Edwyn Collins

Backstage Mayfair Club, Newcastle 1982, Kensal Green 1986, Kilburn 1994

Tonight came wrapped in trepidation. It's been over a decade since I last saw Edwyn(Collins). Back then he was savouring every moment of his long overdue fame. Our families were tight and times were too. We were old friends and Nova Londoners living a block apart. It took almost two decades for Ed to become an overnight success and his wife/manager Grace made sure that all the rewards were duly collected.

 It was shortly after I moved back to Scotland that this chapter was emphatically shut. Their lives had been derailed when Edwyn suffered a double aneurysm. His remarkable road to recovery is best left for Grace to tell in her moving and inspirational account 'Falling and Laughing: The Restoration of Edwyn Collins'. Time slips through your fingers, some times it's necessary to get a grip. Tonight is one of those times- time to rip it up...

  Edwyn is playing his last performance of the Festival and it's his birthday to boot. 50 is the Magic Number. On stage is an elective mix of friends and colleagues. Guest guitar performances by Romeo(Magic Numbers), Ryan(Cribbs) and leggendario Malcolm Ross turned the night into a truly memorable event. Edwyn held the audience in the palm of his hand, the all acoustic set seemed to give new resonance to his amazing body of work.

 Filing out of the venue Grace appeared from the wings and with one embrace dissolved the years of intractable guilt, tonight we were going to party.

 The birthday party was consummated at a quay-side hotel in the port of Leith. Ed's a vision; a garland of flowers around his neck and a glint in his eye. He's lost none of the charisma. With the throng of well-wishers and party-goers this wasn't the time to be re-building bridges, that would have to wait.

Anyone who can call Grace a friend is blessed. Her open heart, selfless generosity and unquestioned loyalty is matched only by her Weegie pit-bull tenacity- she'd be falling and laughing if she were reading this. We make a pact that the next time I'm in London I'll stay with them and we'll make a start on lost time.

 My parting image of William(Collins) was of a nine-year old who blushed like a tickled squid and buzzed with more energy than the Hadron Collider. My memory was standing in front of me, transposed by time into a confident young man- blush tamed but still intact.

 Seb(Sebastian Lewsley), Edwyn's stoic compadre, music programmer and re-programmer used my hand as an ashtray when asked to do 'touch'. I like his style.

 Malcolm (Ross), Ed's stalwart supporter, oozing with champagne charm.

 Ryan from the Cribs was trying his hardest not be so enigmatic, with little success.

And Romeo! I spent much of the night drawn to him like a moth to a flame. It's impossible not to warm to Romeo.

At 7.30am I pull over the covers over my sweetheart and me. It's been a wonderful night of heart lifting.

  At the time of writing this Grace is locked into a battle with MySpace over the rights to show the video "A Girl Like You". Grace begged, borrowed and pawned to get enough together to see it made. I racked up a heap of IOU's from friends only too glad to tear up the check. The video was a testimony to creative ingenuity, dogged determination and a belief that we were part of something very special. Necessity became the mother of a monster- over 2.5 million hits and still counting.

Screening

10am Sunday morning and I'm dragging myself along Lothian Road as the bin men lug the soiled waste from the strip-joints. I'm accompanying my compañero Don Bernardo to a private screening at The Filmhouse and I'm running late, comme bloody d'habitude.
 

Bernardo's been invited to the preview of a debut movie by Dianne Bell (above) and I'm here for immoral support. The film is set in Arizona and follows the journey of an obsessive librarian and a free spirited Scot. It is beautifully shot and has a confident inertia. In my half-awake state I couldn't stop puzzling over the title "Obselidia". For a first movie it's a testament to Dianne’s ingenuity, dedication and creativity- bravo!
 

After the screening we headed 100 yards to the Sheraton hotel for post match analysis and refreshments. Gaynor (Howe), the girl with curaçao eyes and co-star of the film, is here with husband Liam (Howe).

Liam, music producer and former member of Sneaker Pimps, is from my neck of the woods and tells me he has been working on new material with a mutual friend Edwyn (Collins)- small world.

Jules (Duncan) renowned for his creative debauchery can't stop effusing about the film.
 

I entrap the illusive songstress Jerry (Burns) who cranes her neck to talk to me, her four-inch heels bringing her chin in line with my naval. Jerry's voice of honey-glazed gravel is so voluminous it's unfathomable how she compresses it into her diminutive frame. 1pm and Lothian Road is waking as I make my way home, au bloody lit.

Dylan Moran- What It Is

 Got the comps, joined the queue and we were funneled into the Playhouse, flanked by my photograph of tonights act - Dylan Moran. The 3,000 seater is a sell-out, packed to it's claret rafters. Projected behind him loomed my shot. This came as a surprise; I hadn't realised my photograph was going to become part of the set.
 Tonight he's playing to his adopted home town of Edinburgh. Performing to locals and family is a mixed bag of excitement and pant-soiling fear. Dylan defiantly surmounted his nerves and left the audience with withdrawal symptoms.

Stewart Lee- Taking a Stand

 At The Stand Comedy Club the walls are perspiring and the heat is fanned by laughter. Stoking the flames is Stewart Lee, Britain's one-time 41st Funniest Man and satirical thorn in the backside of mediaocrity. 

 I've been called in to try and resolve his identity crisis. Stewart is often confused with "Terry Christian, Todd Carty, Morrissey, Edwyn Collins, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ray Liotta, Roland Gift, Ali Campbell, Mark Lamarr and a 1930's drawing of Tarzan."  It was a tall order but after a couple of sessions I could now offer him a selection of Stewart Lee impressions. From the shoot there wasn't a single image he'd censor. Stewart was a great subject and impeccably unkempt company.

 

Edinburgh Festival 2009
 
  I was urban somnambulating, on my way to the college art shop, Hypocanthus at the controls. My co-pilot was hijacked by a cacophony of power tools and generators coming from the college grounds. Perfect timing: city is under excavation and it appears the college isn’t exempt.
A look behind the tarpaulin and my simmering rage was taken off the heat. Inside a sculptor was mercilessly attacking a slab of rock. This was to be a stage for a month long performance.
Eleven shelters, each housing a sculptor and a block of stone, was the setting of Milestone- brainchild of Scottish sculptor Jake Harvey. He had the inspired vision to display 10 international sculptors (and a graduate) at work in the grounds of Edinburgh College of Art. Artists from Japan, the USA, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and the UK were assembled, each demonstrating their mastery and differing styles. Over the next month they would create a finished sculpture from scratch. Through gritted goggles they assaulted, smashed, gouged and beat their hapless victim into submission. The creative fallout covered everything in a blanket of white.
In sculpture evidence of the trauma and struggle between creator and creation is usually polished away before put on display. Here was a visceral demonstration of destruction in the quest for beauty - for art. Quarrying sculptors remorselessly destroyed in order to create: they are not art nihilists. Superficially their acts appear as wanton destruction, yet are demonstrations of a fevered desire to consummate their relationship. The rock never submits without a fight. The two find their way together with psychometry and ardor. The course is set in stone, dictated by the flow of the petrified veins and mille-feuilles. Milestone was an insight and a revelation. It helped me to better understand my processes and draw some analogies. My subject, like the sculptors stone, is defined by the light of it's surroundings. It too is impassive and acquiescent to its environmental conditions until I start to reveal with my light. With light I can obscure, hew and expose with surgical precision.
 Once a week, for the span of the event, I made my pilgrimage and kept a record of the consequent acts on this stage.

 
Priest paying homage to Jake Harvey Scott's creation.

Hayashi Takeshi Japan

Joel Fisher USA

Sibylle Pasche Switzerland

Gerard Mas Spain

Susanne Specht Germany

Peter Randall-Page and David Brompton-Greene

Jessica Harrison Scotland

Atsuo Okamoto Japan

Daniel Silver Israel/UK

Carlos Lizariturry Moro Spain