So, yesterday was Hey You Get Off My Pavement, the annual alldayer by the lovely folks at Mono. The concept: a festival-like atmosphere in the city centre with awesome local bands, shopping, the wonderful Monorail, vegan foods and of course plentiful alcohol. Your ideal Sunday in Glasgow really.

The reality included all of the above but with constant pouring rain. Normally this would kill off a festival but luckily this one is held in a courtyard with concrete underfoot and sheltered areas all round so it only dampened the enthusiasm a little. The line-up was pretty fantastic already and the secret surprise guests turned out to be Franz Ferdinand which made us all feel a bit smug. Yes, we may be standing around in the rain like losers but you’re missing a tiny gig by Franz Ferdinand.

Anyway, I was doing a little stall inside (thanks everyone who stopped by!) so I was nicely sheltered but also cut off from the bands. I did see bits of Dananananaykroyd (riotously fun as ever) and The Twilight Sad (one of those bands who definitely have something and will probably do well but just don’t hugely appeal to me. You know?). Sadly Part Chimp pulled out but De Salvo seemed to be doing a reasonable job at trying to break some sound barriers in their absence.

Once I had packed up my stall it was time for Franz Ferdinand and it was still pissing it down but we are from Glasgow so we had hoods and hats and umbrellas. I haven’t seen Franz play since way back at the beginning so I was quite looking forward to seeing them. And thus quite surprised to discover they were really dull. I kept thinking they were playing new songs but then I would slowly recognise them as album tracks played in a rather lacklustre manner. No hits and nothing much particularly exciting. Very disappointing.

I might have blamed it in some part on the rain or the sound but Errors were on after and sounded immense. They managed a bigger moshpit than Franz and in more rain as well. Errors have been playing all over the place recently and have quite obviously grown more confident in their talents. They may still look like they’ve wandered in off the street but they’ve lost a lot of their previous rabbit in the headlights nervousness, and their onstage banter is even almost decipherable. But none of that really matters when you have a synth that goes URRRRRRR and you play it very loudly alongside those chiming guitar lines and the relentless drumming. By the time they pulled out a glitched-up extended Mr Milk people were punching the air and dancing in the rain and Franz Ferdinand were all but forgotten.

I love Glasgow. I really do.

(I love Mono too. Thanks to everyone for such a fun day.)

Posted: 08|6|07 at 7:02 pm. Filed under: live reviews.
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