Nile Rodgers – Glasgow Barrowland

I tried to get tickets to see Nile Rodgers the previous year but it was an exercise in frustration.

Every time tickets appeared on Twickets, they vanished almost instantly. Full price, reduced price, it didn’t seem to matter. By the time I’d clicked on them, somebody else had already beaten me to it.

This year wasn’t looking much different.

I spent weeks watching tickets appear and disappear before I could get near them. At one point I even bid seventy pounds for a ticket that was accepting offers, only to have it rejected. Considering the face value was eighty pounds and Twickets add their own fees on top, I wasn’t exactly being stingy.

Still, no luck.

Then, the day before the gig, a few more offer listings appeared.

I started bidding at forty pounds, figuring it was worth a try. Unbeknown to me, Emma was conducting her own negotiations and had increased the offer to forty-five pounds.

To my amazement, it was accepted.

The next thing I knew, I’d transferred over the sixty-five quid and we had ourselves two tickets to see Nile Rodgers & Chic.

Quite possibly the cheapest tickets in town.

Now that’s the sort of success story I like.

Before the main event, support came from Tom McGuire.

The poster had advertised Tom McGuire and the Brassholes, but on this occasion the Brassholes were nowhere to be seen. Instead, he was joined by a female vocal group called Little Acres.

In fairness, they did a fantastic job.

Tom has always been a charismatic performer and the alternative line-up worked really well, creating a lively and soulful opening set that got the audience nicely warmed up for what was to come.

Then Nile Rodgers walked on stage.

And it was basically hit after hit after hit.

The man has had a hand in so many classic songs that it’s almost ridiculous when you stop and think about it. Whether through Chic, his work as a producer or his collaborations with countless other artists, he has helped create a substantial chunk of the soundtrack to the last fifty years.

The remarkable thing is how fresh the songs still sound.

One moment the audience would be dancing to a Chic classic, the next they were singing along to another song that Nile had written or produced. The catalogue is so deep that the evening felt less like a concert and more like a celebration of popular music itself.

The atmosphere was fantastic.

By this point, Emma and I had managed to secure our usual preferred location near the front, which made the whole experience even better. There aren’t many performers who can generate that level of energy across an entire venue, but Nile Rodgers remains one of them.

He barely seemed to let the audience catch their breath.

Looking around the room, there were smiles everywhere.

That’s the effect these songs have.

They’ve become woven into people’s lives over several generations and hearing them performed by the man who helped create them adds an extra level of appreciation.

As an added bonus, Emma and I even managed to appear in a video filmed by the bass player from the band.

Years from now, somebody may be watching that footage and wondering who the pair standing down the front are.

Now they’ll know.

Looking back, the effort required to get the tickets made the whole thing even sweeter. After missing out the previous year and spending weeks playing Twickets roulette, finally securing the cheapest tickets in town and then witnessing such a fantastic show felt particularly satisfying.

The videos below include Tom McGuire’s support set, footage from Nile Rodgers & Chic, some mobile clips from the evening and proof that Emma and I were indeed occupying our customary position at the front.

Persistence pays off sometimes.

Nile came on stage and it was a case of boom, boom, boom, one hit after another.

Here are the mobiles I shot.

You can see Emma and I in the front row of this clip from the bass player.