December 2009 Archives

A new skin for the old ceremony

In which your correspondent looks like he took a wrong turn on the way to the drunk tank...

Protempore – Issue 85

It’s been a busy old couple of weeks for your tired and very emotional hack who scrapes a living by following tired and very emotional politicians around the place, trawling the gutters and bars for snippets of gossip to fill this space. To be honest, as I sat down to start writing this drivel, I [...]...

Of Bucket Lists & Caramac

Bucket List, it turns out, has nothing to do with ranking pails. Prior to recently watching a film of the same name, I had often marvelled at the idea of Jack Nicholson and More Than Freeman doing just that for 100 or so minutes. In my head, they would be sitting, on buckets, sharing dialogue [...]...

Elegy for the Great Unwatched

Colin Montgomery pens a requiem for the DVD titles that time, and a willing audience, forgot…...

A Thousand Tiny Thank Yous

Chair of Leith Festival, Gordon Munro, reckons you should all stand up and take a big, deep, bow...

Two Barflies at The Barony Bar

Lucy Christopher talks to Grid Iron Theatre about their revival of Barflies and the upcoming Leaving Planet Earth...

The Wonderful World of FAB

Older than Hibs and Hearts and more successful – they’ve won 2 trophies in the last 4 years, Tam Heinitz on Leith Cricket Club. Oh, and genocide…...

Reinventing the New

Kennedy Wilson looks at the shock of the new and asks, who knew there was so much new?...

Incredible Mr Toad!

Enter stage left (right I mean)… Mathew Young, an international mongrel who accidentally washed up in Edinburgh just nearly seven years ago, he, bravely, abandoned a perfectly respectable career as a design engineer to run Song, by Toad Records full-time. The label is actually an off-shoot of Song, by Toad, a music blog he has [...]...

The Chairman of the Bored

Rodger Evans suggests that your boredom will not be alleviated by fumbling around in his trousers...

A Virtual Big Bang

If there is one thing that the on-going Arab Spring uprising has demonstrated it is that the internet is a powerful tool with which a group can derail oppression and disappointment. It is an implement they are using to direct a brighter democratic future of their own envisioning. The World Wide Web is a rapid [...]...

A little night music

The first time I heard Ren Harvieu was a Monday afternoon on Radio 4. She was in the studio reviewing new music releases. Cheryl Cole’s latest offering was up first. “Um, yeah, it’s… alright?” was Ren’s evasive verdict, delivered in the softest Salford brogue. When pressed she added “Yeah, it’s OK, let’s leave it at [...]...

Leith Jazz Festival 15-17th June

After a long pause of more than a decade, a coterie of bars in the Shore area have set their sights on reprising the long dormant but not forgotten Leith Jazz Festival. Organisers are expecting between 15 and 20 local watering holes to host as many as 60 gigs over the course of the weekend [...]...

Culinary Adventures on Leith Walk

One of my favourite things about living and working near Leith Walk is the wide variety of foodstuffs on offer. As an avid cook, I like exploring different ingredients from the plethora of multicultural grocers on the Walk. In fact I rarely need to visit Scotmid, as the local grocers meet most of my culinary [...]...

An Inconvenient (Un)Truth

Dave McGuire plays devil’s advocate on fakery in music and asks whether it is always necessary to keep it real?...

Leither in London – Issue 85

Being kissed awake isn’t something I’m all that used to these days so when I was nuzzled out of my Saturday morning slumber it took me a second to recall how I’d ended up here. Oh yes, Rudy. The very drunk yet charming man I’d met in the pub last night. I still don’t know [...]...