Super Furry Animals at The Usher Hall Edinburgh: Review

Usually with bands I prefer their early work before they ‘sell out’.  So this retrospective set of 1996’s Fuzzy Logic and 1997’s Radiator should have got me going.

But, see, I likes their later stuff. 2000’s Myng, 2001’s Rings Around the World and 2003’s Phantom Power.

There was nothing particularly wrong about this rendering of their two debut albums.  Not from the band anyway.

But the sound.  Oh my sweet Lord.

Helen Keller wearing an aqualung could have put on a better performance than this.

Go to your next gig wearing a parka with your hood up, wrap your head in a duvet and then get a dog to piss on it and you’d be getting close to experiencing what went on the Usher Hall last night.

Rubbish. And, consequently, boring.

Another great example of why Edinburgh is crying out for a good mid sized venue (it was only half sold out) because the Usher Hall is putrid for rock and roll.

1 star.

 

SFA logic?

“Lennon is currently serving a four game suspension imposed earlier in the season and will sit out the second of those games against Inverness Caledonian Thistle on Wednesday night. It was widely believed that the fresh punishment would take effect when the current ban was completed but Celtic’s statement confirms that they do not believe that to be the case.

Taking into account the SFA’s rules and the date the most recent ban was imposed, Celtic are claiming that both suspensions will be served simultaneously from this point on, meaning their manager will be in the stands for four more matches including the Inverness game and not a further six as would be the case if suspensions were served consecutively.”

I am not jumping on the anti-Lennon bandwagon, I simply can’t be bothered and I do have sympathy for the way he is treated in his private life.  No, this is all about the SFA and their continuous bottling it.  If Lennon has erred his sentences should not be commuted, like the last one was or run simultaneously.  No wonder Celtic are not appealing.  If they did even a  commuted sentence would begin after the current one.

It’s a farce.

The Plain in Spain stays mainly in Rutherglen

Flamin' 'eck. We only lost 3 - 2. At home.

The headlines will proclaim Braveheart!

The truth is, in my view anyway,  Scotland huffed and puffed tonight.

Spain were not in top gear.  Need they be?  They were playing a team who had just lost to a team who had  just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.

They gradually worked out a way to get through against the great blue wall.

Two up.

Job done.

Tools down.

And then; oops.

A wee Spanish banana.

Could the worst happen?

Could they really lose to a team who had just lost to a team who had  just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.

Don’t be daft.

Supersub.

3 – 2.

Cue Lionheart.  Cue whatever.  It’s always like this.

Some good performances (Naismith, Fletcher, Bardsley) and a corker of a baddie.  Whittaker will want to erase tonight from his memory forever.  Run ragged, 100’s of mistakes, gave away the penalty just before halt time, got sent off.  Doh!)

This was not a new dawn for Scottish football.  It was just another close defeat to a huge team that nearly took their eye off the ball.  But it was at least exciting.

Last night I watched the death of Scottish football.

 

And this is before last night's results have been taken into account.

 

For a Jambo, Craig Levein is a nice bloke but that in no way exonerates him from open and outrightly hostile criticism in the wake of last night.  It was so embarrassing that I forsee no future at all for our ‘national game’.  We turned up to play a team ranked 37th in the world who had just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania and we failed to play with a striker.  In other words the limits of Levein’s ambitions was a 0 – 0 draw. To a team who had just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.  The formation was 4 6.  have you ever hard of that?  Apparently Spain play 4 6, but that’s 4 defenders and 6 strikers! And this was to a team who just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.

If we had a chance I do not recall it, and yet after we went 1 0 down with 20 minutes to play he reverted to a 4 4 2 formation that, whilst unsuccessful, at least put the Czechs under some pressure which is hardly surprising because they are a team who had  just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.

OK, Rangers have ground out two good results by playing ultra cautious tactics, but they played a striker at least.  The same striker that is in the form of his life and only came on as a sub to create the aforementioned formation to a team who had just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.  Rangers’ tactical decisions are fair enough.  They were playing one of Europe’s finest – not  a team that had just lost a European Qualifier at home to Lithuania.  (That said, the Turks they played had never made the Champion’s League before and had just been humped at home by Valencia – but it paid off).

Levein looked sheepish, but unapologetic, after the game.  I anticipate that the media will rightly go on a field day and, for once, I support them.

It’s very, very sad that our national game, one that only 30 years ago we were considered amongst the finest in the world at, has become a joke.  A laughing stock.

How anyone could forgive us taking 96 minutes to pip Leichtestein (a country with a population of 34,000) is beyond me.

This result and this formation in particular, sets out our position in stark relief.

Losers.

And unambitious ones at that.

God help us on Tuesday night.  Although.  Although.  Although. You can just see it can’t you.  A backs to the wall Braveheart performance.

(And an unlucky 1 – 0 defeat.)

Bertie's back!

we are Derren Brown

Could you close the door behind you on the way out?

Cheerio then

I am not, and never have been, a fan of George Burley.  The performance by Scotland against Wales on Saturday defied description in the first half.  At 3-0 down we gave away a stone wall penalty that wasn’t given and Marshall, the goalie, should have been sent off.  So that would have been 4-0 with ten men.  We’d no doubt have shut up shop at that point and sloped off with a four goal defeat.  As it was we lost to a bunch of schoolboys by three.

He had to go.  And go he has.

Our game is a mess.  I mean, let’s face it, Hibs are within a win of topping the league despite a makeshift team in parts and having sold 11 internationalists in five years.  How is that possible?  I’lll tell you how.  Because everyone else is dreadful.  And if you want proof of that look at Rangers’ and Celtic’s positions in their European groups.  Both bottom, neither with a pot washed.

Investment in Scottish football’s youth (outside of Easter Road) is lamentable and that’s why that old saying “There’s no easy games in international football” is true once again.  Scotland is an easy game.  Falkirk went out of Europe to a team from Leichtenstien.

Lichstentsien!

In the past, had a Scottish team drawn a team from Lichstentsien we’d have needed a calculator to work out the aggregate score.

So back to Burley.  Cheerio and good riddance I say.  We’ve had two clowns in charge (Burley and Vogts).  It seems remarkable that the rose between those two thorns was dour old Walter Smith who got the team playing again, reaching unheard of heights.

He leaves?  Splash, right back in the poo.
Smith is sitting in the Ibrox ejector seat so I suspect the SFA will make the predictable decision to send him a parachute.  Indeed this may all be part of a “plan”.

By the way.  Check out 60 Watt’s topical Scotsman.com ad in  The Scotsman.

It hurts so much. This eternal underachievement.

Oh well, might as well be totally rubbish at everything.

As a Scottish foootball fan one has two options: support the Old Firm (either half will do) or follow your heart and stay local.

I chose that route and support Hibernian FC.

When it comes to your country the choice is rather more restricted.  Therefore I support Scotland.

Today I watched my country play Macedonia in what was a very important game.  What I witnessed was what I see week in week out from my club team.  Complacency.

Scotland, in the first half, against a team ranked 50 or so places behind them in the FIFA rankings were out-fought, out-thought and out-bothered.  Scotland didn’t give a damn.  It was a really disappointing thing to see, post Euro 2008 badluckness. Sure, it was a different thing in the second half, when it was a race against time.

‘It was too hot’ they’ll say.  But it was the Macedonians who were most suffering at the end.  So that is no excuse.

I think the comparison to being a Hibs fan is very relevant here.  Week in, week out Hibs fail to beat the rank and file (like St Mirren, say) but come the glamour tie all the stops are pulled out (The Old Firm and Hearts).

Scotland can turn it on, big style, against France, Italy and, no doubt, the Dutch but an eminently beatable Macedonian team screwed it for us once again for lack of application.

By the way, I hate, naye loathe, Skopje.  I slept in the train station overnight there in 1983 and it was full of idiots. 30 degree heat all night and folk pacing about in leather studs and chains.  I honestly don’t know how I got out of there alive.

Hearts reserves 2 – 1 Rangers

Och.

That’s pathetic.

But at least Romanov might recoup some of his utter embarrassment at Hearts.

As for Celtic?  Ho, ho, ho.

The bottom line?

Hibs – a European disaster.

Rangers – A European calamity.

Dundee Utd – Another European embarassement.

It’s a long way from Old Trafford isn’t it.

Makes you pit a line oan!

That’s the old gag and phoenetic translation of Hibees’ new manager’s name; Mixu Paatelainen. But I tell you what, new manager or not, I’d not be rushing to bet on Hibs putting Inverness Caley Thistle out of the cup this afternoon. I hope these are non-prophetic words. But time will tell.

Prediction?

Hibs 1 Thistle 1

Replay

Thistle 2 Hibs 0

Will Thistle win the cup? Will they buggery.

Cometh the hour. Cometh the man. Are you ready?

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