For his fifth and final favourite Glasgow album, King Tut’s booking agent JP Mason explains what The Twilight Sad’s ‘ Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters’ means to him.
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00:00 another band who you know very, very well?
00:03 - Well, I... - Better than most?
00:05 I wouldn't know them without him, though.
00:07 Oh, no, no, no, that's why I'm leaving this to last,
00:10 because Scott and...
00:14 Well, the Frightened Rabbit and the Twilight Sad
00:17 had become friends before I met Scott,
00:20 and I knew of these guys, I'd heard of this band,
00:23 the Twilight Sad, who existed,
00:25 and they were always spoken about,
00:27 and kind of like, oh, they're mental.
00:30 Like, every time they spoke about them,
00:32 it would be like, oh, these guys are...
00:34 They're wild, they're like party animals,
00:37 all the rest of it, and like,
00:38 you go on a night out with the Twilight Sad,
00:40 you'll know about it and all the rest of it.
00:43 But the music wasn't something that I didn't...
00:45 that I didn't home in on for a while,
00:46 until Scott started...
00:49 Scott got a copy of this before it came out,
00:51 because this came out in May 2007,
00:55 either April or May 2007,
00:57 and by that point, I'd known the Rabbits for a year,
01:00 and Scott said to me,
01:02 "Have you heard the Twilight Sad yet,
01:03 or have you seen them?"
01:04 And I went, "No, I've not."
01:05 They'd barely played any gigs,
01:07 and Scott was like, "They're the only band in Scotland
01:09 better than us," right?
01:10 And I remember him saying that vividly,
01:13 and he was like, "Well, you need to go and see them."
01:16 And they'd come back from America in April 2007,
01:21 and they'd been touring with Aeriogram,
01:24 and it'd been quite a difficult tour, I think,
01:26 because Aeriogram's visas had not been properly processed,
01:31 so they didn't get out to the tour.
01:33 So Twilight Sad had to basically do the tour on their own.
01:36 They'd got a bit of hype at that point,
01:37 but they weren't big enough to be playing these rooms
01:39 that they should've been playing with Aeriogram.
01:41 So it was a tough tour for them,
01:44 and they came back, but on that tour,
01:46 they'd learned how to play live,
01:47 'cause they'd been playing live every night,
01:49 and they'd had to actually...
01:51 I think prior to that, their live shows were a bit shambolic.
01:55 They just didn't know how to play.
01:56 They were just...
01:57 It was just everything was up to 11,
01:59 Andy's guitar wailing, drowning out James,
02:02 who didn't have any ears,
02:03 so he couldn't hear himself singing.
02:04 So it was just a cacophony,
02:07 which I'm sure they won't mind me saying
02:09 they would admit that.
02:11 But they still got signed off the back of one of those gigs
02:14 to Fat Cat.
02:15 But Scott and Billy from Frightened Rabbit
02:17 took me to see the Twilight Sad at the Classic Grand 2,
02:21 so the downstairs one, where it's the smaller one,
02:24 in April 2007, and I saw them.
02:27 And there was only about 20 people there,
02:29 'cause they were the third support on a three-band bill.
02:32 And I loved them.
02:33 Straight away, I was like,
02:34 "Oh my God, this band are unbelievable."
02:36 And Scott was like, "I told you."
02:38 And I was like, "Aye, but I didn't expect this."
02:40 And then they introduced me to James
02:42 straight after they played,
02:44 and James was like, "Oh, how's it going?
02:48 "I've heard a lot about you and all that."
02:49 And still probably one of the nicest things he said to me
02:53 about me to this day.
02:54 And we immediately became pals.
02:56 And then suddenly, I was just like this wee guy.
03:00 I was older than them, actually,
03:01 but I felt like a wee guy,
03:03 because I was just like,
03:04 I was around these two guys
03:07 that I just knew were important in my life
03:11 and that would be important in other people's lives.
03:14 And James and Scott were obviously
03:15 really good pals as well.
03:16 And I just loved being in their company.
03:19 I loved going to see them live,
03:21 but being in their company was the best thing
03:24 because they just were really funny.
03:25 And we had so many good times together,
03:29 going to flat parties after being in here
03:31 or elsewhere or going on tour together.
03:34 We drove to Brighton, all of us in a van together,
03:38 and it was the best fun ever.
03:39 We got a carry out for the van down,
03:41 and then we ended up on Brighton Beach
03:44 at six in the morning,
03:45 just steaming and having a great time.
03:48 It was an amazing, amazing time.
03:51 And I'm so, so grateful that I was part of it.
03:53 But when this record,
03:54 Scott gave me a demo of this record
03:56 before it came out from Fat Cat,
03:58 he was like, "Oh, here, take this."
03:59 And I remember just looking at the artwork.
04:03 And in contrast to the Alex Harvey artwork,
04:05 I looked at this artwork,
04:06 which is Dave Thomas,
04:08 who did all the Shite and Rabbit,
04:10 Twilight Sad,
04:11 and subsequently done Mogwai's artwork as well.
04:13 And as soon as I saw that artwork, I went,
04:16 "This is going to be a good record."
04:18 And I listened to the first track,
04:20 and it just blew me away,
04:22 and continues to blow me away, this record.