Brian Ferguson’s diary
Nostalgia galore at the Playhouse for fans of the Incredible String Band – some 50 years from their unique sound being forged a brisk walk away in the long-gone Crown Bar on Lothian Street.
Halfway through the show, Joe Boyd, the ISB’S long-time manager, set out a convincing case for Edinburgh being the home of psychedelic music, surely one of the city’s best musical claims to fame.
Later on, Scritti Politti frontman Green Gartside, one of many singers to reinterpret their songs in the show, recalled being left ecstatic by the ISB when he saw them play live in his native Bristol in the early 1970s – so much so that he ended up being knocked down by a bus.
He recalled: “The Incredible String Band had a big impact on me in more ways than one.” l Edinburgh has felt awash with pop-up bars this month, but how many are serving up Buckfast cocktails?
It was surely a complete coincidence that I discovered the Red Fuji on sale at the Leith Volcano at a rare gig in the capital by one of Lanarkshire’s finest exports, The BMX Bandits.
Five of the six bottles of the infamous fortified wine,
0 Chat show – Nicola Sturgeon mixed with grapefuit juice and tonic water to create the “volcanic concoction,” ordered for the Fringe, have already been used at the bar created at the former St James Church on Constitution Street. What on earth would the Buckfast Abbey monks make of it? l The last word, with any luck, from Nicola Sturgeon on the stooshie over Alex Salmond’s Fringe show, on THAT illadvised joke, and his spell in the limelight as the festival’s answer to Benny Hill.
During a visit to see how Castlebrae Community High was shaping up for its debut as an Edinburgh International Festival venue, the First Minister tried her best to be diplomatic when asked whether she was planning to attend the much-hyped Assembly Rooms chat show.
“I’m not sure I’m going to make it, but I think he’s doing very well,” she said. “It wouldn’t be Alex Salmond if there wasn’t some controversy. He is showing that he has got many talents above and beyond just politics.”
However she left the door tantalisingly ajar for a face-toface showdown: “I can’t possibly comment on what guests he has got coming up. I think that’s got the status of a state secret at the moment.”