There is something almost brutally appropriate about sitting through Andy Macleod’s Soho Days and Camden Nights with an audience of three or four people. One is his agent.
The afternoon Edinburgh Fringe slot has the air of a rock ’n’ roll afterthought, which is unfortunate given that Macleod has spent much of his life trying to escape precisely that status.
Macleod was in The Pointy Birds during the years when Blur were beginning their ascent, part of the same London indie circle in which some bands became famous while others disappeared into the margins. The Pointy Birds were bottled off at their first gig, never secured a record deal and eventually called it a day. Macleod has turned that long failure into material, recalling the musicians who made it, those who nearly did and those who, like him, kept going in the music biz.
There are some entertaining stories, including unflattering memories of Blur, while a more affectionate thread involves his Morningside granny, a beret he wore to a Simple Minds concert and subsequently lost. He also plays some of his own songs acoustically, offering a glimpse of the musician who might have been.
But it is a tough grind. The stories rarely gather enough momentum and the flatness of the room becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. Macleod is engaging enough, but comedy needs an audience and music needs atmosphere. That raises a question which extends beyond this show.
Edinburgh is now so crammed with performances that even established Fringe venues can struggle to fill their rooms. There are thousands of artists competing for the same finite audience, often in afternoon slots when the city is overflowing with choice. Macleod’s story is therefore unintentionally more revealing than he might imagine.
He spent years watching others become famous while wondering why it didn’t happen to him. Now, decades later, he is performing a show about that very experience to a handful of people. The difference is that this time, nobody has bottled him off. They just haven’t turned up.
