My first visit to Edinburgh was in my youth when I recall vividly visiting the Castle in the days when you could wander round free of charge and of walking up Arthur’s Seat for a panoramic view of the city. We must have commuted in from one of the many Pontins/Butlins family holidays we undertook at that time, probably from Berwick on Tweed. We visited many of those camps, Ayr, Pwllheli, St Ives and Torbay spring to mind. We also once frequented Camber Sands, which many years later became the home for the All-Tomorrows Parties Festival events where they have had some fantastic bills, an event which I have never yet managed to attend.
In the early 90’s, Gill and I undertook a trip up the East Coast in our trusty beige Austin Allegro staying initially in Arbroath where I developed my kinship to their football club, before visiting Dundee, home of the View, before a leisurely couple of days in Edinburgh, including a visit for tapas at Café Anduluz on George Street, completing the trilogy of their Glasgow/Edinburgh restaurants, just the Aberdeen and Newcastle branches to visit at some stage to complete the club!
We have since utilised the excellent train links from Preston for other trips as the costs going North are infinitely less prohibitive than the extortionate fares now charged by Avanti down to London. I love the fact, like Glasgow, that the main Waverley Station is slam dunk in the centre of the city with easy access to the main drag on Princess Street. Running parallel to there is Rose Street with its plethora of bars and restaurants. On one of those forays, we missed an opportunity to see the Kilmarnock band Fatherson.
We utilised Edinburgh as a base camp for my first visit to T in the Park in 1999, but it was a lengthy commute to the site, and we found some digs in the closer location of Glenfarg for my final two visits to the festival.
My first musical trip was to see Mogwai at Edinburgh Usher Hall on 27/04/06. The venue is a grand old concert hall near the castle on Lothian Road. It was constructed in 1914 and went through a huge refurbishment at the start of this century and has a capacity of 2200. It is in somewhat of a cultural zone with two other theatres adjoining it on either side.
In its early days it was a multi-purpose venue including political rallies, but they curtailed in 1934 after a huge protest occurred when Oswald Mosley was in town. It was also used as the boxing venue during the 1986 Commonwealth Games. In the main, it has been a classical venue but also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in 1972, and as you well know the UK entry that year was the New Seekers!
We decamped before the show into a pub next door watching a portion of a Middlesbrough UEFA Cup match as they were on a remarkable run to the final that year. The gig venue itself had French Riviera beer prices at the bar, so much so when at a lass at the bar ahead of us enquired the tariff for an ale, she cogitated for a moment and changed her order to a bottle of wine. This had to be decanted into the obligatory plastic glass, so became her pint of wine for the duration of the gig.
The Mogwai boys were in crackling form with a few songs being drawn off my favourite album of theirs ‘Mr Beast’ and the venue and acoustics really suited their expansive sound.
My second visit was unsurprisingly to see Mogwai again at Edinburgh Corn Exchange on 21/10/08. We had digs near the Grass market area, and we identified that we needed to purloin a cab to the venue as it was located a fair way out of town in the Chesser area.
The original building was founded in 1909 and had Category B listing, it was restored towards the end of the century becoming a live venue then, before very recently being taken over and changing its name to the O2 Academy. It was a large multipurpose venue with a 3000 capacity, and I found the place to be a bit metallic and soulless.
The support act was a duo from Bristol called F##k Buttons whose first album was produced by Mogwai. Their harsh aggressive sound was initially intriguing but soon became repetitive. To be fair also it wasn’t one of my favourite Mogwai performances, they are always minimum level good, but the set list didn’t play to their strengths. Thankfully the band have a habit of rotating their play list each night so when I saw them in Manchester two nights later, they were back in exemplary form.
Via a further cab we reversed back to the Grass market area, where unfortunately I was not yet aware of Sneaky Pete’s as a venue of some repute which was located across the road, so we did not make a visit, but maybe will do so next time!