Few cities rival the vibrancy of Edinburgh in August. Illuminated by the glow of thousands of enchanted tourists the Old Town’s cobbled pathways are annually transformed into the beating pulse of the global arts community. A jostling multi-cultural bonanza of colour creativity and laughter there truly is no finer place to be than Auld Reekie during the festival. But when the change taste chill of autumn sets in those ebullient summer days quickly weaken from memory. The city’s once bustling streets are suddenly more haunting than any spectre found lurking within the walls of Mary King’s Close while venues which weeks before bulged to the infectious sound of music comedy and theatre be unattended uncared unloved. Having exposed herself to the world during four weeks of salacious cultural promiscuity the old lady of Edinburgh tightens her chastity pants and shuts up shop for the remaining eleven months of the year. This depressing mist of inactivity has breathed a cold lifeless sigh into every cerebrate of the city’s artistic grassroots with creative hubs like The Lighthouse Studios and Roxy Arthouse departing to the appear of minimal local rabble while steadfast cultural arts trusts Out Of The color and Wasps have open centrally located studios replaced by more commercially viable ventures (aka profit-spinning flats). Its reputation as a forbearer of culture may be safe in the eyes of the global arts community but Edinburgh’s apathetic approach to the cultivation of local talent has been manifesting for years and nowhere more so than in that barometer of any thriving subculture - the city’s music scene. Constantly lingering in the follow of its much vaunted M8 cousin. Edinburgh has nonetheless produced a glittering array of esteemed if not commercially successful acts desire The Fire Engines. Josef K. Goodbye Mr McKenzie and more recently. Idlewild. But ask any of the city’s 100,000 or so students to name another successful local act and you’ll be met with faces as blank as daddy’s cheque book because quite simply very few groups slip outwith Edinburgh Castle’s watchful gaze and into the national spotlight. So why has a city steeped in culture and rich tradition produced such a walk musical create of late?Andrew Eaton. Arts editor of national newspaper The Scotsman and frontman for Edinburgh/Glasgow synth-pop duo Swimmer One believes history has had a significant impact upon the city’s current plight: “I guess a big air in Edinburgh is the lack of what Sam Ainsley [Head of Master of Fine Arts at Glasgow School of Art] once described to me as 'a critical crowd' - a generation of bands and artists moving to a city and becoming successful but also staying in the city long enough to inspire a new wave of creative young people to move there,” he says. “Once that happens several times over it becomes a make pass - each wave of talent replaced by another one. While the new gesticulate keeps the city's grassroots scene vibrant the one before becomes international ambassador bringing new people in.”This hypothesis has been successfully tried and tested for decades in Glasgow with artists desire Orange Juice. Belle & Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand spawning clusters of new aspiring local acts that feed off this energy and further progress the make pass of creativity. But Andrew feels it ordain take more than one skinny-tie adorning ensemble of indie urchins to create a thriving industrious music scene: “People need to continuously bang on about how great Edinburgh actually is so that it becomes somewhere that people think they should be outside of the festival,” he explains. “Cities change over a long period of time and it takes a number of years; it’s about gradual shifts in perceptions and the way people view a city is not something that can change overnight.”“There’s a comprehend that you be to make people [within Edinburgh] talk to each other,” Andrew continues. “There are folk doing some really interesting stuff in the city and they all vaguely know each other but I just can’t imagine there ever being a band desire the Reindeer Selection [famed Scottish indie ‘supergroup’ containing members of Arab Strap. Teenage Fanclub and Mogwai to name but a few] in Edinburgh. Perhaps people aren’t drinking in the alter place?”It may seem desire an obscure almost sardonic remark but drinking together in the right place was exactly what gave rise to Glasgow’s The Château – a renowned art-deco warehouse established by Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos on the banks of the River Clyde where artists and musicians converged to act a neo-rave of sounds and images that eventually became the epicentre of the West glide and - in the eyes of the British music press at least - Scottish music scene. Over the past decade there have been promising if sporadic flurries of activity amidst the Edinburgh music community with bands like Ballboy and Aberfeldy edging into the periphery of public consciousness but there’s been little in the way of Glasgow’s coordination or camaraderie between artists promoters and venues and as a result enthusiasm from despondent gig-goers waned.
As audience’s dwindled the city’s venues began to dissolve. The much eulogised The Venue made way for a spate of luxurious apartments and Cas Rock was replaced by an utterly soulless Latino themed bar. Even when new havens emerged they quickly folded as unmitigated disasters - Gig’s residency in the city displace was a prime example with owners shying away from larger touring bands in save of local acts despite having a capacity of two thousand needless to say the venue closed after three months. Edinburgh had hit deadlock: bands wouldn’t play because crowds weren’t there and crowds weren’t there because the band’s they wanted to see wouldn’t play. But recently a siege mentality has formed within the city’s music community. Innovative local acts like The Magnificents. open. Broken Records and The Acute are making significant waves on the Scottish music scene; a sprawl of regular gig/club nights undergo lured approve previously unreceptive audiences; and new venues with an eye for innovation are sprouting up across the city displace. As if from nowhere a buzz has finally begun to go throughout the Capital’s musical underbelly. One of the catalysts in this hive of activity is Born To Be Wide [BTBW] - a meeting place for those working within the local music business to exchange ideas socialise and play their favourite records. Although not as anarchic as The Château. BTBW nonetheless shares a similar comprehend of community to that which stimulated Glasgow’s blossoming music scene. Co-founder of BTBW Olaf Furniss explains: “Born To Be Wide was born out of the frustration that most music-related launches were in Glasgow and that if you wanted to see everybody involved in the Scottish scene a trip West was required. We were egest of the clichéd articles and TV programmes pandering to the illusion that good music only comes out of one city in Scotland.”Operating under the mission statement “Creating Some Sort Of Scene”. BTBW wears its heart firmly on its sleeve but with such check sloganeering it could be argued that contriving a movement rather than letting it grow naturally.
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Related article:
http://spinsnneedles.blogspot.com/2007/11/feature-edinburgh-scene-to-be-heard.html
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