Coba Fynn have really been putting the hammer down of late. We supported The Blims and El Condor Pasa the other week at Barfly at fairly short notice. Doug and I attempted to dash with haste from Edinburgh to Glasgow and were thwarted at square one by the ongoing tram works. I received a helpful status message as I waited for Doug to pick me up:

FUCKIN TRAMS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then another:

Edinburgh does. Not. Need. Fuckin. TRAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!

We arrived after a stormy journey-into-terror drive to Glasgow (wherein we forded the M8) to find Davis alone on stage, idly picking out chords, and the sound guy looking at his watch, unimpressed.

We went on at 8.30 or so to an audience consisting mostly of the other bands, and the Captain. I had memories of the last time we played such a quiet gig, and they were not happy ones. Something this time just clicked, though: the audience, or lack of it, was incidental, and though I was happy that they seemed to enjoy the set it was more about hitting the right note within the band. We played consistently and convincingly, I think, and afterwards a Blim was sufficiently impressed to compare Fox in the Phoenix to the Clash.

The ‘Fynn and the Clash mentioned in the same breath. This is a welcome development.

I stayed to watch El Condor Pasa. Their songs and playing were good, but my God! they were bored. They’d been touring for two whole days and already they looked like they’d rather be looking for tall buildings off which they might reliably end it all. We clapped, they looked stricken. It was an odd show.

* * *

We had another gig on Saturday—a going away party for Emily, one of Charlie’s colleagues and the temporarily resuscitated Average Folk Band‘s squeezebox maestro—but before then we’d booked practice at the benighted Verden Studios. Verden is on the outskirts of Portobello, and squats within a ’70s office block on an otherwise derelict industrial estate. It has a few redeeming features—expansive windows in some of the upper rooms; mismatched but solid gear; mini-bars filled with cans of Irn Bru and bottles of beer—but mostly, it’s a hole. We were assigned a windowless box on the ground floor with litter stuffed behind the soundproofing panels and no ventilation.

And yet we had the best practice ever. We sweated freely and played our hearts out. My perception is too subjective to tell if we were actually good or not, but it felt like we were guitar heroes that day*.

The gig then came around that weekend. We had the stage to ourselves and oodles of time to play with before anyone arrived so we took our time getting our minimal set-up (amps for the guitars, a simple PA for the vocals) just right, then went our separate ways to park cars, get changed, grab some food and the like. Doug and I sat outside with squeaking styrofoam cartons of deep-fried whatever from the local takeaway, blethering aimlessly but engrossingly until everyone was back and the audience began slowly filtering in. Over the next couple of hours our better halves arrived, the Average Folk Band played a few songs, Ruth & Andy turned up with a load of visiting friends, and we finally were on around 10pm.

Christ, it was brilliant.

The Barfly set was still fresh in our minds and I’m pretty sure we played even better than the rehearsal. The crowning achievement was our run through Take Me Over (“that sounded like Nine Inch Nails” said Waxy, on hearing our first performance of it earlier this year), where we turned things up to 11, smashed it out of the stadium and [insert hyperbolic metaphor of choice here] so hard that a little girl ran away across the dance floor, hands clamped over her ears. Rock & roll!

We trotted out a load of radio friendly covers during the second half to get the audience up and dancing. Charlie coaxed a gaggle of giggling nurses to sing backing vocals on Twist and Shout; Andy arrived on the dance floor with a cartwheel inches from Davis’ face, and we finished with a messy, sprawling cover of Crossroads where we tried (and failed, but gloriously so) to channel Clapton, Baker and Bruce through our sweat-dripping instruments.

The silence rang in my ears after the clapping and cheers subsided. Sweat was rolling down my sides under my shirt, and my bass was slick with condensation. What a gig.

* Q10 in Glasgow is similar to Verden in this respect: its rooms are damp-walled caves formed by the arches of a disused railway bridge, with temperamental amplifiers, fungous couches and peeling paint, and still it seems to lift rehearsals a bit above the average.