The Great Eastern

The award for Glasgow’s most peculiar music venue has to go to The Great Eastern. By day this grassroots indie gig space operates as a daycare centre for the local elderly community, by night it plays host to fresh faces in music, as well as stalwarts of the Scottish music scene, with upcoming bookings including The Vaselines and De Rosa.

Located just off Great Western Road, the outside of the Fred Paton day centre has been given a lick of trendy grey paint and equipped with a slide in/slide out venue sign, which means you could walk past the place every day without having a clue what it gets up to at night. Limited somewhat by the constraints of its day use, the central room has a bit of a church hall vibe – if churches were cracking open beers from pop-up tables at the back wall.

The unusual setting adds further interest to more humdrum aspects of a gig trip. A walk to the toilets, for example, involves cutting through the TV room – a room full of mismatched wingback chairs; a fun place to chat about which seat you might choose in your twilight years. A La-Z-Boy in the corner seems the obvious shout, until you spot a sign from management on the wall which insists 'seats cannot be reserved'. An indication that things at The Great Eastern can get pretty lairy during daylight hours too.