All good things come to an end, but at least Broughton-based Whisky Kiss have gone out on a high: bassist Iain McPhail brings down the curtain on a spectacular week in the Big Apple.
New York is the kind of place where sometimes you need a coffee, just to go for a coffee.
The energy and creativity that abounds in this place is incredible. Whisky Kiss have had a great week in the city that never sleeps, and we’ve made some great new friends along the way. From jamming with Keifer Sutherland at Dressed to Kilt, becoming good pals with Donald Trump and the Trump Organisation, catching up with UK ice dance champion and Olympic medal hopeful John Kerr (pictured centre, below), to working again with the world-champion breakdancers from Brooklyn and meeting their ultra-glam Highland dance equivalents at Assemble & Leap – this has been a tremendous week.
[img_assist|nid=1675|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=150]The grand finale was the Tartan Day parade down 6th Avenue, followed by the star-studded afterparty at a sizeable venue in Chelsea right by Macy’s and the Empire State Building. This has not been Wishaw on a wet, wintry Wednesday night, and motivation has not exactly been a problem.
For the parade, we were based on an open-top bus, stationed beside Radio City. Interestingly, Charlie Sheen is doing his one-man human torpedo show at Radio City just now. Tempting to mention that Mr Sheen’s show lacks a little something, a little polish perhaps, but then that would be a too-obvious gag. We’ll Pledge to do better next time.
A lot of Tartan Week’s events are organised and run by people based in the US acting in an entirely voluntary capacity. For the parade we’ve been working with Lebby Campbell and Camilla Hellman, volunteers who both devote a huge amount of effort to running this event and others. We’ve really appreciated their time, energy and input. There is no doubt that the parade backdrop of the Rockerfeller Center and Radio City is jaw-dropping. We’ve been lucky to play in a lot of the world’s great cities over the last four years at various events, and while there are other places with a lot of tall buildings and a certain air of confidence about them, we’ve been struck by how New York is just that bit different. It is unmistakably cool in a way that most cities don’t achieve. The day New York has difficulty filling its shops, offices and apartments will be the day we know capitalism has finally flopped. Until then, this brash, glorious temple of modern life will no doubt continue to set the pace, with Broughton somewhere close by in the vanguard of course.
After the parade was over we shot down to Midtown, by Macy’s and the Empire State, for the Afterparty. Boy, was it a spectacular event! One of the bands who were on our bill, called Skerryvore, didn’t show up, which didn’t seem to go down terribly well with the organisers. “A ciascuno il suo” as the great Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia once wrote. It did turn out to be fantastic news for us, though! It meant we had the stage and the whole night to ourselves, and we’d invited along the world champion B-boys and the champion Highland dancers Assemble & Leap to join us. It’s not every night you get the opportunity to put on a show with such world-class talents, in a cool-as-ice setting, where you can have two cultures meet and intertwine, but this was undeniably that. This turned out to be our New York and we had the time of our lives. The night just could not be stopped!
[img_assist|nid=1678|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=640|height=480]The 'dance off' between the girls from Scotland (lined up on one side of the room) and the achingly-hip breakdancers from Brooklyn (lined up on the other side) was just 100% *red hot* (pictured afterwards, above). Truth be told, the band had been winding the girls up before the event started, telling them the B-boys thought it was in the bag, that they had a point to prove, that the girls were better than the boys gave them credit for. We all smiled as the girls responded with sass, class and no little attitude. There were dipped shoulders, pursed lips, and rolls of the head – we knew this was going to be a winner, right then. On this evidence, Scotland lacks confidence no longer, and is beginning to take her place in the wider world. The boys may be too cool for school, but they didn’t know what hit them at first. It was all very RunDMC vs Jason Nevins, and these two groups were outstanding. Our music seemed to be a great soundtrack, mixing hiphop and house samples from the DJ, while the musicians threw in live fiddles, whistles, pipes and beats.
A few people in the audience were saying at the end of the night that, as Tartan Week veterans, they thought the event had never looked cooler than it did last night, which was really nice of them to say – especially as it had all been spontaneous and thrown together on Friday! Some people in the audience were posting pictures on the band’s Facebook page, and we hope to get a couple of videos up on there in the next couple of days to give a more visual taster of how it all went off.
The show went on for four-and-a-half-hours and the venue was packed to the rafters – one of the truly unforgettable gigs for Whisky Kiss and a fabulous end to our NY Tartan Week tour.
Thanks very much for joining us over the last few days, and many thanks to the Spurtle for bringing our blog to you during New York Tartan Week 2011.
Cheers, Iain
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