The Last Night

From Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy the gig review blog

Hold onto your hats chaps, this isn't a pretty story.

The bands had finished for Sunday, Robbie and me were pottering about trying to figure what we could do to seize the initiative. More late evening acoustic sets, we needed a venue, the signal box sounded crap, the cafe was a bit crap, everywhere was too noisy, so aye, it'd be the platform again. But which bands to play, not the same as last night, maybe just the Chris Gilmour Experience and Images of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps. Robbie wandered off to the loo and came back saying he'd booked Pocketbooks, and my guitar was required.

I felt a weight on my shoulders, pressure, some kind of duty or responsibility, I just shrugged it off and went to get my guitar.

The stroll back through the festival site was different. To my left there were a circle of Bowlie folk off of the internet, I could feel them watching me. They'd been at the platform last night, they knew what me walking with my guitar meant. Do I slouch when I walk? In photies where I'm in the crowd, I have the worst posture ever.

On the platform waiting is Robbie, Rowan from the Just Joans and her husband Mark. I sit down and open my guitar case. Disaster strikes, a string has snapped, the heat in my car warping. Luckily Robbie suggests just threading through the long end, and it turns out okay. Completely out of tune, but recoverable. I'm tone deaf, but I make a stab at it before handing the guitar to Robbie to make pitch perfect.

A drunk chap called David appears, he apologises for being sarcastic to me on the internet, but I'm not quite sure who he is, other than someone I sometimes see at concerts.

With an audience of three friends and a vague acquaintance I wonder what songs I could play in my Chris Gilmour Experience set before Pocketbooks turn up. If they turn up at all.

I glance to my right, and terror fills me. A great crowd descends on the platform, people eager to see a repeat the the previous night's rapture.

But something is very wrong. What happened? What happened?

Four years ago? Was that start? I got booted off the Bowlie messageboard. Friends and acquaintances I had there drifted away out of contact, unreachable, part of another world forbidden to me. My name turned to an insult by these same people. Not all of them, some were still friends, still with happy shared memories of holidays in the sun, but part of the same crowd. I saw them over the weekend, eye contact and half-hearted small talk. Anorak, Bowlie's successor messageboard, the overlap between the two. These people regularly hound me off the fora. Regularly and frequently.

And now expecting what of me?

That ignorant shit Andy Hart stands to my left, leans down and politely asks if Pocketbooks can borrow my guitar.

Time slows, I gaze at the evil in his eyes, and at expectatant faces all around, friends and enemies sat or standing in a semi circle, Robbie tuning the guitar, no sign of any Pocketbooks in the crowd.

Chris, we don't give a shit what you're doing, but we're going to commandeer your guitar and ignore you and there's not a damned thing you can do about it. Ha ha, you're going to be stuck here for hours waiting to get your guitar back and there's fuck all you can do about it.

Yeah sure Pocketbooks can use my guitar.

Robbie finishes tuning and tries to hand the guitar back to me to play.

No way, no fucking way, fuck that shit, I'd rather swim in blood.

And I walk away.

In the diesel shed I danced with The Just Joans.