Coffee-Table Notes

In the entire history of pop music, every song tells a story. In the more innocent days of rock and roll's dawn especially, the jukebox idylls and three-minute dance-hall melodramas of coffee bar heartbreak and last dance epiphanies reflected their era in a way that now seems obvious material for full-length musicals such as Dreamboats and Petticoats. Yet, behind the songs themselves was a legion of songwriters, producers, singers and musicians all looking to hit the big-time with their own particular take on teenage dreams. These were the days of the production line song-writers, be it emanating out of Tin Pan Alley or the Brill Building, would-be American hit factories where songwriting teams would hawk their wares. One of the latter was Neil Sedaka's Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, a bubblegum classic written in much the same vein as the work of Gerry Goffin and Carole King, a canon so perfectly observed by Todd Rundgren I Saw The Light, from his 1972 album, Something/An...

Now that the festive pantomime season has drawn to a close, there is only the briefest pauses for breath before theatres across Scotland open their doors again for what looks like a tantalising year ahead from both home-grown and touring shows. First out the traps is Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Company, with a new production of Eugene O'Neill's family-based epic, A Long Day's Journey into Night (January 17th-February 8th). Tony Cownie will direct a cast that features well-known television faces, Paul Shelley and Diana Kent. While touring productions of West Side Story (King's Theatre, Glasgow, January 15th-25 th ) and Evita (Edinburgh Playhouse, January 27th-February 8 th ) are sure to pack in audiences, the only other Scottish production to open in January is 1933: Eine Nacht Im Kabarett (January 22nd-February 2 nd ), Tightlaced Theatre's production of Susanna Mulbihill's new play at Summerhall. Focusing on 1930s Berlin and Hitler's rise to power, Mu...

When Hamish Pirie arrived at the Traverse Theatre in April 2012 to take up the post of associate director under then recently arrived artistic director Orla O'Loughlin, one of his first tasks was to stage a verbatim reconstruction of both a daily meeting of the Occupy movement and the weekly bunfight of Prime Minister's Question Time in Westminster. While Pirie had started his new job just three days before the public presentation of Tim Price's script, he rose to the occasion with an event that set a stamp on a tenure that has gone beyond purely text-based work. Almost two years on, and as he prepares to depart the Traverse for pastures new, it's clear that this was the case whether it was directing radical comedian Mark Thomas in his very personal solo show, Bravo Figaro!, or another collaboration with Price called I'm With The Band. Inbetween these two Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows came Quiz Show, Rob Drummond's devastating and timely study o...

When Douglas MacInytre founded The Creeping Bent Organisation to  release records in the art/pop spirit of Bob Last's Edinburgh-based  Fast Product label and Alan Horne's Postcard Records of Scotland, he  was asked in an interview who his influences were. His reply  name-checked Fire Engines, Suicide, Subway Sect and The Pop Group, musical agent-provocateurs all, who in different ways, defined what  came to be known as post-punk.     At the time, MacIntyre had never met any of the artists concerned. With  Creeping Bent about to enter its twentieth year of operations, however, it's a different story, with the label having put out material from key  players of all the acts named. These include Davy Henderson's post Fire Engines projects, The Nectarine No.9 and The Sexual Objects, Alan Vega  of Suicide's collaboration with producer Stephen Lironi as The Revolutionary Corps of ...

Edinburgh's Hogmanay Four stars “The way to kill a song,” says radical folk singer Dick Gaughan, quoting the late Labour MP, Norman Buchan, before regaling the audience with a slow version of Hamish Henderson's masterpiece, Freedom Come All Ye, “is to make it a national anthem.” Gaughan has lost none of his righteous fire, nor the sense of humour that accompanies it in a glorious appearance at Scot:Lands, the nine-venue New Year's Day gadabout Edinburgh's Old Town for a feast of themed bespoke performances. Gaughan was performing as part of High:Land, which saw Ullapool's Ceilidh Place reconstituting the venue's speak-easy vibe in the old Bristo Hall, where the likes of Nancy Nicolson and The Cast played short sets across two floors. Shetland Arts did something similar in Greyfriars Kirk, aka Shet:Land, with sessions from harpist Catriona Mackay and fiddler Chris Stout among others. Elsewhere, King Creosote formed a super-group with fellow traveller Wi...

Edinburgh's Hogmanay Four stars Art may not have been the first thing in people's minds as they packed Princes Street on Hogmanay, but it was in abundance in what turned out to be the driest, most wind-free event in years. This must have been a blessed relief to Pet Shop Boys, who were scheduled to headline the main stage in 2006, before the elements forced them to cancel. This year, however, the duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe relished the occasion with a flamboyantly hi-tech, all-singing, all-dancing show that saw in the new year with stylistic panache. Prior to that, local supports The 10:04s and Nina Nesbitt kicked things off with displays of wide-screen indie-rock from the former and jaunty sugar-coated ditties from the latter. The main action, however, was over at the Waverley Stage. So while The 1975 served up a set of coffee table atmospherics and well-mannered pop hooks in the Gardens, Chvrches and Django Django all-but stole the show down the road with matching di...

When Tightlaced Theatre and Sporadic Music's co-production of Susanna Mulvihill's new play, 1933: Eine Nacht Im Kabarett, opens in Edinburgh's Summerhall complex in a couple of weeks, it not only marks the opening of 2014's home-grown theatre season. The show also points to a fertile under-the-radar arts scene that exists in the capital via a network of young companies working in venues outwith traditional theatre spaces. This has recently manifested itself, both in the In Your Face Theatre company's recent revival of the stage version of Irvine Welsh's novel, Trainspotting at Out of the Blue's converted drill hall home, and in the Village Pub Theatre's ongoing presentations of new work in the back room of the bar the company have adopted as home. Previously, the Siege Perilous company have produced work at the Malmaison Hotel on the Shore, while Creative Electric have been devising experimental work with young people in the bowels of the Bongo Clu...