GIG REVIEW : BUTCHER BOY & ADAM STAFFORD ; LANGSIDE HALL, GLASGOW - SATURDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2011

Post-holiday blues, Xmas nights out, scary weather and a seriously-ill cat have all been determining factors in my inability to get the blog back to normal these past few days.  And with the cat not yet completely out of the woods yet (that's three nights away in a vet's hospital with the costs ever-escalating), it might be that no sooner have I tried to get going again than I will come to a grinding halt.

But to matters in hand.

Saturday 19 November was one of the most enjoyable events of my whole life.  The night that I finally put something back into the world for all the times that musicians have enthralled and entertained me in a live environment this past 30 plus years.

60 folk bought tickets in advance.  A further 64 came along on the night and either paid in , were on the guest list or aged under 16 and nor charged anything.  Then there was me and Richard on the door and the two lads who did the sound and lights.  That made it an audience of 128 or thereabouts for a very fine show indeed.  A huge thanks to everyone who made it along.

It was a long day.  I was there at 4pm to help out where I could with the sound lads arriving as well as the band going through a soundcheck.  Langside Halls is a cracking old venue, but a real problem to get the sound spot-on without a lot of hard work and it took a fair bit of time to get there.  In among all this,. John from Butcher Boy also gave an interview to a student journalist to help out with her course and then Adam the support act turned up around 7pm advising that he was OK about a minimal sound-check.  The reason for his late arrival was that having played on the Friday night as support to The Twilight Sad he was required to do an 8-hour shift on Saturday at the job that helps pay his rent.....

Next task was to staff the merchandise stall as the first punters rolled in.  One of the earliest arrivals was Anna Docherty, the listings editor of The Skinny, who had given the event a great plug in the paper.  Anna was very kind - she turned down the offer of a place on the guest list preferring to come through from Edinburgh along with a friend and pay her own way as she was a fan of both acts on the bill.  Thanks again Anna...

The doors opened at 7.30 and Adam Stafford took to the stage at around 8.15pm.  I knew beforehand that he would divide opinion as his show is quite different to that of Butcher Boy but I reckoned he would go down well with most folk.  Personally, I thought he was sensational.  He played a lot of new material and shied away from the more commercial offerings from his 2011 LP Build A Harbour Immediately.  As I said just two sentences ago.....he was sensational.

Matthew from Song By Toad had caught Adam's support act to The Twilight Sad in Edinburgh just a couple of days earlier.  I hope he doesn't mind me just doing a cut'n'paste job from his review as he said it far better than I would ever be capable of:-

Before we get into that though, fucking hell, Adam Stafford! 

Now, I enjoyed his latest album Build a Harbour Immediately, but live was something else. And, without wishing to hurt anyone’s feelings, I can’t understand how it wasn’t utter shit.This is a man building up his songs with looped and layered beatboxing.  He adds just a little guitar here and there, but for the most part the actual substance of the music is built from layer upon layer of… and I am going to have to say it again here… beatboxing! 

To explain myself, beatboxing is a little like rapping, in the sense that the mere mention of it gives me the fucking twitches. I am sure that in the right environment, done by the right people in the right context, it can be awesome, but it is very much Not For Me.  I even get the cold shakes when Tom Waits mentions beatboxing, and he is a musical deity who can do exactly what he pleases, as far as I am concerned.

So if you had described a man in a shirt and tie layering (and I kid you not) bow-chkka-wow-wow and deedy-n-dee-diddy and stuff like that, there is nothing I can picture being made with those ingredients that isn’t utterly embarrassing, unlistenable shit.But he was brilliant.As I said, looking at the actual mechanics of what Stafford does, it shouldn’t be great, but it really was.  It helped that he played it absolutely straight, but more than anything, despite what they were assembled from, the songs themselves were absolutely great. The performance was fantastic too.  The whole thing was fucking awesome. 

I was grinning like an idiot by this point even though I knew by now that I was going to be about 20-25 punters short of what I needed to not lose any money on the venture (damn you Okkervil River for stealing some of my audience!!!). I knew from the soundcheck that Butcher Boy were going to be at the top of their game so the end result of a memorable gig was assured.

But nothing had prepared ne for just how good Butcher Boy were going to be.

From the first notes that Alison played on the accordian for set-opener When I'm Asleep to the resounding flourish to the encore that was Profit In Your Poetry, the band did not do anything that wasn't short of perfection.  Findlay, the band's drummer, afterwards told me that he felt it was a good a live show he had ever been part of which is good enough for me.

It was the first time Butcher Boy had played a proper home-town show since the slot supporting Belle & Sebastian at the Barrowlands a year ago - there's been a couple of sets that were 'unplugged' or low-key but this was the first fully-fledged performance and it was one worthy of a 5-star review from any critic.

The set extended to 14 songs over around 50 minutes with a fair amount of old material being aired as well as the best stuff from 2011 LP Helping Hands.  I've actually got a 15-track Butcher Boy compilation on the i-pod made up of my own personal  favourites.  Twelve of those fifteen were played at Langside Hall - it felt at times as if I'd handpicked the set-list:-

When I'm Asleep
The Day Our Voices Broke
Girls Make Me Sick
I Am The Butcher
This Kiss Will Marry Us
Carve A Pattern
Helping Hands
Anything Other Than Kind
I Know Who You Could Be
Sunday Bells
Imperial
I Could Be In Love With Anyone
There Is No-one Who Can Tell Where You've Been
Profit In Your Poetry

Far too many highlights to single anything specific out.  But I surely wasnt the only smiling when John sang the line 'From Langside to Kerelaw' during Helping Hands.....

The next Butcher Boy gig is in London in early January.  I'm going to make sure I'm there.  If you can, you should too......

Ticket details here.

mp3 : Butcher Boy - Anything Other Than Kind

Thanks also to Comrade Colin for the black and white photo and Kenny McColl for the colour snaps that are at the top of this post.  To Richard for being such a star on the door that night, to Lloyd from Peenko and Mike from Manic Pop Thrills  for all their help in advance and to Michael and co from EH Sound for being heroes on the night.

The biggest thanks however have to go to Alison, Basil, Cat, Findlay, Fraser, John, Maya and Robert for a memorable performance.  You'll need to go something to top that in London but I'm looking forward to seeing you try.