This was such a great event, a pure blast of so many talented musicians, some playing for the first time. Glasgow Life did a good thing here and let polymath meister Ali Braidwood and poly-musician Warren McIntyre do an open stage event, in the summertime, in the bright sunshine (as it turned out!) and invite loads of great musicians to turn up and just play, to punters, toddlers, dugs and anyone else who turned up.
It was completely free, and no security problems – the polar opposite to another music event taking place on the southside on the same weekend, with the biggest risk to security here always being a toddler invasion, which threatened once or twice…
So many acts performed, and BM is only really going to give a roll-call here and hope she hopes to see them doing bigger things soonish…
BM thinks there were already a couple had gone on before she arrived around 1.15pm, but the first act BM saw was Emmy V, only 15, who did one original ‘Open Your Eyes’ plus a cover, and sounded great.
Poetry from Finola Scott was great, with a tribute to Green’s Playhouse, and yes it was then to be The Apollo!
Junkyard Dog did the business in between the acts and also gave us a pretty brilliant spoken word take on his years in Memphis, bleak and dark – BM loved it.
The Jimmy Hahas (hope BM got that right) played two fine bluegrass songs, ‘Can I See You Saturday’ was great….
Nicola Evans and Donal Boyle (again, hope BM has got that right) did a couple a great songs, ‘Daniel’ and ‘Travelling Song’ – she has a great voice and the fiddle did a great job as well.
(draws breath because this was a marathon, in the heat of the day,,)
Stephen Solo was up next and gave us three amazing tracks, including one new one, album release tomorrow, and again the toddlers threatened to upstage, but the nursery group staff were in full control!
Euan Fergus was up next, playing tracks from his Wild Places band solo, with his sidekick Daisy looking on and assessing her dad’s work – it was that kind of day…
BM thinks that Xan Taylor was up next, but may have got the spelling wrong, anyway she played with guitar and double bass, channeling bad vibes (‘Vicky’, her negative alter-ego), and good vibes ‘Mantra’ and a general good feeling – BM likes her stuff and hopes to catch her again soon.
BM’s notes are a bit scrunched here but think next on was Flew The Arrow who gave solo acoustic guitar over one long song, maybe not quite BM’s cuppa but went down well.
Samina Choudray gave us a very interesting take on dissociation in an excerpt from her short story collection – Indian culture family life, in detail, and her delivery was great as well – worth checking out.
Linnie Carson came on to do a couple of tracks, one an original and one cover, with some nice guitar playing.
BM may have missed one or two but at some point Warren McIntyre came on with a slightly different line-up of Starry Skies (with Xan Taylor on backing vocals, Noel on drums and other unnamed on guitar and double-bass) and did three songs. First we got ‘Be Kind’, then ‘There for You’ plus a new song ‘Do It With Love’, which had some neat lines about a “screen zombie generation” but with all Warren’s songs the message was optimistic overall. He singled out “yellow T-shirt girl” as the best dancer and sashayed across the stage in the sun – good times!
Julie Ann gave us some nice guitar playing and one original song (‘No, No’ BM thinks) plus an ambitious but wonderful version of the Cocteau Twins’ ‘Pearly Dewdrops Drops’ – a great voice.
The very youthful Pippin McKee gave us the Billy Bragg classic ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ and Mathew Gibb did a nice version of The Killers’ ‘Somebody Told Me’. Jimmy Riff paid tribute to a departed fellow musician Ian Forker and did another nice acoustic number. And Warren’s neighbour, introduced only as Rowan, did a couple of proto-punk numbers including the anthem ‘Theresa May Anarchy’, which drew a large cheer with its refrain “Get it up yae!”
Closing act Fraser McCallum did two original numbers ‘Augury’ and ‘ADD Copy B’ which were quirky, eccentric and well delivered.
After this it was a few more party Tunes from Junkyard Dog and the whole thing finished around 5pm, over 4 hours of great music and all for free. Apologies if BM missed anyone or misspelt any names or got tune titles wrong, many of these acts don’t have much of a profile or releases so stuff can’t be checked….
All BM can do is to pay tribute to organiser Warren, host Ali Braidwood and the sound guys and other staff who made this happen, and hope it becomes an annual event. Fun in the sun indeed!