Room with a view
A FEW readers told us how much they enjoyed our stories about Vaughan Williams and Edvard Grieg last week, so keeping to a musical theme we have looked back at previous Diary stories about bands and singing, including the gallus young woman dancing in front of the band at Glasgow's compact King Tut's musical venue who was tapped on the shoulder by a chap who told her: "You're blocking the view." Hardly missing a beat, she replied: "I am the view.”
And when red-haired 1980s pop star Toyah Willcox bounced on the stage in Glasgow and shouted: "Glasgow! I've come for your men!" a woman in the audience merely shouted back: "Take them.”
A fiddle
A READER who returned from a holiday in Venice said he was in St Mark's Square when he heard a Scottish voice at a nearby table querying the rather large bill for two coffees. The waiter explained to him that there was a sizeable surcharge for the musicians playing in the background. "If I'd known," replied the Scotsman loudly, "that I was going to be paying for the music I'd have listened to it.”
Support act
AND a reader in Lochranza once told us about a local function where there was some stirring fiddle music being played and a woman was asked if she would like to get up and dance. "I cannae," she replied. Then added: "Wrong bra.”
Knocked up
A GLASGOW reader picking his daughter up from a party in the west end reminisced about going to his first party there a generation before. He recalled: "The music was a bit loud, and the neighbour through the wall started knocking on it. I still remember a drunk staring at the wall and shouting, 'There's not a door there! You'll have to come round’."
Uniform result
GROWING old, continued. A reader in Bearsden once declared: "I remember in my early 20s being at a party in the west end when the police arrived saying they had a complaint about the loud music. I couldn't believe someone would complain as it was only one in the morning. Then the other night I was disturbed by loud music nearby at half-past nine and I found myself itching to phone the police.”
Tied up
A LAWYER once told us about an embarrassing moment in court. "I leaned forward to listen to a witness and the spooky tones of a Halloween tune echoed through the court. 'Whose phone is that?' snapped the sheriff. I didn't budge as the musical tie my kids bought me faded away in the silence as everyone else fumbled in pockets."
Music to his ears
WE do like the American acts that come to Glasgow. Country singer Otis Gibbs once told his Glasgow fans: "I had a really nice gig in Cardiff. Afterwards a guy walked up to me and said, 'I want you to know that your music saved my life.' I laughed and said, 'That's ridiculous', but he said, 'It's true. I was in a coma for five months and the doctors weren't able to revive me. They'd given up hope. Then one day a nurse came in with a CD player and put in one of your CDs.
"'I immediately woke up, sat up on the edge of my bed, then walked across the room and turned off the CD player’."
Arresting moment
AND another American singer, Jace Everett, played at Glasgow's Oran Mor, but got lost walking to the venue from his hotel. He went up to a parked police car, explained who he was, and asked where he could get a taxi. Instead the cops told him to jump in and took him to the Byres Road venue. As Jace told the audience: "First time I've been in the back of a cop car and I wasn't crying.”
A wash out
ELAINE Scott, retired manager at the Ben Nevis bar in Finnieston, was once asked in a magazine interview about the famous folk who have called in at The Ben. Her list included Dolly Parton's drummer but then she added the memorable explanation: "He was just passing the time while he washed his drawers in the laundrette across the road.”
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