Added on Wednesday 16 Sep 2009

West End Volume 4

The Internet is a wonderful place to go for a wander and, on such a wander, I found the old Jockrock message board. When I say old, it was still active even if it now contained comments on Beatles reissues instead of the vitriolic slander against bands, venues and promoters that it used to be known for. Anyway, I got me thinking about what rock music is to Glasgow - oops, I meant Scotland - and where it is today.

Scotland has always been a breeding ground for rock music. It's been a strange breeding ground though. Influences get absorbed, adapted and cast back out into the masses. We don't follow fashion, we shoplift it. Whilst in Mono - one of the few record shops still left in Glasgow - a while back, I picked up a copy of a compilation called Messthetics #105 that contained tracks from 1977 to 1981 as the punk invasion hit Scotland and got repelled leaving only its fashions (?) and a healthy disrespect for authority. Come to think of it, we already had the latter. It was certainly refreshing to listen to the likes of The Exile and the Radio Ghosts and it made a trip back into my record collection something of a necessity to unearth other long forgotten gems. The funny thing was that this compilation was released by an American company. We don't do history either it would seem.

Returning to today, there's a very respectable amount of rock music out there for you to enjoy with a beer or two. There's melodrama and social commentary from Salon Society, stadium level theatrics from Sonny Marvello, the elegantly entrancing (they would have surely be on the Harvest label if this were the seventies) Ciro, the quirkily commercial Viragoes and, in a surprise entry to this chart of future fame after last night's gig, the melodic metal of Kemantian. There's plenty more out there but the aforementioned bands were more than enough evidence for these ears that rock music in Scotland is alive and well. You're never too old to rock.