Cast your minds back to 1996, pop pickers, the year of Football’s Coming Home, Chris Evans’ gurning face on TFI Fridays and a number 3 hit for a former hospital porter from Yorkshire who had already released a batch of lo-fi recordings. So…
A mere 14 years later, Mr Bird (AKA Stephen Jones) takes the stage in a half-full (despite some fairly extensive press previews, including the “Johnny Depp is a big fan and couldn’t appear due to ‘security’ reasons”) Tuts looking about the same as he did back in the day (as Evans would say).
Betty remembers seeing this man headlining at both Old Fruitmarket and Cottiers (ask your Mum) in the 90s, when we were all a bit younger.
With a full band (mainly his previous stage band from the glory year, or maybe years) Mr Bird launches into some new material, the voice still intact, somewhere between a diva and a karoke singer, but is mainly pitch perfect. Betty notices that where some of his generation have let themselves go a bit, Mr Bird is svelte and in good shape.
He is promoting a new album and has I think tried to play in Scotland in the last few years but was cancelled for reasons I’m unclear on. The new songs are pretty muscular with good riffs (two guitars, one big bass, thumping drums and keyboard/third guitar with a rocking the Depp look – possibly a joke?)
A few songs in, Mr Bird, after muted applause, addresses the audience. “You lot look like you’re here to witness an execution”. Possibly true, but these are the dedicated fans, many now white of hair and wrinkly of face. As the set goes on Mr Bird begins to crack down a few of the audiences’ grimaces and begins to come on a bit Frank Skinner with some joshing, the Glasgow jokes going down in the “you asked for it” vein. A career in comedy surely beckons, and he’s already done a few books (refer to ITM? literary correspondent as Betty hasn’t done the book review training package yet.)
Betty cannot help thinking, here is a guy who sings in a Yorkshire accent (unusual in the 90s apart from one Mr Cocker, not Joe), has some good lyrical quips, and knows his way around a song – Jarvis is a national treasure so what exactly happened to Mr Bird?
Some of the titles – ‘Drug Time’, ‘Bastard’, ‘Eyes In The Back Of Your Head’ – hint at some dark times but always a sense of the kitchen sink, some family and children concerns and someone who may not have found the 1996 success all that helpful.
Mid-set, the man initiates a nice audience Q&A over the Jamie Bulger murder – “string them up, I say” – it’s par for the ironic course but the bait is not take by this audience, respect due, and he’s forced to soldier on with his perceived execution.
Musically I enjoyed it – some complex tunes delivered in a small space, with the pop sensibility he has always had – so can he not write for flipping Janet Jackson or fulping Shania Twain, to have some success and to stop being so miserable?
The Song (‘You’re G…’) is apparently on the setlist but Mr B goads the audience (I think most of them have “got over” it years ago so it’s a non-issue, no shout for it tonight) and after a couple of the old school classics, (the last one being ‘Good Night’) he announces after one encore (and after going on late, quite close to curfew): “sorry I’m a bit dour tonight but my dad passed away this morning and I’m off to the funeral now” – sharp intake of breath at the very end…
However that line “you’re like a TV, learning to swim” provides one of the most memorable, surreal lines of the 90s – I hope that nice Mr Evans took notice.