Ginger Live

Ivory Blacks, Glasgow, 12th of May 2009, 9.15pm, singer, song writer, guitar player and frontman of The Wildhearts Ginger hits the stage with his solo band for an evening of music, fun, banter, and drunken Glaswegians. Ivory Blacks is a tiny place, the band has to travel directly through the crowd to reach the stage, they're hailed with riotous applause and when it dies down Ginger tells the crowd "Just pretend we haven't come on yet" and proceeds to tune his guitar, which earns a laugh from the crowd and more or less sets the tone for the evening - it's a small gig, relaxed atmosphere, the crowd is here to enjoy themselves and so is he. The band fire up their instruments and the gig begins... I've been a fan of Gingers main musical endeavour - The Wildhearts - for a scant few years, first hearing them through Pandora internet radio some time in 2006 before Pandora were forced to close

their doors to the UK market due to excessive royalty demands by the music industry (surprise surprise). I ended up buying everything HMV on Oxford Street in London had by The Wildhearts on a shopping trip, those plus a CD called "Valor Del Corazon" by Ginger himself that happened to have been filed along with The Wildhearts material. There are differences and similarities between the solo stuff and the band stuff, the main similarity is the harmonised vocals - a staple of The Wildhearts and a tool Ginger continues to use on his solo material. The main difference is the overall style and influences. The Wildhearts are a rock band, often bordering on hard rock, Ginger solo still has a rock vibe, but with strong influences from American folk and country music among other genres including "American big band". Ginger himself commenting on the difference between The Wildhearts and his solo endeavours was that The Wildhearts was where he went when he wrote a strong riff driven song - sort of indicative of the different approaches taken.

Despite the differences I think Gingers solo music really kicks arse, it's got an energy and exhibits a very strong sing-a-long compulsion. Getting a hold of Gingers stuff online ain't easy, so check out his myspace player and at the bottom of the blog there's a youtube playlist of some cool Ginger related vids I found, check em out.

I think the only thing left to mention was how banteriffic the show was – the small size of the venue allowed easy communication between the band and the audience, and from the Wildhearts shows I've been to in the past I know Ginger is quite a chatty guy on stage. Banter highlights included a newly engaged couple requesting Ginger dedicate a new song he was about to play to them, Ginger agrees saying: "OK, this one is called 'Turn around and walk away now while there's still time' - nah it's not" Which earned a laugh. At another point Ginger thanked us for coming and told us he thought he'd never had a bad gig in Glasgow to which he received the reply "Aye ye huv!" much to his shock, although when reminded of the gig in question he agreed "What, the hotel? And the crowd were like here *motions to head* Aye that was fuckin awful like".

Ginger informed us with some reservation that there would be no Wildhearts songs performed that evening - which received a mixture off Woos and Boos - later when the crowd started calling out requests for solo material Ginger proclaimed us coolest crowd of the tour as no other crowd had requested any solo stuff, which was cool :)At another bizarre moment a rather drunken guy behind us tried to tell Ginger he was playing a gig in his hometown (of Newcastle) and if he knew the place, however Ginger couldn't understand the drunken ramblings other than it was about Newcastle, although from his musings on the place it's pretty clear his opinion of the place isn't particularly high and his frequency of visits is low. The poor guy probably felt a bit embarrassed, but hey, that's what you get for trying to ask overly complicated questions while pished.

In a first for me at a gig Ginger was actually forced to break up a fight in the front row - no idea what the beef was about but it seemed one guy was pushing another, Ginger made them shake hands and said "See how you feel after this one" proceeding to play one of my favourite songs he's ever written - "Mother City" a song about New York - his adopted home.

The band left stage before an encore - as is customary, however this particular stage doesn't really have a back stage for them to retreat to, just a bit to the side that is largely obscured (but far from completely) by a speaker stack. Realising this Ginger comes back on stage immediately and muses on the matter "This is ridiculous, we're just sitting over there *points* and you can see us" at which point we look over to where the rest of the band are sitting grinning at us and waving, so Ginger asks us to turn around and pretend the back of the place is the front for a minute and asks us to turn around, then when we turn back the band are on and he's all "We're back! Hey!" They played another two songs and that was it - thoroughly enjoyable show - can't wait til later in the year when they release some new shit. Bring it on Mr Ginger! In-gig picture credits go to my wonderful girlfriend Helen.