New International - King Tut's Wah Wah Club, Glasgow, 11/1/2014

  by Tony Gaughan

published: 15 / 1 / 2014

intro

Tony Gaughan watches strong sets from three new Scottish bands, the Holy Ghosts, Colonel Mustard and the Dijon 5 and A New International, at a show at King Tut's Wah Wah Club in Glasgow

This was as strong a line up as you could have hoped for in this run of ‘King Tut’s New Revolution’ shows at the legendary venue. Biff Smith's former Starlets are back with the shiny new name of A New International, but had the same personnel and played a short but perfect set which opened with ‘Fabulon’. The band had lost none of their unmistakable style of flamenco-infused pop , and there was plenty of new material, notably ‘Valentino’ and a lush cover of Scott Walker's ‘Jackie’. Old Starlets’ favourites ‘I'm Your Kinda Guy’ and the achingly brilliant ‘Tenterhooks’ ended a brilliant set. Colonel Mustard and the Dijon 5 were anything but a sextuplet, and the stage filled with over a dozen members. Yet the Colonel did not waste any time in assuring the masses present that they were the sixth member. It looked like chaos was assured, and yet the band delivered a superb set, most of which had their own dance moves which Colonel John was more than happy to demonstrate on ‘Gay Icon’ , reggae masterpiece ‘Bouncy Ball’ ,the amusingly-titled ‘How Many Manys are Too Many Manys?’ and ‘Capturado’. The band finished by inviting their ginger fans on to the by now heaving stage for the finale of ‘Always Ends in Tears with a Ginger Girl’. Edinburgh five-piece the Holy Ghosts set a very high bar for the last set of the night, and their straight-edged rock and roll went down well with the audience as they presented ‘Ol Snake Hips’ from their debut single and ‘When We Were Kings’ from their ‘Voodoo Shakedown’ EP. The photographs that accompany this article were taken by Bill Gray at www.billgrayphotography.co.uk.

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