Looking Out To Sea

Friday night was another of Radiohead’s gigs on Glasgow Green. Many years ago they brought a whole tent to the green. This time it was just a stage, so we all stood outside in the rain.

It seems to be the done thing for doors to open a very long time before anything happens on stage. It was four and half hours between doors open (4pm) and Radiohead taking the stage. I’m pretty sure if they cut that time in half there would be fewer drunk, antisocial jerks in the crowd, throwing drinks over people and knocking each other over.

The show was really good. Ben tried to memorise the set list but I don’t know if he succeeded; here’s one on a fan site. The wonders of the internet! They played everything off the new album except House of Cards, which happens to be one of my favourites.

The support were Bat for Lashes — very good. Kind of Björk with darker music. (I’m assured Björk can be very dark but I’ve never heard her do stuff like this.) Give the album Fur and Gold a listen.

I mentioned in a previous post that Citylink were really rubbish when I tried to book transport to Glasgow. Well, not nearly as bad as when it came to putting on the transport. I paid for special “event” tickets, which would theoretically bus us from Edinburgh to Glasgow Green and then back again afterwards. The bus took us to Glasgow’s main station on Buchanan Street, so we had to make our own way across the city (buying an A–Z in the process). After the gig there were no buses to be seen so we went back to the bus station, which was chaos. The drivers insisted there were buses waiting empty at Glasgow Green but it’s pretty obvious why they were empty — because nobody knew where they were. Being a ticketed event there was only one entrance/exit to the Radiohead show, but wherever the buses were parked it wasn’t in front of this entrance. Nor were there any signs to tell you where they’d be parked. I felt quite embarrassed for convincing our friends that the bus would be better than the train, considering it turned out to be slower, more uncomfortable and not as advertised.

This evening we saw Helen’s mum sing with the Garleton Singers at St Cuthbert’s — they did some Brahms love songs, there was a piano duet by Schubert, and then after the interval the all-conquering Carmina Burana. It seems you are allowed to sing about drinking and hot sex in church, as long as you do it in Latin.

I enjoyed this one more than previous trips to see the Garleton Singers. It really helps to know the tunes so we’ve been listening to some of the Brahms in the last couple of days. And of course everyone knows Carl Orff, right? He appears in enough football/car/deoderant adverts.

It was pretty rockin’ anyway, and the reprise of O Fortuna had a little extra excitement because the timpanist’s music kept falling off the stand. But, quite frankly, if you play timpani and don’t know how O Fortuna goes then you’re doing it wrong. She just kept playing through…

We saw Equus last night with Helen’s family because it was her father’s birthday. It was a visually impressive and intriguing play, but didn’t have young Mr Radcliffe in it cos this isn’t swanky London. The shows come up here but the famous people are strangely absent. Anyway, I enjoyed it but I am still unsure what it was about.

I could tell you the plot — boy likes horses, boy blinds six horses at a stable where he works, psychiatrist plays detective to work out what happened. That bit is all very obvious. But there was lots of philosophising in a very obtuse way, where people had to ‘account’ for things, where accounting wasn’t really explained. The entire second half seemed to be the psychiatrist having a mid-life crisis of conscience and complaining that he really wanted to go off to see the sights in Greece instead. Also, that he didn’t get on with his wife and couldn’t have kids. And he didn’t think he was helping his patients any.

To which I can only reiterate what his friend said at the time, although not so bluntly: get a grip you big whiner. Watching comfortable people come over all emo isn’t really my idea of a good time.

Before the play we had tea at The Apartment — which seems to have no internet presence at all. It’s suddenly become a lot harder to take it seriously. ;-) Food was very nice though the furniture was a bit too arty for its own good. I was sitting on a wooden square block. Hmm.

Check this one out:

Thanks for the CD, Liz! And now for some Bach:

Helen and I went back to our home town at the weekend. (The place where the masthead photo was taken.)

On Friday night we went to a preview of Philip Revell’s new work (I warn you, that’s an appalling website he has there and it may not work for you at all). So we’ve got a new casserole dish and a wee jug. We’re putting together quite a nice collection now, as Helen received a set of bowls on her birthday.

We played Trivial Pursuit with Helen’s parents. And Helen’s mum and I soundly thrashed the other two (well, it was actually pretty close, but that doesn’t sound so impressive). My impressive computing knowledge won through in the end, though only because I could remember what COBOL stood for. Damn you Grace!

On Saturday I tried to fix my parents computer. That wasn’t very fun. In the words of that great orator, Ripley, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure”. I honestly don’t understand how using such infested machines can be better than going without. I’m sure it’s more productive to just pull out the quill pen and the carrier pigeons than fight with Windows spyware one more time.

We went to see The Golden Compass also, which I thoroughly enjoyed. More on that later. I tried again to fix my parents computer on the Sunday but failed, again. I hate that machine.

On Sunday night we went to Haddington to see the Garleton singers do a Christmas concert. It was pretty much all over my head though.

Bumsong! Er, Burnsong I mean. But that r and the n together look so like an m it’s hard not to do a double-take whenever I see it.

Burnsong, in the Queen’s Hall. They got a wee collection of singer/songwriters who had never met before, put them together in a house for a week and forced them to eat square sausage and write beautiful new music. Then they came to Edinburgh and played them for us, these songs that were just a week old. And it was fabulous.

It was staggering how beautiful some of the songs were. That’s what happens when you don’t have time to file off the rough edges, or spend weeks pissing around in studios to get the right type of reverb. Just acoustic instruments and nerves and talent.

This lot were the ones responsible. Maybe we’ll hear from some of them again.

• Midge Ure
• Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub)
• Roddy Woomble (Idlewild)
• Jo Mango
• Nuala Kennedy
• Louise Quinn
• L-Marie
• Ziggy Campbell (Found)