A good Monday to you dear readers. Robbie was at Crabshakk over the weekend. He resisted the urge to order the Nicky Modlin inspired cocktail, but did send the big man a selfie to show him what he’s missing. Elsewhere, he was at Watershed festival, and embarked on his own odyssey last night: holding in a pee for three hours while watching Christopher Nolan’s epic.
Elsewhere, Calum and Beth were at the Unite the Clans rally and counter-demo on Saturday morning. More on that below. Beth also supported her sister as she ran a half marathon in Strathclyde Park. Calum, meanwhile, enjoyed the kiwi accents and sponsored Sauvy B at New Zealand house, AKA Òran Mór.
Onto your briefing.
Glasgow in Brief
😡 In case you missed it, last week we wrote about the stranglehold Scotland’s largest gig promoter, DF Concerts, has over the music industry. Its CEO, Geoff Ellis, looks rather shook, having responded to us in a fit of pique. “Pathetic, poorly researched piece of utter pish … You should rename this bollox The Glasgow Bellend!”, he wrote on Instagram. We pointed out to Ellis that we asked him for an interview, which his PR team declined on his behalf. “I’m too busy helping to build artist careers than waste my breath on you,” he replied humbly.
We can now confirm DF Concerts have reached out to us via the form of a threatening email, acting in a fashion to be expected for a company that belongs to a multinational conglomerate with $25bn annual revenue. They even gave a deadline to remove the piece, which has now passed. As you can see from clicking the link above, we have not done this.
Despite this apparent surfeit of cash, DF’s flagship venue, King Tut’s, pays Glasgow support acts just £30 if they fail to sell enough tickets. DF Concerts said these are widespread policies across the industry.
On the flip side, the person “build[ing] artist careers” can be very well remunerated these days. DF’s highest-paid director was paid £801,440 as per the company’s 2024 accounts. We asked DF Concerts if this was the rather ranty Ellis, who’s one of five directors. This figure has been trending sharply upward since the 2020 accounts, when it was less than half of 2024's sum. Not bad considering King Tut’s support acts haven’t had a pay rise on their base fee in several decades.
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