely takes two sips from his glass of red wine throughout and despite the band’s youthful energy, their enthusiasm seems to be tempered by a very slight fatigue – understandable, really, when you realise they’ve toured incessantly all year and their gig calendar doesn’t pause until Christmas.
Nevertheless, the way they tackle crowd favourites like Something Good Can Work and the blazing finale of I Can Talk proves the future for Two Door Cinema Club is very bright indeed.
Two Door Cinema Club – Costume Party
Two Door Cinema Club – Hands Off My Cash, Monty
March 10, ABC, Glasgow (tickets)
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