Here’s an odd tale of two cities. In Glasgow, home-grown live music thrives (as our music tour testifies) while in Edinburgh it struggles to survive. In support of The Bongo Club, the latest Edinburgh club threatened with closure, we came up with these thoughts. And some questions.

Hole in the heart: the gap where La Belle Angele was destroyed by fire December 2002

Has Edinburgh lost its musical soul? It’s hard to understand why the City of Literature has such difficulty supporting a vibrant live music scene. During the Festival, Edinburgh’s halls and attics, back rooms and basements burst into life as pop-up venues for creative activities of all kinds.  But live music shrinks back into its shell for the rest of the year and for the last few years that shell has been getting smaller and more fragile.  Meanwhile, Glasgow grows ever more dynamic as Britain’s first City of Music.

What is the crucial difference between these two cities?  Is it because industrial decline created so many great performance spaces in Glasgow? Does the relatively higher price of property in Edinburgh prove too much temptation for cash-strapped bodies like Edinburgh University and City of Edinburgh Council (thinking here of The Forest, Assembly Rooms, and now of course The Bongo Club)?  But – given Glasgow’s ability to reinvent grand old buildings (O2 Academy in the Gorbals, Old Fruitmarket in Merchant City…) as well as supporting innovative newer ventures like Mono and Stereo – the value of mere bricks and mortar cannot be the only answer.

The Lot in the Grassmarket, closed in January 2011

Of course Edinburgh does have a vibrant scene and always has done – from Fast Product and The Rezillos to FOUND, North Atlantic Oscillation, My Tiny Robots, Fudge Fingas, Firecracker Records, Song, By Toad, Wasabi Disco, Ultragroove, to name only a handful – but it’s in real danger of disappearing or migrating elsewhere if it can’t be nurtured. That is surely not the tale Scotland’s capital wants to tell the wider world.

Like Glasgow, Edinburgh has both grand and large-scale venues: HMV Picturehouse, The Jam House, Corn Exchange and recently refurbished Usher Hall. But a thriving, constantly evolving, independent music scene requires eclectic, exciting – eccentric even – ‘melting pot’ spaces like The Bongo Club; providing not just jobs for locals but an essential platform for grassroots music talent.

Clubs close in Glasgow too. Fire, debt and property speculation wreak havoc everywhere. But in the City of Music, clubs soon reopen or reinvent themselves. A new, bolder spirit of enterprise would not go amiss in the capital city where there is now a spreading opportunity of empty properties.  At the very least these could become pop-up clubs and theatres.  Not just for the International Festival and Fringe but to save the musical soul of the city.

PS: this is a slightly expanded version of the message we sent to The Bongo Club in support of their campaign.

It doesn’t have to end like this…