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Edinburgh
Festival Fringe 2000 6th - 28th August
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July 31  WORDJuly 31-Sept 2 (Acoustic Underground at the Tron, Venue 9) The Fringe isn't officially underway, but already we've got some intriguing opening tasters. "Word" tonight kicked off the Tron's Acoustic Underground season in fine style. Word comprises of five individual songwriters searching for a new way to play collectively without quite being a band. The focus is on quality of song rather than ego of performer, and each 'ego' simply comes on as themselves. It's almost a radical notion! Of course, it entails a constant change of on-stage line-up and the swapping of instruments with every number (not to mention turns at the sound desk, given that the sound engineer also happens to be one of the performers). Revisiting their concept has shown that the germ of the idea is a good one. Yes, it began stiffly, but after the first half hour the relaxation set in they found their flow. Intense solo 'wrist-slashing' seriousness switches to cheesy irony; sensuous poetry to hard-core gritty thrash in moments. Their informal, even casual relationship as musicians, is oddly what makes it work. It shouldn't have happened, but they gelled. In the event, the joke about their closing cover ('Rocket Man') being perhaps a 'superior version' to the one heard last night wafting from the Castle, actually (as it turned out) had a grain of plausibility. This was party time with edge and the audience loved every minute. Though they might not realise it, Ruairidh McGlone, Holly Tomás, Iain Firth, Graeme Mearns and Peter Micheal Rowan may just have rediscovered and reinvented 'ceilidh' in a true sense of the word. Colin Donati |
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