January & February Shows.
From Celtic Connections 2025 and beyond.
I have not been as active on my Substack as I wanted to be or hoped to be.
On other platforms I'd feel the need to apologise for the lack of contact or the lack of content.
But on this one I always feel the opposite way, as if we should apologise for clogging up your inbox.
Through January and February I was out and about photographing gigs and writing reviews.
I covered 9 shows at the Celtic Connections festival as well as an album launch and caught a couple of others for fun along the way. Including my friends playing a matinee show at the Glad Cafe. A venue that I'd never been to before for a gig.
The matinee gig was an experiment.
It featured my pals Scunner, celebrating 21 years of relative obscurity. The Nanobots, a space synth punk duo and occasional Rezillos and my other pals Miss the Occupier, who make indie pop guitar tunes and were sporting their new keyboard player.
For a 1pm gig up against the 6 Nations Calcutta Cup game and both Rangers and Celtic in action that day they pulled a decent crowd.
There were a lot of children brought along too which changed the whole dynamic. Children probably aren't allowed to attend evening gigs in venues like this.
To me this experiment was a success and it must be good for the venue too as they were able to put on 2 shows that day.
We were out the door by 3:30pm so it meant there were no hassles for last buses or trains and plenty time for you to go off and do something different for the rest of your day.
It was also a good fun gig.
Before I lived in the city my last bus home from pretty much anywhere was around 9pm.
It made going to things limiting and expensive.
Yet if things had run a couple of hours earlier everything would have been fine and I could have gone anywhere.
I really think that matinee shows or earlier starts have to be more commonplace.
Even in the big venues.
If you go to the 12,000 seat OVO Hydro venue and you need a train to get home you will probably have to walk out before the encore in order to make your way back to Queen Street or Central Station.
The Hydro sends questionnaires after shows and I've always pointed this out.
You cannot be an accessible venue if audience members have spent a small fortune to attend and then can't stay to watch the full show.
It's not right. But to be honest. I'd rather go the small show any day.
They're more fun.
Support your local venues and support new music.
Meanwhile, earlier in January.
For Celtic Connections I put in requests for Photography passes as we usually do but for some reason this year when they got back to me they had given me review tickets as well.
I thought "OK, I'll just do more work and make more stuff"
So along with the photos and writing I did for others I made an abridged version of my reviews and used alternate photos to make an Ebook or Ezine of the whole thing. 82 of the to be precise.
you can find that on my website here.
I want to make more Ebooks and other digital products. Both to sell and to offer to paid subscribers.
Hiding posts behind a paywall is not something that I've ever been a fan of.
I'd rather offer something of value instead.
Something that took a bit of effort to make.
In picking things to cover I always look for the Scottish bands.
That what I'm into, it's my thing. It's what I've always been interested in.
I don't care about the genre or their level of popularity or fame.
Just artists putting out interesting work and putting on interesting shows.
I know that basing my work around something like that means I will be forever stuck at a level of obscurity compared to doing something trendy. Just like my friend's bands.
But this is my thing.
Doing something else would not be authentic, although I don't suppose that authenticity really matters anymore in these days of AI. Or does it?
The whole point of doing something like this is to make a niche your own and not follow what it trending or mainstream.
That's the whole reason I named my site here on Substack "Conform".
Because it doesn't.
Mainstream media is all about conforming. They were always about telling you what bands to listen to, or what films to go and see or what clothes to wear.
Nobody challenges anything these days, they just regurgitate press releases. And for me the mainstream media has never represented or shown my reality or my life.
Ever.
To proving my point is the coverage of Storm Eowyn where one of the worst damaged buildings was in my hometown. Where none of the media outlets could get the name right in their coverage.
This year's Celtic Connections had quite a lot of Scottish bands.
From the celebration gigs that KT Tunstall and the Bluebells were playing at the Barrowlands to the album launch of Mellow Party and the Dumfries Community Choir.
Add to that, visits to the lovely surroundings of St Luke's, Cottiers Theatre and the Mackintosh Church.
At St Luke's on the opening weekend I saw Brownbear perform with a string quartet.
That was a really special evening.
I also caught the band of displaced Shetlanders called Middle Class Guilt at their launch gig for their album “The Committee”.
We really like this band. They're unlikely to hit the big time anytime ever due to releasing their album on cassette, which I bought of course, and the fact that they make pretty weird music.
Again, a band that are very much doing their own thing.
I had two visits to the Tramway on the south side which is a venue that I've not been to very much over the years. The place is usually used for theatre type shows and that was how it was on my first visit for the innovative gig theatre piece called A Giant on a Bridge.
This show is going to happen again at this year's Edinburgh Festival.
Theatre set ups are actually always a bit of a pain to photograph as you're restricted in where you can go.
On the second visit I saw a man juggling glow in the dark balls in the middle of the crowd which I will never have an answer as to why. At least I got the photo.
I also saw a band called Dlú that I've followed since I first saw them perform at the Open Stage in 2018. Which they ended up as a winner of.
At Cottiers I saw Broken Chanter play the biggest gig I've seen them do. Singer David MacGregor's previous band Kid Canaveral is probably the band that I have seen the most. This might have been my third time seeing this incarnation.
In support was Raveloe, with Kim playing a mostly solo set.
I first saw her performing a few years ago at a charity gig in a pub and have followed ever since.
It's funny that I remember that bands and not the causes that these type of nights support.
At the Mackintosh Church on the last night I saw Pictish Trail and on the way in picked up a flyer for an after party. Except the after party sort of started before the gig.
And that's the thing that Celtic Connections has lost over the years.
The end of the festival used to be the last night of the Festival Club where Kevin MacLeod the compare would put on a big golden smoking jacket and come out and sing covers of hits and oldies with the ensemble band.
It was the best night and yet it's lost since they've moved from the Art School venue.
Pictish Trail and support band Afterlands played a couple of sets that really made use of the acoustics of the old church and it's always a nice place to be. But it's not the best venue in terms of facilities. It's a church.
I've seen everyone involved in one guise or another but I didn't know the Afterlands music before this gig. And it's one that I have listened to quite a bit since seeing them.
On a day off I went to the Danny Kyle Open Stage and saw some of the emerging talent perform.
This is sort of a competition. Like a Celtic battle of the bands I suppose although as the host Liz Clarke will always say, everyone who performs is a winner.
It's just that some win bigger than others.
Unfortunately there was also a loser this year and for me it was Jim Byrne & Friends.
Not because of their songs or performance, because they were perfectly fine.
I quite enjoyed seeing them actually and have seen them before. But because the second they started playing everyone's phone blared the Red Alert siren warning for the oncoming storm the next day.
Even mine, which is always on silent.
They did well to cope with it but I felt it was unfair on them.
The Open Stage is broadcast and run in partnership with Celtic Music Radio and they have an archive of everyone who took part. I gave this one a listen and they've either managed to edit this out or the sound engineer was skilful enough to avoid capturing the unwanted intrusion.
My aim is to have more regular posts on here.
I have some projects in the pipeline that I will share and I’m going to make some more ebooks. But no spoilers for future posts.
Until next time.
Slainte!
Andrew