Year: 2017

We all know Trainspotting, the movie. Based on an angry novel that rails against, well, pretty much everything it can, it hit a stylistic note that resonated, exposing the gritty side of life we all know lies beneath the social media glimmer.

This stage adaptation of the novel is a different beast, sticking closer to the novel and revealing two scenes which punch a darker, more twisted view on an already dark tale. However, for all the horror and despair, there are genuine moments of hilarity to balance them out. I definitely didn’t think I’d spend quite as much time laughing as I did.

Testament to the performances for helping move us from laughter to tears in short measure (the ‘baby death’ scene remains a harrowing, visceral moment), and it’s worth noting that most of the actors pull double, triple, and quadruple in one case, shift to keep the story moving as bit part characters drop in and out.

The staging echoes the overarching mood, harsh realities picked out in fluorescent, and some of the more powerful scenes are all the more striking for it. There is no hiding place for the audience here, nothing is shied away from, be it the desperate struggle to recover lost suppositories from ‘that’ toilet, to the moment Renton has sex with his dead brothers wife, right on his coffin.

Comparisons with the movie are easy to make (and lord knows a lot of the audience clearly had that frame of reference in mind as they whispered and giggled their way through the entire performance) but the latter mentioned scene was among the more powerful. I’d include the monologue from ‘Alison’ as she recovers from the death of her baby and a new life stretching ahead of her, all the while dealing with the type of asshole men that are writ large in the news at present.

As the closing scenes played out, I was left with a sense of a revitalised story, a raw view of how friendships can change and how ultimately we are all surviving as best we can, no matter what choices we have to make.

As a packed out Academy sang along with the final refrain of the evening, myself included in my usual slightly off-key baritone, Weezer acknowledged the crowd with well deserved smiles I stood and let the memories of twenty plus years wash over me.

From the minute they stepped on the stage, ripping their way through the first few tracks without pause, it was clear this band were exactly as you expected them, only louder. Sometimes this doesn’t work if the band can’t bring an extra dimension to their songs, but sometimes it does and a lot of that is down to the strength of the songs themselves.

Weezer sit in my record library in the category best defined as ‘not played all that often but when I remember about them I love every track’. Their riff heavy pop songs play to a sweet spot in my musical psyche and the slightly offsetting visual of the short, geek spectacled, slight lead sing and songwriter thrashing out some stupidly catchy chord sequences, only made the energy coming from the stage all the more obvious.

Watching a live band settle into a gig is always fascinating, and after those first quick fire tracks despite Weezer showed now sign of abating, cramming 21 songs into a 90 minute set, you could see their energy levels rise to meet where the bouncing fans were from the outset.

But it’s not just noisy guitars, oh no, that River guy knows how to write a catchy rephrase and almost every song was sung back at the band word for perfect word. The setlist also had a good rhythm to it, letting both band and audience breathe when needed, before heading straight back into massive riffs.

Lacking a flamboyant front man, Weezer stick to what they know best, good simple rock songs and sometimes that’s all you need to send a hot, sweaty, happy crowd out into the Glasgow rain to cool off.

Addendum: Rivers Cuomo features in an episode of Song Exploder discussing his song writing approach in general, and how ‘Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori’ was created.

The sixth menu at Six by Nico would surely have to be an affair to remember, right? Well I’ll admit I was a little underwhelmed by the menu this time around but, having been pleasantly delighted in the past, I still had a little tremor of excitement as we sat in Kelvingrove Cafe prior to the meal.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Gordon McLean (@gmclean)

The menu for our sixth visit (from the website):

1. CELERIAC PANNACOTTA – Forager Salad / Red Cabbage Gazpacho
2. SMOKED PHEASANT TERRINE – Rainbow Carrot / Chestnut Crumb / Wild Berry Gel
3. FORAGED WILD MUSHROOM – Parisienne Gnocchi / Parmesan & Truffle Royale
4. RAINBOW TROUT – Wild Sorrel / Toasted Hazelnut / Swiss Chard
5. GROUSE (£5 SUP) OR VENISON HAUNCH – Beetroot Sauerkraut / Burnt Onion Jus / Blackberries
6. TRIO OF APPLE – Pan Perdu / Cinnamon Chantilly / Brioche Parfait

But first, as always, Snacks!

These weren’t listed when we booked so it was only when we arrived and got to see the menu that we had an idea of what was in store. It turned out to be two perfectly boiled quail eggs which were deep fried in a crumb (parmesan I think), a tiny beetroot meringue with wonderfully sharp goats cheese filling, and the smoothest, richest, earthiest wild mushroom veloute I’ve ever had. Ohh and some sourdough bread and truffle butter.

Some big flavours to get our palettes tingling before the first course arrived.

I’m not a big celeriac fan so was quite glad that the little cube was sitting in a delicious rich red cabbage gazpacho. However, despite having eaten here five times already so I should’ve known better, the pannacotta was wonderfully subtle and gave a rich creaminess to the gazpacho, with a few drops of truffle oil floating on the top making all the difference.

Swiftly after, a point I’ll come back to later, was the smoked pheasant terrine. Telling this was the least favourite dish of the evening for me and my companions. That’s not to say that it was bad, it was well cooked and presented but just seemed to lack any real flavour punch, it was almost as if the lifting of the cloche, released more than just the smoke it was containing.

Having not had gnocchi for a long time I was excited to try the next dish, but obviously the star of the show was the foraged wild mushrooms. Coupled with some parmesan shavings, a parmesan crisp, and a return of the wonder that is the humble truffle, this was an absolute belter of a dish. A mixture of textures and flavours from the different types of mushroom, including a few pickled ones just to give a quick sweet vinegar hit to the tastebuds, coupled with the parisienne gnochi and the parmesan and I’d have happily have eaten this dish twice over.

At this point we had to ask for a little extra time as the plates had been coming out thick and fast. It’s not the first time it’s happened and is probably where you’d expect the restaurant to make some improvements. The food is very high quality but occasionally the service lets things down a little. Of course they were very accommodating but it was good to have 5 mins or so to appreciate the previous dish before the next one arrived.

I’m not quite sure how they cooked the trout – I’d guess at sous vide – but it was delicious. I’d never have thought to pair trout with hazelnut but the toasted hazelnut crumb was a wonderful compliment to the gentle flavours of the trout. I’m not sure the wild sorrel and chard added much to the dish though, but sometimes simple is best and the trout was quite happy to speak for itself.

Grouse or Venison? We all chose venison! And ohhh my heavens what a wonderful plate of flavours, textures and surprises. The venison fillet was cooked to perfection, with a wonderful sear on the soft tender slices that melted in your mouth, and the accompanying beetroot sauerkraut was rich without being overpowering. The burnt onion jus, blackberry reduction, a few bits of blackberry, and some small cubes of beetroot were dusted with a dark cocoa powder and it all came together in a rolling mesh of flavours.

The venison was by far the stand out dish last night for me, although part of me is regretting not taking the grouse option. I’ve tried grouse in the past but I’m pretty sure it would sit well as a replacement for the venison on this plate. Well worth considering.

As ever, with good company and stellar food, time flies and I was, once again, taken aback that we’d reached the last dish of the evening. Trio of apple doesn’t sound all that inspiring but as the plates were presented it was clear this was a lot more than just ‘apple three ways’, turns out it was ‘apple four ways’, with a sharp green apple gel to one side, a couple of apple flowers drenched in a light syrup, some fresh cut red apple slices, and the entire dish sat on a bed of apple puree. Add in the cinnamon chantilly, the brioche parfait, and a wonderful crumb topping and this dish would’ve sat well in the Childhood menu… a very sophisticated, deconstructed, apple crumble! Plates were soon cleared for this one!

And then it was over. The sixth menu of Six by Nico was definitely a hit, with only one dish that didn’t really dazzle, but I’m being very picky as the level of cooking is consistently high across the board. Even the ‘ok’ dishes are of a standard that many other restaurants don’t achieve, which is why we keep going back.

Is this michelin star level food? Perhaps, but I don’t think the restaurant is set up with that in mind, and whilst I think the food could be (if you collated their best dishes into one menu… hint hint Nico!) but the serving style can be a little off beat which is absolutely not an issue for me, but likely falls short of michelin standard. But then that isn’t the point of Six by Nico, it’s always been a relaxed, informal, fun experience that just happens to have amazing food on offer.

Have I mentioned that the set menu is £25 for six courses (and you can swap courses between the main and vegetarian options). Add in £5 for the ‘Snacks’, and £5 for an apertif, chuck a bottle of wine in and for £45-50 a head you are being treated to high end cuisine in a laid back environment. The food quality remains high, as does the execution of each plate. It really is a fine dining experience on a budget.

Addendum

For the last few visits we’ve taken to trying to rank each menu. We were in the midst of this conversation when the bill turned up and our server asked how our meal was. We mentioned we were ‘ranking’ the menu and it turns out that our pick of ‘best’ menu is what most people have said! The Chippie remains everyones favourite.

Earlier this year I listened to the remastered, reissued Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – an album that was released six years before I was born. The first thing that struck me was how similar it was to Nevermind by Nirvana. No, really.

Nirvana had been making some waves but the first time I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit on MTV it made me stop and turn and stare. What was this? It wasn’t heavy metal, it wasn’t indie rock, it was new, and once I managed to get a copy of the album it stayed on my stereo, on repeat, loudly, for several weeks. It was the soundtrack for my first winter at college and to this day still invokes memories of student unions and drunken nights of experimentation, it also opened the door to another band that has never left me, Pearl Jam (who had released their first album a month prior).

I grew up listening to Queen. A band I latched onto in my parents LP collection, nestled alongside my Dads folk albums, and a plethora of singer/songwriter records (Sedaka, Joel, Manilow), ohhh and that copy of a Saxon album. I’ll skip past the bit where I totally ignored my Mum’s Beatles albums because the covers ‘looked like old music’ (don’t worry, I’ll come back to the Beatles soon).

Of all those early Queen albums ‘Jazz’ is the abiding memory; that weird black and white spiral cover, and the range of songs was what grabbed my attention – Fat Bottomed Girls, Dreamer’s Ball, Bicycle Race, Jealousy, Don’t Stop Me Now. This was a rock band play jazzy piano bar numbers? Silly songs about riding bikes? And to this day the drum riff in Fat Bottomed Girls still gives me goosebumps. It was a good grounding for my first forays into the world of popular music.

Queen ‘The Works’ was the second album I ever bought (the first was Adam & the Ants, Friend or Foe) and they remain a firm favourite, the type of band I love to sing a long to because I know all the words. Yet despite the emotional link to my childhood their songs never really spoke to me and as I grew into an adolescent I found their heaviest tracks didn’t rock hard enough and their later tracks all seemed a little too radio friendly (I prefer early Queen, gimme Sheer Heart Attack over The Miracle any day).

I was kind of stuck in my musical habits, but it was Top of the Pops and the Top 40 on the radio that was my gateway for those years. Iron Maiden were next up on the list – I can probably still remember all the words to every song on Piece of Mind – as I explored a heavier sound, gravitating towards big stupid guitar riffs like many a young teenager.

Having a parent who is a secondary school teacher also, occasionally helped. Imagine my 14 year old surprise when I walk into the family kitchen to find my Dad doing the dishes whilst Appetite for Destruction is blasting from the cassette deck because ‘the kids at school were listening to it’. The opening stuttering loops of Welcome to the Jungle is also on the list of goosebump moments.

Heavy Metal had me for a few years, but it wasn’t until 1991 when an 18 year old me first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit. That distorted, fuzzy, broken guitar ripped through the airwaves, and a visceral voice attacked the chorus and OMYGODWHATISTHIS was all I could manage. Over and over, the bass thumping, the drums thudding, volume at 10. We had moved on to CDs now, insert disc, set to repeat, repeat, repeat.

I’d never felt anything like it, never heard anything like it, and it felt new and, as cliched as it now sounds, it felt real. This raw, beautiful, screaming voice, those soft and loud songs, the pop sensibilities that kept getting ripped up and stomped on. Nirvana were the Queen I had longed for and I had only had to wait 10 years for them.

Fast forward to 2017 and whilst it was Nirvana that dragged me to my musical home, it was Pearl Jam that stuck with and grew with me. They fed my desire for meaningful words to sing, for dark songs for darker days, for uplifting anthemic beats and howling guitars. Sonically they were in the same dirty world as Nirvana, a basement growl thrust into the ether, but then THAT VOICE came booming and hollering at me from inside my own head.

I’ve only seen them live once and I will happily, joyously admit that I wept big fat tears and adopted the lyrics of the opening song of the set into my heart once again. Release Me, sings Vedder, howls Vedder, his throat ripping my heart asunder. As I flashed back to those first listens, curled up in my old bedroom, my teenage angst writ large. A matter of timing for sure, a happy coincidence of lyric and emotion, something I’ve rarely felt since, at least not until a little band called Elbow and a man called Guy Garvey reached into my heart and my soul, pulling line after wonderful line for his songs.

I veer to playlists more and more these days but sometimes it’s good to go back to an album or two. In ‘Ten’ by Pearl Jam and ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana, you have two of my Desert Island discs. Sgt.Pepper would have to be another, yet it wasn’t one of those buried in my parents collection (my Mum preferred their early stuff, she was that screaming, hysterical teen). I discovered it years later.

There’s been a lot written about the remastered release that was issued earlier this year and whilst it’s not quite like listening to the album for the first time back in 1969 it is definitely a markedly new sound for a well worn friend.

But stop and try and imagine something.

Imagine you are that child who is starting to explore music. Who has the lay of the land, can pick out reggae from soul from folk from classical. Who has a framework within which to work, a way of discovering related artists and songs.

Now, can you imagine what it must’ve been like to listen to Sgt.Pepper for the first time?

Listening today feels a bit like stepping into a time capsule, but not back to 1969, instead we are transported to an entirely different reality, taken through wonderous vistas, fantastical places and everyday melancholy. Each song is a perfect example of itself and I never tire of listening to it, even more so with this new release as you are able to pick out individual instruments and voices much better than before.

There hadn’t been an album like that before and whilst each song is memorable in it’s own sense, the format and construction was so completely new to the mass audience it was presented to it must’ve been utterly, wonderfully, bemusing. Imagine taking your new Beatles LP home, pouring over that album cover, reading the sleeve notes, before sliding the dark vinyl from its sleeve and dropping the needle and OMYGODWHATISTHIS!

Will we ever get another Sgt.Pepper, another Nevermind moment? As music skews away from the mainstream more and more, and pop music is continually filtered and processed down, I have to wonder if future generations will experience the same kind of bewildered awe that some of us have been lucky enough to experience.

Albums (not tracks) that land with an impact are few – Beyonce’s Lemonade springs to mind – and typically the impact these days is not purely musical, it requires a level of culture resonance and weight for an album to make a big impact on the masses.

But I know that somehow, from somewhere, an album will arrive.

Everyone will stop.

Everyone will listen.

Everyone will react.

And I just hope I’m still around to hear it too.