Susie D

In which I talk about all four bands and Stirling’s shitetastic crowd

So apparently I missed where it was a 7pm doors but 8pm first band. I was at the Tolbooth at 6.55pm and was the only there other than staff and bands. I then spent a good 40 minutes in the general area loitering and wandering around to kill time before the bar filled up a little.

The Tolbooth had changed up its main room again too. 3rd time there, 3rd time the room was different. The stage was lowered and there was a barrier for the first time ever. I don’t understand why a 250 capacity venue, in Stirling no less (where there has never, ever been a rowdy crowd), needs a barrier. Useless addition.

The first band were Rail Fan, a small folky band who didn’t actually say where they were from. They had really good tunes that had my toe-tapping. Also two of the guys in the band were older men and the lead guitarist was actually amazing. I spent most of the show watching him. I don’t usually to tend to watch old guys in awe at gigs but I did tonight. Good stuff.

The second band were Brazil Exists. I was a little worried that I’d force myself to like due to their connection with Andy FRabbit but I didn’t. I wasn’t overly impressed 2 songs in though I was particularly enjoying their trumpet. However from the 3rd song the set picked up and I quite enjoyed myself. Not bad at all, not bad. If I saw them on a lineup again, I’d happily go watch them and I might pick up that EP.

Our first co-headliners were Over the Wall, they had a fair crowd in and they got the best reception of the night. They were really brilliant, all their songs sounded ace live. I think this was my first live Over the Wall experience but it won’t be the last. History and Thurso were my favourites. The guys in the band were hilarious too and really got the crowd on their side.

Finally Three Blind Wolves took the stage to a much depleted room (deja vu to 2008 FRabbit Tolbooth performance) but did a brilliant job despite the lackluster crowd. They started with Hotel and Black Bowl Park, which I thought was rather brilliant and they sounded ace. The rest of the set was mostly made of new tunes, which all sounded pretty good to me and they stuck Emily Rose in there too. Sadly my favourites Echo on the Night Train and Captain of a Ship didn’t make an appearance. Ross tried very hard to get the crowd going with very little response, I felt so sorry for him. After the gig I went to merch and bought a CD and told him it was awesome and that I’d seen them support a few times (I daren’t mention 5 of them were FR gigs for fear he might have figured out who I was) but this was my first headline gig, he asked if I enjoyed it and I said yeah it was ace and then he thanked me for buying the CD. My first interaction with Ross Clark! Yay!

Now here be the rant about the crowd - for the amount of tickets sold for that gig (almost all of them), there should have been a much fuller room for 3BW. It’s so sad when you know a lot of tickets have been sold but a band is playing to maybe 30 people. Second, the crowd barely made a peep and hardly moved at all. Three Blind Wolves are a band that you should happily dancing like a maniac too and you should not need the band to prompt you to give them loud appreciation, or any appreciation. Absolutely ashamed of Stirling for this shitetastic show. No wonder we hardly get any music here, we’re not deserving.