Latest news with #FringebytheSea
Scotsman
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Blur's Dave Rowntree on capturing the band's early years on camera: 'nobody's posing'
When Blur drummer Dave Rowntree started taking pictures of his bandmates in the early 1990s, they were still a 'tiny little band' playing 'quite unfashionable music', he tells Paul Whitelaw, ahead of an appearance at the Fringe by the Sea Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... When Blur drummer Dave Rowntree decided to take some photos while on tour in the early 1990s, he had no idea they were about to become one of the biggest British bands of the decade. Their first album, Leisure, had just been released to mixed reviews, and although they'd scored a top ten hit with Baggy anthem There's No Other Way, they were generally regarded as Just Another Indie Band. Not that Blur cared less about that, as they were finally living their pop star dreams. Dave Rowntree | Contributed This is where we find them in No One You Know, Rowntree's charming compendium of candid photographs starring four young men - Rowntree, Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Alex James - having the absolute time of their lives. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I didn't use the pictures where people were miserable," he smiles, "it's a little bit self-edited. But I think it captures the joy, the excitement, the enthusiasm and the fun of it all. It's easy to get caught up in the later period of the band's history when we were - after the Brits and Oasis and all of that - far more into the limelight. In those days we were a tiny little band playing quite unfashionable music and it wasn't at all clear that we were going to be successful." Graham Coxon and Damon Albarn as photographed by their bandmate Dave Rowntree | Dave Rowntree Rowntree's photographs also capture the distinct personalities of his bandmates. 'The photos I took were of people in the downtime, nobody's posing, they're just being themselves," he says. "We're goofing around and trying to cope with the boredom of sitting around between soundcheck and gig or travelling. When you're doing a photo shoot or on stage, everybody's playing a role to some extent, but that's not what I've got – I've got pictures of people when the TV cameras and interview tape recorders are all turned off. I've captured the people - not Damon from Blur but Damon Albarn.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Damon Albarn pictured during an early Blur tour of Japan | Dave Rowntree The book follows the band on eye-opening tours of Japan and South America, where they were treated as far bigger stars than they actually were at the time. As Rowntree explains, 'The UK weekly music press had in those days a cache outside the UK, so that if you were on the cover of Melody Maker you could still be playing in a tiny little club in London to about 50 people, but people outside the UK had no idea, they thought if you were on the front cover of a paper you must be this great big band." No One You Know by Dave Rowntree | Contributed And how does he feel when he pores over these old photos of the friends he's known for almost 40 years? "It's odd because when I look at Damon, Alex and Graham today, I still see the young people in those pictures. Very occasionally I get flashes of them as the middle-aged men that we all are now, but by and large when I look at Alex I still see the Alex with the floppy fringe and chiselled cheekbones. It's weird really.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
Scotsman
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Fringe By The Sea: Remembering The McKinlay Sisters, who supported The Beatles and the Rolling Stones
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... They were the first Scottish girl band to break into the charts 60 years ago and the first to ever play Wembley Arena as they toured with The Rolling Stones. Now the story of The McKinlays, a pair of sisters from Edinburgh, is to be told in a documentary to be screened at Fringe by the Sea in North Berwick. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Jeanette Gallacher, who formed the band with her sister, Sheila, in the early 1960s after taking part in a local talent contest at an Edinburgh nightclub, is to speak on a panel at the festival, ahead of the showing of documentary Since Yesterday on August 10. The documentary, by co-directors Carla J Easton and Blair Young, who will also speak alongside Ms Gallacher, examines the 'untold' story of Scotland's 'missing' girl bands and looks at why they did not enjoy the same level of fame as their male counterparts. 'Guys have power that girls don't in that business, especially back then,' Ms Gallacher said. 'We would be knocking on the door of the agency asking for our money and be told 'oh, the cheques haven't come in'. The McKinlay Sisters supported acts including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Gerry and the Pacemakers, but never became household names and struggled to make ends meet as performers. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Jeannette Gallacher was one half of the McKinlay sisters who supported bands including The Beatles in the 1960s. | Fringe by Sea Ms Gallacher recalls the day she and Sheila were asked to record their songs at a studio in London after winning the contest, following a short tour of Scotland. 'The very idea of going to London and making a demonstration disc, which was what we were doing, was incredible at age 17,' she said. 'My dad would have signed anything, we didn't know anything about the business. It wasn't a good move at all, as the agent was not very caring and we were sent all over the place without any management. For the solo girls on their own, it must have been awful. But at least I had my sister, so we never suffered any actual abuse, but we were not supported.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The pair soon became popular support acts and played on tours with major bands. Ms Gallacher remembers finding the members of The Beatles to be ordinary people. The McKinlay sisters. | The McKinlay sisters. 'You take it for granted because when you're doing it, you don't see them as these big icons,' she said. 'The Beatles were big at this point, but they were just very nice guys. They were just our colleagues, we would chat to them.' She remembers John Lennon as being 'a bit sarcastic', while Paul McCartney was the most friendly. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Once, we were in Edinburgh at the ABC, in our dressing rooms and some girls tried to climb up into our dressing rooms because they thought that was where they [The Beatles] were,' she said. 'A lot of nonsense went on, it was quite funny.' Following the release of their fourth single in 1965, the sisters moved to Germany where they toured as The McKinlay Sisters. Jeanette later became one half of a vocal duo called Die Windows, scoring a number one hit in Germany in 1972, before retiring to bring up her family in Edinburgh. Sheila McKinlay died 13 years ago. 'Doing the documentary without her felt strange,' Ms McKinlay said. 'It was bittersweet to look back on that time, the special time with my sister.'
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Here's my top 10 Edinburgh Festival picks not to be missed
BOOK EVENT Hanif Kureishi: Shattered but Unbroken Edinburgh International Book Festival, Venue T, Edinburgh Futures Institute, August 15, 3.15pm Author Hanif Kureish (Image: Getty Images) Some years ago (maybe around the time Gordon Brown was Prime Minister) I interviewed Hanif Kureishi at his home. He was a splendid, feisty, bullish interviewee, calling out my questions and taking the hump at times. In 2022 he suffered a fall that left him paralysed. He's now a tetraplegic. If anything, he might have become a better, braver writer as a result. Hosted by journalist Chitra Ramaswamy, this Book Festival event sees him appear remotely, but, such is the force of his personality even now, that shouldn't make any difference. CLASSICAL Best of Monteverdi Choir Edinburgh International Festival, Usher Hall, August 4 I do like a choir. And in this year's compact (or should that be financially constrained?) Edinburgh International Festival this is the performance I'm drawn to. Led by conductor Jonathan Sells, it should be a showcase for the choir and the English Baroque Soloists. The programme takes in Purcell and Bach (both JS and Johann Christoph) and culminates with a performance of Handel's Dixit Dominus. ART Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years Royal Scottish Academy, July 28-November 2 Stretched Canvas on Field, with mineral block removed, after a few days of sheep eating it, 1997 (Image: Andy Goldsworthy) Sometimes you can have enough of flyers and street jugglers and dingy comedy venues, right? That's the time to take in an exhibition. And this August you are spoiled for choice in Edinburgh. Resistance, curated by filmmaker Steve McQueen, continues at Modern Two for anyone seeking inspiration to be an activist. Dovecot Studios is home to an exhibition dedicated to the textile design of IKEA and the Scottish Gallery has a celebration of the artist Victoria Crowe on her 80th birthday. All well worth your time. And then there is Andy Goldsworthy taking over the Royal Academy. This exhibition includes more than 200 works by Scottish-based environmental artist, including an expansive new installation built in situ. Remarkable work from a remarkable man. TALK Tim Pope Fringe by the Sea, The Dome, North Berwick, August 2, 2.45pm It's tempting to forego [[Edinburgh]] all together this August and just decamp to North Berwick for the duration. Because this year's Fringe by the Sea programme contains everyone from Chris Hoy, Eddi Reader, Judy Murray and Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) to Hamish Hawk, the Bluebells and Dave from Blur. There's even an indie disco overseen by Scotland's pre-eminent musical Stuarts, Murdoch and Braithwaite. But can I single out this appearance by director Tim Pope? His work with The Cure, Siouxsie Sioux, Talk Talk, Soft Cell, Strawberry Switchblade and even Wham! (he directed the video for Young Guns Go For It) made him one of the key visual artists of the 1980s. In this special event he's in conversation with Vic Galloway. FILM Grow Edinburgh International Film Festival, August 16-19, Cameo, Filmhouse, Vue, various times Grow with Nick Frost (Image: unknown) I suppose we should be grateful that we still have an [[Edinburgh]] International Film Festival at all after the collapse of CMI in 2022, but even before that it seemed to be struggling to match the buzz and the engagement found at the other end of the M8 at the annual Glasgow Film Festival. This is the second year of the revivied Film Festival under director Paul Ridd and it comes trailing some criticism that it's not Scottish enough. (Critic and journalist Siobhan Synnot has claimed that 90 per cent of the people selecting films for the festival live outside Scotland). Despite all that, there is much to see here. As well as a retrospective of Budd Boetticher westerns, there will be in-person conversations with directors Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank) and Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels and the upcoming 28 Years later sequel The Bone Temple), producer Jeremy Thomas, as well as premieres from directors including Paul Andrew Williams, Andrew Kotting, Helen Walsh and the Dardenne brothers. I'm intrigued to see Grow, the new film from Scottish director John McPhail (Anna and the Apocalypse), with a cast of familiar British comedy faces (including Jane Horrocks and Nick Frost) and a plot description that combines the phrases 'Scottish fantasy' and 'pumpkin-growing contest'. FILM Bulk Edinburgh International Film Festival, Cameo, August 14, 11.55pm And sticking with the film festival ... 'This is a midnight film through and through. Car chases, gun fights, sci-fi and romance,' director Ben Wheatley has said of his new film Bulk which is having its world premiere at this year's EIFF, part of the festival's Midnight Madness strand. Sounds fun. Wheatley's last outing was Generation Z, the Channel 4 TV horror series (the one with Anita Dobson and Sue Johnston as OAP zombies). Before that he gave us The Meg 2. But I'm hoping Bulk - which stars Sam Riley and Noah Taylor - might be fit to stand alongside his best films, Kill List and A Field in England, both of which belied small budgets to offer up potent, unheimlich horror thrillers. Here's hoping this is another one. If midnight is too late for you, there are screenings of the film on Friday, August 15 at the National Galleries and Vue, and there will be a special In Conversation event with Wheatley himself on August 15 at 1.30pm at the Tolcross Central Hall Auditorium. DANCE Journey of Flight: Kathryn Gordon DB3 @Dance Base, August 12-17, 2.30pm Intrigued by the sound of this dance performance based on the migration patterns of birds and the idea of place. Accompanied by live music from Jenny Sturgeon, Shetland-based dance artist and choreographer Kathryn Gordon's show combines bespoke visuals and avian-inspired movement and should offer a calm retreat from the hurlyburly of the Grassmarket. 'We've really explored what home is to us and that feeling of nostalgia and leaving and coming back,' Gordon says of the piece. It also involves paper planes. And who doesn't love paper planes? POETRY At What Point with Caitlin O'Ryan Spiegeltent, Edinburgh International Book Festival, August 19, 6pm Actor Caitlin O'Ryan was a regular in the TV series Outlander, but it's her spoken-word poetry that has really got her noticed. Last year her performance of her poem At What Point went viral and it wasn't hard to see why: an impassioned cri de coeur about violence against women, gender inequality and the challenges of female experience, it had echoes of Self Esteem's breakthrough hit I Do This All the Time. But, if anything, O'Ryan's words hit even harder. In this book festival event she talks to Holly McNish. COMEDY Zainab Johnson: Toxically Optimistic Pleasance Courtyard (Above), July 30-August 24 There is quite a lot of work-in-progress shows coming to Edinburgh this summer, Aisling Bea, the wonderful Ania Magliano, Laura Smyth and Larry Dean among them. Nothing wrong with that but usually Edinburgh is what you're progressing towards. Case in point. Zainab Johnson may have her own hit stand-up show on Amazon Prime (Hijabs Off), but here she is making her debut at the Fringe. Johnson's new show talks gun ownership (yes, she is American), relationships and, as the title suggests, optimism as a toxic trait. To purchase tickets for the Fringe, please click here
Scotsman
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
ScotRail announces extra late-night services during Edinburgh festivals
ScotRail said it will operate extra-late night services and extra carriages on key routes during the festivals. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The announcement of the extra services will be welcomed by those visiting the city - with ScotRail saying that it will give festivalgoers extra choice and more flexibility. Extra services will run at the weekend throughout the festival, which takes place between 1-25 August. With key routes including Glasgow Queen Street, Glenrothes with Thornton, Dundee, and North Berwick all gaining additional late-night services. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Customers travelling on routes between Edinburgh Waverley and Stirling, Dunblane, Dundee, Leven, Perth, Glenrothes with Thornton, Cowdenbeath, Bathgate, Glasgow Central via Shotts, and the Borders will also benefit from more carriages. ScotRail said that it expects more than two million people to travel to the festivals by train. It hopes the changes will provide hundreds of extra carriages, providing tens of thousands of additional seats during the festival period. Scotrail said it will operate extra-late night services and extra carriages on key routes during the festivals. Highlights for ScotRail's services during the festivals include: Extra late-night trains between Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street, departing at 00.03 and 00.33 every night via Falkirk High, plus additional departures at 23.30 via Falkirk High and 00.12 via Bathgate on Fridays and Saturdays. A late-night Friday train to Glenrothes with Thornton via Dunfermline, departing Edinburgh at 23.59. A Friday late-night service to Dundee, departing at 23.56. A Sunday late-night service to North Berwick, departing Edinburgh at 23.24. Special services from North Berwick to Edinburgh Waverley after midnight, from Friday, August 1, to Sunday, August 10, supporting those attending Fringe by the Sea. Mark Ilderton, ScotRail Service Delivery Director, said: 'We're proud to play our part in helping people experience the buzz of Edinburgh during festivals season. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'With longer trains and more late-night services on key routes, we're doing everything we can to make it easier for customers to enjoy all the capital has to offer, from the first show of the day to the last act of the night.' Tony Lankester, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: "We welcome ScotRail's enhanced services during the peak festival season and encourage Fringe audiences to plan ahead and book rail travel where possible. "From families planning a fun day out in Edinburgh to those here for an evening full of Fringe performance; travelling by rail will deliver you right to the heart of the action." More travel information is available here.
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
ScotRail announce late night trains during Edinburgh festival season - here are all the extra services
Extra services will operate between Edinburgh and Glasgow every night in August Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... ScotRail have announced a raft of extra late night trains on key routes to and from the capital city during the festival season. The train operator will run additional late trains for festivalgoers from August 1 to 25, including between Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Queen Street, Glenrothes with Thornton, Dundee, and North Berwick. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Late-night services will run every night from Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street via Falkirk High, with extra services on Fridays to Dundee, Glenrothes with Thornton and Queen Street via Bathgate and Airdrie. Additional trains will also run after midnight from North Berwick to Waverley between Friday August 1 to Sunday August 10, for revellers enjoying Fringe by the Sea. Mark Ilderton, ScotRail Service Delivery Director, said: 'We're proud to play our part in helping people experience the buzz of Edinburgh during festivals season. 'With longer trains and more late-night services on key routes, we're doing everything we can to make it easier for customers to enjoy all the capital has to offer, from the first show of the day to the last act of the night.' The extra services include late night trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow | PA Here's a list of all the extra services on offer: Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Everyday between August 1-25 12.03 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 12.33 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level Fridays between August 1-22 11.30 pm Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 11.56 pm Edinburgh to Dundee 11.59 pm Edinburgh to Glenrothes with Thornton 12.03 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 12.12 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street Low Level (will show as Saturday on the ScotRail app) 12.33 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level Saturdays between August 2-23 11.30 pm Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 12.03 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 12.12 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street Low Level (will show as Saturday on the ScotRail app) 12.33 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level Sundays between August 3-24 11.24 pm Edinburgh to North Berwick 12.03 am Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level 12.33 amEdinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street High Level Friday August 1 until Saturday August 9 12:01 am North Berwick to Edinburgh Sunday August 3 and Sunday August 10 11.24 pm Edinburgh to North Berwick Extra carriages are also being added during the period for passengers on routes between Edinburgh Waverley and Stirling, Dunblane, Dundee, Leven, Perth, Glenrothes with Thornton, Cowdenbeath, Bathgate, Glasgow Central via Shotts, and the Borders. ScotRail is urging passengers to plan their journey and book tickets in advance.
