Barrowland

Glasgow Music City Tours founder and guide Fiona Shepherd is the subject of one of the twelve beautifully-shot, documentary-style online films which capture the spirit of Scotland through the eyes of those who live and work here. Images of Glasgow will be beamed worldwide as part of the new VisitScotland cinematic TV advert set to be shown…

On Friday 19th February Barrowland Ballroom will be turned into a cinema for the first time as part of the Glasgow Film Festival. The occasion is the World Premiere of Paul Fegan’s documentary Where You’re Meant To Be.  It’s sold out, but as we write there are tickets available for the screening on 24th February at the GFT….

VisitScotland have just launched their new Spirit of Scotland campaign and our guide Fiona plays a starring role in the campaign’s video about Glasgow’s music scene. From the Barrowlands to Franz Ferdinand, Fiona talks about the venues and bands which have shaped the sound of the city. Experience it for yourself by booking on one of our walking tours.

Folk punk troubadour Frank Turner plays Barrowland with his trusty band The Sleeping Souls next week, so we took the opportunity to ask the hardest working man in rockendom about his Glasgow gigging memories. When it comes to serious touring, Frank Turner has written the book. Literally. The Road Beneath My Feet, published earlier this year, is more gigography than autobiography, recording his recollections and impressions of the thousands of shows he has played in the last ten years, since splitting his hardcore band Million Dead and going solo. “I read a lot of music books growing up and I always got annoyed when they glossed over what to me is the interesting bit – the mechanics of how you go from being a band just playing with your mates in your bedroom to playing in big venues,” says Turner. “Get In The Van…

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…

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…

We recently took the blogger Rob Lloyd out on a Glasgow music city tour. Rob writes the mighty fine Stop Having a Boring Life blog which documents his travel adventures all over the globe. We took him all over the Merchant City and East End of Glasgow. Barrowland Pathway At Jim Lambie’s Album Pathway in Barrowland Park, Rob was particularly taken with the blue police box which sits at one corner of the park. When you live here, police boxes are still common enough that you tend not to notice or remark on them. Of course, if you are a visitor then the sight of an old blue police box means only one thing: Dr Who. But, aside from Barrowland Park police box, do you know the connection between Dr Who and Glasgow’s music scene? It’s a story we cover on our Glasgow’s…

We got a great turn out for our first Merchant City Festival tour on Sunday. It was a pretty varied group in terms of musical interests but with content ranging from music hall acts to Glasgow’s post-punk scene via the classical conductor with the world’s longest name, we had stories for everyone. UK’s oldest music…

Only a few days to go until our Merchant City Festival tours begin, and we are very excited. Starting off at the Old Fruitmarket, the four tours are a two-hour swing through the musical past and present of the Merchant City and East End. From the dung-flinging audiences of the Panopticon to the Barrowland’s more romantic stories, the tours bring some…