Issue 618

Musicians' guide: How to make it in the music industry

Want to make it in music? Fancy yourself as The Next Big Thing? Claire Sawers and Malcolm Jack track down nine very different people currently working in the industry and quiz them on just what they do and how they do it In addition, for detailed…

Trade secrets

Five months before Margaret Thatcher’s landslide 1979 victory, and with Britain’s city streets still retaining the air of a depressed bombsite, highbrow arts programme The South Bank Show appeared to have been hi-jacked by a cell of musical terrorists.

Missing in action - Angelina Jolie interview

Playing the real-life mother of a missing child in Clint Eastwood’s latest film was an emotionally fraught experience for Angelina Jolie, she tells Rob Carnevale

Alien War

In 1979 Ridley Scott’s Alien quite literally burst into the public consciousness as the ultimate in sci-fi horror. In 1986 James Cameron upped the ante with the heart stopping action of sequel Aliens and even if David Fincher’s Alien3 (1992) wasn’t as…

Charles Avery

‘Be not afraid,’ says Caliban in The Tempest, ‘the isle is full of noises that bring delight and hurt not.’ Charles Avery might disagree. For the Mull-born-and-bred artist, it was the sounds of the woods around Lochdon that got his childhood imagination…

James Yorkston

It’s no longer news to say a James Yorkston album has been ‘critically acclaimed’ – because they always are. Since coming to John Peel’s attention in 2001, releasing early material through the Fence Collective and moving on to recent albums with Domino…

The Beano

As a wee nipper there wasn’t a more exciting day of the week than ‘Beano day’, when your local newsagent would drop a copy of the cartoon compendium onto your doormat alongside your parent’s newspaper. Often rapidly devoured before heading to school…

Modern Lovers

For a club night which has been one big, glorious celebration of the retro soul, funk, psych and freakbeat sounds for eight years now, Modern Lovers has an eye on the future this fortnight. The regular monthly event in Edinburgh is both the eighth…

Pantomimes

Earlier this year, I took a trip to Scarborough to check out the headquarters of the Qdos Entertainment empire. This is the organisation responsible for 21 pantomimes in the UK alone, not to mention a handful of theatres, a couple of talent agencies…

Illuminations - Shinsuke Ogawa

Illuminations is Filmhouse’s first standalone documentary festival outside of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Programmed by Jenny Leask, a former programmer of the EIFF Document strand, Illuminations aims to screen generically different…

Woodlands Bumper Value Comedy Club

NEW CLUB With parts of the Jongleurs’ chain under threat of sell-off, these are interesting times for comedy in Scotland. Even more so now with the growing number of smaller nights emerging to challenge the Stand-Jongleurs hegemony and spread the…

Beehive

COMEDY The phrase ‘all-female sketch show’ shouldn’t necessarily send a shiver down the spine, but it just does. And before anyone says Smack the Pony I’ll trump you with Tittybangbang. But maybe things are changing. After a good Fringe for female…

Che Camille

In the beginning, there was The Chateau, a shambling old tenement warehouse on Glasgow’s Southside, rented out at rock bottom prices to a loose collection of artists, designers and performers, and Franz Ferdinand, who staged now-legendary guerrilla…

The Ceilidh Tree

Long before willows were stripped and white sergeants were dashed, a ceilidh used to mean a social gathering where songs were sung and tales were told. Giant Productions go back to this original meaning with their charming, interactive show for…

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe department

As a child, Kirstin Innes always wanted to go to Narnia. Instead, she got the next best thing: a whole day backstage at the Lyceum Theatre as they try and bring that world to life.

Happy when it rains

Going on holiday in Scotland? In the winter? Ach, you’ll have heard the jokes. You might have made some of them yourself. No, it probably won’t be that sunny. Or warm. However, as the pound plummets abroad and air fares shoot up, holidaying at home is…

Remote Control

There are a few gossipy titbits in showbusiness that are generally read as fact. Madonna and Guy were not quite made for each other. Jordan isn’t the sharpest nailfile in the drawer. And the Jackson family is, well, a bit weird. Wacko you might say.

R34 at India of Inchinnan

Stand on the observation deck at Glasgow Airport, cast your eyes over the runway towards the mossy rise of the Campsie Hills and you will see a large white building. This is R34 at India of Inchinnan, a restored Art Deco factory where tyres were made…

Last word: Sanjeev Kohli

First record you ever bought ‘From Langley Park to Memphis’ by Prefab Sprout. Had I been financially solvent at the age of 11 it would have been ‘Snooker Loopy’. Last time you were chatted up The last time I wore a kilt, a very drunk female…

Close Up

PHOTOGRAPHY/FILM ‘Why has not man a microscopic eye? For the plain reason man is not a fly.’ The early 18th century poet Alexander Pope’s wrote that, perhaps in a moment of peevishness. Between Pope’s witticism and writer and critic William Hazlitt’s…

Taste Test - Instant porridge

Ready Brek Original • Various stockists including Tesco, Morrisons and Asda. £1.89 for 750g. Tasting like mushy Weetabix and looking a lot like Polyfilla, this soggy and bland excuse for porridge is awful. Its one redeeming feature, a smooth and…

Paul Bettany

Paul Bettany has rediscovered the joy of acting. Over the coming months, he’ll be seen playing a racist peach farmer in America’s Deep South for The Secret Life of Bees and then a royal adviser and future prime minister to Emily Blunt’s queen in The…

Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us

NEW PLAY It’s hard to shake off the feeling that this final production in the National Theatre of Scotland’s series of Traverse Debuts is set in a bygone era. The story of a young man returning home from the seminary, disillusioned with Catholicism…

Musicians' guide: Open mic nights

Mondays Glasgow Nice 'n' Sleazy 421 Sauchiehall St, 333 0900. 8pm. The Monday Acoustic Jam, 8pm–midnight. Free to all performers. Bring your instrument and join in the fun. Open Mic NIght - Pivo Pivo 15 Waterloo Street, 564 8100. 6pm.