First band of the evening were Glasgow’s Wired Desire, a young band who’ve been touring incessantly and getting themselves noticed in the process. Their brand of Guns ‘N Roses meets AC/DC grunge never happened rock proved infectious and enjoyable and they had the swagger to carry it off. Tonight’s short set was all original material and went down a storm with the crowd. Sometimes they seemed a little unsure what to do with such a big stage and maybe the quality of the songs ebbs and flows a bit but generally they were excellent and the crowd lapped it up. Following Wired Desire was the Stevie Agnew Band featuring not just one but two sons of Nazareth bass player Pete Agnew. They provided a set of earnest well-played middle of the road rock, sort of like Bryan Adams mixed with a little Coldplay. It was even less exciting than that sounds and the crowd generally lost interest but the last two numbers had a more anthemic quality and ended the set on a high note.

As a wee surprise the evening’s MC announced a special appearance from original Nazareth drummer Darrel Sweet’s first band ,as a tribute to the man who passed on too early. On marched the Burntisland Pipe Band to play a couple of songs but once the skirl of the pipes had faded away it was finally time for the main event. I don’t know when Nazareth last played the Alhambra but the first time any of them graced the stage was when a nine year old Pete Agnew won a talent competition in 1955. This time there were 1,200 or so people ready to rock with the rather more grown up Pete and his band mates on their 40^th anniversary tour.

These days they are really a band of two generations with the drum stool being occupied by Darrel Sweet’s son Lee. He doesn’t let his dad or the band down in any way and makes a formidable rhythm section pairing with Pete Agnew. The guitarist spot has been held down for 14 years now by Jimmy Murison, a formidable player and quite capable of filling the sound with great riffs or melodic soloing and very, very impressive. OK the fact that the rest of the band let him off the leash a couple of times for some pointless 70s style soloing was annoying but when he was playing within his role in the band he was brilliant especially during new brooding, atmospheric song “The Gathering” and long time live favourite “Morning Dew”.