What is Mayfesto?

Once upon a time, quite some time ago, there was a wee Glasgow festival called Mayfest. It was a great mix of music, theatre, film, dance and modern art and seemed to be the testing ground for the all year round festivals that Glasgow now hosts. Perhaps the mix of what was on offer was too much of a mish-mash, or maybe it had just run its course, but it was a sad day when it finished in 1997. The Mayfest Club in the old Fruitmarket holds particularly fond memories.

However, throughout Glasgow over the past few weeks posters have been appearing advertising Mayfesto, a month of political theatre based in the Tron theatre. Included are plays by George Packer, Katherine Kressmann Taylor and David Greig and the theme, if there is one, seems to be telling the personal stories which are hidden behind the headlines of war. This promises to be a thought provoking, potentially exhausting, two weeks of drama which could remind audiences how powerful theatre can be when it has an argument to make.

Hopefully Mayfesto will succeed. For all the music, film and comedy festivals in Glasgow, since Mayfest turned its toes up, theatre has been sidelined. I know there is quality theatre in the city all year round, but festivals tend to focus the mind and fire enthusiasm. You can find all the relevant details by going to mayfesto but this video should whet all appetites:

Gordons Alive!!!

The Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2010 is well under way and there are some great artists showing their wares including Linder, Jim Colquhoun, David Malkovich, Katy Dove, and many more. For a full programme of events and exhibitions click here .

Lots of interesting stuff, but the two musts for me are David Shrigley, who has an exhibition of sculpture at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and whose work I looked at in a previous post (see The Boy David...), and Douglas Gordon. Gordon is perhaps best known for his film Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a collaboration with Phillipe Pareno which followed French footballing genius and headbanger Zizou as he played for Real Madrid against Villareal. 17 cameras are trained on Zidane only as the match progresses and it is a fascinating study of a man at the top of his game, all set to a Mogwai soundtrack. In case I haven't described that as well as I hoped, here's the trailer:

Gordon's exhibition at this festival is an update of his 24 Hour Psycho which is showing at the Tramway until the 3rd of May. If you've never heard of this piece it is exactly as it sounds, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho slowed down to two frames per second rather than the normal 24, stretching the running time of the film to 24 hours. So, if you time your visit precisely, you can luxuriate in your favourite parts of the film such as the 'mother reveal', the brilliant ending, and, of course, that shower scene. Here's a brief clip of that very scene done in the Gordon style:

You may think 'what's the point', and if you do then I'm not going to try and convince you here, but if you're around Glasgow over the next week give something in the festival a go. No medium gets as much stick as modern or visual art, but like any other form there will be things you like and things you cannot stand. Some will make you think, others simply smile, and others perhaps provoke anger, but you don't know which is which unless you sample widely. If you're still unconvinced that there is anything for you at this festival I'll leave you with one of David Shrigley's sculptures that will surely change your mind:

Sparrows and Bells...

I've been neglecting the newer releases as of late as I've been reaquainting myself with my old vinyl and immersing in the joys of playlist building on Spotify. Apart for saving me a few bob, (I'm still beholden to the CD or the second hand when it comes to buying music), I've been comforting my ears with the familiar and the neglected. A steady diet of Tom Waits, The Smiths, The Cocteau Twins has been interrupted by a little Win, Fatima Mansions, The Sundays, The Icicle Works and many more. Most prominent has been old Aztec Camera and I''ll be posting an appraisal of Roddy Frame soon, if I can keep it under control.

But this week has brought the new Trembling Bells' album Abandoned Love and Sparrow and the Workshop's Crystals Fall and these are worth shouting about. The music of both is veering towards the folk section, but they are very different pieces of music. Sparrow and the Workshop are the most eclectic in their sound and apparent influences. They fit into the current vogue for electric 'roots' music that takes in everyone whose album gets four star reviews in Mojo and Uncut. If you want comparisons then it is a little like the collaborations between Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell, but with better melodies, stronger vocals and the drums turned up. However the band they most remind me of is Trespassers William, not necessarily in terms of the sound, Sparrow and the Workshop are more upfront, but in the feel of the music. Here they are with A Horses Grin:

Trembling Bells made one of the best records of last year with Carbeth, and at first they may appear a more straightforward prospect than Sparrow and the Workshop. Actually, their brand of folk music is a more challenging proposition. This is traditional folk music with only the most restrained production applied (congratulations are due to John Cavanagh and Stevie Jackson, who obviously borrowed Belle and Sebastian's 'horns' for this record. No bad thing) and this allows Trembling Bells individual talents to shine through. Lavinia Blackwall's vocals are from an earlier time. If not quite a madri-gal, at least influenced by singers from the seventies such as June Tabor, Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson.

The band's playing comes across like medieval jazz. What at first listen seems simply old-fashioned and quaint is actually complex and involving. It all comes together for a wonderful and surprising album. We aren't used to listening to music like this anymore. It's Steeleye Span, Trees, Fairport Convention and any other number of, usually English, folk bands that were thought to have been consigned to history. This is authentic stuff. I love both of these new releases, but whereas Sparrow and the Workshop are completely contemporary, Trembling Bells feel out of time. This is Adieu England:

Connolly Collects...

As I've mentioned before (see In praise of: Billy Connolly) I have a great admiration for Billy Connolly, and I see he was recently confirmed as the No1 stand-up comedian in Channel 4's 2010 update of their 100 Greatest Stand-Ups list, which I think is a fair reflection on the importance of his impact on comedy and the regard he is held by his contemporaries. I know these lists are popularity contests, but there does seem to be a genuine warmth towards the man from other comics.

But it reminded me that I recently saw, for only the second time, his most successful attempt at straight acting. In 1999 The Debt Collector, an Edinburgh set thriller, saw Connolly play Nicky Dryden a thinly veiled on screen version of Jimmy Boyle. (Very) closely based on the later life of the convict turned artist, the film was accused of being overly violent but is a film that asks interesting questions about revenge, second chances and Scotland’s strange and harmful obsession with, and glamorisation of, the ‘Hard Man’. It is has unfairly been forgotten as it is one of the best Scottish films of the 1990s.

Alongside Connolly there are great performances from Francesca Annis, Ian Robertson and has a couple of 'look who it is' cameos from Ronnie Ancona and Ford Kiernan. But it is Ken Stott who steals the film. If Brian Cox is Scotland's greatest living film actor, Stott is his TV counterpart. Perhaps best known today as Rankin's Rebus, wiping out the memories of John Hannah's attempt (one of the most spectacularly examples of mis-casting this side of John Wayne as Genghis Kahn), Stott is superb as the bitter policeman Gary Keltie who arrested Dryden, and devotes his life to ruining Dryden's apparently idyllic new life post prison.

Unfairly accused of stereotyping urban Scotland, the film was in turn condemned by many who never saw it. I recommend you track it down as it is so much better than it may appear at first. Here's the trailer:


Over the years Connolly has quietly built himself a quirky, diverse and fairly impressive film CV. Starting out in Peter McDougall plays such as Just Another Saturday and The Elephant's Graveyard it wasn't until he had his own US sitcom in 1990, simply called Billy, that he began to get regular work. Even the films that were not successful, such as Still Crazy, The Man who Sued God and Timeline, were of interest, but films like Mrs Brown, The Boondock Saints, The Impostors and, of course, Muppet Treasure Island, would look good on any one's filmography.

One of the latest addition to this list is the recently released on DVD zombie comedy Fido. Connolly takes on the title role as the Robinson family's 'pet' zombie. Set in an alternative 1950's America the film is just one of the glut of zombie movies around if you like that sort of thing. But if you only watch one zombie film this year, make it Fido. See trailer below for what to expect:

Patter Merchant...

I may have said this elsewhere in these pages, but for me poetry is the art form that balances the fine line between good and bad more precariously than any other. When it's good it's very, very good but when it's bad it can be awful. I suppose this is because there is so much going on that there is so much to go wrong.

I don't know much about poetry, but I know what I like. There are only a few poets whose new work I wait for as I do with my favourite novelists, film-makers or musicians. Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard and Don Paterson are probably the only three who make me eager with anticipation. Luckily for me, and you if you are a fan of insightful, witty and poignant poetry, Don Paterson's latest collection came out at the end of last year. It's called Rain and it has since won the prestigious Forward Poetry Prize for what the judges called a 'masterful collection'. Here is the title track, so to speak:

Rain

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line

forget the ink, the milk, the blood
— all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters

Paterson recently received the Queens Gold Medal for poetry, following in the footsteps of fellow Scots Sorley Maclean, Norman MacCaig and the aforementioned Edwin Morgan as well as well kent names such as Auden, Betjeman, Larkin and Hughes. The poet, whose previous collections include Nil,Nil,God's Gift to Woman, Landing Light and Orpheus, uses his everyday life as inspiration for his work and Rain deals with love, loss, hope and despair and he moves easily from the intensely personal to the universal and elemental.

Like Morgan and Leonard his work is accessible, wears its intelligence lightly, and can be amusing and deeply moving. I often feel like I don't allow enough poetry into my life. If you have a similar inkling then try some Don Paterson, either his poetry, or his collections of aphorisms The Book of Shadows, The Blind Eye and Best Thought, Worst Thought which also come with high recommendation. Below is a clip of the man reading at Book Slam:

Burning Bright...

I've written elsewhere about the apparent renaissance of Scottish comedy after what can generously be described as a low point (see No longer gemme? & In praise of: Absolutely). I didn't want to tempt fate by recommending BBC's Burnistoun until I could be sure that something that started out well wouldn't follow the all too regular pattern of tailing off in quality as the series progressed. Nae danger.

Produced by the much maligned, and often rightly so, Comedy Unit, Burnistoun is the world of Robert Florence and Iain Connell. These two have been working together for some time on easily forgotten shows such as the Gregor Fisher and Billy Boyd vehicle Empty, the situation 'comedy' Legit and The Karen Dunbar Show as well as the more successful Chewin' the Fat. Florence was also involved with the short-lived but fondly remembered gaming review show Videogaiden.

It seems that Florence and Connell had been given the time to write enough strong material to fill six episodes, something that has obviously not always been the case with Comedy Unit productions. Burnistoun manages to be both new and familiar. As with all sketch shows it has some misses, although to be fair it has a higher than normal hit rate. I can only hope that it will get another series, but at least Scotland is slowly gathering a sizeable group of comedy writers who write what they consider funny, not to some generic idea of what Scottish comedy is meant to be. You can still catch the full series here if you're quick, but by the time you read this it should all be up on YouTube. Below are a few of my favourite sketches:

Trainspotting...

The latest Dear Scotland column, (out today and to be found @dearscotland.com/indelible-ink-trainspotting/ ), looks at the impact and legacy of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The success of the industry that came to surround the tale of Renton and his chums; the film, poster, soundtrack(s), t-shirt and subsequent careers of those involved, have come to overshadow the original text and the column reminds us why this is one of the most important Scottish novels.

It is more complex and arresting than the film could hope to be, and if you have never read it, or haven't for some time, then I recommend you reacquaint yourself with the inhabitants of Welsh's world, especially those the film left behind. Some of the funniest scenes involve Rab 'Second Prize' McLaughlin, and some of the most heart-breaking events happen to the tragic Dave Mitchell. Even those well kent faces Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy are given more character than the film allows. Don't misunderstand me, I think it's a good film, but it would be impossible to match what the novel achieves.

This also applies to missing scenes that are central to the characterisation of the individuals involved. We have a better understanding of Franco Begbie's 'nutter' persona when we meet his alcoholic down and out dad in 'Trainspotting at Leith Central Station', and Renton's 'heroic' status is challenged further than it ever is on screen, particularly in the chapter 'Bang to Rites'.

It may be a terrible cliche, but this book is not only better, but braver than a film version could ever be. It's also great fun to read as Welsh's language is his real triumph.

Next month's column will look at Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room. If you've read it you know what a good book it is, if you haven't you should give it a go. You won't be disappointed.

The next 5 novels under discussion are:

Louise Welsh The Cutting Room (May)

Gordon Legge The Shoe (Jun)

Alan Bissett Boyracers (Jul)

Iain Banks The Wasp Factory (Aug)

Anne Donovan Buddha Da (Sept)