The Vaselines, The Pastels, Teenage Fanclub & Malcolm Middleton. Mono, Glasgow, 5th July

This was a nice surprise. A low key show in Mono featuring The Pastels, Malcolm Middleton, Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines. To promote the launch of a new charity, the David Williamson Rwanda Foundation, and also to have some of the favourite bands of a man who died too young play some of his favourite songs. What a great way to be commemorated. In a venue which, according to Stephen’s preamble to ‘About You’, exists partly thanks to his encouragement and business acumen. He said that most of the list of favourite Pastels songs ‘are not songs The Pastels... can play at the moment, but he really loved The Jesus and Mary Chain’. Drifting into a digression to say that ‘About You’ also features on the new! imminent! Pastels! Tenniscoats! record! (my exclamation marks), he sounded a bit embarrassed by such unabashed self-promotion and tailed off. ‘Are you ready?’ asked Katrina, like a park keeper calling in a rowing boat. ‘Your collar’s a bit out,’ she added helpfully. Stephen defended the collar misalignment as punk rock, and away they went, Norman Blake standing in for Saya on the high backing vocal. The high point of their short set was the last song, ‘Basement Scam’, which was full, rich, glorious. I got lost in the sound, and lost in time, this and ‘The Viaduct’ tracking a course back through the years (Mono is constructed around something you could describe as a viaduct – I wonder how much of a coincidence this is?) Brogues thought this was the best he’d heard them do ‘Basement Scam’, and I’d say the same.

Malcolm Middleton had played first, apologising in advance for the gloominess of his songs compared with the other bands on the bill. I haven’t followed his career at all, the only songs of his I know are the improvised ones from Arab Strap’s first LP. His voice has dropped several octaves since then, and he was right about the songs being gloomy – but not unpleasantly so, and one was gloomy about pizza.

The Vaselines sounded great. S. said the following morning that she preferred them live, and my rock classicist hackles rose, wanting to say something pompous about their records (I love my Vaselines picture disc, all the songs crammed in taking up half a centimetre each, the Bad Seeds-style mug shots glaring out at you as it spins). But they managed to pull off that trick of adding tons of grit to their sound without losing any clarity. The guitarist charged with unleashing the peals that punctuate Vaselines songs had his amp set to fuck up the balance bone in your ear, the drummer did his best to make you jump up and down, it is a wonder more people didn’t fall over. Any snide thoughts about the exhuming of songs from another era were gone five seconds into ‘Son of a Gun’, fresh as sunshine in the bedroom. Eugene’s look of concentration during ‘Rory Ride Me Raw’ was hilarious – you’d think he was playing ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ – but it convinced, too. They did ‘You Think You’re a Man’ with real drums replicating the metronomic underground beat (that’s just showing off!) and invited Stephen Pastel onstage to honk the bicycle horn for ‘Molly’s Lips’. Then it was time for our taxi to the bus station and we had to go. Chris fills in the rest of the set:

• ‘Teenage Jesus Superstar’. Cripes.
• ‘Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam’. With Noise where lesser men might have cellos.

It’s fine, it’s really fine. What we saw was brilliant enough.

As it turned out, the taxi was late, we missed the last bus home and went back to Mono in time for the end of Teenage Fanclub’s set – a bit of ‘Don’t Look Back’ and, of course, ‘Everything Flows’. The perfect complement to ‘Basement Scam’: aching, epic, wild, home.

Update: horsemeatpie’s photos, videos by geomck of Teenage Fanclub, The Vaselines and Malcolm Middleton.