Strange Daze
Usually seen as front man for the Wildhearts Ginger is something of a surprise addition to the main stage at Guilfest & it soon transpires that many of the crowd don’t actually know who he is!
Hitting the stage resplendent in a freshly acquired kilt and accompanied by a full band complete with backing singers he instantly looks at home but he’s not going to have it all his own way today. The crowd isn’t very big and he goes down well enough as he works through a handful of tunes from his solo career. The sound is brilliant despite not being loud enough, ‘Drinking in the Daytime’ and ‘Yeah,Yeah,Yeah’ sound great and whilst they don’t have the punch of The Wildhearts they are as hook laden as you’d expect.
Ginger is well known for his amusing between song banter but it falls on deaf ears today as pretty much everything he says is met with silence and nobody would’ve been surprised to see some tumbleweed blowing across the stage. To his credit he never gives up (although mentioning anal sex at tea time was probably not advisable) and it certainly doesn’t affect the performance. The backing singers are in fine voice and they add a little something extra as they dance around the stage. ‘Mother City’ and ‘Supersonic Shake’ lean more towards The Wildhearts and it seems a short forty minutes as he leaves the stage to yet more polite applause. It’s been a fine performance in the face of indifference but Ginger is in such positive mood these days that you get the feeling if only one or two of the crowd were converted today then he’d consider it job done.