If you’re thinking about drawing a comic book, it might be a good idea not to spend several months on the first panel drawing EVERY SINGLE BUILDING IN GLASGOW.

I never was one to follow advice. At this rate, expect issue 1 some time around about my 80th birthday.

I’ve been subconsciously forming an idea for a while which was crystallised a few days ago when I read this article about Alan Moore’s new magazine, Dodgem Logic.

Back in the mid nineties, in the two years between school and work that I charitably refer to as my art school education, I was a huge fan of  Deadline Magazine. It brought together all the things that interested me at that point. There were a few other essentially underground magazines which threatened to go mainstream at the time, such as The Beastie Boys Grand Royal magazine and the Herb Garden, but to my mind, Deadline was the daddy. The inclusion of the comics just gave it another dimension which made it stand out from the more mainstream mags like Select and NME.

Of course, the Tank Girl movie sucked so badly, and crashed and burned so terribly it dragged the magazine down with it, and it left a gap on WH Smiths shelves which has never really been filled again.

The first issue of Dodgem Logic isn’t out yet but it looks like it will be taking much of the same inspiration as Deadline, but tying it around what’s going on in Northampton just now. Moore has hinted that he’d like people to localise the magazine for different cities through an 8 page pullout which will carry local event listings and the like, and I hope someone else picks up the challenge to do that for the central belt, but I’d like to read something which is more tailor built around what’s going on up here.

There’s always been a thriving creative scene in Scotland. Glasgow in particular always seemed to avoid the talent drain which affected a lot of English towns and cities, whereby anyone with the slightest hint of talent would leave for London at the first whiff of success. I guess the A&R men never made it past Hadrians Wall? Whatever it was, it sculpted a supportive local scene which functioned in complete isolation to whatever was going on in the rest of the UK. Exactly like what has happened over the last five years or so in more or less every city in the western world, thanks to Myspace, Twitter etc.

Now there’s an army of  quality bloggers writing passionately to document the latest bands, artists, photographers and writers. The ever brilliant Glasgow Podcart just posted a round-up of some of the best yesterday. Much as this couldn’t have happened without the internet, like Alan Moore, I still like artifacts. Something to pick up, hold and flick through. I accept the idea of producing something on dead trees in this day and age seems like a backwards step but, particularly when it comes to art, it’s more appealing, for me at least, to have something tactile. A physical printed object to hold.

So my idea is this. A magazine which would incorporate music features, short stories, serialised graphic novels and short strips, as well as features on artists and photographers. Initially, it would focus on what’s going on in Scotland right now but it certainly wouldn’t be a chestthumping ‘wha’s like us’ endeavour and wouldn’t automatically kiss any arses based on home postcode.

It would be full colour and printed on the best quality paper I could afford. I want the thing to look so beautiful, you can’t resist picking it up and flicking through it, like a copy of Juxtapoz or Hi Fructose. The sort of magazine you want to collect and keep, rather than throw out when the next issue arrives.

That’s the idea in a nutshell, and now I’m really looking for your input. Please leave comments. How many of you would be interested in reading something like that? What sort of features would you be looking for? More particularly, is there anyone who would be interested in contributing articles or having their work featured? I’m particularly interested in hearing from amateur graphic novelists, or other comic artists but if you are a writer interested in collaborating with an artist to produce graphic adaptations of your work, or vice versa, I’d love to hear from you too so I can get you in touch with each other.

Please leave a comment even if you wouldn’t be interested, so I can get an accurate idea of what sort of reception it might get.

It’s been a long time coming but finally, here’s the first few glimpses of artwork for the comic book I’m working on. Neither of them are finished. I’m not especially happy with the way Sam looks. He needs a bit more development stylistically I think, but I’ll be putting the artwork on hold for the next few months, so decided to put up what I have so far.

I really want to learn Illustrator and will persevere with it but the magpie drawing took the best part of a day when I know I could have done it in an hour or so in Flash, so I ended up reverting to Flash to do the character drawing.

The reason I’ll be putting things on hold is that I read about this competition last Friday and have decided to have a go at adapting the script for issue 1 into a TV script. The overall story is quite episodic anyway so would adapt pretty well into a TV drama format. The competition closes at the start of November, which means I might even do NaNoWriMo again this year…I have an idea for it if I find the time!

As mentioned previously, I’m gearing up to take part in Script Frenzy, which starts next Wednesday. Click the image above to go to my profile page on the SF site or check back here throughout April for updates. If you’re taking part, leave a comment with your SF name and I’ll add you as a writing buddy.

A few years ago, I had no desire to be a writer. I envied people who could but didn’t think I had it in me. I’m certainly not one of those people who always wanted to write. I may have loved reading since before I started school but always had the assumption I was neither original or insightful enough to write anything that anyone else might want to read. That all changed in early March 2007, when, as hackneyed as it sounds, I had a dream.

I’m not one of these people who applies mystical significance to dreams. I know it’s all connected to the complex way that brains process and store memories and experiences. Ever since my teens, I regularly wake up with music in my head which, to the best of my knowledge doesn’t exist anywhere else. Famously, that’s how Paul McCartney came up with the melody for ‘Yesterday’, but having discussed this with a few people, it would appear that Macca and I are in the minority with this. 

Those with an overactive god gene may believe they are hearing the voices of angels, and a quick google reveals plenty prepared to believe that, but I know it’s just my brain making things up. I’ll wake up with a fully formed new song in my head at least once a month. Over the years, entire albums worth of material have been washed down the plughole with the shower water and forgotten about by the time the first coffee of the morning is brewed.

When I’m asleep, the niggling self doubt of my concious mind is silenced. I don’t talk myself out of creating something before I even start, on the basis that it might not be any good. When my subconcious mind gets left to come up with stuff, more often than not, it tends to do quite well. On this night in March 2007 though, I didn’t just wake up with a song in my head.

As dawn showed the first signs of breaking, and the blackbird which lived on the tree outside my bedroom window began it’s morning ritual of singing its unique song (a song which, unlikely as it seems, consisted of the first 5 notes of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer), I had already been awake for hours. I had awakened in the middle of the night  having just viewed the first 20 minutes of a film in my head. The film I had to write the script for.

I wake up with ideas and thoughts often enough to keep my phone at the side of the bed. It’s a touchscreen so I just scribble my idea down and go back to sleep. This time was different. The movie in my dream was so fully formed, I couldn’t hope to scribble everything down without missing some crucial detail or waking up my partner and have to explain to her why the hell I was playing with my phone at two in the morning. Instead, I  just kept playing the idea over and over again in my head, elaborating some details here and there. Loosely, it’s about the Grim Reaper. It goes off on some unusual tangents, on which I’ll elaborate in future posts.

I made an attempt a few months later to start writing the script but my concious mind switched back to it’s usual role of telling me what I was writing wasn’t good enough and I didn’t get very far. I stopped writing but the idea didn’t leave me. Real life wen’t a bit crazy at that point. Over the next year and a bit, my Fiancee moved in, we moved house, got married, I got a new job doing what I’ve always wanted to do. The script idea languished low on the priority list but was most definitely not forgotten. 

Eventually, in August 2008, I made the decision that I was going to take part in Nanowrimo and write the story as a novel. Nanowrimo is an annual event where, every november, thousands of amateur, and some professional, writers sit down to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. I hadn’t written before but neither had thousands of others that had all pledged to do it. As it turned out, I couldn’t have done it without them. The motivation of thousands of enthusiastic amateurs was inspiring and, in the end, I turned in ‘a Death in the making’, a novel of just over 50,000 words, in just 26 days.

Because I only had 30 days to write a novel, I had to write at speed. This fed into the idea of allowing my subconcious mind to take over. I didn’t have time to rewrite something if I wasn’t happy with it so I had to keep pushing forward. 

As you might expect, the end results weren’t exactly going to be keeping the Man Booker  judges occupied. When I re-read it, it was far better than I expected, but still needed work.  I had a good story, I just hadn’t told it as well as I could yet. That’s where it’s stalled ever since.

In an attempt to kickstart things again, I’ve decided to return to the original concept and adapt the story into a screenplay. I’m hoping that by doing this as a part of Script Frenzy, (Similar to Nanowrimo, but the goal is to write a 100 page screenplay in the month of April), I can feed off the same collective energy that motivated me to finish the novel in the first place. I’m also hoping that the restrictions of a script format will allow me to really polish the dialogue, so that, when I do return to the novel, a lot of the groundwork has already been done.

Unfortunately, there is the added restriction of probably only getting to write on my lunchbreaks, since real life hasn’t really got much less crazy. I like a challenge.

“Based on your tastes, Amazon recommends ‘The Best Gay Anthems in the World, Ever’.”

How do you tell a computer that, while it doesn’t actually matter whether or not it thinks you’re gay, you have no desire to listen to the high energy club tunes and camp divas warbling that populate such CD’s?

This was an issue I faced years ago, shortly after discovering Of Montreal. I had first heard them on Internet Radio and was intrigued enough by their Elephant 6 connections to download a few tunes, which lead to ordering their most-recent,-at-that-time, album: ‘The Gay Parade’. At that point, somewhere deep in the Amazon servers, an algorithm spotted the word ‘Gay’ in the title, and my user account was promptly transferred to a folder labled ‘Fabulous’, in pink, 72 point Arial. My recommendations for the next few months tended to consist of CD’s featuring topless, oily men on the cover.

Incidentally, it was about another year before I actually heard the full album since Amazon took it upon themselves to turn the online purchase of an album into an epic quest in search of the CD. An order which was originally supposed to despatch within 7 days was pushed back to being within 28 days. Then another 28 days. Then an email was sent, saying they were waiting for more stock, then another saying the stock hadn’t arrived and they were trying other suppliers. Eventually, they threw in the towel and advised they had cancelled the order.

When I did finally did hear the album, I was charmed by how authentically recorded-in-1967 they managed to sound. It had the lyrical innocence of Pet Sounds and, unlike a lot of other 60′s wannabe’s, sounded fresh, with just a hint of nostalgia for a bygone age that never really existed. The album was full of sweet songs about being happily, comfortably in love. Songs like ‘Neat Little Domestic Life’ and ‘Old Familiar Way’.

Of course, it’s well documented how trouble (albeit temporary) in Kevin Barnes personal paradise materialised a few years later. Finding himself plunged into a dark place, he gave birth to his flamboyant alter-ego Georgie Fruit, who brought about a huge evolution in the bands sound.

So it’s a different band I’m waiting to hear tonight than I would have heard back then. Waiting here on my own, I might add since Sydne is off to Fopp to buy a present for a friend, so I’m stuck here, holding place at the head of the (not-yet-existent) queue.

I therefore had nothing better to do than amuse myself with the sign on the door, which read: ‘This is a non-smoking premise’, which made it sound more of a suggestion than an order.

Shortly before Sydne appeared back, a guy came out and advised they were experiencing some ‘technical difficulties’ so might be a bit late.

After Sydne apeared back, I was standing with my back to the stairs and heard someone descending the stairs directly above my head. Sydne glanced up and, suppressing a laugh, instructed me not to look. A man in full kilt appeared, walked straight past us and tried the door. When it didn’t budge, he tried a bit harder. Still no progress. He yanked it as hard as he could to the extent that he nearly ripped it from the door completely. I was about to point out that the door was in fact, locked, a fact which was clearly eluding him, but just as I drew breath to speak, he let out an exasperated splutter and strode off again at full pelt back up the stairs.

Sydne was still suppressing a laugh and buy this point was close to turning purple. ‘So’, I asked her, ‘Was he a true Scot?’ After she regained her composure, she claimed she hadn’t noticed but I’m not sure I believe her.

As the sound of bagpipes flared up from Oran Mor’s upstairs venue (I presume a Burns supper, although, if it was, it was a day late) the queue started to grow. About fifteen minutes late, the doors eventually opened. Sydne headed for the stage and I got the drinks in.

When I joined her at the stage, conversation turned to the support act. I was particularly impressed by their lo-fi maraca which sat just in front of us, consisting of a used coke bottle with some rice in it. There was an extension chord next to it with ‘Casiokids’ written in black marker on the side. This adaptor had plugs with only two prongs sticking out of it. I applied my Sherlock Holmes like deduction skills to conclude they must not be from Britain. Only later, after their set and, more importantly, after they had already told us all where they were from, did I spot the  ‘Scandanavia Made’ tag on the keyboard about 2 ft from my nose which may have helped me pinpoint a bit more.

Normally, when a band consists of four tall slim blokes and one short, normal looking one, you can bet he writes all the songs. Casiokids had that dynamic. I have no idea if my prejudice is correct or not but in this case, the normal one looked a bit like a young Micky Dolenz. He was also the smiliest man on earth. I immediately warmed to them.

Musically, they sounded exactly like you might imagine a Scandanavian band called the Casiokids to sound. Which is not a bad thing. They were fun and bouncy with lots of lo-budget electronic noises on display.

The arrival of Of Montreal was heralded by a 6ft tall tiger in a white dinner jacket miming for us to cheer as loud as we could.

The band strode on and launched straight into ‘She’s a Rejector’. While they raced through the song, they were joined on stage by two strange human statues. One kneeled on the ground and was being whipped across his back by the other. They were then joined by a couple in ‘country laird and lady’ dress who started arguing with the statue who was dispensing the whipping which degenerated into a fist fight as the band played on around them.

For the next song, they were joined by a man with a handlebar moustache dressed as priest. His cassock was then ripped off (by a guy in a pig costume) and a pagan symbol was drawn on his chest, then devil horns were placed on his head. I was starting to realise that Of Montreal shows are as much about the performance as the music.

Other theatrical antics included strange golden statues like a melting plastic buddha. The whole show was clearly aiming for the euphoric party atmosphere of a Flaming Lips concert and, though they may not compare musically to the Flips best moments, atmosphere wise, they came close occasionally. The whole thing was one big party.

Now, comments on LastFM suggest there were a lot of annoying people in the crowd. From my position right down the front, I missed this and thought it had actually been a good crowd. (Hope that doesn’t mean we were among the annoying ones?) There was just one girl however who, while she may not have been annoying me, was clearly pissing off the stage manager throughout the gig. She was standing directly in front of The Late BP Helium and was very grabby.

Every time she tried to grab anyone from the stage within arms reach, she would knock the camera on BP’s mic stand, causing the stage manager to come running back on and align it again. His evil stares towards her  grew stronger each time, culminating in looking hard at her, giving the universally-recognised ‘I’m watching you’ hand sign, then, after pointing at the camera concluded with the, also-universally-recognised, throat slash gesture.

This managed to refrain her until the next song, when, what looked like ninjas with fencing masks appeared and started slinking towards the front few rows and indulge in stroking their faces and hair.  This of course was enough to set grabby girl off again.

This may well be the first gig I’ve been to with actual, proper costume changes, like Liza Minelli or someone. I’m sure when Liza Minelli does it though,  she doesn’t re-emerge clad in a bulging fake fur jumpsuit wired up to a smoke machine which pumps dry ice from every orifice.

 It lasted for one song before he stripped off completely to a shiny pair of sequenced briefs. Again, one more song before he disappeared offstage and reappeared for the final song of the main set covered from chin to ankle in shaving foam.

While they were offstage before the encore, I started eying up Kevins setlist and contemplated grabbing it but I decided to leave it until they had finished. This proved to be a mistake since within seconds of reappearing back onstage and launching into Suffer for Fashion, he kicked it backwards, out of his way and well out of my arms reach. Bugger.

As soon as the song finished, I made a quick change of tact and grabbed Nina’s which involved lying onstage slightly but by then, there were so many people onstage, it went unnoticed.

Some of these people onstage shuffled forwards and pointed a cannon at the crowd, out of which an explosion of feathers covered us all in the first few rows. Kevin mentioned they had recently supported Franz Ferdinand and then launched into a cover of  Franz’s ‘Take me out’.

Everyone piled back on stage all at once. The touchy-feely fencing ninjas grab sydnes camera and attempted to take a picture of her. When it was handed back, it had a worrying message suggesting all the photos have been erased. Fortunately, as you can see, they weren’t.

They immediately followed ’Take Me Out’ with a cover of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’. Finishing with covers of two other peoples anthems could be seen as cheating slightly and in the cold light of day, it shouldn’t have worked. By that point in the gig though, they had fostered enough of a party atmosphere that they managed to get away with it.

As a final gift, when The Late BP Helium was leaving stage and launched his plectrum into the crowd, it must have ricoched off the ceiling since it landed IN MY HAND.

 As grabby girl pushed in front of us to harrass the stage crew about something or other, we wrestled to retrieve our feather covered jackets and bags from under her feet. At the time of writing, it’s four days later and I still haven’t managed to get all the feathers off of it.

This was easily the most I’ve looked forward to a gig since Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips and Kraftwerk all played for my 30th Birthday.

Now, I appreciate that, technically, the above bands did not, in fact play for my 30th birthday. Deep down, I know that they all happened to be on a festival bill which took place a few weeks before my 30th birthday. However, I’m working on the theory that, if I tell myself enough times that they did, then years from now, when I’m living in a nursing home and several marbles short of a schoolboys pocket, I’ll genuinely believe it to be true. And how great will that be?

The new album wasn’t due to be released until the day before the gig, but the hype on the blogosphere for this one has been so incredible that I couldn’t resist a sneak peek. When I read on Wikipedia that it leaked on Christmas day (what a christmas present!), I was helpless to resist. On first listen, it only took until the end of the second track, (the sublime ‘My Girls’), before I went to Amazon to preorder it. That was on the 29th December and it’s more or less been on permanant rotation ever since.

I had no sooner finished writing my best albums of 2008 list when quite possibly, the best album of 2009 comes along. It had been a  long gestation period getting into Animal Collective with a few aborted attempts. (Hint to noobs, ‘Here Comes The Indian‘ may be a great album once you allow its charms to work on you for a while, but it might not be the best album to start dipping your toe in to the band with.) I finally found a way in Strawberry Jam and then worked my way back.

Around the time last year  I was really getting into them, they played Oran Mor. Unfortunately, we were in Germany at the time announcing to my inlaws that we had got married so we couldn’t go.

So yes, I had been REALLY looking forward to this one. Did it live up to the expectations? Well…

In an unusual turn of events, we weren’t actually first in line for a gig for once. There were four or five people in front of us. When the doors finally opened, the bouncers shouted down the line for us to have both tickets and ID ready. I was in usual ‘travelling-light’ gig mode and had nothing more than cash and ticket in my pockets. Panicked thoughts of a long drive back home to pick up my drivers licence started fleeting through my head. Then someone in front of me questioned why ID was required. The bouncer qualified his earlier statement by saying that if anyone wanted to be served at the bar, ID would have to be shown.

I like to think I look youthful but the simple fact of the matter is, I’m 33 years old and slightly overweight with a hairline not so much receding as hastily retreating. There is absolutely no chance that anyone could possibly mistake me for being younger than 18.  I asked him, when it was my turn to show my ticket, if I was seriously going to have to show ID to buy a pint. His response was non verbal, but the look was just withering enough to answer my question.

As we squeezed past the younger attendees having their ID checked before getting a black cross written on the back of their hand, I noticed that the younger ones had the indignity of having ’U18′ written on theirs. [Edit: Revhalfro has pointed out that it was, in fact, a smiley face and not U18]

It’s a long time since I was last in the Art School. Last time was Mouse on Mars and Future Pilot AKA back in 2001 as part of the second Triptych lineup. It isn’t exactly as I remembered but, since my memory of that evening is a blur with numerous black holes, and an embarassing attempt to strike up a drunken conversation with Sushil Dade during his set, that’s probably a good thing.

My first impression this time round was of the sound system. Blimey, that gives good bass. A fact amply demonstrated by the spleen rupturing dubstep they chose to play, every other song, before the bands started.  The pre band music they played was actually ace. One track in particular stood out as warranting further investigation so I made best effort to make a mental note of  some of the lyrics with the intention of investigating further the following day. Unfortunately, the only line I could still remember by next morning was  a repeated refrain of  “I don’t know what happened”.

According to Google, there are ‘About 2,050,000′ results for that phrase. However, being the freaking google ninja that I am, I managed to figure out the track is What Happen’d? by SJ Esau. I was able to verify this by a quick scan of the rest of the lyrics and immediately recognised the rather more memorable line (by all but me, evidently): “A hurricane of piss and shit came to my door”.

Around 15 minutes late, the support act, Highlife, hit the stage. We were lucky enough to be front and centre. When he started playing, the speakers, which were already set to stun, were cranked up to dematerialise.

On witnessing him, I passed on to the next age of gig goer. When you first go to gigs, it seems as though everyone, band and audience, are older than you. After a while, the audience are the same age but the bands are still older. Gradually, the audience gets younger and you’re the same age as the bands. Then, even the bands are younger than you. I had accepted all of these stages graciously as they came and went. I thought there were no more stages to come. However, when a man on stage can have a beard, and not a whispy bumfluff beard but a full on man-of-the-forest style beard, and still look like a child, then you really feel old.

When Highlife played their first notes,  I immediately realised we weren’t quite as centred as I thought we were. I could tell this by the fact that whilst the music sounded damned loud through my right ear, my left ear immediately waved a white flag.  The bass, it could handle but Highlife had quite a high vocal range and a tendancy to sing the vocal sound ‘eeeeee’ as high as he could a lot, which, at our proximity and direct line to the speaker was the aural equivelant of a parmesan grater on my ear drums.

None of this is to criticise the music though since they (well, he since there was only one of them) started out brilliantly with a sitar like drone from a strange squeezebox contraption. The next few songs all sounded completely different to one before but were all really good. Samples, loops, guitar all coming together in a great way. I started thinking that this was exactly the sort of brilliantly eclectic band you might imagine supporting Animal Collective. Unfortunately, he shot his bolt a little to early.

Somewhere around the halfway point of his set, it was as though he allowed the loud talking from the back of the hall to drain every ounce of confidence from him. He seemed keen to get off the stage as quickly as he could, despite the fact that, from where I was stood, the crowd appeared to be genuinely into him.

He even resorted to the old support act trick of asking the audience ‘so are you all looking forward to Animal Collective then?’ which of course solicited a cheer. He then laughed nervously and said, to himself more than anyone else ‘I knew at least that would get a cheer’ before continuing with a few more perfectly nice, but average, alt-folk strumalongs before finishing his set.

He mentioned that he had a CD at the merch stall which was pay-what-you-like. If it wasn’t for the fact we had our space camped out down the front, I probably would have bought it. It was certainly worth a fiver based on what I heard.

On to business then. Not having seen them live before, and given their tendancy not to pose for normal band pictures, I didn’t really know what any of them looked like or what to expect.I had somehow imagined that not much would be happening onstage and it was going to be like watching orbital or something where there are just a few guys staring at keyboards and rows of knobs and not moving very much.I was wrong

As opener ‘In the flowers’ errupted into its euphoric second half  the lightshow exploded and attacked my sight with the same approximate intensity that the speakers were pummeling my ears. The real visual treat though was Avey Tares incredible ‘death by electrocution’ grimaces and head shakes throughout the show.

The set they played was very heavy on material from the new album but judging by the number of people singing along, theres either a lot of very fast learners in the AC fanbase or else I wasn’t the only one to have downloaded it earlier than it’s release date. The main problem with this is that, for a band 9 albums into their career,  there was so much great older stuff that got left out. a balance of old and new would have been nice.

I had anticipated that ‘My Girls’ was going to be the highlight of the evening, given how much like braincrack it has been to me since I first listened to it. However, if I was pushed to pick one, ‘Lion in a Coma’ was probably the highlight. The song has a perfect balance of melody, beats and noise.

Another highlight was the extended tribal drum wigout instrumental in the middle of ‘Fireworks’, which segwayed into the dayglow rave of set closer ‘Brothersport’.

The normal band ritual of leave the stage, wait one minute, return to stage was followed then they played two more songs. Neither of which could match the highs of the main set. Particularly, the final song they played ‘Daily Routine’ , I thought we could have done without. On the album, it starts out well but drifts into repetitiveness in it’s second half. Live, the second half of the song seemed to stretch on even longer.

They left the stage again and the lights came up. Is it wrong to wish, after such a brilliant show that they had gone without the encore and left us wanting more?

All in all though, it lived up to expectations and I still can’t stop listening to the new album compulsively, even though I should maybe be listening to a bit more Of Montreal before we go and see them next week.

Upon finding ourselves on Byers Road with a spare thirty minutes, we did what any self respecting music fan would do and headed straight for Fopp.   Of course, a visit to Fopp isn’t complete without spending money.  Always on some bargain you didn’t know you needed twenty minutes earlier, but now, absolutely must have since its just so cheap.  This time was no different.

As I idly browsed, Sydne came running up to me with her hands behind her back and a huge grin on her face.  ‘I bet you anything that when you see what I have behind my back, you’ll have to buy it’ she said.  Being experienced enough to recognise the signs which signal an imminent parting of this fool and his money, I said nothing and looked at her expectantly.  And sure enough, for just four of your shiny new pounds…

That girl knows me so well sometimes, it’s scary!

I’ve always been a fan of Jamie Hewlett’s artwork ever since the early days of Tank Girl appearing in Deadline back in the early nineties.  So, for some time, I’ve had my eye on this book, but I could never justify twenty five quid on it.  At four pounds though, Bargain!  (especially since, according to Amazon, it’s out of print and the few remaining new copies are going for £50!)  They had done it again.  Damn you Fopp and your reasonably priced media, costing me my hard earned small change (and dwindling storage space) at every visit.

I spotted something though that just seemed plain wrong.  Fopp have started selling computer games.  I can’t define why exactly it’s wrong, but it just is.  Even though they’re now part of the HMV megalith, they still exude, and trade on, the slightly musty air of an independent old-school record shop.  The kind from High Fidelity.  One that smells like your parents loft and is generally populated by slightly balding men in too much denim who are old enough to know better but too old to save.  Fopp selling computer games feels tantamount to Dylan going electric in ’65.  I managed to fight the urge to scream ‘Judas’ as we bundled out the door and headed back in the direction of Oran Mor.

We descended the stairs to the venue entrance with fifteen minutes until the scheduled opening time.  A minute or so later, we were joined by a friendly, talkative Aidan Moffat lookalike.  When we revealed we lived in Motherwell, he recounted a story of the last time he had been in one of Motherwell’s less respectable drinking establishments and witnessed a fight breaking out.  The two aggrieved parties found their way into the car park, and then partook in a somehow more wholesome and innocent kind of fight which is seldom seen in these harsh times;  A manner for which the correct term would probably be fisticuffs rather than fight.  Jackets and shirts were carefully removed beforehand to reveal threadbare string vests.  They fought sportingly for a few minutes before agreeing a draw, shaking hands and returning back inside together to conclude the consumption of their alcoholic beverage of choice.  Our Aidan-a-like described it as ‘One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen’ and I can’t help but agree that it sounds like it.

A few more minutes passed and the queue began to grow some more.  A man with an American accent appeared and asked if this was where tickets could be bought. A few minutes earlier, our Aidan-a-like had spoken to one of the bouncers since he too was wanting to buy a ticket. The bouncer had confirmed there were fifteen tickets still available. He recounted this information to the American.

‘Aye. It’s no’ open yet though. theres about fifteen tickets left.’

To my ears, this was spoken quite clearly, but in hindsight, his accent must have been a bit impenetrable to those of a non-Glaswegian persuasion. He listened intently and nodded at all the correct moments but no lightbulb of understanding ever appeared above his head.  The cogs continued to visibly turn after silence had resumed.  A look of mild panic dawned on his face as he realised that it was his turn to speak but he had no idea what had just been said to him (a look I know only too well from my feeble attempts to speak German when visiting Sydne’s folks). The entire queue smiled at him encouragingly, as if hoping that we could make him understand by sheer will alone.  Aidan broke the silence again. “It’s due to open in ten minutes and there’s still about fifteen tickets left” The cogs appeared to speed up, but the eureka moment was still evading him.

Eventually, he spoke.  ‘So…it…is…where we get them?’  he asked tentatively.  We all nodded thinking that our collective psychic encouragement had prevailed and he had managed to penetrate Aidan’s accent. Sadly, we were mistaken. He immediately followed up by beginning to squeeze past us and head for the door. The tension in the crowd released itself with an audible ‘NO’ from a few of it’s number. He recoiled like a toddler being reprimanded for trying to touch something ‘burny’.  Someone else in the queue tried his luck, over enunciating every syllable. ‘This. Is. Where. You. Get. Tickets. But. It. Is. Not. Open. Yet.’

…glaciers drifted…

‘Aaaaah’. The American smiled and nodded. The rest of the queue exhaled as one. With the sound of a dropping penny ringing in our ears, silence returned to the queue.

Another few minutes passed, then the doors opened and we were allowed in. Oran Mor looked just as warm, cosy and inviting as ever. The soft lighting and bare stone walls, accented by the tasteful Christmas decorations, painted a festive picture which would just require the presence of a roaring log fire to be complete.

While we were waiting for the entertainment to begin, I had observed that, with Stereolab’s wealth of antique keyboards and other equipment surrounding the stage, the space left in the middle for the support act, ‘The Week That Was’, to perform in was miniscule. I wondered how they would fit.  I was reassured therefore to discover quite how tiny most of the band were.  They were abnormally small.  Positively Lilliputian.  The singer looked a bit like a tiny Bob Mortimer but there was an exact 1:3 scale replica of Alex Kapranos on drums, perfect in every detail right down to his pointy little shoes.  Conversely, the bass player/percussionist was  their Gulliver. He towered above the rest of the band and I half expected the others to pull him to the ground and tie him up halfway through the set.

That didn’t happen so I had to entertain myself with the music, which had the angular guitars and harmonies of the Futureheads but strayed dangerously close to the dreaded ‘prog-rock’ for way too much of their set.  Occasionally, I’d find myself liking what I was hearing but then the song would meander off in an altogether more noodly direction and I just wanted to scream ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ at the stage.  Overall though, they weren’t bad.

Eventually, Stereolab arrived on stage.  Now, much as I consider myself a fan of the band, I have to confess to only really being familiar with four of their albums.  For some reason, although I love those albums I do own, I never got round to filling in the gaps.  I think its always the problem with discovering a fairly prolific band when they are already four or five albums into their career, that you are forever playing catch-up and don’t know where to begin.  Especially when it comes to a band like Stereolab who seem to have an endless catalogue of ltd 7″s and rareties that make catching up seem like an impossible task. Because of that, I only really knew a handful of the songs they played.  They have such a definite sound though that it didn’t matter as much as I feared it might.  Still, it would have been nice to have heard some more songs from ‘Emperor Tomato Ketchup’.

What the songs lacked in familiarity to me, they more than made up for in volume.  Stereolab were LOUD.  Earbleedingly so at some points.  The two main touchstones of Stereolab’s music were always 60′s French pop and 70′s Krautrock, (although the new album has a large slice of Motown thrown in).  Most of the songs they played started at the French pop end of the spectrum and grew to become krautrock beasts by the end.

As I thought they might, they finished the main set with ‘French Disco’ to rapturous applause.  When they returned though, it was as though they decided to turn up the volume some more.  Twenty more minutes of krautrock wig-out ensued and then they were gone.

On the way out, I held the door open for Stuart Murdoch from Belle & Sebastian.  He didn’t say thank you.