Crush'd like Sardines in a Metal Box
So the gig was truly awesome. My first time in Glasgow on a rainy night, Bat For Lashes were really good, all kinds of interesting instrumentation and a drummer with golden cape things under his arms like he was a wrestler or something. After them, well, bless my soul if it wasn't Radiohead.
They've been a band who have said things to me about my life for years, and the last time I saw them was in 1997, the Glastonbury performance which people tend to mention as the best gig ever if Q asks them for their latest 1000 Pointless Lists Issue. Since then they've clearly come a long way. Thom Yorke seems to realise just how much the audience in front of them love him and his band, and is having fun up there. Old songs like Paranoid Android and Just seemed to have something, well, more, to them. A certain bounce, or musical fluidity in the way the band play them. That might just be one of those small things but it was really interesting that the improved musicianship seemed to be there. Back then they were awesome. Now they're better.
Other highlights included a foot-long hotdog. No tricks, just 12 inches of meat, oh yeah.
One strange downside to the evening was the unfortunate consequence of the public transport agenda they were pushing, where ScotRail put on no extra rail provision despite the fact that approximately thirty-five thousand people were going to have to leave Glasgow at about the same time, with the result that we ended up packed into cramped carriages with about an extra fifty people per carriage and barely space to breathe for the entirety of the journey, which took a whole hour longer than it should have due to delays. I ended up wedged in a position that I can only really describe as groin-to-ass with some poor guy who I'd never met, as some hulking giant stood behind me slowly straightening his arms in a vain attempt to deny the fact that the whole carriage was a seething, compressed mass of humanity, wedged together by incompetent official decision-making and a complete lack of foresight by the people in charge of our public transport.
Still, we went out drinking afterwards with a few of the people we met on the train, having reasoned that if you can get along in those difficult circumstances, clearly, you're going to be friends. Saturday was spent rather hungover, and I'm off out with one of them this coming weekend too. All kinds of win.
They've been a band who have said things to me about my life for years, and the last time I saw them was in 1997, the Glastonbury performance which people tend to mention as the best gig ever if Q asks them for their latest 1000 Pointless Lists Issue. Since then they've clearly come a long way. Thom Yorke seems to realise just how much the audience in front of them love him and his band, and is having fun up there. Old songs like Paranoid Android and Just seemed to have something, well, more, to them. A certain bounce, or musical fluidity in the way the band play them. That might just be one of those small things but it was really interesting that the improved musicianship seemed to be there. Back then they were awesome. Now they're better.
Other highlights included a foot-long hotdog. No tricks, just 12 inches of meat, oh yeah.
One strange downside to the evening was the unfortunate consequence of the public transport agenda they were pushing, where ScotRail put on no extra rail provision despite the fact that approximately thirty-five thousand people were going to have to leave Glasgow at about the same time, with the result that we ended up packed into cramped carriages with about an extra fifty people per carriage and barely space to breathe for the entirety of the journey, which took a whole hour longer than it should have due to delays. I ended up wedged in a position that I can only really describe as groin-to-ass with some poor guy who I'd never met, as some hulking giant stood behind me slowly straightening his arms in a vain attempt to deny the fact that the whole carriage was a seething, compressed mass of humanity, wedged together by incompetent official decision-making and a complete lack of foresight by the people in charge of our public transport.
Still, we went out drinking afterwards with a few of the people we met on the train, having reasoned that if you can get along in those difficult circumstances, clearly, you're going to be friends. Saturday was spent rather hungover, and I'm off out with one of them this coming weekend too. All kinds of win.