More fun than expected.
For those of you unaware of the Oran Mor venue in Glasgow, its situated in the heart of the West End and as well as being a gig venue, it is known for its beautiful surroundings, innovative lunchtime theatre series and for hosting a club where the older-set of West-Enders who still think they’re hip like to come out to play at the weekend.
Yes, most weekend nights the venue is filled with ladies with orange faces and bleached blonde-hair looking like the aunties of WAGs and the men are rich, stupid and have no problems in indicating how rich or stupid they are which means that the men and women are well suited. You can well imagine that the music that gets played on these nights is pretty horrific and reminiscent of a bye-gone era.
It was therefore with abject horror that the American Music Club came onstage and announced their introduction with a snippet of an Abba song and the sense of fear that some of the regular incumbents of the club would sneak in and take over the night with their brattish style and behaviour was a major concern.
Thankfully, the band switched tack to make a reference to the River Clyde and then launched into ‘Hello Amsterdam’ and the evening was back on track. A noticeable factor in the early songs was how often shirts were mentioned in the lyrics and when you added this to some of the stylish hats that the band were wearing, then you could say that American Music Club are an extremely fashionable band!
Even though the venue has been open for a considerable amount of time, it is still to convince this writer and yet again, sound problems in the Oran Mor were managing to hamper the performance by a band. Throughout the opening numbers, the higher ranges of Eitzels vocals were being lost which was extremely frustrating for band and crowd alike.
Not that the majority of the crowd would have noticed as the venue was populated by a large amount of intolerant drunks who never shut up throughout the entire set. For all the talk of the younger generation being a cheeky lot, it has to be said that the crowd at the NME Tour the previous week was impeccably behaved compared to the crowd at the American Music Club gig, which was played out to the backdrop of continual shouts and cat-calls from people who were probably allowed out for their one night of drinking of the month. With every between song story halted by song requests and interruptions, the flow of the night was largely disjointed and yet again, the jerks had made their presence felt.
The set had a far rockier feel than a lot of people were expecting from the gig but as this was the first time this reviewer had seen the band live, it came across as lively and focused and benefited from having no prior expectations as to what the night would contain. At times, it was really raw and Mark Eitzel was far funnier than what certain elements of the music press make him out to be, he was certainly on form as a showman.
‘Home’ got the biggest reception from the crowd and it was almost with an ironic glee that the final song of the night was ‘Jesus Hands’, with its “I can tell you’re not a drinking crowd” line, which was greeted with laughter and many a raised eyebrow.
It was an interesting night that could have been better but by being located in a venue that can border on the soul-less on a bad night was never going to give the American Music Club the best chance of success.