Wednesday 27 May 2020

Lockdown 7/84 - Edinburgh Fringe 2020 Hindsight

So the story rolls on and it seems we are not going to have posters all over town, we wont be inundated with Dubrovnik style crowds, and key workers will be able to get to their work this August.

Deadbeat first started commenting on the festival nearly 40 years ago and back then it was so exciting. We were all loving the pop up atmosphere and it seemed we were an oasis in the meltdown of Thatcher's experimental economy, or how to treble unemployment in as many years nightmare. Yes from 1979 to 1982 we managed to go from 1m to 3m unemployed, "just like that", as Tommy Cooper said.

Its so ironic with the mad doctor Johnson experiment, that we are now paying people to be unemployed rather than let the free market dictate, how the Tories have changed in 40 years. They now believe that keeping people employed and paying taxes is preferable to putting them out of work, yes, I read that three or four times.

So what absolutely confuses me is over the years as the maxim you cant have enough of a good thing proves our infrastructure cant cope with the various festivals and fringe we hear the expression about bail outs.

Never have any of these voices ever assisted the performers, or considered the employees or the city in the past. Its a bit glib but the anti social behaviour associated with August, which Edinburgh citizens pick up the tab for, which starts with the odd discarded flyer wafting in the meadows air and the concludes with an environmental disgrace as the full carbon emissions are quietly ignored.

I met the Director /Producer of a Canadian show last year where she was the only person associated with the show who came over to Edinburgh. The 'virtual show' was a '2020 hindsight' precursor to this year's festival and the more I think about it the more I love it. It was highlighting CO2 emissions and therefore used people who were already in Edinburgh to read and ad lib from various media. The content of the show changed every night with the performers and conceptually was very clever, if not always hitting the mark the Company had aimed for. I think it would've been much better this year for the 2019 experience.

Which leads me back to my experience of the Fringe in particular and where a lot of it goes wrong. Whether its the 80's, 90's or early 2000's prices just seem to defy the inflationary model and the costs for performers went through the roof, the ticket buyers paying £5 seemed a milestone, then suddenly in the blink of an eye it went to £10, then more recently £20+ from this buyer's seat seemed a bit bizarre.

If you view a basket of goods like price of a bottle of Guinness in 1980 38p, price for a draught pint now £3.50- £4.00. I drank on the Southside, same pubs, different owners, but 10 times the price.

We've all noticed that entertainment prices have rocketed. IF you want to see your mates bands with a disco, expect to pay £10, back in the day it might have been £3 to see the Undertones, but you'll get change off £30 if you want to see them now, so less than 10 times!

So why when we used to go to Potterrow for a drink in the Fringe bar in 2019 do we find the prices 20 times.

Why do all the pop ups charge so much, is it because their pitch costs that much?

How much has a cinema ticket gone up by, how much has a season ticket at Easter Road or Tynecastle gone up by?

There are a lot of questions to be asked and 2020 offers us the chance to do exactly that.

The point of the festival used to be to give performers a stage, writers and production crew experience and visitors an opportunity to support their efforts and perhaps to see some original and exciting new material, performances, hear phrases that would resonate for years to come.

"....If you can say, clearly enough to make it pay......", 40 years on now sounds quite prophetic, although I'm sure this wasn't the first time these words had been uttered....

So when we look at how the Festivals have evolved we realise that we bring in a lot of money into the city and it leaves immediately. We bring rigs and gear from across the country as just like PPE, you'll pay 4 times the normal cost for a microphone stand in Edinburgh during August, never mind the cost of water, beer, gin and a cup of herbal tea.

If shortages such as that exist within what should be a first world economy, then clearly we are operating like a third world one.

We bring specialist labour in too, to build the pop ups and provide the lighting rigs and anyone involved in staging will be able to provide another 20 pages of stuff.

What really frustrated me last year was I'd been on a  premises fire inspection the day before I saw a show in the Pleasance. I couldn't understand why health and safety seemed to go out the window for the month of August. It could be that many of the rules dont apply to pop ups and only to permanent structures, but the wee nooks and crannies of the best venues are really dangerous. I'm not suggesting to any wannabee firestarter that they should go and get their career off to a roaring start but flyers with old wooden floors work well on November 5th!

I've gone off piste as usual but what we need to do is strike the balance like Dubrovnik. We dont want to kill the golden goose and this year allows us to build an infrastructure that works. Pop ups that are extensions of what we do well are superb, those that are maximising revenue dont belong and those that are dangerous, ie queuing on a main road......

Thankfully the staff at the A & E will tell you the festival brings a better class of drunken injury but its a hot spot for these frontline workers who have had it hard for a long time, please listen to them when they advise how events should be run.

My interest in this is that we arrive at a better solution and not that we talk about businesses that are under pressure owing to the collapse of the "FREE MONEY" that has poured into Edinburgh for so long. Those of us who have a day out usually come back £200 poorer for it but having had a great time. I think its right the taxi drivers get a wee boost but what's the point as its a marketing coup for private hire, while the uber-parent snatches 25% off the top pays no tax and sneaks it out of the country never mind Edinburgh.

Lots of people fund shows with the crowdfunding, ticket buying and large donations. THey'd be disgusted to know that most of the money goes on accomodation and over priced venue hire. Especially when you have to hire the venue's equipment and staff as an additional extra.

I must complete this

Friday 22 May 2020

lockdown #88

I've been watching so much retro TV I was starting to wonder if Deadbeat was written in the 80's.

Aids has been completely written out of the folklore and its really fucked me off.

I just dont understand how such an earth shattering pandemic can be conveniently written out of the  popular history books.

Ok, I get that it wasn't popular in a happy way, but it was moving up the charts in the national statistics reasons for death.

It was popular in the number of cases being presented to our NHS staff who were powerless to deal with the pandemic as there was no hint of a lockdown or care for those exposed back then.

I remember signing off "Take Care Vinny", as I finished writing my usual shite.....

Out of the blue, I'm watching BBC4 and a programme starting about 1986 comes on and hello, it suddenly reminds me it did happen. Its mostly the rave scene but it does strike a chord.

Marches about clause 28, and everything I remember about the 80's seems to have happened, even if the results were more short lived than we felt they were.

Frankie did go to Hollywood, the Tube was an entertaining groundbreaking show or at least I think they did as the show seems to have moved onto the 90's and take that.

The presenter looks like they're 45, so I'm a few years adrift, our overlap was 15 minutes ago, but its Prodigy 1993, they're all giving it licks......and the strobe is setting off a migraine, ha ha!


Wednesday 20 May 2020

Care home cull enquiry

Its over a month ago I first mentioned the care home cull and while its good that its now being picked up and the blame is being thrown around, let's just stop and concentrate on the virus first.

The problem lies with care being a business. These are quite simply incompatible if businesses are allowed to fold when they cant meet the care standards. They shouldn't be allowed to open if they dont have deep enough pockets to get into the game.

The care game is like insurance. There is unlikely to be a pandemic more than every X years, but when there is one all the profits from years gone, by need to go against the huge losses faced this year.

I dont think that will happen, they'll just close down, cut therir losses and move their debt mountain/capital on to a shell company of their choosing.

Legally when the enquiry happens in 2021 lots of time will be spent chasing this money, the investors and yet those who profited during the good years have already banked and spent that money, the cash reserves are no longer within many of these organisations which is why they will fail.

I think we need to look at it differently.

We should start not at the care homes where the deaths occurred but at the care homes where they were prepared.

Instead of giving care homes 5 stars, we should ask them why they were prepared.

We should ask if they started buying PPE when news of the pandemic broke in China or if they routinely carry large quantities of stock.

We should ask what measures they had in place for their staff and was it those measures that ensured they kept their staff and residents safe.

We should ask when did they go into lockdown, was it before France and Spain or if they waited along with the government. The care industry had no reason to wait as I see it, so telling visitors it was for the safety of all residents was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

We should ask all the questions we like, but then we should ask them what we should be asking of government, of other care home providers and how the sector should be governed. This government (UK or Scotland) believes in self government and whether its breaking from Brussels or London, the best care homes should be telling us how the care industry should be run, not politicians who have no chance of understanding such complicated issues without any idea of the technical and logistical constraints.

That's what I hope for in 2021, but the best care homes will probably just want to get on with being the best and that means looking after their staff and caring for their residents.



Wednesday 13 May 2020

care home cull part 3

I was gutted to see my concerns from 3 weeks ago starting to come to fruition as care homes close and staff and remaining residents get bumped as occupancy plummets.

I fear this sector will continue to get little support as the government looks at them as key workers not needing financial supports, despite the fact most of them are paying through the nose for PPE as they try their best to look after their staff and residents.

The residents have a broad mix of reasons for going into care, like the staff the residents shouldn't be abandoned.

Quite simply its just not fair and any pressure we can bring to help the sector, whether its offering help at your local care home or hitting your local politicians we should try.

I thought by Christmas the sector would be decimated and I'm now thinking this is going to happen so much quicker.

Wednesday 6 May 2020

Paris 1981 - The Beat, The Selector & The Clash

I was reminded recently of this gig which my mate Alan never likes to remember, he left, just after "Washington Bullets", and as some of you know, that was about the 4th song.

I was mad for the gig but had no idea how to get tickets.

I'd bored Reidy most of the day we arrived in the city and he kept saying "its a sell out, forget it".

We had a good day, up to Montmartre, then down along the ChampsElysees and up the Eiffel Tour, making a Fat Al stop on the way for a bag of fun sized Mars Bars.

As luck would have it, as we scaled the heights, then sat surveying the skyline, a guy looked over enviously at me munching my 4th mars bar. I threw one over and we got chatting.

He was English, London, good guy, I gave him another mars bar and asked if he'd heard of the Clash.

He said he was the tour manager.

I laughed.

He said he was.

I said I'd tried to buy tickets.

He said "I'll get you backstage passes."

I said "Ya Beauty! thank you!"

He said "write your names down"

I said "there you go"

What an encounter, I was to be honest sceptical, but I really liked the guy and if it was a wind up so be it, a couple of fun sized mars bars and a lovely thought for a few hours.

We turned up 4 hours later and said "oui, liste de guest"

I stil dont know what guest list is in french but we gave our names and they were there.

"Merci", and 2 backstage passes were handed to us.

I was blagged into oblivion. What the fuck. We've got into a gig nobody can get tickets for fuck fuck fuck what is going on......selector, Pauline Black ya dancer, how good is she, on ma radio, then the Beat mirror in the bathroom, rankin, oh how good is this.....then the Clash.....

I'm just heading off, not a big fan of the Clash....says Reidy......ya what!!!!!!!!!!!

As I got older I realised he was more EWF, yes Earth Wind and Fire, the band, not the game....

I danced for joy, shouted till i was hoarse and then went back stage and ate like a wee fat boy, well I'd finished the mars bars 4 hours earlier.....

I went back stage, and I said "hmmm, yeah, sorry my mate had to go home he felt ill....thanks again brilliant tickets, great gig and the buffet's no bad!

There's 4 members of the Clash, our man with the Mars Bar, another guy, 2 girls, me & platters of food. These guys dont look like they've eaten in weeks and I'm thinking another day's Bobby Sands' wont do them no trouble....

I'm Fat Al please enjoy the Buffet!

Tuesday 5 May 2020

Deadbeat #25 - Pop Wallpaper & the hot May of 1984

As we head into May 36 years ago I'm reminded of one of my best fuck ups as I apologised for an entry in Deadbeat #24 commenting on the release of "Love" by Alone Again Or, the band got in touch to saw "naw", I re-read the press release and announced the band Love have got a single out on WEA called "Alone Again Or".

Good name for a band, I thought....as I reminded our readers to never believe what they see in the media....oh and their demo

Edinburgh's Pop Wallpaper were the cover & the centrefold while Grangemouth's Dead Neighbours were interviewed by Julie.

Hilary interviewed Swansway & Gene Loves Jezebel in Dundee, Guy Dadge talked about Random Rhythms Music Workshop in Stirling while Jill & Rose gave us their guide to good living in Glasgow and Keith interviewed Fiction Factory.

Yes, #25 felt like heaven.....with our 2nd anniversary approaching a 24 page issue.

In our first anniversary issue, #17, we'd put out a flexi single with Pop Wallpaper/Wild Indians.

Yes, its time to put a real Deadbeat single out.

Every day that went by we made it up, blagged records, into shows, interviews, asked bands to send us demo.

Who the fuck did we think we were trying to press a record.

It was that 'ready fire aim' mentality.

The counter-culture to 'you need to aim high'. Naw, you just need to set it on fire!

If only we'd bumped into fast forward....

Jock Edwards gave us an update on the 10th Meadows Festival in Edinburgh, a fascinating insight into how easy it was to select bands to play and hats off to Wilf for donation of the sound.

The polis, wanted the bands not to have much of a following, so there wouldn't be a big crowd.

Brilliant, Edinburgh, 1984, that's all but guaranteed I laughed.

The early 80's were a tough period. The 1983 election polarised our music scene into stadium bands and those who just wanted to enjoy it. Some had turned rebellion into money but as you read the interviews the joke about artistic control comes through strongly. Success wasn't to be measured  at any price. Some with deals quietly rolled a big fat one and slept through 1984.

For me the buzz, was simply living, writing, gigging. Underground for many was happy to philosophically, be underground.

The release of the 2nd Deadbeat Tape was heralded with a random set of bands from around the country. You wouldn't hear them on the radio and listening now, proves that music was alive and well. Aberdeen's Alone again Or didn't quite make the cut but along with Glasgow's Wee Cherubs they made the cut for Scottish Korner. As with other tapes I'd send them on to some of the A & R guys in London while theyd send me copies of the music they wanted to sell. Ha Ha, the music industry's maestro had won the election, and it was time for extravagance, nous demandons la Roi de soleil!

I think Scottish music at the time was more Montmartre than Versailles, the penny drops as the mushroom rises!

I'm looking forward to asking that question as we approach all the interviewees 36 years on for a 2020 perspective!

For a full copy click on the page #25

care home cull part 2

I'm really worried about the decimation of the care home sector. First we put them to the back of the queue for PPE and testing, then we talk up the planned end of lockdown.

For many in the care sector this means the exposure just rises and their lives are threatened.

Lets be absolutely clear, any end to lockdown is the precursor to the next lockdown.

Compared to the HIV/Aids Pandemic when the public were steered by the media into the global health pandemic being a gay plague and a cull on junkies, what will the press story be this time.

What disgusting message is going to be contrived to explain why 100,000 vulnerable people could not be cared for. They are hiding behind the fact that if we dont test care home vistims then the death certificate wont say Covid-19 was a factor. Hello! The normal number of deaths in care homes during April, May, June & July will be higher. Whether it says Covid-19 on the death certifcate or not. If GPs are doing these remotely, of course they cant mention Covid-19, but it doesn't matter, the care home resident, is dead.

I'm absolutely convinced by the end of this year that will be the magnitude, and I wont be surprised to see the figure much higher. The UK simply hasn't got the testing and tracing infrastructure in place and seem in no hurry to do so, foolishly thinking that its a cute way to doctor the stats or more cynically they're quite happy with the £billions they will save.

I look at Slovakia and what they did to protect their citizens. They acted early and reacted well to the evidence. Tracing is essential and we know we can do it but unlike Germany we seemed to have dismantled a lot of our infrastructure but more importantly dont seem that keen to get it started again.

Freedom of movement means the virus is free to move. We dont know if 6% of the population have had exposure to it or if the UK lockdown arriving later increased that figure, what we do know is you cant control this virus easily and I wont feel confident until 60% have been exposed to it.

I hope I'm proved wrong and that the virus just vanishes but I just cant see it.

The lead time between being infectious and showing symptoms is what alarms me. The lack of social distancing being demonstrated while under lockdown makes me extremely nervous as we prepare to exit it.

There are statisticians who analyse data for a living and many of them have access to the real data. What we need is the politicians to accept the statistics and be clear what conclusions they seek, not try to spin the results.

Death is inevitable and flattening the curve has been about reducing the level of death by ensuring that when people get the virus and need hospital treatment, the hospitals are indeed open and not overrun.

A good outcome of 20,000 deaths was described and most of the public are still unsure whether we need to get this virus and move on or hide until a vaccine is available.

Dementia is recognised as a leading cause of death in the UK and 'tick tock' I'm just waiting until the headline reads in 2021 that 2020 deaths from Dementia were up 400% due to our ageing population and the impact of the pandemic, not the honest response of our complete failure to protect them.

There were 120,000 people died between April - June 2019, 118848 the national office for statistics tells us. I dont know what the figure will be this year but my pin goes into the graph at 200,000+, if it shows 300,000 then we have a fair idea what kind of impact Covid-19 will have had.

There are many people nationwide making very good positive choices to help curb this virus so hopefully its less than 200,000. Additionally the daily updates from the politicians and public servants seem to fall into good stuff or pish. The ones still watching their report card instead of taking positive action to contain this virus will doubtless be judged by history....unlike those who advocated drinking dettol...keep safe, socialise in safe hammocks or pods, if you dont live in a field, stay a safe distance and keep washing those hands.