Hari and Aino - The Gramaphone

Its freezing outside, the was snow just starting to lie when I set out. The Gramophone tonight is pretty fullish, people standing around in coats and scarves.

Five-piece band on stage, singing girl sounds a little like Sonia from Echobelly, angular chap weirdly dancing and flailing away on melodica but his mic is barely picking it up.

Sounded very bass heavy when I came in and where I was stood to the left. The vocals buried under the drums and bass. New Order / King of Partick bass and pretty alive drums, noodly Britpop guitar, and I'm more convinced the vocals are Echobelly covers.

Oh, some painful cracks, where's that coming from? Maybe its the synth violin.

Nice groove, could do with cranked up vox.

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Beake - The Torrino

Some curly-haired troubadour guitar busker chap on stage with Steve accompanying on trumpet. Playing covers, I think the first one is Bob Dylan.

Aw man, its freezing outside. The missus had convinced me to wear my cool jacket instead of my warm jacket and now I'm suffering. I wouldn't like to be sleeping rough tonight.

Its a Camden Calling night, all homeless and vulnerable musicy folk, with a wee accompanyment of local musicians. The gig's kind of free, donations accepted, to support paying for courses and studio time for the bands.

The chap on now has a very mellow voice, turns out its laryngitus, so the vocals are very smokey and Rod Stewardish. 'Good, I liked his spirit'.

Interesting venue, its a wee basementy place, red walls, reminds me of Sleazy's or the 13th Note, that kind of vibe. It smells a bit, I think its the toilets, but there's debates about whether its garbage or low-lying stink of eggs.

Nice twelve string guitar sound. As always the trumpet gives a whole different dimension to how it sounded.

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Daydream Parade - The Torrino

Ooh, I've seen this chap before, he's funny.

Aye, acoustic guitar, sat on his own, and singing a song about deaths caused by eggs. Surreal stuff, Edward Lear would be proud.

'Its been ten years since I saw my penis' ah, a song about chidhood obesity. It would be funny if it was true.

'Comedic, but socio-political' appartently, I'm get the comedic side of things, but the funny voices play down the other. There was that scene in the League of Gentleman movie with the theatre company, there are shades of that here.

'Was very comical political original'. One of the songs was very poignant, all finger-picked and nice.

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The Lyrebird Sings - The Torrino

Ooh jazz girl singing, with a lone electric guitar, very bassy.

Soul.

All kind of kooky, with jazz singer dancing and vocal riffing.

Some nifty guitar work going on. I wish I'd paid more attention to the tutorial section of Total Guitar magazine.
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Mada - The Toriano

The compere introduces, the band improvises and after a few moments Mada takes to the stage.

Mada's almost overcome with emotion as he thanks the organisers for this, his first headline shot. The songs sound a little more polished than usual, and it was a weird experience to hear the crowd singing along to everything. Mada was just loving it, holding the microphone out for the crowd.

Too much faffing, trying to get things just right. And then half the audience's view being blocked by the compere or the cameraman. Aw man, and the drunk clapping dancing girl.

Steve on trumpet has a new friend in the sax girl, she seemed kind of nervous, especially when Mada slings her to mic to sing a chorus. But Steve is a reassuring influence. Musically it was best gig so far, with the extra horn and keyboard player, they came up with decent horn parts.

Here you can really see what Camden Calling is about, you can sense the feeling of achievement in the room, the recognition of Mada from his peers.

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The Hillfields - The Buffalo Bar

I wrote this review once before, just while the band were on stage but deleted it by accident. To be honest the review was more about my girlfriend's absence and me glancing at the stairs in case she appeared. The main bit of the review about the band was that the photographer chap's camera flashed a green checked pattern before taking photies, I hadn't seen that before. I know my camera does a red thing before the autoflash, so I keep it switched off.

Also I love the Hillfields. The matching shirts. The singer who looked a little like he'd been Gomez in the 90's. The stark instrumentation. If I were in a band with other people I'd want to be the Hillfield's bass player. Aw man, if The Deep Fried Wolfknuckles hadn't been on a garage trip we could have been the Hillfields. Even the guitar was neat, all open chords, and half-set capos, I'd never seen that before.

The set seemed a tad short.

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The Plimptons - Ocean Colour Resurrection

And then, almost right on cue, you've got the Plimptons's new single launch at The 13th Note in Glasgow. Its one of these ones where they give out the CD for free and there's a screen set up for the video.

Kind of like a Mighty Boosh skit, there's something odd about how the sound is mixed though.