A footnote before we start: on Tuesday I caught former guest Peter Sandberg at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, and it was a beautiful, intimate set. I've already written about Peter recently, so today the story is Glasgow.
There's a particular kind of madness that only live music can talk you into. Mine involved a dash from London to Glasgow, a sprint through the doors of the Queen Margaret Union, and a pint can of Red Stripe bought with five minutes to spare before the band walked on. Why Red Stripe? Student memories. Some habits outlive the haircut.
The band was The Wedding Present, on their Seamonsters 35th anniversary tour. The company was meant to be my brothers. As it turned out, I spent the first hour on my own, because they were upstairs the whole time and I had to go and find them.
My younger brother has been on this ride for 40 years. He followed the band through 1992, when they put out a brand-new 7-inch single every month of the year and made it look easy. I'm the latecomer, with about ten years of fandom to his forty. Once I'd tracked them down, standing together in that hall, the gap between us vanished. Walking out into the cold Glasgow night, he called it one of the best gigs he has ever seen them play. From a man with forty years of evidence, that counts.
The QMU
The QMU is one of those venues that has seen everything and been impressed by very little. It's noisy, intimate and steeped in student union nostalgia, and it holds a proper place in Scottish music history.
Glasgow crowds don't do polite. You won't find head-nodding or folded arms at the back. From the moment David Gedge led the band on, the place went up. They played Seamonsters in full, every heavy, dark layer of that wall of sound, then topped it with a handful of classics and newer songs.
Rachael in her element
Regular listeners will remember Rachael Wood, our Musician of the Month, talking about her debut solo album, It's Not The End Of The World. I asked her which Wedding Present record she most loved playing live. She picked Seamonsters without blinking, because she loves playing it start to finish for the heavy guitar drive and the intensity.
On Thursday I saw exactly why. Rachael is a phenomenal guitarist. On the show she called herself a "side woman" and talked about what happens when everybody in the room is suddenly looking at you. In Glasgow, everybody was, and the room was hers, one razor-sharp riff after another.
The verdict at the merch table
Afterwards, with the amps off and the crowd drifting out, I found her at the merch table, where she kindly signed a copy of her album on vinyl for me. With a big grin, she told me it was "the best gig of the tour so far."
As I told her, she probably says that in every town. But I was there, in the noise and the sweat of the QMU, and I'm happy to take her word for it.
Five minutes to spare, as it turned out, was plenty.
If you missed Rachael's episode, you can catch it here.