Tenniscoats, Muscles of Joy & Tangles, Garnethill Multicultural Centre, Glasgow, 18th June

Six days is far too long to have left it, but here are some things I remember about last Saturday’s gig by the Tenniscoats.

• True to the (Tracer) Trail, it wasn’t in a conventional venue, but a community hall with chairs stacked for if you wanted to use them, and a wooden floor if not.
• Brogues nearly couldn’t make it, but then J. insisted (phew!)
• Tangles, on first, was a chap dressed exactly like the rockabilly one out of the Sexual Objects, making strung out Robin Guthrie-isms from a guitar and a loop pedal. Brogues winced and said ‘King Crimson’, but I thought he was very good.
• A.’s new-ish fella W., whom I hadn’t met before, was taken aback by Muscles of Joy, asking ‘you liked them?’ Chris agreed, conceding good rhythm but accusing the one on the left of drowning out everybody else’s good bits.
• There was, for the first time, a male member in Muscles of Joy. Ahem.
• High up on the wall opposite the stage area was a shelf of large Chinese dragon heads. To the right were the Tracer Trails banner, and a board filled with Chinese writing.
• There were no stage lights, hence the lack of photos. There was a stage, but Tenniscoats were the only ones to use it, and then only to sit on the edge before wandering forward.
• Because they are wandering minstrels, after all.
• They played with no amplification, just the two of them, opening with ‘Mou Mou Rainbow’ and ‘Baibaba Bimba’.
• Ueno played a Spanish guitar, of which I approved, because I have one of them. He shook it and raised it and moved to the left and right to get tremolo and stereo panning effects, except that they weren’t effects at all, but real.
• Saya stood and sang, with a smile and a slight forward movement. This, somehow, was love.
• She sang ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You’ from an exercise book.
• She introduced ‘Tamashi’, from new album Tokinouta, in halting English, as being ‘about spirit’. Ueno sang too for this one, it is my favourite song at the moment.
• They faded out the last song, slowly reducing the volume of the singing and the guitar playing, to a whisper and a caress of the strings. It was hard to tell when the song finished and silence began. Maybe it is still playing somewhere, maybe it always will be.