Close your eyes. Imagine
you’re in Memphis on a hot summer’s evening.
You’re in a bar where a band is on top form, cranking out covers of the
very best blues and soul hits that came out of the place. You’re dancing, you’re smiling fit to
bust. You’re singing along. You’re having a ball.
Except you’re in Glasgow, and the band is playing all their
own stuff and it sounds just like all those classics. They’re Vintage Trouble, and it feels just as
damn good.
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| "Hey Nalle - you forgot to put your tie on!" |
The die is set from the second Nalle Colt strides onstage,
unwraps some slide guitar worthy of Jimmy Page on ‘In My Time Of Dying’, and
lights the blue touchpaper on a frenetic ‘Run Like The River’. They segue into the yearning ‘Nobody Told Me’
beautifully, by means of a singalong passage, after which Ty Taylor asks “Can
we make this Fruitmarket into a dance party tonight?” Is he kidding? The place is going daft already.
All this may sound like unconstrained fandom. So sue me.
My other half hasn’t seen them before, and her face is a picture of gobsmacked
contentment. That’s the impact Vintage
Trouble have.
I can imagine that when VT got together they had a vision of
what they wanted to do. But jeez, the execution! ‘Strike Your Light’, with rattling drum
patterns from Rich Danielson, is a 60s throwback that totally inhabits the
spirit of ‘Twist And Shout’. Or maybe
‘Shout’ – take your pick. And then they
whack out ‘Another Man’s Words’ just to demonstrate that they can produce a classic
hook in a slower vein too.
They chuck in a couple of new songs, demonstrating that
they’re not standing still.
‘Rollercoaster’ and ‘Turn The Sky To Blue’ both have an air of funk
about them, the latter in particular essaying a Stevie Wonder vibe á la ‘Higher Ground’
perhaps. And their eye for
crowd-pleasing detail is evidenced by their introduction of a piper they met on
the street to lead a Highland dance party.
One answer to a wealth of material is to do what Springsteen
does, and just play for hours. Another
is to compress things by way of medleys, and for the time being that’s VT’s
chosen route. A mash-up of ‘You Better
Believe It’ and ‘Soul Serenity’ crash lands into ‘Angel City, California’,
which then melts into ‘Jezzebella’, which in turn downshifts into ‘Gracefully’
before they go full circle.
‘Doin’ What You Were Doin’’ reinforces their ability to hit
the nail smack on the head, its Smokey Robinson feel resulting in a swaying
mass of bodies, with Colt producing a sweet guitar solo into the bargain. And then they go in the other direction with
a revved up ‘Blues Hand Me Down’ as the soundtrack to Taylor’s inevitable
crowd-surfing. Throughout all of this
Danielson demonstrates a Charlie Watts-like versatility behind the drums –
visible this time rather than hidden away at the back as he was at the
Barrowlands last year – while Rick Barrio Dill bops away energetically on
bass. Oh yeah, and their harmonies are
spot on too.
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| Slydigs, with a little help - "It's E, then D, then G." |
They do a request spot for an encore, and go with the calls
for ‘Nancy Lee’. It’s as good a choice
as any, though I’d have liked them to find room for ‘Before The Teardrops’ too. And then it’s time to file out, having danced
the night away.
Slydigs are on support duty again, as they were last
autumn. They’re still gallus, as they
say in these parts, with drummer Pete Fleming still flailing away effectively in
the manner of Keith Moon crossed with Dave Grohl, only now with a worse
haircut. Nalle Colt appears to lend them
a hand on a decent ‘Hey Joe’/Zeppelin segueway, but their heart is really in
the land of Oasis, as an acoustic number echoes ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’, and
closer ‘Stiff Upper Lip’ recalls ‘Rock’n’Roll Star’. And it has to be said they have the
effervescence of Britpop rather than the stodge of Britrock. But making that count in the shadow of
Vintage Trouble is, as they say, a tough gig.
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