Considering that the band have kept their fans waiting for over 30 years they’re in remarkably good spirits. Indeed, it’s been down to the Sounds in the Suburbs clubnight – best known for their more intimate shows in the sports clubs of Glasgow’s West End – decamping temporarily to the city centre venue, to finally get County Durham’s most famous punk/metal act to finally play Scotland’s City of Rock.
Indeed, there’s some anxiety in the crowd – glances at watches, nervous shuffling – since it’s known that like so many gigs stop at 10pm to give time for the DJs to kick off.
Not that support the Cathode Ray particularly overstay their welcome – though their set would have benefited from a punchier set of songs. This is just their second show following a set in Edinburgh the previous night – they band have worked with Paul Haig as something of a studio project, but live, singles ‘Mind’ and ‘What’s It All About’ still work without the Josef K man. However, it’s ‘Eureka Moment’ and recent single ‘Slipping Away’ with its infectious guitar hook that win the plaudits tonight.
Oddly, given their history, Penetration have never played Glasgow, and indeed their first Scottish show was at Wickerman last year.
So it’s not clear how many of the crowd tonight were original punks – a few grey hairs and bald heads, though no apparent pot bellies – if they’re regulars at Sound In The Suburbs gigs they must have all abandoned pogoing for tennis.
On stage, the members seem to be wearing fairly well, as gangling bassist Robert Blamire and a raven-haired guitarist play the opening bars to ‘Stone Heroes’. Then, a shock-headed Pauline Murray bounds onstage – and delivers a rendition of the tune suitable for that old live/ Memorex question as her soaring vocals show little signs of the ravages of time. The band, inevitably go through a greatest hits set – well, would have if they had hits rather than a succession of near misses. ‘Danger Signs’, with its thudding almost-metal riff, was closest to the charts in the late 70s, while other singles ‘Life’s a Gamble’ are dispensed with fairly early and invoke mass singalongs as the old-time fans (myself included) dredge their memory banks for Murray’s lyrics, which veer between obtuse (the aforementioned ‘Stone Heroes’) and still relevant today (‘Don’t Dictate’).
Yet another favourite in ‘Free Money’ is wheeled out and Murray declares that they’ll continue to play the intro until Blamire gets through it error free (he does). Band and crowd clearly enjoying themselves, they’re free to try out new material – a single, ‘The Feeling’ which isn’t bad on first hearing, though ‘b-side’ ‘Guilty’ much better represents that old Penetration sound with a big belting chorus.
There are a few surprise in the setlist – ‘Shout Above The Noise’ and ‘Silent Community’ – gratefully received, while ‘Lovers of Outrage’ and ‘Nostalgia’, aptly, both show why the band are revered after 30 years and offer a slight sense of surprise that their legacy is really just one top 20 album.
With an encore of ‘Firing Squad’ – the last of their top 75-scraping ‘hits’ – they’re done, perhaps beaten by the curfew, but with a crowd simply happy to have finally caught them live.
Worth the wait? Definitely.