Gig review: Miles Hunt/Bruce and Jamie Watson/Dave Sharp

Published on Wednesday 29 July 2009 19:19

MILES HUNT/DAVE SHARP/BRUCE & JAMIE WATSON *** ROCKERS, GLASGOW

THERE was an unavoidable whiff of nostalgia about this bill, comprising three musicians who could once fill venues ten times the size of Rockers, a classic rock dive tucked under railway arches with camouflage netting on the ceiling and every inch of wall space papered with posters, T-shirts and other memorabilia.

Big Country guitarist Bruce Watson has not met Wonderstuff frontman Miles Hunt since the two bands toured over 20 years ago. These days, Watson is playing with his son Jamie, a studious-looking young man who looked box fresh next to his battle-hardened old man.

Watson snr is not a great singer, but he has enough of the goods to deliver an effective Joe Strummeresque holler on typical punk troubadour fare such as Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World and The Saints Are Coming by his fellow Fifers The Skids. His own song about the death of Buddy Holly was laden with clich, but there was a lot of heart to the father/son performance and the acoustic arrangements brought out the country inflections in the old Big Country songs.

Dave Sharp, who was formerly guitarist in Welsh rabble-rousers The Alarm, has been touring solo for years (to hear his fogeyish comments on modern music, you might think it was even longer), and was at ease with his derivative take on the Dylan/Guthrie-style minstrel, hunched over his harmonica.

Miles Hunt wore his guitar low and his glasses tinted. Accompanied throughout by the lightning violin of Erica Nockalls, he is still peddling perky tunes with acerbic lyrics, playing the fortysomething emo with the clunky line "while Bono sings about his beautiful day, there are those of us who don't feel that way", before raising the tone with such Wonderstuff hits as Welcome To The Cheap Seats, Golden Green and "the one about the cow".