Memorable night outdoors with Scottish rockers

YOU can say what you want but there can be few music events with surroundings as spectacular as the performers.

Stonor Park, which hosted Texas — surely one of Scotland’s finest bands — was that place.

With the familiar opening steel guitar riff of their first single, I Don’t Want A Lover, the band’s hits tour began and the audience was partying like it was 1989.

It is often said that bands are only as good as the person fronting them. For this show, vocalist Sharleen Spiteri set out the ground rules early.

With the command of someone with decades of experience in getting the most from a crowd, the diminutive figure screamed: “Let’s party!” and the fans duly obliged.

Hits followed — Halo, Once in a Lifetime, When We Are Together — as the crowd sang and danced, directed by Spiteri with a skill honed at thousands of live performances but making us believe we were her first and best audience.

The show was a mixture of music and memories from the preceding three decades, including one Texas would probably rather forget.

Against the advice of the record label, the band insisted on following up their debut top 10 hit by releasing the song Thrill Has Gone. It peaked at No 60 in the charts.

The band thought their career was over and, as Spiteri sarcastically put it: “As a thank-you to everyone in the audience tonight who didn’t buy that single, you can hear it in full now.”

But this was no pension tour set. Spliced seamlessly with songs that were on vinyl the first time around were 2017’s Let’s Work It Out and Hi from 2021.

A pared-down version of In Demand, including some fine backing vocals from the crowd, slowed the pace for a moment to allow the band to take a well-deserved short break.

Then, with the mercury nudging summer 1976 levels, Texas obliged with Mr Haze complete with a sample from Donna Summer’s Love’s Unkind.

They then launched into another fan favourite, Inner Smile, before playing the song that could be said to have relaunched them in the UK, the Marvin Gaye sample-heavy Say What You Want.

The audience were given yet more instructions on how this last section of the show would work. Tongue firmly in cheek, Spiteri told the crowd this was the last song, wink.

“I say that, you plead for more and you get just that, band ego soothed. Simple.”

On cue, after a perfect rendition of the song, the band went silent and the crowd applauded for more.

It must be said it’s difficult to start a foot-stamp on a parched patch of open grassland but an attempt was made nonetheless to woo the band back to the stage, wink (remember the rules).

Texas duly returned to the stage. We’d done it and the band kept to their word.

Almost immediately they delivered another “absolute belter” of a tune in 1999’s Summer Son, a mash-up of Motown and pop that had everyone on their feet and those at the very front literally bouncing.

Before the last track of the night, Spiteri thanked the crowd for their support then joked that if they didn’t recognise the first line of the song, they could leave.

Ears pricked for fear of falling foul of Finnieston’s finest as
Elvis’s Suspicious Minds was turned up to 11 by a band at the peak of their craft.

And then it was over. What a show. We left, hoarse, with numbed dancing feet, smiles all around.

A night to remember — the night Texas came to town.

Andrea Olley