Glasgow barfly on a December Sunday night and to be honest I didn’t want to be here. I felt old – so, so old. It’s a 14+ gig and just some nights the age you feel is the age your aching muscles feel no matter how young the lass standing next to you is…and I’m sore and still hungover from gods know what I did on Friday night. I’d rather a quiet rocking chair than the prospect of loud music tonight…
And I’m worried. The Poisoning are the first band and contrary to every other time I’ve seen them, they have no fake blood make-up and far fewer clothes on.
But this is The Poisoning, the band. And well, if you were right down the front you kinda missed half the performance. Some opening support bands will waste their energy on asking politely for the crowd to move forward a bit to create atmosphere. Not these guys, any space you leave them is soon filled: this band goes to the crowd. And I’m glad I had a buffer of young teenage girls in front of me – singers I can usually cope with but fuck me that guitarist has scary eyes when he wants and I don’t have my camera to stare back with…!
During their third song tonight the person next to me turns round and announces “I have a new favourite band!”, and aye, tonight they had me offering them my first born in praise & worship. I’m assured by folk who listen more than I do that they manage to play the goth horror punk style just as well as they pose to it.
Next up, In So Far inevitebly had to play the worst slot of the night, following such a great local opener but not being the known headline band will always be tricky. And that’s what they managed to do, they played that fill in set, as much as I loved the lowest slung bass ever and the lead singer’s enthusiasm, they never quite managed to win enough of the crowd to impress and my ears only heard some vaguely generic rock sounds, on another day I may have been easier to please, but not tonight. I went to the bar and I bought a drink.
Trashlight Vision did me kinda proud though, they managed to play almost a Stadium Rock show in exactly the sort of venue I remember that whole sound growing from. Probably very few folk there other than me & Acey Slade, who yeah, was acting just like he could have been headlining Donnigton in ’91, nobody else would have understood if I’d said “a real original Cathouse show”, sleaze rock, cock rock, whatever rock, even with the lack of pole dancers it still made me yearn for sleazy stripper infested dives that I’ve only seen in Crue videos. But I was happy enjoying the set as such – they even managed to play a Guns N’ Roses cover without me being up in arms at the travesty of it all, there’s not many bands I would forgive that liberty!
Trashlight could have won me over compeltely but then they started up with 1st Fright and well… I tried my best to jot down some sensible notes of what to tell you guys about the gig but when I look at them now all I see is an A4 piece of paper with “THE POISONING – stage invasion – WIN~!!” written on it.
In So Far did their best, Trashlight Vision played a fine headline set.
But The Poisoning – they won.
