Sunday night and was called the Pogo-A-Gogo. Basically, it was the hotel’s upstairs ballroom, with a bar serving fizzy lager. But there were also occasional live gigs. By this time, Fife had a punk band of its own – The Skids. The guitarist, Stuart Adamson, had been to the same school as me. There was no stage, band and audience becoming one, writhing on the floor or bouncing to the music. I’d sneak my punk clothes (a boiler-suit spattered with bleach) out of the house and change at a friend’s, then his dad would drive us to Kirkcaldy. Great nights, and my first really great gig.2 BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST It had taken some persuading, but my parents finally agreed that I could accompany a friend to Edinburgh at the age of 16 to see Barclay James Harvest. I’d then have to stay the night at his house, as there was no way to get home. A huge adventure. I’d never heard any BJH albums (and, indeed, have never owned any since). It was also my first visit to the Usher Hall, a posh cavern of a place. Were Barclay James Harvest any good? Frankly, no, but that didn’t matter. They had dry ice and a light-show and amps turned up to the requisite 11. Tom Robinson was in the support band and I came home with a programme, poster and badge. They say you never forget the first time …
3 HAWKWIND … SORT OF Though BJH was my first gig, I’d been lying to pals at school. As far as they were concerned, I’d previously trekked alone to the wilds of Dundee’s Caird Hall to see Hawkwind. I made the whole thing up, of course, wanting to impress with my solo efforts. I duly scrawled some signatures on a Hawkwind album sleeve, then crushed and tore it a bit to make it look like there’d been a fracas of sorts. And around this fake artefact I spun the story of my trip. I explained the light show, the nude female dancers, the sonic wondrousness of it all, until I almost began to believe that I really had been there. All in all, a brilliant night, which only exists in my imagination.
4 U2 While a student in Edinburgh, I saw many great gigs (Pere Ubu, Iggy Pop, The Kinks, Ramones, Bauhaus …) I also missed a few. A mate tried to get me to go see The Buzzcocks, all because of the support act, a new band called Joy Division. I stayed home and wrote an essay instead, and have regretted it ever since. I also missed out on the Stones at the Playhouse because I had an exam the next day. But one concert that stays with me is U2. They were playing in a disco in Tollcross. I think their first album had just been released. A few hundred sweaty fans, dancing for a solid 90 minutes, and a gang of young men on stage, playing for their professional lives. They were brilliant. And to think, I only went because my mate’s girlfriend let him down and he had a ticket going spare.
5 THE PROCLAIMERS After uni, I moved to London. I’d pretty much stopped going to gigs by that time, apart from jazz nights in Hoxton. But I did make the trip to a pub in Finsbury Park to see a new outfit called The Proclaimers. Until that night, I’d never realised how many Scots had made the move south. The place was awash with familiar accents and football scarves – everything from Partick to Aberdeen. The twins won me over that night – they were electrifying. It was a pretty rough and drunken crowd, but they had them eating out of their hands. After the gig, I decided to walk home rather than take the tube: that way, I’d have more time to reflect on what I’d just seen and sing a few of the numbers to myself. That’s how good a gig it was: it made me want to walk through the rummer parts of night-time London.
6 THE ROLLING STONES I had to wait a while for my next outstanding London gig. It happened in 2003, in another fairly small venue, the Astoria on Charing Cross Road. I’d managed to miss having dinner with two-thirds of REM (which is another story in itself), and was gutted. Taking pity, my publisher found me a ticket to a secret Rolling Stones gig. This was supposed to be for fan-club members, and took place in the sweltering confines of the Astoria night-club. The audience had come from the four corners of the globe to see the Stones on home ground, playing a set much like the ones they’d have played when they first started. The stage was only about six feet off the ground, with no props or gimmicks. Just a band playing out of their skins. At last I could discern that Keith really is a good guitarist, and that Jagger has the stamina of a man half his age.
7 MOGWAI Back home in Edinburgh, one of my favourite venues is the Queen’s Hall, not so much for the acoustics (iffy) or the views of the stage (even iffier), but for the quality of music it seems to attract. I’ve seen bands as different as The Residents and the Art Ensemble of Chicago … musicians as different as Dick Gaughan and Lloyd Cole, The Durutti Column and Plainsong. But the gig that stands out for me was another recent one – Mogwai. Young men with attitudinal guitars and no need to keep the noise in perspective, as there’s no singer to drown out. Their show there in 2003 was colossal, and for the first time I really felt my age. As the volume increased, I found myself at the very back of the hall, plaster falling around me. This was a really, really loud gig. Loud and great. It felt as though the whole hall might elevate, rise from its pinnings into the sky, propelled like a rocket. Which is what the best gigs should do – transport you.
9 Drummers of Note – Selected by Ben Schott
Ben Schott is the bestselling author of Schott’s Original Miscellany, and subsequent miscellanies on Food & Drink, and Sporting, Gaming, & Idling.
His drumming is mediocre at best, and he harbours ambitions to play the Hammond organ to the same standard. Below, in no particular order, are some of Schott’s drummers of note.
1 CLYDE STUBBLEFIELD Stubblefield was James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’, and as such can claim to be the most sampled drummer in the world. Alongside fellow drummers Jabo Starks and Clayton Fillyau, Stubblefield pioneered the tight, crisp and heavily syncopated snare and hi-hat riffs that defined the James Brown sound, and funk itself.
2 JAMES BLADES More a percussionist than a drummer, Blades deserves mention as the man who recorded the Morse code ‘V for Victory’ signal for the BBC during WWII. The ‘dot-dot-dot-dash’ rhythm was played on an African membrane drum with a timpani mallet and was broadcast up to 150 times a day to encourage the Resistance in Continental Europe. As if this was not enough, James Blades also recorded the famous J. Arthur Rank gong (on small Chinese tam-tam) that was mimed by the boxer Bombardier Billy Wells.
3 CHARLIE WATTS Without doubt the most dapper of drummers, Watts merits a place in any drumming line-up for his bespoke suits alone. Like (the much underestimated) Ringo Starr, the essence of Watt’s skill lies in playing just enough for the song and no more. When asked what 25 years of rock’n’roll with the Rolling Stones was like, Watts apparently replied: ‘It’s been one year drumming, and 24 years hanging around.’
4 STEVE GADD One of the most recorded drummers in history, Gadd has played with a stellar line-up of musicians from Stanley Clark to Eric Clapton. His work with Paul Simon has justly received high praise: the groove on ‘Late In The Evening’ and his fiendishly complex riff on ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’ typify his fluid and effortless style.
5 JOHN ‘STUMPY’ PEPYS Tall, geeky and bespectacled, Pepys was the first of six drummers for the band Spinal Tap. His formal technique might seem unsophisticated to modern ears, but he pioneered the simple pop sound of the early 1960s – this is best illustrated in his drumming on the 1965 ‘Thamesmen’ track ‘Gimme Some Money’. In 1969 Pepys died in a bizarre gardening accident that to this day remains a mystery.
6 KEITH MOON Setting aside Moon’s antics (both real and apocryphal) his drumming for The Who was as stylish and clever as it was violent and anarchic. Almost any Who track demonstrates the genius of Moon’s drumming – from the simple power of ‘Substitute’ to the flamboyance of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
7 RITCHIE HAYWOOD The drummer for American band Little Feat, Haywood has two apt nicknames: ‘the beat behind the Feat’ and ‘Mr Sophistifunk’. On tracks like ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Sailin’ Shoes’ Haywood sits just behind the groove, seamlessly melding the styles of rock, zydeco, folk and blues.
8 RONNIE
