Fringe Adventures 2006 - Part 4
Sheer laziness made me put off writing this for so long, but for completeness’ sake (and because in years to come I’ll probably want to know what I actually went to see) I present the last bits of my 2 weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Celeb Spotting: Alan Davies, and a very, very depressed looking Steve Coogan.
Show: Beergut 100
Bill Bailey’s punk covers band (with the best pun name ever) back for the second year in a row, so I was determined I wouldn’t miss them this time around. The show is basically an excuse for them to bash out old punk favourites with a bunch of guest singers - including Phil Daniels and Rich Hall - and to generally make a lot of noise. There’s something about the Teviot Debate Hall that makes all music played there feel like it’s liquefying your internal organs even if it isn’t all that loud. Years ago I saw Death In Vegas playing there and could feel my lungs vibrating from the sound pressure.
It was also the second time I’d heard Bailey play his Kraftwerk tribute ‘Das Hokey Kokey’, which made me happy.
Film: Cars
Ok, so this had nothing to do with the festival whatsoever, but I had a lot of time to kill before a show one day. I enjoyed it, but it’s pretty much the same story as all of Lasseter’s other films: “Jerk lead character is slowly transformed into a heartwarming, lovable pillar of the community.” Still, it was a nice antidote to Hoodwinked earlier in the week, and whetted my appetite for the next Brad Bird film.
Show: The Dresden Dolls
Yes, again. Good as always and in the Spiegeltent too, which is just about my favourite Fringe venue. The downside was that the stage is very low, and they both have to sit down to play, so cue the audience spending the show sitting around cross legged. It was like the gothiest school assembly ever, with the bonus surreal effect of gradually losing all feeling in my legs.
The obligatory fanboy moment came when they closed their set with “Two Headed Boy”, proving that if their 12-year-old cosplay audience ever deserts them, then they’ve got a promising future as a Neutral Milk Hotel covers band.
Pubs: The Auld Hoose (briefly, to pick up Ewan on the way to Beergut 100. We wandered in during the middle of the most disorganised pub quiz I’ve ever seen. Lots of people I know seem to love this place, but for one reason or another I’ve never been in there without feeling really awkward and uncomfortable and wanting to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.)
Biblos (It’s main feature is the huge goldfishbowl-esque window with comfy sofas from which to watch people passing by on the street. Sadly there were too many of us to fit into the seats there, so we had to just mill around upstairs listening to bad DJ-ing.)
Food: Pancakes from a stall outside Teviot. (Nice, but makes you feel a bit of a berk standing around holding a pancake for 20 minutes while waiting for the super-heated jam-filling to cool down to edible levels.)
Centraal (again, for food this time, until the another too-loud DJ drove us elsewhere.)