Reflections of an Ageing Gig Goer! 6

Scouting for Girls, Callum Beatie and Vince Freeman at O2 Kentish Town October 10 2024

When I go to a concert, I always have a picture in my mind of what type of audience the headliners will attract. Generally my picture is fairly accurate, but that definitely wasn’t the case the other night when I went to see Scouting for Girls. Their first chart success was as far back as 2007 so I was expecting a largely Millennial audience, but I was surprised by the number of Gen Z fans like my daughter and her friend in particular who were in primary school when Scouting for Girls saw their initial success.

Vince Freeman

Vince Freeman wasn’t a name I was familiar with before the night, but I am always interested in the support acts so I was pleased to see and listen to someone new. He has been around the scene for a while but, as he wryly announced, his debut album had been a long time coming! Not surprising when he spent six years in pain with two prolapsed discs and a degenerative spinal condition. Even during those years he never gave up, gigging whenever he could despite being unable to carry his equipment or walk without a stick. Then, just as he finally recovered, Covid shut down the whole of UK entertainment. He then sold coffee at events from his own coffee truck as well as performing. His is an inspiring story of someone paying more than his dues and finally getting a taste of deserved success. The title of his album, Scars, Ghosts and Glory is a great reflection of his journey so far. I only found out the back story after the gig, but as soon as I listened to his voice I just said to myself ‘There’s someone who has so much experience of life’. The depth to his singing clearly comes from the challenges he has overcome. Blame Myself has echoes of Gnarls Barkley in the percussive delivery and his defiance and determination shine through. Although he has clearly taken more knocks than most people could deal with he has decided to hold himself accountable as a way of coming to terms with the hand that life has dealt him. It is a defiant track that epitomises his hard won experience. Imposter is a brilliant example of the connection I immediately felt with him and a story I didn’t yet know about. He sounds like George Ezra or Ed Sheeran at times, but he has that store of pain and struggle which gives his voice that quality of authenticity that only experience can give to you. The lyrics could have been triumphal, but Freeman sings them as a message of catharsis which is really effective. He is a singer who truly values the opportunity to sing to large crowds and they haven’t taken long to warm to him if Thursday night was anything to go by. The final song of his set was The Singer which mentions the voice in his soul, a soul which has overcome so much adversity. Well, all I can say is that this singer is one that genuinely deserves whatever success he achieves from now on.

Callum Beattie

Scottish singers have always been favourites of mine over the years, from Rod Stewart onwards. Callum Beattie is another in a long line of artists from the heartland of folk and rock who has impressed me from pretty much the first time I heard him. Vocally he definitely brought to mind early Rod Stewart at times with his power and the growling delivery. 25 seconds was a rocking start to his set that had the audience dancing and singing along pretty much straight away. Let Me Fall is a guitar driven song that is extremely catchy and has another great chorus. Vandals is the opening track to his most recent album and reflects teenage misdemeanours that have an air of fond nostalgia when you look back on them. It’s a relatable track for many people, whatever their own misdemeanours were! Something in my Eye was my favourite track from the set with its lovely tune and reflective lyrics. It’s the type of song that washes over you and makes you feel happy but has that undercurrent of wistful longing that makes it so appealing. The set finished with the swelling chords of Heart Stops Beating, a song that contains some excellent lyrics that reflect the rush of love in those early days of a relationship where you somehow know that you have found the one.

Scouting for Girls

I last saw Scouting for Girls in 2015 when they were touring the album Still Thinking About You which, by the way, contains one of the best Christmas singles of the last 20 years, Christmas in the Air (Tonight), which was criminally ignored by radio stations. Do yourself a favour and check it out in the next couple of months, it’s simply terrific! At that time I thought that Roy Stride was one of the most energetic frontmen in the business. In the last nine years he seems to have got even more energetic! He was immediately in top form and started with a track from their most recent album The Place We Used to Meet called The Missing Part. It’s not an album or indeed a song I was particularly familiar with, but I definitely intend to rectify that very soon. The next song raised the roof, and the bar, really early on as he launched the band into their early smash hit Heartbeat. The Gen Z fans around me proved to be word perfect as they belted it out. My personal highlight of the night came quite early on with the nostalgic Michela Strachan, a song that speaks to the 12 year old boy in so many of us that had a TV crush. At that age, it was Julie Dawn Cole in Angels and Isla St Clair in The Generation Game for me! The crushes may change but the feelings never do. My daughter and her friend were up and dancing for the next track, I Wish I was James Bond, which the audience sang perhaps more loudly than pretty much anything else during the night with perhaps one exception.

Roy then told the story of how far back the group went. Their first gig was in the Bull and Gate, the pub next door to the venue 25 years earlier, to the day, before they were even called Scouting for Girls. He met Greg Churchouse, the bassist, on the first day of secondary school and the drummer Pete Ellard on the first day of primary school! This shared history is what makes them the utterly engaging and enjoyable band that they are. Roy and Pete sang in front of an audience for the first time at cub camp so they brought out a ‘campfire’ that looked like a Blue Peter make and somehow seemed totally right for the evening! One of the songs around the campfire was Kumbaya which immediately gave me flashbacks to my own scouting days! The more reflective campfire mood disappeared almost immediately with the next song which had the whole audience on their feet. Posh Girls is catchy, funny, saucy and utterly irresistible with one of the best choruses I’ve ever heard. It was a song that saw Roy not only go into the crowd in the stalls, but also come up to the balcony, which is something you hardly ever see, but it really brought us into the action in a way that is missed in other venues. The ‘Boys in School’ refrain raised the roof every time and its ability to make me smile all these years later is priceless.

Lead guitar on the night was played by Nick Tsang who has been touring with the band for the last couple of years after stints with a number of other acts. One of his previous jobs was playing with Busted which gave Scouting for Girls the opportunity to play Year 3000, a song that has the same nudge nudge humour that so many of their own songs have. It was a perfect fit, but it did make me wonder anew how Busted had worked on the basis that only five generations had passed in 1000 years! The next song, Raising a Glass, comes from The Place We Used to Meet and when Roy announced that a video to accompany it was being shot there and then, the crowd went wild. He went into the crowd again and found out that Callum was 18 on that very night so he had the whole venue sing Happy Birthday to him! The final song before the encore was Elvis Ain’t Dead which segued into Can’t Help Falling in Love With You, both songs sung with real gusto, particularly by the left hand side where we were who beat the rest of the audience hands down! The evening ended with She’s So Lovely which raised the roof once again and reminded us, as if we needed it, of Scouting for Girls’ enduring ability to pen a tune with the best of them.

The night was great from beginning to end and the headline act showed that not only is there life left in them, but that they are in fact getting better. They clearly love playing live and their audience love seeing them, and I can’t see either situation changing for a long time. Now, as you’ve read this far, go and listen to Christmas in the Air (Tonight) and lets get the guys the Christmas hit they deserve.