A wee afternoon jaunt into the city for the Girls Rock Glasgow fundraiser was a perfect way to wile away a couple of hours on a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon. This was more than just a couple of bands on a Sunday afternoon, which indeed would have been enough in itself, no, this was an event laid on by Girls Rock Glasgow, to feature some of the current crop of women in grassroots rock bands, but much more than that it was to,raise funds for this years Girls Rock Glasgow summer programme to inspire the future generation of girls in rock bands, and it has to be said they had loads of potential in the audience for future years.
It was fantastic to see an event like this bringing in girls from an early age, as well as the bands, there was crafts and badge making for the kids (and a good few adults if truth be told…), home baking for sale, and of course the music, with ear defenders provided to protect the tender ears of the young crew, including babes in arms!
Unfortunately I was unable to be there from the kick off, but was fortunate enough to get there just in time for the last couple of acoustic solo tracks from Marigold, enough for me to know I need to hear more!
Despite them having released their debut EP in 2018 and then reviewing their 2020 We Fight EP on The Ginger Quiff, I have somehow never managed to see Fistymuffs live. I’m delighted I can finally say I’ve seen them, and now can’t wait to see them again. The way the bands interacted with the kids was a credit to them, Suky introducing their opening number, This Job is Killing Me, by questioning, tongue in cheek, whether the group of youngsters gathered at the front even had jobs… They then went on to increase the tempo with White Collar Crime, a dig at the rich which channelled the spirit of White Riot from The Clash. Walk Alone is bittersweet in many ways, it’s sad that Ashley, and the likes of Carla J Easton with Sugar Honey, has to write songs like these in the 21st Century, but the fact that they are, and that Girls Rock Glasgow and other groups like Loud Women (and their Reclaim These Streets collaboration) give a platform and a voice to women and girls in music can only be a positive. Fistymuffs continued to impress, even joking about forgetting song lyrics as they kept rolling out the empowering messages in their songs, including tackling the misunderstanding of neurodiversity on Just Try Harder, before closing out their all too brief set with their “theme song” Fistymuffs Anthem.
Before I had to exit sharply, I was glad to have managed to catch the whole of Curdle’s set. If you know anything about the lyrical content of Curdle songs you’ll have been with me in wondering just how Hoggers, Wiggy and Clare would handle that in a room full of impressionable young ears. I should have known they’d tackle it with aplomb. Never a worry, despite song titles like Red to the Elbows, which incidentally was one of the set highlights, the trio seemingly in full L7 mode…; Hoggers was unfazed – “Does anyone here know what an embalmer is?, and Blood Beat (when you like someone so so much you want to see them inside too…), also handling the fact that several of their songs feature blood curdling screams, after Bring up Red Wiggy was impressed that “no-one even flinched”… not even flinch. sitting just to my left… It felt like an age since I’d last seen Curdle, so when the thunderous throb of bass on set-opener Choke kicked in I was in my element from the off, the grin didn’t leave my face throughout, both with the joy(!?!) of listening to their bloodthirsty songs and amusement at the songs intros. The Love and Rockets co-creator, Jaime Hernandez inspired Flies on the Ceiling was the penultimate song before Wiggy and Hoggers swapped instruments before introducing the first song they ever wrote, Dave Gahan is Such a Love Butt, and questioning what a love butt actually is, before inciting a singalong across the age groups.
I make a hasty exit at the end of their set as my daughter chose gymnastics over music and I was on Dads Taxi duties… what a thoroughly satisfying way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Afternoon gigs are the future!
find out more about Girls Rock Glasgow at their website