Glasgow & Arctic Monkeys
We went up to Glasgow last weekend to see Arctic Monkeys and to catch up with some old friends.

Friday night our friend Ally Kerr (more of whom in a minute) took us to a very cool club called The National Pop League, which is held about once a month in a humid, sweaty, working mans club - think The Pheonix Club and you won't be far off. It's great having friends in a city like Glasgow, I doubt we would have found such a cool club without local knowledge. The music policy is very cool (David Bowie, The Smiths, Belle & Sebastian and Arcade Fire all get an outing whilst we're on the dance floor) and the club appears to be the hang out of Glasgow's coolest indie kids. So if you're in Glasgow on the last Friday in the month then try to find your way to The Woodside Club in the West End of the city and get there early - it was only one of our friends telling the door staff that we'd come all the way from London for the club that got us in.

I booked tickets for Arctic Monkeys at King Tuts a couple of months ago on the strength of one song I'd managed to download. Let's say we wern't disapointed by either the band or King Tuts and the Glasgow crowd.

Artic Monkeys have'nt had a proper single out yet (just a limited relase avaible on a tour earlier this year). Luckily the "illegal" file sharing networks have a pile of songs available for download and there is a roaring trade in bootlegs on ebay. It would appear that most of the people at Saturday's gig have heard these tracks as they know every word of every song. Well almost every song. The band play a couple of new songs early in the gig, which they apologise for and promise to play the classics later on in the gig. Only a band this confident with a loyal following could refer to songs most people have yet to hear as classics. The fan worship reaches fever pitch when the band start up Scummy Man and the crowd sing the entire first verse back to them. Unbelievable.

Musically you can draw a direct line from The Libertines to Razorlight and on to Artic Monkeys. Lead singer, Alex Turner, has a truely great voice and there is a knowing wittyness in the lyrics which we've come to expect from Barat, Doherty and Borrel. The band are on tour for the rest of August but you'll have trouble getting tickets.

And so on to our friend Ally Kerr. He's a singer songwritter from Glasgow and in the year or so since we last saw him he's started to make progress. He has an album out, which has had some good reviews, and has just got back from a mini tour of Japan. We picked up a copy of his CD in Mono (a great record shop in Glasgow) and are reasonably impressed (I really can't be objective when a friend is involved). Check out the reviews on Amazon.com, including one from the late, great John Peel.
- posted by Nigella @ 8:58 PM