Music
Julian Cope, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
Five stars
Serendipitously, I had visited the exhibition of Alasdair Gray's art at Kelvingrove en route to the former Teardop Explodes frontman's contribution to Tut's 25th birthday celebrations. From one uniquely talented Renaissance man to another, it immediately became obvious. Since his brief flirtation with pop stardom, Julian Cope has ploughed a furrow as distinct as that of towering and respected figures like Captain Beefheart, but it seems that his eccentricity will forever stand in the way of that stature being recognised.
This appearance came as he promotes the paperback edition of his acclaimed debut novel, One Three One, and a new compilation of his music from the years 1999 to 2014, the excellently titled Trip Advizer. Characteristically, his performance was restricted by neither task, only mentioning the former glancingly and playing just a handful of songs from the latter. They were emblematic of his current voice, though, from the opening I'm Living in the Room They Found Saddam In to the broader politics of Cromwell in Ireland and the critique of the creativity in primitive man, They Were On Hard Drugs.
Vintage fans of the man were thrilled to hear a version of Culture Bunker, from the classic Wilder album and an encore of Teardrops hit Treason, as well as a couple of visits to the (similarly well-named) Peggy Suicide album. We also heard some fine stories about the reasons for the success of the Fried album in the Far East, and a mistranslation of the Doppler effect vocal noise on Sunspot.
The title of the newest number would appear in this family newspaper as row of asterisks, but its condemnation of fundamentalist terrorists deserves the widest possible audience nonetheless. Armed with just an acoustic guitar, Julian Cope is altogether too dangerous to be marginalised.
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