Playing catch-up in nine easy steps
Jim Carroll
(1) You go away for a few days and all hell breaks loose. Item one: John Waters vs the O’Blogosphere. John boy called people names and generally acted like Kevin Myers. The O’Blogosphere responded (I’d have sore thumbs if I linked to everything which was written). Much fuming all round. Boy, I’m glad I missed that one…
(2) Item two: “Falling Slowly” and the Oscars. While there’s some chit-chat about whether the song from Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová actually qualifies to be considered for the gong (and Una had a piece on it in the Sunday Tribune yesterday), Adam Maguire points out that the very first time the song was ever featured was in Once back in January 2006. Yes, the song turned up in several different places between then and now (the soundtrack to a Czech flick Beauty In Trouble, on “The Swell Season” album and on “The Cost” from The Frames – Glen knows how to get value from a tune), but it was first written for the flick. Jaysus, it had better win the bloody yoke after all that.
(3) If you’re offered a job working on the road with an aging prima dona, militant vegetarian and all-round over-rated egomaniac, here’s what to expect. Some day, if you’re good, l’ll tell you the tale about me and Morrissey’s trousers.
(4) On The Record: we know things. Last Monday, we told you The National were on the way to Dublin. By Friday, voila, tickets for the show on May 15 were on sale. Just like that. What’s the betting that there are more dates to be announced?
(5) On The Record: did we tell you that we know things? Yesterday’s Sunday Times had an interesting business story that MCD’s Denis Desmond has taken a share in Irish pop station Bubble Hits. Mmmm, we thought, that sounds familiar. Is this the same story we wrote about, oh, six months ago? Wonder what old On The Record story the Sunday Times will pick up next week….
(6) Want to read another article about The Wire? Of course you do. Here’s Charlie Brooker hanging out with the cast. Question: did anyone go to the David Simon masterclass in Dublin last week?
(7) Is the 2FM Hope for 2008 Meteor Award the gong of death for new bands? Previous winners of the gong of death have included such household names as Relish, Rubyhorse and Angel of Mons. Hoping to do a little bit better this year are Leanne Harte, Owen Brady, The Kinetiks, the rather excellent We Should Be Dead and Ham Sandwich. 2FM listeners (all of them – not just those in our house who listen to Rick O’Shea’s show) get to decide the winner.
(8) Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the most chilling, bleak, unputdownable book I’ve read in years. You’ll have dreams and nightmares about the man and the boy for nights afterwards.
(9) A ton of new gigs have been announced in the last few days. These include Hammell On Trial (Bog Lane Theatre Ballymahon Co Longford February 24 and Cyprus Avenue Cork February 25), Animal Collective (Tripod, Dublin, May 19), Yeasayer (Whelan’s, Dublin, May 13), Efterklang (Button Factory, Dublin, March 29), Dinosour Jr (Academy, Dublin, May 12 and Spring and Airbrake, Belfast, May 13), Grant Lee Phillips (Whelan’s, Dublin April 28) and Frightened Rabbit (Speakeasy, Belfast February 20; Roisin Dubh, Galway, 21; Cyprus Avenue, Cork, 22 and Crawdaddy, Dublin, 23).
Dinosuar Jr tickets for Belfast gig availale from site below . . .
http://www.geturticket.com/
Just so the above is not some plug (and I’m sure the fact that alex forgot to mention the ticket price was an oversight), tickets for Dinosaur Jr in Belfast are £19.50 and are €28 in Dublin.
I heard that Silver Jews are playing in May, dunno where though. Sadly I’ll be in exam mode then.
apologies – couldn’t find link on ticketmaster and had to hunt that link down.
(6) After reading the excitement about season 5 I finally got around to checking out The Wire and have managed to get through the first 2 seasons in the past fortnight. Holy shit, you weren’t wrong dude.
Glassjaw are playing Tripod in May. That is the be-all & end-all of the May set of gigs.
despite pleading with the nice people at FAS , i couldnt get a ticket for the Simon event as it was reserved for industry people only. c’est ca.
Hey Ian , welcome to the cult.
Jim, did you hear David Simon’s interview on Tubridy’s radio show last Tuesday? (I think). He was also on some arts show on Newstalk on Saturday night.
ian – now you know what all the fuss is about
brock – i was away so missed all the David Simon stuff but the Tubridy Show interview is here – http://www.rte.ie/radio1/thetubridyshow/1179937.html – so will check it out. thanks for the heads-up
His comparison with his own show and The Sopranos is interesting, as is the hurt in Tubridy’s voice when he says that he doesn’t rate The West Wing.
Sorry about not finding the link, laziness got the better of me.
I’m worried about starting to watch the wire. Its a big commitment what with 5 seasons and all? Jim, Ian, just how compulsive is it? Is it opening a pack of pringles compulsive? Will it ruin the last vestige of a productive life I’ve managed to cling to? Box sets are dangerous things.
Gardehead – it’s one of the very few TV shows that I can watch over and over again because it’s the most un-TV-like TV around. It also remains the best impulse DVD buy I’ve ever made without knowing anything about the show to begin with.
If you want a taster, TG4 are currently showing Series 4 – they’re showing 2 episodes every Monday night.
I am buying the Wire this week due to a great piece in the Guardian on Saturday. Charlie Brooker’s opening paragraph sold it to me.
But this sentence in particular was pure gold:
“The Wire’s so good, I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, because they get to discover it anew.”
Read the full piece here.
Some good gigs there.
Re: MOZ. Jim, what’s your stance on the whole ‘kiss and tell’ issue? That article poses a handful of questions.
How compulsive is it? I’ve only been on it 2 weeks and I’m already jonseing because my series 2 package has been gone since last night and it’ll be at least 2 days until I get my series 3 re-up.
It’s incredibly multi-layered with so many plot lines interwoven seamlessly and the characters and really well drawn. Perhaps they didn’t continue it through the rest of series but in the first 2 years everything that happened was of significance to the overall plot. As great as the episode of the Sopranos with Chris, Pauly and the Russian or the one where Hesh got shook down for unpaid music royalties they really didn’t do much to progress the main story arcs. The same could be said for plenty of episodes of The West Wing. That’s not the case of The Wire. Whats really got me about it thus far was that during the second series a number of characters that were really prominent in the first year were placed on the back burner to simmer away while the focus switched somewhere else but at the end of that series we saw how they tied in and it hinted that the main focus would return to them in subsequent years. Then there’s a political aspect to it that’s only been mentioned in passing but that I’m sure will be addressed at some point.
At least, that’s what I think.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! Silver Jews are playing?!!! I was only listening to Tanglewood Numbers yesterday afternoon while I was washing the dishes thinking that it was a great album and that it’d be great to see them live even though they only toured last year and played Jerusalem or somewhere peculiar like that.
Don’t suppose anyone caught Explosions in the Sky on Saturday night? I had no idea that they were prone to some kickass dance moves on stage.
One more article on The Wire? Okay, so it’s a year old but “If Hip-Hop was The Wire…” is worth it just for “Clear Channel & Emmis Communications would be…Chris & Snoop” http://palmsout.blogspot.com/search/label/Year%20End%20Guide
The Road is a darn spectacular book, eh Jim? It needs a movie adaptation pronto.
shane – apparently, there’s a movie in the works featuring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron and directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition) – http://www.rte.ie/arts/2008/0115/theronc.html
I see The Chancer have ripped off your Once story – http://www.thechancer.ie/2008/01/28/slow-jam-the-glen-again/ – they seem to be making a habit of that
see The Chancer have ripped off your Once story – http://www.thechancer.ie/2008/01/28/slow-jam-the-glen-again/ – they seem to be making a habit of that
They seem to be making a habit of that. A piss-poor Blogorrah, methinks
Rasputin/Its Different – To be fair, the story was also on other blogs. Derek would never rip me off – I know where he lives.
Would you all give a very warm wlecome to Ireland’s newest addiction: The Wire!
RE point 5 – it’s good to see I’m not the only one that has had something first covered on their blog pop up in the ST. At least the journo in question had the good grace to tell me where they’d got it.
Sinead – What I found really weird was the fact that the story originally appeared here and in The Irish Times back in August, five months ago. And I also used the info in a MCD/Live Nation profile piece in the paper at the end of November. I had to look at the date on the paper to see if I was reading an old issue or something.
Dear God, The Road. Where do I begin? I spent one week with it at the beginning of the year and for that whole week I thought of nothing else. Every spare moment I dived back into it. At work, I was still in its world. When I turned the last page, it took me few days to return to my own world. It’s the stuff of nightmares and a very plausible vision of what could happen in the future.
I was reading an interview with Viggo Mortensen while he was promoting ‘Eastern Promises’ and the interviewer noticed he had a copy of the book in his jacket. I don’t know they are going to replicate the destroyed world of the novel.
The first literary masterpiece of the new millenium.
Quint – I finished the book on Sunday night and yet all i can think about at the moment are those characters and the ideas which the book throws at you. It comes at me at the weirdest of times. I rarely read or enjoy fiction these days, mainly because I’m rarely moved by what I read. The Road is the exception – incredible writing from McCarthy. It truly is a masterpiece
Very true, parts of it come back to you out of the blue-the part at the end when they’re on the beach-when they are in the house and they look out the window and see a group of people approaching-the baby on the fire-incredible stuff.
I read mostly non-fiction myself as real-life is far more interesting but The Road showed howe powerful a novel can be, you’re just drawn into it and it takes over your life completely.