Brian Ferguson’s diary
Excitement is palpable in Leith about the return of the Edinburgh International Festival to its historic theatre building – after a remarkable and ridiculous break of 30 years.
Nostalgia about how it once hosted Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Krafwerk, Slade, John Martyn and Mott the Hoople can finally be set aside in anticipation of a new series of gigs.
Essential reading in the run-up to these much-anticipated shows have been the playlists of inspirational Scottish tracks revealed to the National Museum of Scotland – whose exhibition on the history of Scottish music has partly inspired the EIF gigs – by a host of leading musicians.
One of the most commonly cited acts have been indierockers Mogwai, one of the the hottest tickets in the entire EIF programme.
The latest to lavish praise on them is actress, theatre director and – as of this Fringe – playwright Cora Bissett, who is attracting rave reviews with her Traverse show on her time leading short-lived indierock band Darlingheart. Recalling the impact of a Mogwai gig at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, she said: “I don’t think I had vibrated to music like that before.”
One of the many people to recommend Bissett’s show, What Girls Are Made Of, as their festival highlight so far was Bruce Findlay, who is best known as the long-time
Above, Mogwai are playing at Leith Theatre. Below, Cora Bissett
manager of Simple Minds.
He also had a part in Darlingheart’s dramatic rise and fall after featuring their cassette demo on his early 1990s Radio Forth programme.
I bumped into the legendary founder of Bruce’s Records at Aye, Elvis, a new Scottish comedy drama at the Rose Street about a female Elvis impersonator trying to make a name for herself in her native Aberdeenshire.
As Findlay, who was sitting alongside me, hooted with laughter along with the rest of the Presley devotees
at hearing his classics given the Doric treatment by Joyce Falconer, his musical journey had come virtually full circle.
As he told me earlier this year, Findlay’s very first foray into the music business after leaving school in 1959 involved selling Elvis’s records at his mother’s shop in Falkirk.
Back in Leith Theatre, hugely impressive finishing touches are being made to the reborn venue ahead of its return to the Edinburgh International Festival tonight.
The adjacent Thomas Morton Hall is also being pressed into action as the venue’s main bar, where the furnishings include the purple booths last seen in The Hub during recent EIF shows by Alan Cumming and Miaow Miaow, and a bar partly made out of wooden desks rescued from a skip.