[For the full slew of pictures, please see this Flickr set]
And time for the annual Ginger gig. Well, bi-annual seeing as he did an acoustic set in Glasgow about 6 months ago that I missed. This year’s shindig was moved from the Garage to the smaller G2 which is a shame, but it’s still not bad and meant the crowd could definitely be described as “intimate”.
We caught the tail end of one of the support bands and they weren’t much cop. A lot of effort, but just nothing that great. Sorry to whoever they were.
Last December, the gig was pure Wildhearts numbers. I knew every one and it was fantastic. This year… I didn’t even recognise the first couple of songs at all. I assume they’re from Ginger’s current band, though I’m not sure if the musicians on stage with him were part of that. Let’s face it – historically he’s not had the greatest records at keeping a band together! I think I recognised the bassist from last year though.
Eventually, Ginger wiped off some rather obscure facepaint and the band launched into “I Wanna Go Where The People Go“, a nice bouncy number that I could finally get into. The set was a mix of predominantly older material with a few more recent tracks. I overheard a couple of guys after the gig. One was telling his mate that he had the recent albums and had listened to them a couple of times, that they weren’t bad but that they weren’t a patch on the old stuff which he’d enjoyed the most. Pretty much what I was thinking.
Ginger, however, is such a good entertainer because his between-song banter is so good. He’s very much “one of the lads”. Rather than preaching about record executives and how the government shouldn’t be involved in US foreign policy like some bands, he just informs everyone that the “hurricane” they braved to get the the venue was “well, a bit **** really”. Then launching into a song about Hurricane Bawbag that the band had written than afternoon.
He spent a large portion of the show singing into a microphone adorned with a pair of y-fronts thrown from the audience, which apparently had a phone number written on them. Such is the nature of a Ginger gig!
The rest of the band were pretty good apart from the rather strange woman who took up one of the microphones. The sound wasn’t great, so it’s hard to tell if she was there for harmonies or what. Regardless, she looked pretty and everything, but also looked ridiculously out of place. You know the way someone looks when they’re just not really sure what to do? Like a competition winner dragged out of a crowd to stand next to one of their heroes? That’s the impression she gave. Strange.
The gig finished a little earlier than I think the band had expected as they were informed of the Garage’s early curfew after they went on stage. A shame as it obviously meant missing a good number of classic tracks out. Amongst them “Geordie in Wonderland”. I’m gutted that my favourite – and a regular int he set – had to be skipped just so flipping students could get a couple more cheap drinks in.
Life goes on. As does Ginger. And I’m sure he’ll be back next year – hurricane or not!
