Dundee’s HMV store in the Murraygate was mobbed by adoring fans of The View on Friday night when the band played an acoustic set to celebrate their new album.
Around 140 lucky wristband holders, most of whom had queued up at about 6am, packed into the shop to hear the band run through seven songs, including four tracks from Bread and Circuses, which was released on Monday.
New single Grace was followed by old favourite Wasted Little DJs from their chart-topping 2007 debut album Hats Off To The Buskers, followed by new songs Underneath The Lights and Tragic Magic.
Another new song Happy was sandwiched between Face For The Radio and Superstar Tradesman, which finished off the half-hour set to huge cheers.
Afterwards, the band signed CDs, T-shirts and other memorabilia for dozens of fans desperate to meet their heroes.
Fourteen-year-old friends Rosie McDonald, Hannah Wynd, Liah Garthley and Erin Orchardson all got ther new CDs signed and agreed the band were “amazing, brilliant.”
“Kyle is lovely,” Rosie added, while Liah said, “So is Kieren!”
Hannah added, “The new album is amazing they were great live.”
Erin agreed, saying, “I really hope the album gets into the top ten it’s brilliant.”
HMV Dundee store manager Derek Regan said, “The album has outsold the second biggest seller by 10 to one this week and that’s Adele (which is number one in the charts). “It’s been fantastic the best instore we’ve ever done.
“You don’t usually get well established bands it’s usually up-and-coming ones so it says a lot for The View that they are doing this for their fans in Dundee and supporting their local store.”
Bread and Circuses went on sale on Monday and hopes are high it will become the Dundee foursome’s third top-10 album.
The band’s manager, Grant Dickson, said, “In this day and age it’s a great thing for a guitar band to break into the top 10… Hopefully the good start we’ve had will continue, because every 500 or so copies sold takes it up another place in the charts.”
The assistant manager of HMV in Murraygate, Martin Brady, said, “Every second customer has been coming in and asking for it we’ve been playing it constantly and it’s going down well with the customers.”
It was the same story at Asda’s Milton of Craigie store, where copies of the album sold out “very quickly,” on Monday.
Meanwhile, a short video showcasing a typical Sunday on the streets of Dundee has been selected for the international release of the album.
Dundee film-maker Scott Davidson (27) had originally agreed to do a video for the song Sunday last autumn, but the big freeze in November delayed filming and the band’s record company came up with their own video for the download release.
Scott, a post-graduate student at Duncan of Jordanstone, fellow student Matt Cameron and their friend Ian Forbes, were asked to complete their video, and when the record company saw it they immediately asked for it to be used as an extra DVD.
“It’s not available with the album in Britain, but it’s an extra DVD to go with the record abroad,” Scott explained. “Apparently a lot of people in Britain have been ordering the international record to get the bonus CD as well.”
He continued, “The idea was to just film Dundonians on a typical Sunday, so we got up at 5am and went around the town to places like Clarkies, the all-night bakers.
“At first it was quiet, but eventually people started moving around and we went around and spoke to people and just filmed what happened.
“After the snow came it was delayed, but we finished it about three weeks ago after we went through and filmed the band playing live at King Tut’s in Glasgow.
“It’s a half-hour DVD with six songs, plus four minutes for the alternative video for Sunday. They’ve also asked us to do another video for national record store day we’re in the process of getting that up and running now.
“We’re going to shoot that in various record shops across Scotland possibly next week and record store day is on April 16.”
The video was shown before the various main films at DCA this week an experience Scott described as “rather surreal.”
“It’s the first time I’d seen it on such a big screen. It seemed to go down a treat I think it went really well.”
Video and stills courtesy of Louise Wilson.