It’s a rainy chilly Saturday in November, and I’m round the back of the Hibs ground off Easter Road in Edinburgh. I’ve been in to see some artists’ studios on their open studios’ day. All very creative, many interesting young artists working away, making things – sculptures with small hands sticking out of a mound of felt, drawings of lighthouses, cinemas and music venues in Scotland, small Perspex made light-boxes which look like Indian adverts, minimal architectural wall panels – just all dedicating themselves to their art. No compromise really, but their art was for sale. The studio rent is going up and they need their space to make their art. Bit of a dilemma really.
After visiting the studios, I’m outside the building sitting on a bench which is on a high concrete platform which looks like it used to be a loading bay; the building apparently was once a lemonade factory. Around the site there are newer modern flats which overlook the studio buildings and yard. I notice a guy across the yard hanging out and just talking to folk. He is Russell Burn, who was the drummer in the post-punk Edinburgh group, Fire Engines. I know some of the others in the group but I had never spoken to him. I had something I needed to tell him.
In around 1978-79, I had joined a band in Edinburgh. I had been learning to play the drums since I was 14 at school, guided by my drumming teacher Mr Grossart. I got to join the band as my school chum’s brother was in it and they needed a drummer, so I was in a band. The others were at Edinburgh Uni, and a bit political. I knew nothing really; I was still at school. And about to leave not knowing what I was going to do. I eventually went to Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee during this time. But while in Edinburgh we would meet and practice the band in the Communist Party bookshop in Buccleuch St, making a dim, and being told by the neighbours to turn our records down. The band started to play a couple of places – The Laughing Duck pub, Edinburgh University Anthropology department student party, supporting other bands such as Another Pretty Face, Metropak and Delmontes – all good fun times. Meanwhile around the same time the band, The Dirty Reds who would later morph into the Fire Engines, were starting to do gigs and an early one was for an Edinburgh University Communist Society event in some venue in the Uni. My band mate, who was at this gig later gave me a small cymbal which he had picked up, as it had been thrown into the audience, and he thought as a drummer I might be able to use it. I never did, it was a bit split, and I had my own cymbals which I still have,
I also still have this other cymbal. I just stored it away in my big old suitcase that I used for my drum kit stands, pedals, sticks and cymbals and forgot it was there. I played my old Olympic drums and cymbals for a while after that but not really getting to play them much, as we moved around from flat to flat. The drum kit stayed in my parents’ house, but eventually it moved with me to our own family home, to languish in the garage for many years until I needed to sell the family home and clear the garage. The old drums were looking well-worn and not something I could really use anymore, although I really wanted to play drums; it made me feel good. So, I found a guy who would take them and trade for a big old ride cymbal. Gladly, they weren’t destroyed, just recycled, which was meaningful. But while setting out the drums and stands to photograph for the trader, I remembered the small split cymbal, which was there in the suitcase. I just slipped it in with all my other cymbals and took them all with me and my new Gretsch drum kit on to Edinburgh.
That small cymbal had crossed my mind a few years earlier when I had watched the film on late 1970s and early 1980s Edinburgh and Glasgow post-punk bands, called Big Gold Dream. The film had many interview pieces with the key people who were involved in the scene and bands at the time. All of them are much older now but very willing to share their stories and give recognition to the moment surrounding the Fast Products and Postcard records birth and influence on modern music culture. While watching the film, I heard Tam Dean Burn, Russell’s brother talking about an early The Dirty Reds gig. He mentions how Russell had thrown the cymbal into the audience, luckily it didn’t hit anyone, just hitting the wall and falling to the floor. It was obviously a key moment in their early anarcho-punk rock performance days to get a mention. A cool sunglasses-wearing Davy Henderson, frontman of the Fire Engines is also on screen saying with a grin, that “there were lots of eventful gigs, involving lacerations and almost decapitations etcetera”.[1]
This stopped me in my tracks. They were talking about the actual moment when the cymbal was thrown out into the audience, before my band mate picked it up and passed it onto me. For a while after realising that it had stayed in their minds too, I was somehow going to tell them that I had that actual cymbal.
I’ve been printing up t-shirts recently, which have a list of hand-written names on the front. The names are a list of the content of some essays I have written and they are connected by a QR code either on the back of the T-shirt or a card to my website. I see the t-shirts as a publication really, the lists can be drawn on anything really: pieces of paper, cards, cardboard, wood, stickers, anything that works as a surface. The t-shirt seemed fun, but after many trials and errors with types of printing and quality of t-shirts, I think I’m getting them now, at last more right than wrong. Although, when out in shops, I find myself always looking at how others have made their t-shirts and which make they are using.
I had come over to visit these studios’ open day last year and I noticed there was a textile studio over in that other building where I remembered they had t-shirt screen making equipment. So, I go over and try to find the studio. On the way, I see there is a door open to a room which looks like a music studio. It is crammed with drums, keyboards, amps, tapes, CD’s, posters, stickers, toys, and other various music making paraphernalia. Apparently, it’s Russell’s studio.
I go outside and see if I can find him. He’s by the door, smoking and talking to someone else. I linger a bit, and don’t want to butt in, but this is my chance.
- Is it okay if I see your studio?
- Yeah, of course, you can take your dug in too.
So, I go inside and stand in amongst Russell’s gear. I love gear; musical instruments and equipment. I don’t know why, but it is very special and interesting to me – how things are made, what makes them, the instruments, the cymbals, the drums, the hardware, pedals and microphones. When I’m at gigs I try and get near the stage to photograph the drum kits, and the other instruments’ set-ups; before and after the band has played. It’s the same gear but after the gig the instruments are imbued with that energy and moment, adding to their experience and history.
I go back in to the yard to find Russell.
- Hi, I don’t know if you know me, as we’ve never met before. I know some of your other band mates, but I’ve never met you, and I’ve got something to tell you.
- I’ve seen you around, what’s up?
I start to tell him that I have the cymbal that he threw into the audience at The Dirty Reds gig at the University, how I ended up with it and where it’s been all this time. He seems relieved but also intrigued that after forty-five years, his lost cymbal has returned, like some metal boomerang that has been circling the planet, until it is remembered, called in and allowed to land.
To be concluded…
[1] Davy Henderson in Big Gold Dream, [Film] Directed by: Grant McPhee. Scotland: Tartan Features; 2015.
Iain Irving 