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LETTERS

Live or let die?

As one of a number of Scottish promoters I would appreciate the chance to address your Scottish readership through the pages ofyour magazine. I have one question to put. Do Scots want an active and vibrant live gig circuit? Attendances over the past few months at Glasgow and Edinburgh venues would suggest otherwise - discos and the insidious karaoke trend are taking

over up here and suffocating a once .f healthy and prosperous gig scene.

Why is going to see a live band so

. unattractive? I know from previous experience that when the Glasgow

g Venue had live acts on Friday nights, 5 the punters couldn‘t get rid of them

§ quick enough to dance to the latest

: US fashion plate. To accommodate

this, we have moved live band nights to Sundays. On the opening gig, Cheap & Nasty played to a crowd of 160 people while nearly 300 attended a rock karaoke event at a rival club, heavily attended by local band members.

This is not just happening in Glasgow. 1 can quote similar stories from across the country. The question remains. do Scots punters want to see up-and-coming bands and major touring acts at club level, or are they really happy to file into discos and karaoke nights like lemmings, and effectively kill off an already endangered species— the small gig?

Speaking as a Glaswegian, I remember the Apollo, the Burns Howff. Shadows, the Dial Inn, the

Doune and the Videodrome. Who‘s

next?

It‘s up to you. do you want live music or is the Glasgow tradition that gave us the likes ofAlex Harvey. Jack Bruce, Gun, The Almighty. Simple Minds, Texas and so on going to be drowned in a wave of indifference? I could be your bed of nails are you prepared to lie on it‘.’

Robert Fields

3 Glasgow Promoter

: Tarrant’stalent

I think you are rather unfair in your comments (The List 148) about Chris Tarrant‘s presentation of The Simple Truth. I thought he achieved just the right balance between putting over the seriousness of the cause. and recognising that the concert was a musical event in its own right.

It is not entirely true that Tarrant‘s

I sole claim to fame is TV quiz shows. For a number of years he has presented Capital Radio‘s breakfast show. for which he won the radio

. personality ofthe year award. Ilived in London at the time of the

Clapham train crash. and I

remember that his show the morning after handled that situation in a very

sensitive and appropriate way. Scott Simpson

Novar Drive

Glasgow

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Write to The List, Old Athenaeum Theatre , 179 Buchanan Street, Glasgow G1 2] Z, or 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 lTE. The best letter next issue will win a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila.

Having your cake

As a committed addict to all things stodgy, I have to admit that your Catherine Fellows launched a pretty persuasive broadside in defence of the quality cake (The List 148). I even found myselfquestioning my penchant for sickly sugar-coated lumps of more sugar for a minute. But hold on there Fellows! Don’t you know that there are many ofus for whom life would be an unmitigated misery were it not for the anticipatory pleasure of waiting in inexplicably long queues for our daily fix ofold-fashioned Scottish bakery? Yes, it‘s true. There are

those of us who actually enjoy the ; lurid fairy cakes, polystyrene

i meringues and cardboard

. macaroons of which Ms Fellows is so : ' disdainful. It‘s a way of life. And I '- firmly believe that after years of

inter-breeding, the Scottish constitution (no, not that one) is

incapable of adapting to the sophistication of French bakery and the like.

Forget the Jose Cuervo. Can I have § . readers, and make a suggestion that

r a chocolate sponge cake? John ‘Plookie‘ McNiven

Warrender Park Road

Edinburgh

1 0n the Record

1, and probably a couple of million

others given recent readership - figures, take exception to David M. - Bennie‘s contention that ‘Real

Morons Read The Record‘. Just because the paper sells 800,000

copies without having a pretentious literary or media supplement is no

good reason to knock it. Plenty of us 9 find its chatty style and off-beat stories a refreshing change from the pomposity of the ‘qualities‘.

Perhaps Bennie is upset because the Record doesn't publish his

88The List3l May—13June 1991

PUD SMITH

a.

miserable attempts at self-publicity on their letters page (which, incidentally, is exceptionally entertaining). His elitist attitude is hard to take, coming from the man who wrote grovelling letters to the Sunday Scotjust for the warped

' pleasure ofseeing his middle initial

in print.

Davie Ford Monkton Drive Paisley

Nice try

Just the other day, I was musing on the preponderance of art works with the word tequila in them. Instantly

; springing to mind were Harper Lee‘s 9 classic novel Tequila Mockingbird

and the James Bond film A View Tequila. Further enquiries

: unearthed Talking Heads‘ Psycho

Tequila and the Cure‘s Tequilaing

. An Arab. The Tequila Chainsaw

Massacre was a good one wasn’t it?

. And then there was that Cambodian : film Tequilaing Fields. [just thought

I

I’d share these thoughts with your

you offer prizes for letters. I find alcoholic beverages always go down well . . .

Gary Nelson

Brighton Street

Edinburgh

N0. We’ll keep the drink for ourselves and let you have a Jose Curevo T-shirt instead.

emu“ Cryptic

1) Ruggiero Ricci plays Jazz (The

List 147)? First thing he or I have heard about it. Hear that grinding noise? That’s Bach and Bartok (who?) gently turning in their graves. ' 2) See David M. Bennie? Gag him! 3) See me? Ah’m off!

Beate Gross

Maybole

Ayrshire

Bridge too far

Re Philip Parr‘s preview (The List 148) of the new series of Channel 4‘s Absolutely it was absolutely incorrect in one assertion. Stoneybridge may indeed never have been a place to inspire artists, nor a place for poets to go and die - but it does exist. -

Where? Does Philip Parr know where Brigadoon is? It’s nowhere near there. In fact Stoneybridge is a village on South Uist in the Western Isles. Actually the programme’s portrayal of the place is fairly accurate have Jack and Moray Hunter been there. Evidently Philip Parr hasn’t. His loss.

Colin MacKinnon Herbert Street Glasgow G2

Neighbours

Re the sillie wee lassie who won the Jose Cuervo tequila last issue. I really must protest on behalf of Euripides McKechnie, whose letter as much more deserving of the hooch. Louise Ewart says that three out of five trailers at the Cannon glamourised violence against women, but she didn‘t specify the films, an omission which left her . letter totally uninteresting. I guess if she had named them, potential rapists in dirty raincoats would have rushed to see the offending movies. I know that after I saw Sleeping With The Enemy and came home to find the bathroom towels out of alignment, I battered my flatmates with the loofah until they started giggling.

Since Euripides is just around the corner in Montgomery Street, I‘d like to invite him round here for some light literary criticism and tequila. If he brings the orange juice, I’ll supply the Black-And-Decker, the rat and a copy of Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. and if he takes on the Curse of The List, and promises to write in every fortnight with an amusing letter, I will be able to take up the offer of a staffjob with Scotland On Sunday (perks include inflation-proof pension, BUPA health insurance, expense account and a Vauxhall Cavalier company car).

Goodbye, good luck and good riddance.

David M. Bennie

Hadddington Place

Edinburgh

Over to you Euripides. Could you bear to swap bons mots with a man who would sit through Sleeping With The Enemy?

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