Well,
the weekend's over and we're all back home safely, I suppose. To my great dismay quite a few of you reading this couldn't make it - next time though, I sincerely hope - for various reasons. A real shame, and, believe me, you did miss a treat! But it only was a treat because of the love and the efforts and, yes, it must be said, the money that our people from Glasgow put into the whole thing. Yes, I had the idea in the first place, but if it weren't for Stevie (CC), Drew and especially JC: it wouldn't have been such a blast!
It was just two days,
Clash - '48 Hours' ('77)
but those two days were packed with everything you possibly could ask for. We had brilliant weather all the time, there wasn't a single cloud whatsoever
Little Man Tate - 'Reflection In His Sunglasses' ('08)
which made the whole event even more enjoyable. We've passed a museum or two and in order to impress Mrs Loser we even went in and out one for half a minute, so, yes, culture: checked! But, to be absolutely frank, most of the time we spent on the way to, in and in front of pubs, bars and venues, all of which were plain wonderful! I have a feeling as if we'd hit the gas a little bit too hard on the Friday,
Everything But The Girl - 'Draining The Bar' ('86)
perhaps we should've moved a bit of that to the Saturday, but there you are, these things happen. Brian
Baxendale - 'An American Friend' ('99)
will be able to confirm this, poor guy, so these next two are for him:
I, Ludicrous - 'My Baby's Got Jet Lag' ('87)
Ballboy - 'If My Hangover Was A Girl' (acoustic) ('06)
Still he found the time to become a friend of the stars, this next is by but one of those:
Pastels - 'Thank You For Being You' ('93)
If I had to name my favourite out of all the venues we had been into, I think I couldn't diminish it down to less than two: 'Nice & Sleazy' in Sauchiehall Street:
was particularly fine, so was Brel's beer garden in Ashton Lane
where some folk tend to do nothing else than checking their mobiles for boring football results without secession whilst others stand there open mouthed, shaking their head in disbelief about the sheer amount of most beautiful half naked young girls attending this venue. This is for you, ladies:
Ramones - 'Garden Of Serenity' ('87)
('Bring On The Nubiles' would've fitted perfectly as well, but we had The Stranglers before, hadn't we?)
Coming back to 'Nice & Sleazy', both nights' DJ's were excellent by and large and they played tunes I hadn't heard in ages, like this:
Medium Medium - 'Hungry, So Angry' ('81)
and this:
Q. Lazzarus - 'Goodbye Horses' ('88)
Very fine indeed!
Glasgow was a blast, there is no other way in describing it,
Jam - 'In The City' (Peel Session '77)
but the main thing, the important thing is, that finally I've met some people I've always wanted to see. I hope the others won't be too crossed when I say that I was mostly looking forward to JC, because I know him for so very long from writing. I suppose it doesn't make all too much sense to go into great detail here, because who reads this nonsense anyway apart from five or six people, and those were a) there or b) know all about the background? Still I want to point out - I mean, I would never have expected even one of you turning out to be a total wanker in the first place - how much it means to me that we all got so well along all the time. I might have drunken myself into oblivion, but honestly I don't think I've heard even one harsh word whilst we were together, everything was always friendly and peaceful and I constantly heard and saw our people laugh and smile. And this, at least as far as I'm concerned, is what turns a bunch of strangers into a group of friends.
So - and I do hope I'll forget no-one - Adam, Aldo, Brian, Carlo, Colin, Drew, JC, Stevie, Walter, this is for you. And it comes from the bottom of my heart:
Wedding Present - 'You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends' ('86)
In other words: I hope that this get-together will be repeated in one form or another wherever and when the majority wants it to happen. Also I hope that the ones who couldn't make it last weekend will be able to join then.
Take good care,
Dirk
PS: as promised, here's the link to the guy from Tokyo who made those Clash-shirts I wore all the time: https://www.etsy.com/shop/nobartco?ref=l2-shopheader-name
