"Hey there all friends within a few hours of Edinburgh, we implore you to go to the best venue on Earth and see one of the most entertaining bands ever!"

"People have been known to drive 4 hours to another state to see them!...."

"People have been known to dry out for 4 hours from a drunken state to see them!...."

Guess it's time to lay off the prunes...

There's a challenge at the heart of the New Rope String Band's late-afternoon show where our three heroes perform a previously little-known morris dance and order the audience not to laugh because it's rude to make fun of other people's culture.
Reader, I failed. Even the most avid morris dance advocate would, I suspect, fail too.
As the folk scene has known for some time, these guys are nuts. In the nicest possible way. From morris dancing to break dancing, via the Bee Gees, and from world music – in the guise of a Malaysian song, allegedly – to Mars (the Holst one, played on a theremin), they get around their many cultural references with prodigious musicianship laced with their very own brand of slapstick, mirthful mock self-reverence, pints both of dodgy provenance and an explosive nature, and much sheer badness towards their hapless, kilted accordionist.
In a show that clocks up way more than a laugh a minute, the highlights include a game of ping-pong between the two fiddlers and a film show that purports to be live and interactive but like almost everything else the trio performs, from Appalachian waltz to "a tune on the pipes", has a thoroughly entertaining alternative outcome. Until August 12.