Blog

At Glasgow Music City Tours we’re always proud to highlight what our musical partners in the city are up to, and we’re delighted welcome to our guest bloggers this week, Tenement TV. This weekend will mark the third consecutive Tenement Trail Festival. Created by and for the music fans in Scotland, Tenement Trail is a unique,…

On our tours, we try to give a flavour of the diversity of music which pumps out of Glasgow year round. But indulge us for a moment, as we compile our latest playlist from a particularly juicy genre vein – that somewhat mercurial many-headed beast that is the Glasgow indie sound. We have already celebrated…

As far as Glasgow Music City Tours is concerned, The Primevals are right up there in the pantheon of all-time great Glasgow bands. We still remember the frisson of first seeing them in the mid-1980s at this recording of the brilliant Scottish music show, FSD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPXY6oF_PCs Singer Michael Rooney exuded that potent combination of mean attitude and…

A couple of weeks back, Glasgow Major Events sent out a film crew on one of our Glasgow’s Music Mile tours. We had a chat with them about why we set up Glasgow Music City Tours; how the tours work and what we would like to do in the future. For some reason, Hollywood agents have been…

It’s a good week to be in Glasgow: John Lydon and Public Image Ltd are coming to town. When the writer Damien Love recently caught Mr Lydon for an interview,  he managed to ask him for us about some of his memories of playing in venues in the city over the years, among other things……

With millions of album sales under their belts along with a Glastonbury headline slot, Florence and the Machine are at the top of their game. A position underlined by their gig at the 12,000 capacity SSE Hydro in Glasgow on Monday. This wasn’t the case when Jonathan, one of the founders of Glasgow Music City Tours, interviewed Florence…

We found Dave Pollock’s Guardian piece about the ‘slow death of music venues’ thought-provoking and a lot of research has gone into it. We’re less convinced that it told the whole story about Glasgow. A number of us at Glasgow Music City Tours have or still do work as music journalists. We understand that an article has to fit the brief, make clear points and not muddy the waters but Glasgow’s live music scene appears to be in rude health rather than facing a slow death. We wrote a reply on the article’s comments page: ‘As a former music journalist who wrote about many of the same Glasgow and Edinburgh venues as David Pollock, I appreciate the power of a punchy headline. However, this article greatly exaggerates the slow death of live music in Glasgow. While the closure of The Arches was indeed a…

One of the real pleasures of doing Glasgow Music City Tours is the experiences that our guests bring to the tours. We have had people who remember going to the dancing at Barrowlands and guests who have performed on the band stand at Kelvingrove. Some have met their life partners in the venues we visit and others have had their lives changed…

This Saturday Paolo Nutini headlines Glasgow Summer Sessions at Bellahouston Park. With support from the amazing Grace Jones, the line up also features sets from The View, Soak and one of our own favourites, Tuff Love. Earlier this year one of Glasgow Music City Tours’ founders, Fiona Shepherd, met up with Paolo for what can only be…

Linden is the latest musical project from songwriter, singer and ex Superstar, Joe McAlinden. This Thursday 27th August, Linden return to play The Poetry Club for the first time since the release of the critically acclaimed, and very lovely, Rest And be Thankful. Superstar were originally signed to Creation Records by Alan McGee in 1992 and, up until 2000,…

We had such a great response to the writer and journalist Damien Love’s blog about his unexpected correspondence with Ivor Cutler that we’re re-running it for those of you who might have missed it. Damien unearthed a previously unpublished interview he conducted with the great man, along with another couple of very special Ivor artifacts….

On each of our Glasgow Music City Tours, there are places that evoke particularly strong memories. The site of the late, lamented Apollo, which features on our Music Mile Tour, is a favourite, where people pause and sigh at the memory of what used to be. Such is the fondness in which its memory is…