a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Sex Pistols and Stranglers draw Glasgow's pensioner punks
"I've been enjoying seeing all the old punks in town," the driver laughs. "They've got all the gear... well, everything except the hair."
Yes, it's probably worth noting at this stage that it is not, in fact, 1978 and both on stage and in the crowd the passage of time is evident.
The line-up offers the first clue: Skids (without Stuart Adamson, deceased), Buzzcocks (without Pete Shelley, deceased), The Undertones (without Feargal Sharkey, campaigning for clean rivers), The Stranglers (without Hugh Cornwell, estranged, also without Dave Greenfield and Jet Black, deceased), Sex Pistols (without Johnny Rotten, legal troubles).
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The second clue is the number of camping chairs deployed for the occasion, something you probably didn't get in the Bungalow Bar back in the day.
At this point it would be easy to just start riffing on pensioner punks: age against against the machine. Granarchy in the UK. No future? You ain't kidding.
It's clear though that there's a real sense of community here.
Fans at Bellahouston Park for the punk all-dayer (Image: Newsquest) At the bar, someone catches another punter's Belfast accent and strikes up a conversation.
"I'm William," the Irishman says. "... or Liam depending on your point of view!". The two men laugh and offer hearty backslaps.
Punk is famously prone to gatekeeping but there's little of that on display at Bellahouston Park, where just about every punk or punk-adjacent band is represented in t-shirt form, from The Stooges and Television all the way through to Green Day and Rancid.
One man, sporting a Bauhaus 'Bela Lugosi is Dead' t-shirt, has overcome follicular challenges by gluing a mohawk to a swimming cap which bears the legend 'Glasgow punk all-dayer 2025' in sharpie on either side.
You'd be hard-pushed to detect revolution in the air. This is, after all, an outdoor mega-gig where a pint will set you back £7.30 and a t-shirt £35: I am an antichrist/please buy our merchandise, to borrow a quip.
Quibbles aside there are lovely moments wherever you look. A girl who can be no older than 12 at the barrier with her parents, all three in matching Sex Pistols t-shirts, a young woman with pink and green hair helping her father, who is traversing Bellahouston on a crutch, to the bar.
As Buzzcocks take the stage a man to my right lights up a frankly ridiculous Cuban cigar. His t-shirt, an homage to the two buses promotional poster for 'Pretty Vacant' reads "punk's not dead but I'm not far away".
As the band launch into opener 'What Do I Get?' two of his companions begin dancing enthusiastically and, despite the heat, they keep it up all the way to the one-two closing punch of 'Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)' and 'Harmony In My Head'.
Between acts the screens alternate some punk favourites with adverts for TRNSMT, which it's probably fair to say is a different demographic altogether even if I do spot a grey-haired woman in a 'Free Mo Chara' Kneecap t-shirt.
The Undertones are next up, and in the front circle someone even indulges in a spot of crowd surfing for 'Teenage Kicks'. "You should know better," guitarist Damian O'Neill chuckles.
The Derry group are known for two-minute pop-punk tunes and singer Paul McLoone admits they've miscalculated how many it'll take to fill an hour - they play an extra three which weren't on the setlist - and perhaps it wasn't a joke when they declared, two songs in, that they'd just do 'Jimmy Jimmy' twice.
Fans at Bellahouston Park for the punk all-dayer (Image: Newsquest) After a half hour break The Stranglers take the stage to the strains of 'Waltzinblack'. Before their entrance I speak to some punters in 'Rattus Norvegicus' shirts, some have seen the band more than 50 times while one, Tom, has never had the pleasure at the age of 47.
Some use the break to visit the facilities, one man declaiming: "See at ma age, if ye want a pish you need to plan it 20 minutes in advance - then ye get there and ye don't even need wan anyway."
Bassist JJ Burnel is the only original Strangler left but singer and guitarist Baz Warne has been playing with them for 25 years at this point and they sound tight.
Their set is mostly built on their early output - 'Duchess' is an early highlight - but Warne gives a knowing smile as they run through 2006's 'Relentless' and he delivers the line: "I saw my love today/she's looking old but so am I".
They finish, of course, with 'No More Heroes' and then it's time for the Frank Carter fronted Sex Pistols.
The former Gallows man does a pretty good Johnny Rotten, and the band make enough noise I'm reliably informed it could be heard as far away as Bearsden.
They may be, as Steve Diggle noted earlier in the day, "all the pensioners" but it turns out these bands can still create an almighty racket.
Fill in your own hearing aid jokes...
