Deadbeat 46th Edinburgh Fringe

It's August, how to scran free tickets for shows. It worked back in 1982, so fanzine time it is. 46 years on I'm no getting free records or fringe tickets. I need to take some lessons from my younger self.

First rule of the free fringe  jungle is an hour before the show the free tickets appear. Nobody wants to play to an empty arena. The smaller the venue the more obvious it becomes if it's only 10% full.

Second rule is "be a rent a crowd". If there are 6 of you sitting at a table. Don't be shy, have a sign up saying "any free tickets", or "we like free shows." Everyone knows that you can't afford to go to everything in the festival. Most of us can't afford more than 5 shows a week. Hats off to those who can afford 5 shows in a day. Let's face it there are more seats than there are people to fill them. 

I'm a numbers guy. Indulge me. The Pleasance alone most have well over 1,000,000 tickets available to sell. Most venues have 10-16 shows, whether it 50, 150 or 800 seats. The Grand has 16 shows. I don't know if it holds 800. If it does that's 12,800 tickets every day. Multiply by 25 days and one 800 seater venue is hoping to sell 300,000 tickets for all it's shows over the course of the fringe. 

As well as the Grand, the Pleasance one and two, the Green, upstairs there's the domes, 10, jack, queen and king Dome even a cellar. 

I rarely forget how resourceful we at Deadbeat could be back in the 80's. How energetic and sometimes brilliant. It was collegiately that Deadbeat was born, like so many bands it grew and its fragmentation was it's demise. We didn't know how to do more than one thing so we often just moved on, inadvertently abandoning our past.

Kinda mirrors this echo chamber society we live in. So in short get out more, live and enjoy. Here's a show, arriving in August.

2 Little Pigs.

Pleasance.

Here's some words I've copied from a Scotsman article by the author.

My 19 year old self found out Deadbeat really got you into gigs, nightclubs and we were grateful. I momentarily thought "can I write shite, I talk shit, sing shit, I even write shite songs, so yes, I can write shit."  Dark shit too although the gallons of Guinness could account for that.

1982 was a vibrant time across Scotland as the aye celebrated Sound of Young Scotland was spreading its seed. By 1984 we'd interviewed three of the members of Josef K and only had Ronnie to do. There's still time to finish the Firhill fab four. What were they doing now, it was 1984, the start of the Orwellian times, all is revealed in issues #9,#22 & #23. Now I'm itching to write "what are they doing now it's 2034." I loved that Happy Family album. The interview with bass player Davy Weddell was alongside coverage of Madge arriving on the scene, according to us.

 Issue #9 was so funny.

We really thought we'd nailed it that new year. January 1983 we had so much energy. There was so much drinking. We realised these family friends knew these friends and the big friendly fanzine had friends throughout the land, especially if you drank regularly in so many places. Yes it was incestuously intense in the Tayside Bar Dundee, coppers or tap in Edinburgh, off the byres road, the Rock Garden, anywhere near queen st in Glasgow. As long as you drank nearby you're going get reviewed or interviewed. In Perth it was the county hotel or wherever. We didn't have any structure. Just a lot of help. It's a party that's so overdue.

Documenting the culture of bands and who moved where, different names in different cities, splitting up, getting a job, creating off shoots, going solo, joining Orange Juice, The Happy Family, Circus of Hell, Autumn 1904. It was a very exciting time for a budding librarian. While that generation moved on other bands continued to fill the voids and expand the pool, the styles, stymied by record companies while following their soul. Many disappeared into myth while theirs gigs became legend. Aberdeen's Alone Again Or would morph into the Shamen, Perth's Relations would go Baggy, even Dundee's Danny Wilson would emerge from a one night Spencer phoenix in the Tayside Bar. Sunset Gun and Strawberry Switchblade would be launched from a cannon and blaze bright while their comet's tale then lived long into all our memories.

Like so many of those Edinburgh bands from 79 who had found their way to London by 1981, I remember staying in the squat hackney way. It's not a squat now. Beautiful town house, I stayed again there in 1988, oh no, that's a darker story. I watched the next wave and felt so invested, it was quite crushing to see how brutal that machine was. Mike Scott would finally get the whole of the moon rerecorded and rereleased to the acclaim it deserved. It must've seemed an eternity for him. Deadbeat had long gone by then it's 3-4 years splurge exhausting and exhilarating in varying levels.

I learned so much from Deadbeat and it's demise. The fundamentals were I didn't nick enough paper to print it on. I'm always navel gazing on this. It reminds me why I can sit in a chair and do fuck all regularly. In fact dreaming is a Vinny Bee occupation. Walking in Spain affords me hours of it.

I didn't charge enough for the ads and so couldn't afford to buy the paper. The golden goose that had enabled us to half inch 4 boxes of 2500 A4 sheets hadn't yet given me a job. I kept asking so during 1985 the little cash I had was being spent on the latest tape. By 1986 the last issue spewed off the press and it was a single sheet. I printed it well but I wasn't a printer. I was wasting everyone's time doing that. We loved it, but like the allotment now, hopeless. Buyers of issue #33 know we never had much ink, certainly not enough for 2500 copies. Deadbeat spiralled into a ridiculous phase of thinking it'd be alright. People would see it was a cottage industry and a fanzine with no print might one day be art. It was shite, some of us couldn't write and then it didn't matter as we couldn't print. You don't write that stuff.

I never could afford to get my haircut there. Salon 51 where are they now. There's an interview to be had.

Enjoy the festival, the fringe and all the fun. It's ever changing and sometimes you have to look under the covers, listen in the courtyards and spot the energised.