Tune of the Week - “Big Chief”
This is what a bank holiday weekend sounds like, people
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Who are you calling random? Better links than you’ll find on your local golf course
Blogledge Nialler9 has just unearthed a top quality recording of Leftfield’s performance at Homelands in 2000. Click through now and enjoy some heavyweight, stomach-pumping bass.
Going to the Garden Party? Prepare for your big day out with this 20 minute excerpt from Hot Chip’s new “DJ Kicks” mix-album. Lovely hurling
Political anoraks, this is for you. Anne-Marie Power spent Election 2007 in Dublin Central tracking the ups and downs of the three female would-be TDs campaigning in Bertie’s backyard. She followed their campaigns from the get-go to the last count for a documentary called Patricia, Mary and Mary-Lou Too which airs tonight (Wednesday) on RTE Radio One at 8pm. If you miss it, check here for a podcast from tomorrow.
KRS-One blanks Ireland! Those June dates I wrote about earlier featuring The Blastmaster and Marley Marl? Forget about them. The shows are cancelled. Read a book instead. Me, I’m about to start the new Richard Ford, if you’re wondering.
Una Rocks tried to give up blogging for a week. It didn’t work. She blames Rick O’Shea. See, I’m not the only one who has issues with 2FM.
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Do you want to see The Good The Bad & The Queen, !!!, CSS, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and dozens more for free?
It may be time to move to Tuscany in that case.
A few weeks ago, there was a discussion here (well, here) about ticket prices for Irish festivals and mention was made of Italian festival Arezzo Wave.
Well, it’s back. It has a new name (Italia Wave Love Festival), a new location (it’s now in Florence) and new dates (July 17 to 22nd). Besides a rake of Italian bands, Italia Wave will also see performances from CSS, The Good The Bad & The Queen, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Tinariwen, Nitin Sawhney, Mika, Scissor Sisters, Cassius, Jimi Tenor and tons more.
Italia Wave will also feature the Elettrowave club nights, the Toscana Wave new band stages, the ClassicWave programme with a focus on Ligeti, the CultWave film, theatre and comic stages plus a load of workshops, seminars, talks by important people (Bob Geldof is mentioned) and some of the best slow-food chefs in Tuscany showing off their wares.
Best of all, admission is free provided you’re in the venue before 9pm. Turn up after 9pm and it will cost you a tenner. Sure, the flight over will cost you more than that.
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Rock the Vote - the latest
Stop groaning already. They haven’t gone away, you know. Or maybe they have. Read on…
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The view from Fairview
Most Saturday mornings, I go for a cycle. The route stays the same: leave the house in Fairview, up through Marino, along the coast road and out to Dollymount. It’s a route punctuated with regular sights. Like the bright orange Volkswagen Beetle towing a caravan which turns up, as regular as rain, on the footpath at the bottom of the Malahide Road by the Crescent.
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Happy birthday Miles
Miles Davis would have been blowing 81 candles off a cake today were he still alive. Pitchfork pay tribute to the genius with a video extravaganza. Watch and enjoy as you listen to the election count on the radio. And then stick on “Sketches Of Spain”.
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Business of bling taken to new high
If you were one of those indignant at the notion of paying €551.75 to see Barbra Streisand in concert this summer, look away now. The Social is a five-concert series which will take place in New York’s East Hamptons this summer featuring shows by Prince, Billy Joel, Dave Matthews, Tom Petty and James Taylor. The cost of tickets for this series of soirees? A cool $15,000 (€11,100).
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Foot on the gas for music label takeover
It’s squeaky bum time for EMI label employees and acts at the moment. The decision by the EMI board to recommend the £3.2 billion (€4.7 billion) takeover offer from private equity firm Terra Firma means Coldplay, The Beatles and Gorillaz are set to be in the same investment shopping basket as German petrol stations Tank & Rast, the Odeon cinema group and Northern Ireland’s Phoenix Natural Gas.
While there’s unlikely to be any short-term changes, Terra Firma will likely take a more practical and less sentimental view on the music company’s talent punts.
There’s much potential for additional value to be extracted from EMI’s back-catalogue, but it’s how the new owners will approach acquiring and developing new talent which will be the most telling. For example, will bands who still have not recouped on their advances and costs get to make a second album any more? Interesting times ahead.
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Ready for a Thrill-seeking summer
Two Irish EMI-signed acts are preparing to remind local live audiences that they’re still very much in business in the coming weeks.
Cathy Davey spent 2006 writing songs for a new album which will see the light of day over the summer. She begins a tour in Cork’s Cyprus Avenue tomorrow night which ends at Whelan’s in Dublin on June 20th.
The Thrills release their third album, Teenager, on July 20th. To promote it, they’re going on a tour of “small intimate and up-close venues” in July and August. They’re also playing Oxegen, which could never be described as small, intimate or up-close.
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Right up your alley
More from the returns department: Marble City giants Engine Alley will be playing their first Dublin show this century in June.
A mainstay of the Irish music scene during the early and mid-1990s with their theatrical approach to Bowie-pop, the Alley went their separate ways in 1996 after a couple of well-received albums and a lot of eyeliner.
While the band have played a couple of hometown shows in the last few years, their date at Whelan’s on June 9th marks the Alley’s first excursion in the big smoke in some eight years.
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Tune of the Week - “Stress”
Imagine if Bernard Herrmann decided to make an acid house banger…
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A requiem for a city
While Friday’s election count will inevitably have its share of must-see moments, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” was truly the most extraordinary four hours of TV I’ve seen in an age.
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The young folks versus the old folks
There’s a very interesting contrast to be made between the excellent general election campaign run by Older & Bolder and the awful, dreadful, cliched drivel which continues to be foisted on us by those eejits at Rock The Vote.
Rock the Vote employed a bunch of celebrity buffoons (and Cormac Battle) to try to get young folk to vote. This bunch of buffoons seem to think that wacky statements, silly handsignals and irony is the way to go when it comes to votes, politics and elections.
Older & Bolder, which is a group consisting of Age Action Ireland, Age & Opportunity, Irish Senior Citizens Parliament and The Senior Help Line, have got lowdown and dirty with issues which directly impact on their immediate constituency. Meetings were organised, voices were raised and the importance of a large voting bloc was quickly understood by all parties.
Older & Bolder’s lobbying is the reason why you’ve heard more about pensions in this election, for example, than such pressing youth-related issues as the country’s appalling road safety record (has there been mention of this issue by any party?) and the influence of the drink lobby on our law-makers, to name just two.
Instead of empowering and encouraging young voters to harass politicians about such issues which are of immediate concern to them, Rock The Vote decided to treat their audience like children and sent in the clowns. What a waste of time, money and resources.
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Proof that at least one of the Smiths had sole
What you are looking at a pair of runners designed by Johnny Marr, former partner to that singing monstrosity Morrissey and now guitar-slinger for hire (currently employed by Modest Mouse).
They are in “luxurious” dark blue leather with black accents, while Marr’s signature is laser-etched in the tongue of every shoe.
Can anyone explain what is it about iconic Mancs and runners? After sneaker pimps getting all excited about the Joy Division trainers, along comes Johnny with these PF Flyers (which look a bit like old-school Pro-Keds to me). Answers in a comment field below please.
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RTE’s digital switch-on - the scoop
2fm’s Mark McCabe kindly took the time to fill in some of the blanks about what he is working on regarding the Montrose digital mission (and he also addresses Twenty Major’s fears about Damien Rice):
I am responsible for 3 new music services that will be on Digital, one of which, is a side chain of 2FM. This service will provide an outlet for acts, artists and content that would otherwise not get as much exposure on 2FM.
No station in the world can be all things to all people, no matter how hard it trys. Digital radio opens up the possibility for audience to find a station of choice from within RTE and stick with it, not channel hop depending on the time of the day.
Digtial Radio= More Choice
Its good for all concerned and lets not forget that one station is as guilty as the next when it comes to offering something different.
Digital Radio at least opens up the possiblity for niche services to develop but no doubt, audience reaction will ultimately decide what niche gets priority.
As for Irish content, at least two tracks per hour are Irish acts or artists that include Star little Thing, Director, Rubyhorse, Humanzi, Gemma Hayes, Red Serpent Sound, Ian Archer and many many more from the Irish stable.
Damien Rice has a total of ONE song on the playlist and as for his friends, I would have thought Damien had no friends having become so Internationally successful and of course, his being Irish !
I, like many others, do think that Irish Radio needs a kick up the rear. I strongly believe that digital radio is the boot.
More of this kind of thing please: people in RTE giving comprehensive blocks of information rather than running away at the first sign of a hard question.
So, hands up who’s going down the shops to buy a digital radio?
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Winners and losers
It’s interesting to note how yesterday’s JNLR figures impact on some individual shows as opposed to the station’s market share and reach.
Going up:
Ray D’Arcy (Today FM) - up 4,000 listeners
Tom Dunne (Today FM) - up 3,000 listeners
Going down:
Gerry Ryan (2FM) - a whopping 15,000 listeners turned off during the period under review, joining the 51,000 listeners who abandoned Radio Gerry in 2005
Ian Dempsey (Today FM) - down 3,000 listeners
Pat Kenny (RTE Radio One) - down 8,000 listeners
Ryan Tubridy (RTE Radio One) - down 15,000 listeners
Morning Ireland (RTE Radio One) - down 18,000 listeners
The Last Word (Today FM) - down 5,000 listeners
Drivetime (RTE Radio One) - down 9,000 listeners
My favourite quote from the round of spin which always goes hand in hand with a new JNLR book? The reaction of RTE radio’s big cheese Anna Leddy:
“I am looking forward to the August book which will give us a fuller picture of the impact of schedule changes on both RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2FM.”
She won’t be the only one. Hi John.
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Artists still rolling up for summer shows
Just when you thought there was absolutely no room left for anyone else on the Irish summer festival bandwagon, along come 50 Cent, Elton John and Sister Sledge looking to get onboard.
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The end with Immediate effect
The announcement by The Immediate at the Trinity Ball last week that they were calling it a day took most observers by surprise.
The band released their debut album, In Towers & Clouds, last summer and it received huge critical acclaim, promising sales and a Choice Music Prize nomination.
It was expected that the band would spend 2007 consolidating their support base at home and, having secured record label support in France, Australia and Germany, touring abroad.
But it was not to be. The band’s farewell statement cited “existential differences” - certainly the first time an Irish act has used that reason for a split. The break-up is said to be amicable, with some members keener to pursue other projects.
The band do, however, leave us with one last tune. As a parting gift, a new track, Mist Above the Mind, is currently streaming online.
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Caning it in the Big Apple
On The Record’s New York readers can be amongst the first to catch new work by Galway’s Cane 141 this week.
The Michael Smalle-fronted group have collaborated with artist Róisín Coyle on a music and visual installation called Lost At Sea which “explores the concept of the beauty and struggle of the sea and the individual’s response to it”.
To coincide with the exhibition, Cane 141 will be releasing the Lost At Sea album, the follow-up to their well-received 2005 Moonpool release.
Lost At Sea opens at the Grace Space in Brooklyn, NY today.
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Un Belize-able sounds
The Garifunas are coming. The story of Garifuna culture, as told by Andy Palacio and his collective of musicians from Belize, goes back to a time of shipwrecks and slavery.
Garifuna culture arrived in central America when two slave ships sunk off the Caribbean island of St Vincent in 1635. The African survivors went on to intermingle with the natives and the Garifuna culture, mixing African and Caribbean traditions, was born.
Palacio and the Garifuna Collective, who recorded the Wátina album about this culture which still exists in pockets along central America’s Caribbean coast, play Whelan’s, Dublin on June 15th.
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Spin time again
The latest JNLR figures have just been published for the period April 2006-March 2007.
I can imagine that, as happens every three months, there’s some frantic head-scratching going on amongst radio station chiefs up and down the country as they parse the figures, work out what it all means and then try to spin it to their advantage. The press releases will be flying within the hour.
The headline findings are as follows (all comparisons are with the figures for Jan-Dec 2006):
85% of the adult population were listening daily to a mix of national, regional and local radio throughout the country.
Listenership to any regional/local was 55% (-1).
RTÉ Radio 1’s reach decreased to 23% (-1), while RTÉ 2FM, Today FM and Lyric FM all maintained their reach figures at 18%, 16% and 3% respectively.
Newstalk received its first ‘national’ figures for the six months covering September 29th to March 31st , achieving a reach figure of 5%.
Both RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2FM’s market share decreased to 20.5% (-0.4) and 12.6% (-0.3) respectively compared to Jan-Dec 2006.
Today FM saw a marginal increase in share to 12.4% (+0.3), while RTÉ Lyric FM’s national market share was 1.9% (+0.2). Newstalk’s market share for the six months surveyed was 3.2%.
In Dublin, FM104 was the most listened to local radio station with a reach of 23% (+1) and a market share of 14.1% (+0.8). 98FM’s reach increased to 18% (+1) with a market share figure of 14% (-0.1).
Spin, Q102 and Dublin’s Country all retained their respective reach figures of 12%, 10% and 3% and recorded small changes in market share, with Q102 gaining 6.7% (+0.5), Spin achieving 5.2% (+0.4) and Dublin’s Country at 2.7% (-0.1).
Phantom 105.2 received figures for five months from November to March, achieving a reach of 2% and gaining a market share of 0.7% (declaration of interest here)
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This is the best election EVER
Just when you thought Election 2007 couldn’t get any more GUBU, along comes Ivor Callely and his Teddy Bears Picnic stunt.
It seems On The Record’s favourite ex-junior minister decided to enlist the help of some people wearing teddy bear costumes as a jolly jape on the hustings in Dublin North Central.
Hey, dressing up in bear costumes worked mighty fine for the Flaming Lips, didn’t it?
But, like many things associated with Ivor, this stunt back-fired.
A mother today rounded on Fianna Fáil TD Ivor Callely after her young children were canvassed by adults in teddy bear suits outside school gates.
The 33-year-old woman insisted she was shocked by the former junior minister’s electioneering stunt outside the junior girls school in the fiercely contested north Dublin constituency.
Damaris O’Brien, from Killester, demanded to know if the unknown figures in the teddy bear suits at Belgrove National School in Clontarf had been vetted before engaging with young children.
“Who the hell are these people in bear suits? I mean you just don’t know who people are anymore and you hear all these horror stories about kids,” she said.
Naturally, Ivor had an answer. Didn’t he?
Despite numerous calls to Mr Callely’s mobile phone and several messages left with his constituency office and parliamentary office there was no response to the concerns.
I repeat. Best. Election. Ever.
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Here comes the Blastmaster
Big up the Choice Cuts crew. They have just announced Dublin and Cork shows featuring KRS One and Marley Marl. The hip-hop legends play The Village, Dublin on June 21 and The Savoy, Cork on June 22. Taking it to the Bridge!
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Hands up who wants another summer festival!
The latest fest to add some names to its line-up is Mantua, the two-day arts and music jam in Co Roscommon. There’s a live stage, an Alphabet Set stage and the Rootical stage with more sound systems and bass than they’ve ever experienced in the west.
Acts worth catching include The Skatalites, Ten Past Seven, Wiggle, Super Extra Bonus Party (really digging their album at the mo’), Digital Mystikz (great, great track on the new Soul Jazz “Box Of Dub” compilation), Decal, Ambulance, Jah Shaka, Brother Culture and dozens more.
We need more festivals like Mantua methinks….
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Livin’ the life, lovin’ the (non-Irish) music
You are an Irish radio station called 2FM. Better still, you are an Irish radio station called 2FM with a public broadcasting remit. OK, you do your best to forget about the public broadcasting remit because it’s a bit of a drag, but annoying feckers keep bringing it up. Public broadcasting remit means you have certain obligations to your public. They are the ones paying some of your bills when they buy a TV licence every year. You need to make nice with them.
Anyway, you are an Irish radio station called 2FM and it is time for you to do a big TV advertising campaign to highlight the fact that you are fresh, groovy, relevant and all the rest of it. You pay a copywriter or a work experience kid to come up with a terrible slogan (“livin’ the life, lovin’ the music” - they don’t like the letter G for some reason in 2FM). It then takes two attempts to get the ad right (the first one looked as cheap as chips so you went off and spent some more euros on animation). The ad is broadcast. You sit back and wait for the JNLR figures to reflect the success of the campaign.
But the one thing you didnt get right was the music, the song to go with the ad. You’d think a radio station would get this right, wouldn’t you? But, no.
Remember the first paragraph? Irish radio station? Public broadcasting remit? So why the hell is the generic and bland tune soundtracking this huge advertising campaign by the Irish national pop station by a UK-based band called Vega4? Do we not have enough generic and bland bands of our own?
Imagine what such exposure would have done to any number of Irish bands. Imagine how 2FM could have said “hey bitches, we don’t just live the life and love the music but we LOVE Irish music. We rock! We rule! Yahoo!” Imagine how we could have spent the five minutes spent on this blog post on something else.
You’ve gotta love 2FM. Well, someone has to.
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More fun than cycling over Ivor Callely posters, it’s the links. Enjoy responsibly
You may think that Fight Like Apes are a blogspiracy such is the amount of blog love coming their way of late. But they’re real and they rock like apes. For lines like “you’re like Kentucky Fried Chicken but without the taste” and “you’re a fucking disappointment to the human race” alone, they’re getting our vote on May 24th.
More reasons to love Palms Out as they’ve outed the Prodigy as sample monsters. If you haven’t done so already, check out Palms Out’s forensic dissection of Daft Punk. More cuts, incisions and nasty bits than a monster mash of Scrubs, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Holby City, All Saints and Casualty. For some reason, there were never any nasty bits in The Clinic. Just the acting.
Cheers to Charlie for signposting this documentary on the Amen break, the six second sample from “Amen, Brother” by The Winstons which has subsequently gone on to star on countless hip-hop and drum’n'bass tracks.
Via the mighty Cheebah crew comes this fantastic footage of breakdancers doing it at the Cliffs of Moher as shot by Claire McGrath. Who needs a blooming interpretive centre when you can dance off on a big square of cardboard or lino on top of a cliff?
German deep funk powerhouse Poets Of Rhythm are on their way to Ireland for dates in Dublin (Whelan’s, June 7) and Limerick (Dolan’s Warehouse, June 8). Check out what they sound like in advance with this free download courtesy of the Choice Cuts gang.
It’s the party-friendly Missill. She’s at Tripod (Dublin, May 25) and Trinity Rooms (Limerick, May 26). Go along. Jump around. Enjoy. Smile. Or watch her latest video here.
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The gang of three becomes the gang of four
Irish Times political correspondent Mark Hennessy is now also in the blogging business.
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The difference between Oxegen and Electric Picnic? Chips
Seriously, this is what it comes down to. Chips. French fries. Wedges. You won’t find them inside the walls at Thomas Cosby’s Stradbally Hall estate (anyway, who needs chips when you have Pieminister?), but there are chips galore at Punchestown.
Food and Drink
We’ve got lots of fantastic food to keep you going right through the weekend. There’s Fair Trade, organic and gourmet choices with tastes from around the globe, from Chinese and Indian to Spanish, Mexican and Italian. We’ve got crepes, waffles, tofu and of course quality burgers and chips - Whatever takes your fancy we’ll be serving it up all weekend.Forget the bands and the campsites and the Oxegen kids vs the Electric Picnic twenty/thirty/fortysomethings - it’s all about the chips.
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History lessons
This is how they used to do it. A dig through the RTE archives has unearthed this series of TV and radio clips from the station’s coverage of past general elections. There’s some fascinating bits and pieces, including behind-the-scenes coverage from 1982, a report from a mass at the Pro-Cathedral for incoming deputies in 1981 and, from the same year and perhaps best of all, Vincent Browne rocking a fine set of mutton chops AND admitting to Brian Farrell that he was wrong.
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It’s a Shocka
It’s probably the first time that hair gel has made the headlines since “There’s Something About Mary”.
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New Order split - On The Record not convinced
Can we have that in writing please? Bassist Peter Hook confirmed the news that New Order have split. “Well, yeah, me and Bernard aren’t working together”, he said during a radio interview. “Bernard went off for a break with Electronic, but that was different. But it’s like the boy who cried wolf this time”.
On the Record cannot help noticing that news of New Order’s demise only came to light when Hook was on the airwaves flogging his involvment with Perry Farrell’s new band Satellite Party.
The story also helped to embellish a few column inches about Control, the new Joy Division film about to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival. It features music by, yes, New Order.
Given that we have been here before with New Order, don’t rule out seeing Hook’s off-the-ankle bass-playing technique starring on a stage with Sumner again in the future.
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Ding-dong as Oldfield fumes over freebie
Poor Mike Oldfield. It seems that no-one told him that his “Tubular Bells” album would be given away free with The Mail On Sunday.
From the sound of his letter to industry trade paper Music Week slamming EMI Records for this oversight, Oldfield must have only found out when he went down the shops to get a sliced pan and the Sunday papers
“EMI’s decision to give away Tubular Bells was taken without my agreement or even the simple courtesy of EMI telling me about it”, he fumes. “To group real music with cheap loan leaflets and the other freebies that fall out of most publications is to devalue it.”
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More sell-outs?
Paula Flynn’s cover version of “Lets Dance”, currently featuring on TV ads for a certain brand of bottled water, kick-started an interesting debate over at the On the Record blog about the ins and outs of musicians singing for their supper on advertisements.
To quote reader Kim Fowley, “if Flynn wants to work for them, why doesn’t she just get herself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it?”
Still, it hasn’t done Flynn any harm yet. Her version of “Lets Dance” is released by EMI Ireland on May 18.
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Tune of the Week - “Solta o frango”
Apparently, it means “release the chickens” in Portugese. There, you learn something new every day round this way.
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Festival of the summer! Sister Sledge! Fight Like Apes! Flushing loos!
Just when you thought there was no way anyone else would bother trying to get into the summer festival groove, along comes Castle Palooza.
Castle Palooza will be held on August 4th and 5th at Charleville Castle, Tullamore, Co Offaly (the place the late, much missed Mor once called home) and will be headlined by Sister Sledge. Yah! Having seen Chic slay the hip kids at Sonar last summer, I’m all for classic disco.
In addition, the line up contains an eclectic mix of Ireland’s home-grown
talent and will feature: Neosupervital, The Chapters, Mainline, Star Little
Thing, The Gorgeous Colours, The Chakras, Red Kid, The Spikes, Fight Like
Apes, Sickboy, Gavin Glass, Royseven, Angel Pier, Springbreak, Daves Radio,
The Loafing Heroes, The Aftermath, The Ok’s, Corsairs, Moebius, The
Ministry, Martin Staunton Band, Prison Love & Marian Bradfield, with more
acts to be announced. There is also the welcome addition of Frightened
Rabbit, one of Glasgow’s most promising Indie acts.Then, there are the facilities. Take note rival festival promoters.
For your ticket price you can also enjoy hot showers, great camping facilities,
a full bar, exhibitions, performance and lots of other surprises. (Not to
mention proper flushing loos!).Tickets are €125 (two days with camping) and are now on sale.
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TV Jools
Look, making a music TV show is easy. You get a band or bands. You get a camera or cameras. You point one at the other. You press a red button (is there some reason why the record button is always red?) and away you go.
Yet, time after time after time, music TV ends up looking like a dog’s dinner. It usually happens when you add stupid presenters or you decide to have groovy features or you begin to get post-modern about the whole thing. There was a reason why The Tube worked, you know.
Thank heavens then for Later With Jools and the return of former Tube presenter Jools Holland for the show’s 29th season. Yes, that’s 29.
Sure, Jools is a TV presenter and sure, there’s the odd zany feature (no sign of the Orchestra thus far or his tendency to play boogie-woogie piano) but Later With Jools works because it adheres to the idea of bands playing and cameras recording them.
Last Friday, Cansei de Ser Sexy, The Hold Steady, Arctic Monkeys, Henri Salvador and Tinariwen were on the show. Jools also had Bryan Ferry on, but maybe he got him free with his groceries at Marks & Spencer.
Next Friday night, Later will have Dizzee Rascal, Joanna Newsom, the mega Candie Payne and Grinderman on the show. It will also feature Travis, but you can go out to the kitchen and get a packet of biscuits when they’re on. I recommend Fox’s Classic.
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The boys in the bubble
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C6 swaps porn for pop
With Channel 4 axing Popworld and RTE’s new summer season blanking rock and pop again (two shows are scheduled on sculptors, but that’s a different kind of rock), there’s less and less new music on our screens.
While some feel traditional pop TV is dying in an age when pop music is available on demand on digital and online channels, tonight’s BBC2 return of Later With Jools for its 29th season shows there is still a demand for high quality music programming.
Over at Channel 6, meanwhile, a new live music series airs from next Monday. Night Shift: The Airfield Sessions will feature David Kitt, Director, Delorentos, Jape, Si Schroeder, Republic Of Loose and others recorded live at Airfield House in Dundrum. Wonder will it attract as many viewers as would have tuned in for C6’s mooted soft porn season?
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Still flocking off
Earlier this year, Bell X1 parted ways with their Island Records paymasters, despite the band flogging over 60,000 copies of their last album “Flock” in Ireland alone.
Many of those customers will be picking up the band’s first post-Island release in the coming weeks. Released on their own BellyUp label on June 15, “Tour De Flock” is a live DVD and CD recorded and filmed at the band’s Point Theatre show in Dublin last December.
For those who would prefer to see them live, Bell X1 play Dublin’s Malahide Castle on June 30 and Cork’s Marquee on July 1.
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Ulster says oh yeah
New institutions are all the rage this weather in Northern Ireland. All eyes will be on Stormont next Tuesday, but music fans may be just as interested in tomorrow’s (Saturday May 5) open day at the prospective Oh Yeah music centre in Belfast.
Located on Gordon Street in the city’s Cathedral Quarter, Oh Yeah will house recording studios, rehearsal facilities, performance space and offices once renovations are complete.
Go along tomorrow for tours of the building, a performance from The Fools, screenings of the So Hard to Beat documentary, panel discussions and various information stalls.
More details at ohyeahbelfast.com
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Tune of the Week - “Strings Of Life”
Back in 1987, a Detroit buck called Derrick May created this tune. From the get-go, this was a stone-cold classic, a track which would survive the twists of time and espcially the many attempts made to butcher it.
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Rocking the vote
Today’s Blogorrah features a selection of videos from the Rock The Vote campaign. I really hope that someone checked that all those “celebrities” and “stars” featured in these vids are on the relevant voting registers. By the way, are young voters so dumb that they need sideburned singer-songwriters, lead singers of flop Dublin bands and devilish pop managers to remind them to vote?
Then, there are the students. Lets be honest about this: every single election campaign sees students moaning and groaning about the fact that the election is on a Thursday and they can’t vote because they’re away from their homes and their mammies. The truth? Over to Ms Laura Egar from yesterday’s Letters to the Editor page in the paper
Madam, - The students whining about being disenfranchised by the Government’s decision to hold a general election on a Thursday should spend less time whining and more time informing themselves about the democratic election process in this country.
Any student in full-time third-level education has the opportunity to apply to have their vote moved to the constituency in which they are studying or to apply for a postal vote for the constituency in which they live.
Ignorance is bliss, it gives free licence to complain. - Yours, etc,
LAURA EGAR, Shankill, Co Dublin
We’re voting for Laura.
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Yo! Yo! Yo! Clipse are coming to town.
The greatest duo in hip-hop today are hitting Dublin next month.
Clipse play Vicar Street on June 13. Tickets now on sale.
That’s as good a result as this.
UPDATE - gig now moved to July 04. No reason given. Maybe they need to do a re-up or something.
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Never trust a hippie (part 2,567,822)
It seems that the Glastonbury Festival, the fest that likes to think it’s the first and last word in peace, love and harmony, has been caught up in the middle of some dodgy spam shenanigans.
According to The Registar, people who didn’t get a ticket for this year’s festival subsequently received pleas to buy tickets for the Latitude festival after their email addresses were shared with Latitude promoters, the Mean Fiddler.
After a wave of complaints were made about this blatant abuse of personal data, an apology was issued by the Glastonbury organisers. However, interestingly over on the Glastonbury website, organiser Michael Eavis is still to be found suggesting Latitude as an “alternative”.
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It’s not just the banks who want your SSIA cash
Hearing that the country was awash in cash, Barbra Streisand has decided it’s high time to visit Ireland. She performs at Castletown House, Celbridge, Co Kildare on July 14.
It will be a posh affair, per the press release.
“A 58 piece orchestra will accompany Ms Streisand as she performs many of the classic songs from her unique repertoire such as “Evergreen”, “People”, “The Way We Were”, “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and many more.”
You don’t usually get that sort of thing in Co Kildare. You certainly won’t get it the week before.
Tickets for this soiree? Well, they start at 118.50 euro and then rise to 193.50 euro, 270.75 euro and 551.75 euro.
What the hell do you get for 551.75 euro (including booking fee)? The mind boggles.
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How many members of Aosdána does it take to write a letter to The Irish Times? (*)
It’s the Tuesday morning clickathon! A collection of random links designed to keep you away for at least five minutes from doing something useful. Like answering the door to your local would-be TD. And sticking his leaflet in your green bin. While he’s canvassing next-door.
What the Wu? There are 215 free Wu-Tang Clan downloads waiting to be enjoyed right here.
Last Friday, we rounded up the gigs and festivals of the summer. But, naturally because we’re human, we left out a few. There’s the Dublin City Soul Festival (we reckon Stax soul stirrers the Rance Allen Group are worth a look) and, then, there’s the full line-up for Groove Armada’s Lovebox hooley at Dublin’s Malahide Castle which also features The Rapture (we’re loving the Claude Von Stroke remix of their “Whoo Alright Yah Uh Huh” at the mo’), Toots & The Maytals, (the hugely over-rated) Super Furry Animals, V2 new boy Jape, superstar spinner Sasha and many more.
We like that eerie version of “Lets Dance” currently featured on an ad for Ballygowan. If, like us, you were wondering who the singer is, wonder no more. She is Miss Paula Flynn and she hails from Co Armagh. Currenly a comunications student at DCU, she usually sings with Jinx Lennon but is now planning a solo album. And yes, she has a MySpace.
Mash-ups may be so 2001 but someone forget to tell Party Ben. He’s the dude behind that Snow Patrol vs The Police “Every Car You Chase” yoke currently doing the rounds and the good news is he’s done dozens more. Our favourite is his remix of Hot Chip’s “Over & Over”. Not as good as the Diplo rerub but hey, what is?
Thanks to Joey and Liz and their super-duper TV-DVD thingy, we saw the Arcade Fire busking their way through “Neon Bible” and “Guns Of Brixton” on BBC’s Culture Show the other week and now, you can do likewise thanks to the Beeb. Luckily, you’ll miss out on Lauren Laverne’s truly appalling interview. Man, she wouldn’t even get a gig on Xpose.
Ah record labels, you’ve got to love them. Check the terms and conditions if you want to get your tune on the soundtrack to the new Bratz film. We should have gone to law school.
(* Your guess is as good as mine, but they’re really splashing out their cnuas on stamps these days)
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