Tyla + Audiology + The Black Lights + Cyster Scalpel
Glasgow Rockers, 19th April 2009
The Bulletproof Poet is back in town, dragging in his wake an ill-assorted crew of support bands that range from the truly appalling to the really quite good.
Mercifully, I've forgotten the name of the first band, which is probably just as well as it saves me from reading their unhappy emails when they stumble upon this review. It seems many support bands have nothing else to do but Google themselves. Here's a suggestion: trying practising your instruments instead.
This would be good advice for our nameless friends (three beardy Lord of the Rings fans in eyeliner), who are possibly one of the worst bands I've ever seen, bless them (and I've been to the Musselburgh Music Festival). They bravely but bizarrely end with a cover of Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out For A Hero' (I guess the element of surprise is everything), which sounds like Dee Snyder on Sing Star. Very, very odd.
Anyone following that lot would seem like Hanoi Rocks, but actually the Black Lights (yeah, okay, the name is not inspiring) are really quite good. The splendidly tall lead vocalist thrashes his gangly limbs about like Alice in the early '70s, and they produce a pleasing glam rock meets Pearl Jam noise that I wouldn't mind sitting through again.
Local boys Audiology are also good, if you like that kind of nu-fangled anguished stuff (and have a penchant for funny High School Musical style hair). But by now it's 11 o'clock and still no sign of Tyla and we have work the following day and are on the wrong side of Scotland…
By the time Wolverhampton's answer to Oscar Wilde hits the stage, the crowd has dwindled. A lot. Put it this way: our hero buys us all a drink. And he can't be minted, or he wouldn't be playing Rockers on a Sunday night to an audience of 28.
Of course he's chuffing marvellous, both as musician and raconteur, treating us to a beautifully maudlin set of raspy-throated, Jagermeister-tinted, Guinness-soaked classics new and old, from 'Last Bandit' to 'Bess', interspersed with sharply witty observations on life and love, art and alcohol and why he's not a rock star. But while his banter with the 'crowd' is admirable, we came to hear him, not the drunken singalong attempts of the Housemartin lookalikes at the front of the stage, and by the time 'How Come It Never Rains' has descended into karaoke chaos, I've kind of had enough.
Tyla is perhaps one of the most underrated artists this country has ever produced, and it's a crying shame that he's ended up shambling about from crappy club to corner pub like… well, I guess like the 20th century, ballad-peddling gypsy he's always been at heart.
POSTSCRIPT: Believe it or not, band #1 did find this review - but being rather charming gentlemen, they didn't hold it against me. So for the record, they're called Cyster Scalpel and they do sound better on their MySpace page than they did live here!
Dogs D'Amour, 17th and 18th October 2005
