Scotland Calling

Time for a quick progress report from North Of The Border, written at the times and in the places indicated, a little garbled here and there but left unedited...

Thursday 14th, 10.56 am, Room 52 at The Bothwell Bridge Hotel in Glasgow.

I like Scotland. It's a great country isn't it? and it's always a great place to play. We've got five shows in five days here this week - excellent. 
We - Ruts D.C. (Dave, Segs and myself) with our sound man Bob and merch girl Rhiannon - travelled up to Glasgow yesterday on the 12.30 pm train from Euston Station while our 'new' driver Harry (I don't mean that he's never driven before, it's just the first time that we've worked with him!) had made the epic journey North in his bus with all our equipment, stopping off to see family and friends on the way. He'd also dropped my ailing amp off at the Marshall factory on the way - it stopped working a few songs into our performance at The Undercover Festival in Margate last Saturday. Bugger! I'm hopeful that there's not much wrong with it as the lights were still on but there was definitely no one home... thankfully there was a spare amp available so the show continued (rather well as it happens) but it's obviously something that has got to be sorted out. 
Last night's gig at The Audio sold out - not bad for a Wednesday night eh? Ok, it's not the biggest venue in the World, but a sell out is a sell out... although I'm currently hampered by a deaf right ear (Earwax! Bah!) I think we played well - tonight we're in Dundee where we've played a couple of times before. I remember the first time being a great night while the second one was a slightly odd evening which wasn't too well attended (not much promotion apparently) and the support band played 'Staring At The Rude Boys'. Strange. Let's see what happens this time.

Friday 15th, 11.10 am leaving Dundee.

'It's all glamour this rock 'n' roll lark' thought Leigh as he helped Harry carry a speaker cabinet up the seemingly endless flights of stairs. As he stumbled breathlessly through the double doors leading into the venue he thanked gawd that the cabinet was on wheels while The Lurkers looked down on him from the wall near the bar. My heart's in the shadow - well it feels as though it's going to burst through my shirt to be honest. It's great to be in show business... there's a statue of Desperate Dan a few hundred yards away in the town centre - we could perhaps do with him here now. 
Five-and-a-bit hours later my heart once again felt as though it might burst through my shirt, only this time for a very different reason. We'd just played an excellent (even though I say so myself!) set at a very appreciative audience and all was right with the world. We added 'Tears On Fire' to the set, a tricky song to play but I thought that we did it well - we'd ran through it during a sound check that also included 'Suffragette City' and a new song called 'Innocent' which isn't finished yet but is showing great promise. The Beat Generator turned out to be a great venue (it'd be even better if it had a bloomin' lift!) and the riskily - named Invercarse Hotel was a nice hotel. It would have been good to have spent a bit more time there but the road to Aberdeen beckons. Get in the van Leigh - it's all glamour, this rock 'n' roll lark...

Saturday 15th, 10.42 am Room 217 at The Douglas Hotel in Aberdeen.

Victory from the jaws of defeat. That's quite a saying isn't it? I wonder where it comes from? It was used more than a few times last night, and not without reason - Drummonds is a good venue for any number of reasons (not least the girls behind the bar) but sadly the P.A. system isn't one of them. Bob is something of a wizard in my not-so-humble-opinion, and he needed all of his magical powers last night - a fraught sound check nearly fell apart when Segs uttered the immortal words 'we might as well just all get pissed, I can't hear a thing'. Not the best thought to have. 
Fast forward three hours and the place is packed  - The Media Whores are on stage and the sound is... ok... much better than earlier anyway. That's a relief. I wonder how we'll get on? 
Two hours later I'm wringing my shirt out in the dressing room. A great gig. A really great gig. Audience fantastic. Band sounded great. Thank Christ for that. From the jaws of defeat indeed. 

Sunday 16th, 11.31 am Room 304 at The Holiday Inn in Edinburgh.

It's our last day and indeed night in Scotland. Shame. These have been great gigs, with some wonderful moments.If you'd have been at La Belle Angele last night you'd have seen a brave attempt at '20th Century Boy' (Marc Bolan had died 40 years ago to the day) during an eventful rendition of 'In A Rut' which also the stage being plunged into total (and I mean total) darkness when the stage lights failed. Apparently there was a problem with the lighting desk - they also went off during  'Love In Vain' which resulted in more than a few, erm, jazz chords from your humble narrator. Let's hope that never makes it onto YouTube... the sound check also featured an unexpected incident when Psychic Investor Mark (during the PledgeMusic campaign for 'Music Must Destroy' you could become a Psychic Investor which meant that you could come to sound checks) responded to Segs's question 'any requests?' with the words 'Out Of Order' - I reckon that song was last played sometime in 1980 when the band was still The Ruts. We had a go. That's all I'm saying! We also had another go at 'Innocent' which I'm hoping will turn out to be a really good song; it might even make it to the stage sometime in this batch of gigs. Then again it might not - we played an 18 song set with a 3 song encore so it might be more of a case of 'what do we leave out?' rather than 'when do we play it?' Still that's not a bad problem to have. Maybe it's not a problem at all? 
Tonight we play in Falkirk. I've never been there before. We leave at midday so I'd better get my gear together.

Monday 18th, 12.35 pm on the train home.

Well that was a funny old night. It was an odd show to end on - we played well but the audience seemed rather subdued resulting in us thinking that we weren't going down very well. However as so often happens this wasn't the case - when we spoke to people afterwards many said that it was the best show that they'd ever seen at The Warehouse. And one person went further, observing that 'this is Sunday night in Scotland - everybody's been drinking since Friday afternoon'. Oh and The Bay City Rollers were apparently also playing in Falkirk last night, although I for one am not sure how that effected things. But however you look at it, it's been a pleasure to be in Scotland - but as previously discussed, it usually is.

So - was the Falkirk show any good? Click here to find out!