Katerwaul's Glasgow adventure

As usual with going to glasgow, it rained. The whole car journey down it rained. I amused my self by watching the IT crowd on my ipod because the view from my window obscured by condensation and Nick and Sam had the likes of Deacon Blue blasting out of the speakers. I couldn't hear a word they said and I'm not sure they could hear me. But we got there safely. We puled up at the Belgrave Hotel on great western road about 3pm. Its a great place to stay. Me and Nick checked into our rooms and were pleasently surprised with the huge beds, flat screen TV, computer with internet and free wifi network and a Swedish sauna style ensuite. I waited for Rae to arrive and marvel at it beauty. She did so an hour later and Marvel she did.

At 7pm Rae and I met Daveheart and Graham for dinner in BLOC, our venue for the evening. We were told not to show up till 8pm because they served food till then. So we took advantage of their two pizzas for eight pound offer which was accompanied by the biggest side order of curly fries known to man or even God for that matter, seriously. While I'm on that topic why is it that curly fries taste so much better than normal fries or chips? Does everyone else agree? What is it in the curling process in the potato that brings out that crunch and flavour?

By 8:30 we were hauling our equipment into the bar and setting up. There is no stage in BLOC, just an area where they've cleared a table away by jamming into a window alcove. The first band kicked off at nine. "State Of Affairs" kicked off with what I can only describe as singable, lovable feel good rock. If Evan Dando sang for Foo Fighters and collaborated closely with Dave Grohl on songwriting duties. The crowd loved it. This made me and the others very nervous. Especially since the last out of town gig we did in Dundee didn't go down well and resulted in the only time so far we've been berated online. But when state of affairs came off it was time to sepperate the men from the boys.
Setting up seemed to have an air of history repeating itself. In Dundee I had a problem with the Amp I was borrowing in that the clean channel malfunctioned resulting in me doing the gig in nothing but distortion. Which fueled the fire for berating us on the local forums. I plugged my guitar in and what do you know... the all too familiar sound of warm dirty distortion laughing in my ear asking me "what you gonna do now?". Fortunately for me it got sorted out. And we played pretty well. The only real sketchy moment was when during the build up at the end of "December Doesn't Hurt" cramp hijacked Nick's arm a few bars early causing him to break into a random splurge of drum hits and symbol splashes in an obscure time signature. We went with it and played random notes resulting in what I like to call "free form jazz". And thats exactly what everyone else thought. Then we stopped for a bars rest before entering the heavy ending riff. I thought to myself "wow, maybe we should do that all the time." Nick, the perfectionist that he is, beat himself up most the night seeing it as a catastrophic error on his part. But to be honest if he didn't he wouldn't be the great drummer that he is. Constantly pushing for perfection not knowing just how great he actually is. I was proud of us that night and it was topped off by going home with only thirty copies of our CD out of eighty. It was great to see Adam Florence from :( an old school mate of Graham and Sam's. It was particularly nice to see Beth, Andy and Graham who had moved to Glasgow over two years ago. And for Kirsty, Graham's long serving girlfriend to finally have us play in her own back garden.

After a great gig with thanks to Sam and Jamie of 45 a-side records it was off to ABC for some dancing then some scoobie snax on the way home. So to end I want to inform you all on the scoobie snack. Its a Burger bun with a Burger, Lorne sausage, two potato scones and a fried egg wedged between it with some tomato ketchup as the moist maker. I didn't participate in this as I had already had some fish but Graham, Sam, Dave and Nick all had one. Every one finished theirs of but Sam who set his a-light and sacrificed it to the God of the Clyde.

Happy Birthday Nick & Tim