This was a joyous and wonderful event. ISS have played Glasgow before but this was the first time that support act Rina Mushonga had performed here, and she played an absolute blinder.
The place was pretty busy for a post-summer Wednesday night as Rina (of Dutch/Zimbabwean origin, now based in London) and her band (drums/guitar/keys, backing vocals) gave us a run-through of current and older stuff. BM is quite bad with titles but overall the sound was Prince vs Janelle Monaie, and then some. The melodies were springing from everywhere and that voice, at one point giving BM a definite musical orgasm… Rina prowls the stage, giving her band big respect but mainly blasting out the songs, a sort of mutant Afrobeat with God knows what else mixed in, but it is indeed a potent formula. Rare to have folk dancing to the support act on a Wednesday but it was that sort of night. Highly recommended.
And Ibibio, well they gave us everything and provoked massive amounts of wild dancing from the crowd. Collectively from Nigeria/London, there were like maybe nine of them, including a three piece brass section and some of the best bass sounds BM has heard for a while (respect for the Classic Grand’s sound system for coping with this, the venue may be a former porn cinema but the floors are now getting sticky for very different reasons – namely split beer and sweat).
Vocalist Eno Williams is the main focus of attention, dressed tonight extravagantly and gorgeously in a Nigerian/70s trouser suit combo, a striking figure if ever there was one, and as well as the marvellous vocals she cheerled and worked the crowd into a sweaty frenzy – a true star. She also reacted to the crowd’s enthusiasm – “Phew, Glasgow!”
And the band were so tight, as astonishing live groove machine which at times invoked Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown’s sidemen and everything in between, including the ‘Stop Making Sense’ incarnation of Talking Heads for that matter.
The 10 song main set and three song encore were comprised of tracks from most recent album and the previous releases – highlights were probably ‘Talking Fish’, highlife cover ‘Nyak Mien’ and BM’s fave from several years ago ‘Let’s Dance’, a stone cold groove classic.
Respect to the promoters for punting this gig to a good sized venue, this was one of the best party nights of the year so far.