He Stumbled On Some Magic

I remember hearing The Big Dish for the first time in 1988. I used to frequent Glasgow's Barras market regularly to buy the latest bootleg cassettes from unscrupulous market traders (how times have changed for the better in that regard). For whatever reason I was already attracted to many Scottish bands of the era, Love and Money, The Silencers, Hipsway, and The River Detectives to name a few. A couple of people advised me that The Big Dish was sort of the missing link between those bands and that I ought to give them a listen. So an additional £3 was spent on a decidedly average quality audience recording of one of their gigs from Barrowlands. However, I was impressed enough to purchase their second record 'Creeping Up On Jesus' shortly thereafter.

A few months later a friend taped a Radio Clyde broadcast from the Glasgow Pavilion and I was pretty much hooked from then on in. This show still features in my collection to this date and serves as an interesting overview of the band, showcasing tracks from all 3 records. The set broadcast from the 1989 Pavilion show:

Life
Christina's World
Burn
Birdland (this track was never officially released)
Where Do You Live?
Monday
Swansong
European Rain
Slide
Bonafide
25 Years
Jealous
The Loneliest Man In The World
Swimmer

The band came across as fairly nervous at the time, something admitted by Steven Lindsay in subsequent interviews about the band's early live performances. However, their musicianship certainly shone through and it was a solid gig, even if Lindsay did manage to forget the lyrics to 'Burn', their proposed single at the time. It was interesting to hear 'Bonafide' and '25 Years' more than two years before their eventual release on 'Satellites'. The rarity 'Birdland' was also played, a quirkly little number presumably pencillied in for inclusion on 'Satellites' but never to be heard again. This version of this song has been posted on the band's Myspace site, which is otherwise fairly thin on the ground.