Coffee-Table Notes

Good afternoon everyone, I just wanted to say a few words about today's mass visit to Inverleith House. My name is Neil Cooper, and I'm a journalist who's been writing about the ongoing closure of Inverleith House as a contemporary art gallery since it was closed last October. First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for coming out today on a lovely February afternoon. You've not only helped increase the footfall of the Garden, but more importantly you've shown how much the people of Edinburgh have been saddened by the closure of the gallery. The last time there was a mass visit was on the final day of the 30th anniversary exhibition, I Still Believe in Miracles, and up until that point, everybody here was able to come down to Inverleith House on a Sunday afternoon and see some of the greatest contemporary art in the world. Sadly we can't do that anymore, because the managers of the Garden say that Inverleith House can't wash its face financi...

1 Last week, the touring stage production of Footloose The Musical arrived in town for a week-long run at Edinburgh Playhouse. For those who may not know Footloose, the stage version is based on a 1984 film of the same name starring Kevin Bacon. Bacon plays Ren McCormack, a fun-loving Chicago teenager who is packed off to the small town of Bomont. Once in Bomont, as this is a teen movie, young Ren of course falls for the local bad girl, falling foul of the local authorities as he goes. The main obstacle that fun-loving Ren come up against, alas, is the fact that due to external pressure, the local city council has banned dancing and rock music. The last time a real life incident similar to this occurred in Glasgow in 1977, when the city's local authority banned what they deemed to be Punk Rock gigs, and – just as in Footloose, in which Ren and his pals were forced to travel a hundred miles to a country bar to dance to rock and roll – Glaswegian punk rockers had to...

1 Thirty-five years ago tonight, on December 8th 1979, I went along to an under-eighteens matinee gig in a shabby basement club in a run-down street in Liverpool city centre. I was fifteen, the band I went to see was called Joy Division and the club was called Eric's. To say the experience was life-changing is an understatement. Eric's was situated at one end of Mathew Street, and was already legendary for birthing a colourful post-punk underground made up of bands with ridiculous names such as Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Both these bands were signed to Zoo records, run by two young men from an office at the other end of the street, over the road from Probe Records, a social hub where all the Eric's crowd hung out. A couple of years before on the same street in an old warehouse transformed into an arts lab and cafe called the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, maverick theatre director Ken Campbell premiered a twel...

1 Good morning Councillors. First of all, I'd like to thank the Committee, on behalf of the Edinburgh Campaign against Public Entertainment Licences changes, for allowing me to speak on their behalf today. It's a pleasure, both for me to have the privilege to represent the group, and to see that the Regulatory committee is taking an issue which actually isn't of it's design so seriously. Things have moved on considerably since the potential misinterpretations of the forthcoming legislation was first brought to Councillor Munn's attention by the Edinburgh campaign. Last week I think the message from Edinburgh's creative community was really brought home at a packed public meeting at Out of the Blue, one of Edinburgh's great independent art-spaces. This led to a very positive dialogue with Councillor Munn and a great deal of press attention, while just yesterday, there was a question raised about the new legislation at First Min...