Get With The Programme: Putting on your first DIY gig

Whether you’ve been going to gigs for years or are trying to get acquainted with a new city, there are many ways to navigate Scotland's plethora of underground music scenes. The best way to go about it is to follow the folk already putting on some of the hottest events, in the sweatiest (complimentary) venues that their city has to offer. From there, you can form your own collective and programme an event to fill a gap that you feel is open. Two years ago WSHWSH did just that.

As WSHWSH organisers Salam Kitty, Shem, Luna and Fatma explain: “We were all having individual conversations about feeling a gap in the club scene in terms of Arab and SWANA [South West Asia and North Africa] representation and wanted to do something about it.” The collective’s driving ethos is to create space for people from the SWANA regions to come together “regardless of religion and sexuality to celebrate our cultures, listen to our music, and just have fun."

Finding your first venue can be daunting; the home base for the collective’s first event in 2023 was the since-shuttered queer co-op bar Bonjour. “Luckily when we started, Bonjour was still open," WSHWSH say, "and they were very open and welcoming of supporting new nights. Salam had a link to them from [queer BPOC club night] Mojxmma, so that was our natural choice.” The collective’s first club night was a sold-out success, and was met with resounding celebration from their community. They tell us: “Since starting WSHWSH so many people have told us that they haven’t felt like there’s a space for SWANA people in Glasgow to meet and connect in spaces that celebrate our culture, especially for women and queer people. Especially with the issues that our communities are facing at the moment in the UK, and in our homelands, it's important for us to have a space like this to be together, and find some joy and connection.”

WSHWSH. Image courtesy of WSHWSH. 

Another Glaswegian collective that’s been rock 'n' rolling their way around the underground is Weird & Wired. James Carvalho and Cammy Young-Lee started organising gigs as Weird & Wired in 2022. They’ve since moved to London and continue to put on gigs under the Weird & Wired name there but they've passed the Glasgow-based W&W torch to Jules Che Thurlow, Millie Hanlon Cole, Louis Muller Stuart, Moana Watson, Aedan (Willy) Wilson, and Kira Wolfe Murray.

Some of the group began putting on gigs while in university, which was no small feat (“a lot of work to manage a dissertation alongside this – but fun!”) and now the gang volunteer their time organising gigs that combine live electronic and punk music into one night of headbanging and moshing galore. The collective tell us that those two styles have “a real vein of shared mentalities between them and a lot of the same energy (self expression, embracing noise, thinking outside of the box).”

The punk methodology behind Weird & Wired extends to how they handle the business side of event programming. The group explain: “We evenly split the take between us and bands after booking costs. Any money we have left after our own costs is donated to charity, so we are never taking a profit. That being said, we are all volunteers and fortunate enough to be able to dedicate time to this for nothing, things are trickier when people need to make a livelihood from organising gigs.” The collective’s punk ethos runs deep, and fundraising raffles – especially for the people of Palestine in Gaza, facing the atrocities of Israel’s genocide – are programmed between bands' sets at most Weird & Wired gigs. 

Leaving Glasgow, David Weaver is the booker at Stirling venues Tolbooth and Albert Halls. His gig programming goes back to high school in Alness in the northeast. He tells us: “We were 16 or 17 and putting on gigs in pubs that we weren't legally allowed in, or putting on all-dayers in village halls.” At uni, Weaver continued: "When I went to Stirling University, it was kind of similar. I was part of the team running Air3, the student radio station. We managed to get a whole bunch of bands to come in and do sessions for us, and then we were able to start putting on gigs.”

For Weaver, booking gigs has always been about the need for people to know about the bands he puts on the bill. He tells us: “Put on gigs because you've discovered a band and NEED to tell the world about them. Put on a show in a venue that you've found that you think everyone should come to. Put together a bill that excites you.” Now that Weaver books the two main venues in Stirling he finds the community created in those spaces to be the most fulfilling aspects of his job. He says: “What I love is that we have people in bands headlining the main venue, and a musician will say 'oh I actually learnt guitar at the Tolbooth, and then I played my first gig there five years later as a 15-year-old, and now I'm back 10 years later headlining.’” Whether you want to put on a gig or throw a party in the student union, there’s a plethora of ways to create a good time for yourself and those in your community; get out there, you're in good company.

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Debut new night from Salam Kitty featuring T.NO and Kinluiz, EXIT Glasgow, 26 Sep
Weird and Wired present The Bleeders, Comfort Girl and Self Love, The Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow, 26 Sep
Interesting Things, Tolbooth, Stirling, 4 Oct, under 25s and Students £30
@wshwsh_____ / @weirdandwired_ / @tolboothstirling