Super Furry Animals’ Furrymania extravaganza

Craig Stephen recalls a weekend of animal magic …

I was working on a Scottish island in the summer of 2001, acting as editor for the local newspaper (in reality there was just me, a junior reporter and a very cantankerous advertising/receptionist lady). It was a bit of a jolly, taking the ferry to the beautiful Isle of Bute where there are ice cream cafes aplenty.

I was due to head back to my home town on the Friday after completing my two-month stint with the paper but the day before I notice that the Super Furry Animals are playing a weekend extravaganza in Glasgow. The Welshmen are promoting the release of their fifth album Rings Around the World, and typically for a group that once bought a tank as a stunt, they are not doing things by quarters.

 A quick call to the PR company dealing with the band and I secure a wristband, which is couriered up and arrives shortly before I leave on the ferry.

In Glasgow I find a flophouse to stay at but at least it contains a games room where I play (and beat) at pool a guy from Cambridge in eastern England who has come up all the way for this gig.

We head down to Glasgow Film Theatre stopping in at the adjacent café beforehand (boozer surely – cynical Ed) and bump into four young guys from Fraserburgh in the north-east of Scotland who have also travelled a bit of a distance (over 300km) for this extravaganza. They’re pissed already.

The Theatre is the venue for a showing of the Rings Around the World film that accompanies the new album of the same name. I’m sat three rows behind the Boys from The Broch. During the film I hear a bit of a commotion in their direction. Later I discover that one of them was punched in the face for unknown reasons – though no reason is acceptable for such an act of wanton violence.  

This event takes on epic proportions as word gets back to the Super Furry Animals and lead singer Gruff Rhys apologies for the act at the acoustic gig AND the main gig.

The film is incredible – a dozen short clips for each song on Rings Around the World. Aidan, the guy from Cambridge, is hyper as hell continually talking throughout and demanding some weed. The guy in the front of us is getting noticeably and increasingly annoyed.

As part of the mini festival there is an after-film party at The Renfrew Ferry on the River Clyde. The Fraserburgh boys are here and are even more drunk having downed spirits since the morning. One of them is called Sair Heid and he certainly will have one the following day. The music is endless and mostly unlistenable techno.

I manage four hours sleep but the adrenaline of a Super Furry Animals mini-festival is keeping me buzzing, so I spend the day walking around this beautiful, green city and check out as many music stores as I can find before meeting up with Aidan at Nice n Sleazy, a small bar on Sauchiehall Street. There’s a stage downstairs with a tiny bar and it doesn’t seem like a suitable venue for a band as big as the Super Furry Animals, but it is a secret(ish) gig for those with wristbands. There’s no need for their usual equipment as this is an intimate, acoustic gig with a spinning roulette which, when spun, determines which song from their extensive repertoire they will play. But it’s not entirely as it seems as Gruff laughingly hints that it’s rigged in favour of some lesser-known album tracks and B-sides.

 The Broch Boys are in a pitiful state by now. One of them tells me he puked up nine times in an hour that morning. Not surprisingly they are all somewhat subdued for the piece de resistance, the main gig at the famous Glasgow Barrowlands, known locally as The Barras.

This provides tasters of the new album as well as various classics such as ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ at which the entire venue goes mental. The final track ‘(A) Touch Sensitive’ fades into 10 minutes or so of techno babble.

There’s an after-gig party on the ferry again with a change of music – this time more pleasant on the ears.

As I sit on the Sunday morning train that takes a couple of hours to get to Montrose I reflect on an incredible weekend that hasn’t cost me anything other than booze, food, a Furries T-shirt and the crap hostel. And I’ve been to two gigs, a film show and two parties. I’d see the Furries again in my lifetime and they would be as awesome as they were in Glasgow.

Furrymania was also held in Manchester and London (where the secret acoustic gig was not actually secret).

As an aside, I bumped into the Bute newspaper junior reporter I worked with over summer in Auckland a decade later at a Charlie and the Bhoys gig. He had moved to New Zealand too. What’s that you say about it being a small world? I heartily concur.