11 things I learned this weekend
(1) I bet there must be at least five of you who wondered what ever happened to Phil Babb. OK, four. Three? Anyway, the former Liverpool, Sporting Lisbon and Ireland footballer (who also had a thing for walking on car roofs) has now moved into the weird and wonderful world of magazine publishing. Yep, there are still people who believe in the power of print. Per Richard Gillis’s interview with him in the paper on Saturday, Babb is now the publisher behind the Golf Punk mag and is planning a Football Punk mag too. Wonder how he would deal with a very well paid Premier League footballer telling him that he couldn’t be arsed doing an interview, eh?
(2) Best take on the whole Brand-Ross-BBC kerfuffle? Hold onto your hats, blogging brothers and sisters - it was John Waters on Friday.
(3) Would you give Ryanair a tenner for a flight across the Atlantic? I suppose the story is one way of taking the dirty look off some not very good financial results for the first half of the year.
(4) One of my favourite Irish albums of the season comes from Waterford lass Katie Kim. “Twelve” (as reviewed here) is a slow-burner, all weird turns and fuzzy twists. Live, as seen in the Sugar Club on Saturday night, Katie and her two hooded co-players get tougher and grittier in a Mazzy Star rocking out with Cat Power kind of way. Best songs were the ones which book-ended the set, the glorious “Radio” and the rivetting “Jennifer”. She plays Cleere’s in Kilkenny on November 15 and Twisted Pepper, Dublin on November 20.
(5) Does anyone know why Cork GAA folks are so intent on constantly pressing the self-destruct button? While a Tipperaryman like myself should be rubbing my hands with glee at even more lies, destruction and despair by the Lee, I actually find the whole affair to be quite strange and pointless. Does Gerald McCarthy really deserve all this? Good column by Tom Humphries on Sandwichgate.
(6) I liked the Why? show at the ALT on Saturday, though not as much as I thought I would before the gig. The room was full-ish and the audience were in the sort of mood where they would probably cheer if even Tommy Tiernan was fronting the band and telling more of his Bernard Manning classics, but the material just didn’t quite seem up to scratch. Maybe it was one of those “it isn’t you, it’s me” situations.
(7) One of the very first Tunes of the Week featured on this blog was the Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve still awesome remix of Midlake’s “Roscoe”. We posed the question then why no Irish promoter had brought over BtWS for a show. Well, Richard Norris has found his way to the blog (see comment number 7 here) and it seems himself and Erol Alkan are up for the challenge.
(8) It seems that the band I should have gone to see on Saturday night were Villagers. Three different people in the course of an hour were raving to me about their show at Whelan’s. Villagers is the new band fronted by Conor O’Brien who used to be in The Immediate (and is also part of Cathy Davey’s all-star band) and “The Meaning of the Ritual” from their MySpace is well worth clicking on. Their next gigs are supporting Bell X1 (Vicar Street, November 12) and supporting Halves (Whelan’s, November 22).
(9) Oddest promo on your radio right now? No, not the one with the fake Eddie Hobbs, but rather the one plugging Morning Ireland’s special extended US Election coverage on Wednesday. So what time are they starting? Midnight? 1am? 1.30am? Er, no, 6am. 6am! Sure, Sarah Palin will be the leader of the free world at that stage. And what are RTE broadcasting through the night instead? Repeats of the Tubridy Show, Today with Pat Kenny, Liveline, the Gershwins in Hollywood and The Arts Show.
(10) Ahead of next weekend’s Van Morrison shows in Los Angeles when the Great Grump plays “Astral Weeks” in full for the first time. Sean O’Hagan muses on that seminal release 40 years on.
(11) And finally, some music for the week that’s in it.
9:55 am
I saw Wilco do a new song on Steven Colbert last week, the imaginatively titled ‘Wilco Song’. They’re seemingly still doing the Steely Dan type stuff. Hmmm.
Comment by Peter81