The Front
hiqhfive
NEIL BAXTER, festival director of Glasgow’s City of Love Festival and director of PR outfit Baxter Associates, hits the streets of Glasgow and chooses the five things he loves about the city.
1 The humour It’s the Glasgow humour that keeps me going throughout the working week.
2 The cralc The chat down the pub on a Friday night at places like Cafe Source, the Tron, Baby Grand or Revolver.
3 Clubbing It’s a must on a Saturday night. l go to Arta, the Polo Lounge or even Bennets when I‘m slumming it.
4 Cafe Gandolfl For their oeufs en cocotte with cheese on a Sunday morning, recovering from the excesses of Friday and Saturday night.
5 Romance With my Glaswegian partner Josh — any day of the week.
SITE OF THE FORTNIGHT
www.musicplasma.com Half way between an indulgence and an ethereal art work. musicplasmacom does a simple thing in a really quite graceful way: it recommends music you might like. Type in a name and it draws a map of artists. displaying how popular they are and how they relate musically. It uses the amazoncom sales catalogue as its source. so it isn‘t scientific — all roads lead to Norah Jones eventually — but it's a helluva lot more pleasant than listening to some drunk at a party trying to describe the newest Manitoba album to you.
' WhatDidTheylhink?
Will
Pop svenga/i
I liked the way the artist's works were put together ‘.'/|ill some African metalworks although I preferred the metal sculptures; to the Ellsworth Kellys.
6 THE LIST 5—19 Feb 2003
theOpinion
GO w" l“ the
Lunan Bay: no streetlights to obscure this view
Why live in a boxroom in the city, when you could e revelling in Scotland’s
unbeatable rural life? Words: Kik Reid
here are many reasons why living in rural Scotland beats city life — the tranquillity. the beautiful sunsets. the chance to commune with nature. and let‘s be honest. the cheap booze. Nobody who has experienced the euphoria that comes with purchasing three alcoholic beverages for
less than a liver can have failed to notice the charm of
life outside the city. OK. so a taxi home may be pricey. but there‘s nothing like getting trashed on a tenner.
As a former lidinbtirgli-dwelling atheist. I would have balked at year ago if you‘d told me I would be welcoming in 2004 in a church hall in Angus. But I have a message for you urban dwellers. You can keep your overpriced pubs with their soulless decor and your claustrophobic clubs. Hogmanay heaven is an impromptu ceilidh complete with whisky-pouring farmers and homemade clootie dumpling. Stumbling home in your wellies through a muddy field. having first conquered the hawthorn hedge barricade. only adds to the charm.
For the price of a pokey two-bedroomed flat in Stockbridge you can buy a spacious cottage in the country with sprawling gardens. Here they call a boxroom by its real name — a cupboard.
All too often in lidinburgh I would come home from work to be greeted by an old hag informing me it was my turn to sweep the communal stairs. Now as I travel home along an untarred road. a buzzard swoops
LIKE
Ellsworth Kelly, lngleby Gallery. Edinburgh
Mark-Paul Director of Iii-tech company
like the art. I'm a Rothko tan and it's gtiite similar. I'd love to see the originals: on prints they probably don't convey the same message.
THERE'S NOTHING
GETTING TRASHED ON A TENNER
down from the skies. welcoming me back.
Civilisation is not far away. A ten-minute drive takes you to the nearest town. complete with shops and beach. Drive for half an hour in the opposite direction and you will find yourself in hillwalker‘s paradise. An hour-and-a-half and you can go snowboarding at Glenshee or be sipping cocktails in lidinburgh.
Driving is a joy in the country. What‘s the point in owning a GTi if you never get to push it past 40'? Here there are bona tide 4x4 owners. Not like those pathetic city types who bought a l‘reelander so they could show it off in the Sainsbury‘s car park on a Saturday afternoon.
There are. of course. down sides to country life. The local gym is five years behind when it comes to new exercise fads and nobody appreciates that your designer tracksuit cost the same amount as their new lawnmower. You can do your shopping on the internet btit only at snail‘s pace because broadband is still a long way off. The smell of cow dung often permeates the air btit hey. is it really worse than the pate-on-toast stench from Edinburgh's brewery?
For me. the highlight of last year was standing outside one night with only my boyfriend and a herd of Aberdeen Angus for company. watching the mesmerising lights of the aurora borealis. This spectacle highlighted that we are bill a tiny splodge on the palette that is the universe. My friends in the city had the view obscured by streetlights.
Alastair
Ad agency MD like the (I()lllf£lt$i ()i lll() sharp angles of the paintings and the curves ()i ilit} sculptures. It's (itiite well put together
Charlie
Sports Iriarketer It's really good: more abstract than I expected. but they're very interesting — and they change the nature of the room they're in.