Gig review: An evening with Danny & Ben from Thunder, Glasgow Oran Mor

Presumably Keith Richards was too busy snorting his dad’s ashes and falling out of coconut trees. Motley Crue must have had some middle-aged groupies to attend to and Iggy Pop was probably counting his insurance ad royalties.

So instead it fell to a couple of members of a mid-league hard rock band to pull up a stool and play the rock’n’roll raconteurs.

Thunder frontman Danny Bowes and his trusty guitarist/keyboard player Ben Matthews are a personable pair but prematurely aged. Their overlong and anti-climatic on-the-road anecdotes involving onstage mishaps, backstage misbehaviour and rectal injections, peppered with showbiz references to Donington, Tommy Vance and “the Maiden boys”, were more Spinal Tap than Hammer of the Gods.

The cosy, good-natured recollections were generously indulged by a captive audience waiting patiently for the occasional Thunder morsel to be thinly dispersed among the copycat covers of The Who’s Squeezebox, The Beatles’ Blackbird (with bird whistle accompaniment from audience members) and a pub rock rendition of Elvis’s She’s Not You.

Beyond the horrible Presley impersonation, Bowes was in fine, fluent singing voice. If only we had heard more of him in his comfort zone.

Although there were tasteful versions of MOR ballad A Better Man and Like A Satellite, stripped back to reveal its Elton John-hued colours, plus bonus kazoo solo on the skiffly rock’n’roll number See My Baby Walking, this show was noticeably light on claps of Thunder.

Rating: **