Babybird
Hug 'n' Pint, Glasgow
****
I have never been heckled by the artist I am reviewing, until tonight.
There I was on my phone, busily making a note of something for this very piece, and Stephen Jones, the main man behind Babybird, chimes up: "Why are you on your phone."
Before long I am told I should not be texting. "Do you have to text?", he inquires.
"If you have to text why are you down the front?" Or words to that effect.
I didn't have a smart answer. I didn't have any answer. I was struck dumb. I just simply said, "no", when I asked if I had to text.
I could not say that I was a journalist who is reviewing your gig you buffoon and I was actually taking some notes, now could I. Well, my other half said I should have.
I was not his only target. A dimunitive lady or "hobbit" with a "hysterectomy" behind me was a target while another was called a "f**ing c**t for talking, or laughing during one song. The "hobbit" was not offended.
Throw in an insult to a chap who decided to film one song by wondering if he was editing "in his mother's basement", and it was back to me and by now I was wondering whether he thought he decided to become a stand-up comedian without the jokes.
He points at my black Head Like A Hole t-shirt. "What's that?". I said: "Nine Inch Nails". Jones looks confused. "I'm at the wrong gig," I quipped.
It's a night where he ended up calling himself a "f...ing tw*t" and the night "a disaster" way before the end and he would be right.
Bad Old Man is dedicated to a former manager who he described using more colourful language that I was too scared to note down.
But in a perverted way it is this headstrong manner that has helped Jones become one of the most underrated and criminally overlooked songwriters that we have in this country.
He has a caustically astute view of the world. Unlike the throng of bands who will blow smoke up your behind, Jones would do anything but.
He dared to confront a Glasgow audience, created an air of confrontation and still managed to win through by the sheer infectiousness of his songs.
For the uninitiated Jones is the purveyor of You're Gorgeous, a song which charted across Europe with the catchiest of choruses that had the old and the young hooked for a time in 1996.
What was lost on those who placed this on wedding playlists is the dark nature of the song and indeed of much of his work. While loved ones were being treated to happy clappy "I'll do anything for you" renditions with the motive of expressing undying adoration, the twist was it was a barbed tale about the way an obsessive male photographer exploits his models.
Jones lives in a world where - and this is the bit I just about managed to note down - where he feels he needs to point out at the conclusion of a euphoric Failed Suicide Club that it is "a positive song"... and if people didn't get it they were in the You're Gorgeous club.
Therein lies the age-old problem for Jones, he is a wholly misunderstood musician, he knows it, and tells us so too.
To say there is more to Jones than You're Gorgeous is like saying there is more to horses than their hooves.
By rights fans should be 'thankful' he is standing up there.
It has been a year-and-a-half since Jones suffered from a heart attack.
Now after a stone and a half lost and dosed up on blood thinners he is in the middle of a new stint of gigs under the Back Together Again tour, named after one of his greatest compositions, reproduced here tonight, but without the majestic orchestral backing that shows off the the song in all its glittering, addictive glory.
The fact he is here, in a glorified pub that is hardly heaving when it only holds 100 is so right for those here, but so wrong as evidence of 23 years of any kind of stardom.
In this sweaty venue he shows off his array of neglected twisted anthems from the searingly jangly The Life from 20 years ago to the infectious closer, the Ugly Beautiful single Goodnight.
"They got this hi-fi, big sound bleeding my ears and I can't get rid," he pleads from the start and it proves prophetic as amidst the acrimonious banter, he unleashes his array of warped earworm hymns that buzz the head for hours afterwards.
Any thought that Jones and co are a mere 90s thing have not heard, for instance, the entirely apt for tonight, Unloveable from eight years ago, a big sha-la-la lavish breast-beater that comes complete with a banned Johnny Depp video. Yes, THAT Johnny Depp.
I bet he didn't heckle him on the shoot. Actually, you know what? I bet he did.
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