Tag Archives: Edinburgh

The North Sea Scrolls

Luke Haines recently announced that he’s about to release the follow-up to 2009′s 21st Century Man. The new album has the rather improbable title of 9 1/2 Psychedelic Meditations On British Wrestling Of The 1970s And Early ’80s. And, apparently, it does exactly what it says on the tin. I’ve been following Haines’ career ever since the release of New Wave by The Auteurs in 1993. The band were always on the margins of Britpop and Haines later changed musical direction to form the electonic group Black Box Recorder. Haines has also collaborated with other musicians and has released a few solo records. He’s even written a couple of memoirs, beginning in 2009 with Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in its Downfall. Haines was quite uncomplimentary about his fellow Britpoppers, with Blur and Radiohead amongst his victims. I’ve seen him once in concert, when he performed recently at Cabaret Voltaire during the Edinburgh Festival. The show was advertised as the North Sea Scrolls and all I knew beforehand was that he’d be joined on stage by a number of companions. When I got to the gig, I was delighted to discover that Cathal Coughlan was one of those guests and that they would also be joined by the writer Andrew Mueller and the cellist Audrey Riley

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Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2009: Comedy

EdinburghComedyFestival-1

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival began in 1947 with just eight theatre companies taking part. It has expanded considerably since then to include comedy, music, dance, opera and musicals and is worth around 75 million quid each year to the Scottish economy. The Fringe is divided into a number of smaller festivals and each of these make up the Fringe Festival. Over one third of all shows in 2009 were comedy performances, slightly ahead of theatre, while music accounted for one sixth of the shows. In just over three weeks, Fringe 2009 sold (wait for it) 1.86 million tickets to over 34,000 performances of more than two thousand shows in 265 venues. Phew! In contrast, I was only able to buy 12 tickets to a dozen performances of twelve shows in ten venues. I guess I’m going to have to get more organised next time. Nearly a quarter of all shows at the Fringe are free and many more cost just a fiver to attend. It is also possible to get tickets for half price on the day for some performance in a 2-for-1 deal. The Fringe does not have a selection committee and, so, is open for anyone to set up their own show. These year there were nearly 19,000 performers putting on shows from sixty different countries. All of these people had to come up with money for travel, accommodation, meals and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they have to pay a registration fee for their show and print up and distribute posters and flyers as well. Therefore, it may come as no surprise to learn that very few performances actually break even, never mind make a profit. For most of the performers, taking a hit financially is a small price to pay for the the amount of exposure and attention that putting on a show at the Festival brings. I’ve already provided some exposure for the musical acts that I saw this year, so here’s a few words about the more serious business of comedy at this year’s festival

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Slip Sliding Away: Sound Shopping in Scotland

Avalanche Records, Edinburgh

Avalanche Records, Edinburgh

Whenever I travel to other cities in Ireland and around the world I love to check out the local record emporiums, secondhand shops and charity stores. Over the last few years I’ve picked up loads of books, CDs and DVDs on these excursions. Recently, however, I’ve tended to spend most of my time browsing in the likes of Oxfam and Barnardos and less in “proper” secondhand stores. This is due to the increased proliferation of charity shops, the range and quality of the titles on offer and, significantly, the extremely low prices of the goods on sale. But, that all changed on my recent trip to Edinburgh where I spent most of my browsing time in bona fide record stores. In fact, the only charity store that I visited this time was the Oxfam Music Shop which is actually a secondhand record store cunningly disguised as a charity outlet

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Signs of the Times

An actual Edinburgh street sign

An actual Edinburgh street sign

A couple of days after coming back from France I was on the road again. This time I returned to Scotland for the second time in two months and to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the fourth time this decade. Edinburgh is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and it’s a busy place during the month of August. The streets are full of tourists, performers and, I presume, people from Edinburgh. There are hundreds of venues devoted to putting on some amazing comedy, theatre and music shows. The cost of tickets to most of these shows is around ten pounds and you can get into many more for free. I went over with my friend John and we got to see about a dozen shows, mostly music and comedy, over an action-packed few days. We also got to check out a few of the city’s wonderful second-hand record stores where I managed to come away with quite a haul of CDs and DVDs. I’ll be posting about these over the next few days, but first I’d like to mention a quirky little exhibition that I came across by accident

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