Adam Ant and the Scottish Gales

Image: MusicFeeds.com

Short Story Success
There was one awesome piece of news that came through last week while I was off recuperating from my wisdom teeth extraction: 11 months after it was first submitted, my short story, REGRETS, was picked up for publication by The Dublin Quarterly I am very excited to tell you that it will be published in the forthcoming issue.

Thanks
I’d like to thank everyone who contacted me through email, web and tweet, since yesterday’s post explaining where I’ve been this past week. From fellow authors to friends and even the local café where my sister and I spend our post-gig hangovers in the south side of Glasgow, messages of concern came through to see how I was doing. I thank you all.

Wind
Yesterday was a real drag getting into work. I managed the first half of the day without any painkillers but I caved by lunch—chicken soup, what else?—and that only made me tired.

The gales that swept havoc across Scotland almost put paid to my trip through to Glasgow, but not quite. I arrived at Waverley station to see all the boards change from ON TIME to CANCELLED shortly after half past 4. It was critical I got to Glasgow before 9pm; nothing was going to stand in my way.

All trains across the country were more or less canned, the Forth rail and road bridges were closed (no luck if you were gong to Fife) but after a dash from Waverley to the bus station, I was lucky to be number 6 in a queue for the Glasgow bus. By the time the bus pulled out the station at 4:45pm (5 mins later), the queue to get to Glasgow was out the door and into St. Andrews Square.

It took 90 minutes to get to the M8, and by the time I pulled into Glasgow it was almost 7pm. I wasn’t caring. My sister had kept a seat for me in Sloan’s Bar (fast becoming a pre-gig tradition for some fine nosh and drinks) and most importantly, I wasn’t gong to miss the gig.

Musical Roots
When I was 6 years old I discovered music. Ian Dury and the Blockheads released Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and I had discovered the entrance to a new frontier. And at such a young age!

In 1979 Madness released their One Step Beyond album and ska was injected into the mix. Then in 1980, Adam and the Ants hit the charts with their Kings of the Wild Frontier album and I was hooked. I had all three components of my musical soul: rock, ska and extravagant showmanship.

That is why there was no way in hell; no dental surgery, no 100mph gale force winds, no trouble with public transport—NOTHING would make me miss Adam Ant performing at the Glasgow Academy last night. I’ve seen Madness about 20-odd times, The Blockheads several times, but never Adam Ant. This was it!

Despite the fact he has a new band (The Good, the Bad and the Lovely Posse) that carried the music very well indeed; it was great to see so many old tracks pre-1978 being aired. Adam is as flamboyant as ever and I truly felt like a kid again hearing these tracks being belted out.

I remember being a small kid and looking at my portable slide screen player of Adam and the Ants on stage (a toy I can’t remember the name of—you put slides in contained on a circular piece of card and it enlarged the image when you looked inside) and wondering what it would be like to see them live. Last night, that dream came true.

The journey home was nowhere near as bad as the one going. The trains had restarted although with speed restrictions. The 51-minute journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Edinburgh took an hour and a half. But I wasn’t caring. I saw Adam Ant and that’s all that mattered.

Tonight
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