This was one of the very best nights of our monthly tenure at the Woodside Social Club, which lasted from August 2005 to August 2007.  Yours truly didn’t actually get to the Woody until about midnight (as our Super Furry Guest DJs Guto and Bunf wanted to “chill out”) which meant I dodged Furrymania on the door and a complete sell out by 11.30pm.  Just as well Mr Iain Baillie was there to capture snaps of 3 bands who were arguably right in their prime at that point (in particular, I think Baillie’s pictures of Figure 5 are superb).  The scenes at the end when we played “the man don’t give a fuck” were wonderful.  (Guto and Bunf missed the hysteria because they were actually outside having a smoke – the smoking ban had started in Scotland the week before, and going without a spliff for 2 hours had left them gasping!)

As was the way with some of Pin Ups’ best bookings, the lead to land the Super Furries came from our appetite for searching out “alternative” action in other cities.  Sometime in 2005 my big brother Gerry (who in the early noughties co-ran northern soul night Fabulous! in Wales)  had taken me to Clwb Ifor Bach (“the Welsh Club”) in Cardiff, and I got chatting to the DJ, who as luck would have it was Gruff Rhys, just back from a Super Furry Animals tour of Japan.  I explained I was a massive Furries fan and asked if he could come and DJ for us.  Gruff basically said he would be afraid of trying to DJ in Glasgow (“I play weird Welsh shit”), but that he would try to help arrange a visit by the “Disco Furries”.  And that’s exactly what happened (with thanks again to Gerry for helping me work out what deal to offer the Furries)!

Here’s what we had to say about the party beforehand:

Guto and Bunf of the mighty Super Furry Animals will jet up from Cardiff to play an exclusive dj set for Pin Up Nights.  Its a great line-up of bands as well – headlining for the 2nd time at Pin Ups are Figure 5 (www.figure5.co.uk <http://www.figure5.co.uk/> ).  They are a top band who have been selling out venues all over Glasgow for a while now, and are about to embark on a UK tour. St Deluxe (www.myspace.com/stdeluxe <http://www.myspace.com/stdeluxe> ) are fronted by members of BMX Bandits and combine sounds of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Spacemen 3 with some of the best guitar playing you will see around. The Hedrons (www.thehedrons.com <http://www.thehedrons.com/> ) are 4 ladies have also played at Pin Up Nights before, and were so good we have decided to ask them back again.