Members of the Hoosiers, Maxïmo Park, Belle & Sebastian and Shed Seven talk about mental health, the pitfalls of the music biz and why they are swapping gigs for theatre audiencesFelix Scoot and Lee Delamere, from one-time chart-toppers Felix & the Scootermen, arrive on space hoppers, launch into a dance routine and bounce up the aisles chanting `Fame is good!` They are presenting a motivational TED talk entitled Self-Help Yourself Famous, with a five-step plan to give us talentless no-marks a leg up the ladder to celebrity. We too could one day reach the dizzy heights of a guest feature with N-Dubz.Over the course of this Edinburgh festival show, the motivational wheels (intentionally) come off. The bullet points are muddled by Broadway musical dream sequences, the arrival of a robotic sexual predator and Felix´s revelations about soiling himself live on BBC Radio 1. Between the illiberal use of tasers and bitter asides about their savage rivalry with Scouting for Girls, stains begin to appear on the gleaming veneer of fame: the shallowness, exploitation and precariousness of flash-in-the-pan success, the inability to complain `because you´re so lucky to be there`, the depths to which you´ll stoop to cling on for another 15 minutes and the delectation a bloodthirsty world finds in watching you fall. Continue reading...
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