Categories: concerts
Tags: The Cat Empire, Paprika Balkanicus, gig, Glasgow
Date: 11 July 2009 17:34:53
Our gig last night was to the O2 Academy in Glasgow to see Aussie band The Cat Empire, with support from Paprika Balcanicus. What a fantastic night that was! I'd seen Paprika Balkanicus before, they were one of my highlights from WOMAD last year, and HD had seen The Cat Empire at WOMAD a few years ago and introduced me to their music once we started going out, but I'd not seen them live before. I think the audience consisted of every single Aussie from within a 75 mile radius, plus us two! I kind of suspected that from the start, but the queue in the ladies confirmed it - what venue full of Brits would have such a chatty loo queue?!
Paprika Balkanicus are from Romania (violinist), Serbia (accordion & guitar) and Slovenia (bass), and play traditional Balkan music, very energetic and they had us all up dancing. They also joined TCE for the final song of their set (apart from the encores - which managed to include a bit of "Billie Jean" amongst all their other stuff). TCE are quite difficult to describe - think jazz, think brassy, think salsa, think reggae, add in a dash of prog rock occasionally, and then imagine a bunch of Aussies just out there having a great time playing really fun, infectious music. Actually we had one of their songs as our first dance at our wedding reception (possibly a clue that we're not always the world's most conventional couple: dancing to a song called "Miserere"!!!!) (it worked really well, the only problem from my perspective was that it is over 6 minutes long, which is an awful long time to be dancing with everyone looking at you!). Sadly they didn't play that one, but they did play quite a few I recognised, as well as some of their new stuff.
Both bands definitely recommended if you ever get the chance. Though I was almost deaf by the end as TCE are very very very loud!