On The Record »

• Irish TV’s take on homegrown hip-hop

  February 21, 2012 @ 8:38 am | by Jim Carroll

  To judge by the domestic TV schedules, Irish hip-hop is having a bit of a moment. A few weeks ago, the first edition of RTE’s new arts show The Works featured a short report on some of those involved in the Dublin scene. Last night, we had a jump in profile and length in the shape of Ireland’s Rappers, a Reality Bites documentary focusing on what the show makers called “a highly creative and dedicated subculture with a cast of incredible and sometimes barely believable characters”.

  That should have been a warning in itself. When a TV show talks about “incredible and sometimes barely believable characters”, you know what you’re in for and Ireland’s Rappers didn’t disappoint in that regard. This was as cliched as they come, with such nuggets as a “feud” between two Dublin hip-hop collectives and a 25 year old rapper living at home with his ma (stop the press! 25 year old Irish rapper lives with his Ma! Just like Biggie Smalls did when he was starting out! No doubt we can expect future RTE documentaries to look at 25 year old indie musicians, folk singers and classical players who live at home with the Ma) featuring in the rushes. There was also some odd loose threads in the narrative about pending releases which were mentioned once or twice and never followed up on, a shoddy piece of continuity and a sign that this show had its own agenda from the get-go.

  Then, there was the fact that a show called Ireland’s Rappers didn’t bother going beyond Dublin and Cork in search of stories and “incredible and sometimes barely believable characters” who could rock the mic. Indeed, we could fill the rest of this post with the names the show should have featured, but Cheebah tweeted it best of all last night.

  But did we really expect anything else from a show which opened with a throwaway line eulogising the Rubberbandits and ignoring a vibrant history from Scary Eire and Marxman to Messiah J & The Expert and onto Maverick Sabre? I genuinely thought that narrator Damien Dempsey would have known better than to get involved in this hackneyed, awkward, cliche-riddden, negative, incorrect protrayal of the country’s hip-hop scene. Surely Damo, of all people, recognises a set-up and an agenda when he sees it?

  And there was an agenda. The problem with Irish TV shows of this ilk is that they’re all about the caricature. The show makers played up the comedy aspects of a 25 year old living with his Ma – surely not an odditity in Recession 2.0 Ireland – a rapper hanging out with his girlfriend and her family celebrating a 21st, people rapping in strong Dublin accents (they’re from Dublin, what do you expect?) and the Workin’ Class Records crew giving an interview to camera with a few horses wandering around in the background. Did those who agreed to take part in the show know that this was how it would turn out? Is this really what Irish hip-hop is all about? Answer: it is to RTE and the people who made this show. They saw the idea of Irish hip-hop as something which could produce some cheap laughs for the gallery if presented in a certain way and away they went. Laughs ahoy!

  Strangely, Ireland’s Rappers focused very little on the music, but RTE TV, as we have seen again and again and again over the years has absolutely no interest in music so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that they went for the comedy rather than musical factor. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t see such musically on-point acts as Melodica Deathship or mynameisJohn on the screen as they saw this charade for what it was (an exploitive reality TV show dressed up as something else). Then again, the people who made the show probably didn’t bother asking these people in the first place.

  The one silver lining in what was an atrocious abuse of the TV licence fee was Temper-Mental MissElayneous, who lit up the screen every time she appeared. She’s the lady who features on the brilliant Willa Lee track “Fallin’”, which we featured here last week, and her own “Proletarian Restitution” EP is well worth checking out (and paying for). Whether it was watching her freestyle on the street in Finglas or mentoring other female would-be rappers about their flow, she was on-point, lively and fascinating, one of the brightest sights and sounds on the Irish music scene right now. There’s someone who’s a whole lot more than just being one of the “incredible and sometimes barely believable characters” the show set out to capture. She’s the real deal.

  Why didn’t we have more people like her (because they’re out there) rather than taking-the-mick scenes involving rappers at home? Because it was easier for everyone involved with the show to send up this idea – per TV’s cliched way of looking at hip-hop, rappers are supposed to live in gaffs straight out of MTV’s Cribs rather than in a terraced house in an estate in north Dublin – rather than explore the real stories and inspirations behind the Irish hip-hop scene. It would be wrong to call Ireland’s Rappers a missed opportunity because the show and the station had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near the real thing. Instead, we got what TV thought we wanted – cheap laughs at someone else’s expense while ignoring that scene’s strong, strident positives. Anyone really surprised? (If you missed the show, you can watch it on the RTE Player here)

• A pointyheaded post about Irish bands and Irish radio

  February 14, 2012 @ 9:45 am | by Jim Carroll

  We must be due a bout of fuming really soon about Irish bands and radio play. There’s a grand stretch in the evenings – yes, there really is – so that must mean that we’ll soon get an assortment of interested parties grumbling, groaning, whinging, fighting, arguing and spitting feathers about this topic.

  It’s a debate as familiar and predictable as a Brendan O’Carroll sketch. Those who are in or who represent Irish bands will point out that their acts don’t get as much radio play as acts from out foreign who just happen to make the kind of pop tunes which music radio likes to play to pull an audience. Those from the radio side of the fence will point to the amount of Irish music they do play (come on down Bressie, Royseven and The Coronas, all of whom received much airplay love in 2011), all the initiatives they’re involved in to help homegrown talent and make the subtle fact that most Irish bands don’t really make the kind of tunes which sound well on daytime radio. There will be a lot of mud-slinging, some political ass-covering (though your man, the showband lad, is no longer a senator) and then, the argument will go away for another 12 months and we can start to talk about something else again.

  

  Perhaps it’s time for some other solutions for this evergreen, hoary dispute (OTR, we’re all about the solutions this week – tomorrow, we’re bringing Lar back). Both sides will claim that the other side have to move first, but that’s really going to get us nowhere. Both sides will claim that they’re doing the right thing and, you know what, they’re right. But that also gets us nowhere. Both sides will try to claim the high moral ground, but the high moral ground is always covered in fog at this time of the year so, yeah, that gets us nowhere as well. Like I said, new solutions required. Smart lad or lass wanted. New balls please.

  Radio is hugely important for any act because it’s a brilliant promotional tool to get to the mainstream, the people who turn acts into hits. If you get a radio hit, you’re on your way in this country to moving your gigs from pub back-rooms to theatres and big halls. Word of mouth is hugely important, you can get so far with print and online and a good rep as a live act is also useful (we’ll forget about TV – the TV business doesn’t give two damns about music so we’ll do as they do to balance things out), but radio is the key player in moving acts from next big things to big things.

  The problem is that existing radio stations are very tightly formatted and every single one of them stays glued to this format like a toddler stays attached to their comfort blanket. When you turn on 2fm or Today FM or Spin and if the stations want to make sure advertisers keep advertising with them, the listener should know what they’re getting. You can’t expect to turn on the stations at 10am to hear MMOTHS’ new single or a track from God Is An Astronaut’s current album. Now, you and me and every OTR reader would like that, but we’re in the minority. We’re the odd ones out. The people who listen to radio want something else and the radio stations give them “something else”. It’s why people listen to radio and people who read OTR and other music-mad online blogs and publications don’t listen to radio. You might get a show like that if you tuned into Zan Rowe’s morning show on Triple J in Australia, but adventurous radio of a smiliar ilk does not happened on daytime mainstream FM stations here.

  Now, I know that some of you are going to tut and say “but the radio stations SHOULD be playing Irish bands! They SHOULD be playing Lethal Dialect or SertOne or Bouts! It’s so fecking unfair! Boo!” And you’re right. I’d happily listen to a radio station which played those acts along with a ton of other ones that I like. As things stand, I rarely listen to music radio during the day because I have all those acts I want to listen to available a click or CD away and my musical tastes are far, far better than anyone on daytime radio. Sure, I’d love to get more people listening to those acts – music fans are music evangalists – and there are various online ways to do so (Last.FM, This Is My Jam etc), but I accept that radio as it currently stands is not the way to do this. Ain’t going to happen. Save your breath to cool your porridge.

  However, there are solutions which don’t require kicking and screaming and forcing the radio stations to use ridiculous regulations and loopholes to claim Kylie Minogue as an Irish act because she recorded the track in an Irish studio and drank Barry’s Tea while she was there. If people really think that there is a demand for Irish underground and indie rock and pop bands on an Irish radio station, start a radio station. Fight fire with fire. Actually go out there and prove that there’s a demand from an audience to hear Irish bands day and night.

  As regular readers know, OTR is a firm believer in doing stuff rather than giving out yards about them. Yes, it’s easier sit on your arse complaining on Twitter about stuff like so many sneersters do, but it’s actually much healthier, educational, entertaining and enlightening to put stuff together. All of which means I’m amazed that no-one involved with the new school of Irish music has put together an online station to broadcast what they believe to be these fantastic bands. What about a temporary licence from the BAI to show that there’s a demand there to hear these acts? While we’re at it with the BAI, wouldn’t Irish acts be considered a community for the purposes of getting one of those community radio licences? The solutions are out there.

  But perhaps the big problem holding back all these initiatives (I don’t think I’m the first to point out these alternatives exist) is the unspoken fear that perhaps the numbers willing to listen to and support such a station are small. That the market for Irish acts is nowhere near as big or healthy as we’re led to believe by the success of some of the acts. That the number of Irish acts who do get mainstream radio play are small for the reason that most of them just don’t have tunes to make the grade and such a station would soon become boring and full of contractually-obligated filler. That the acts who make the break are the exception and not the rule. That you need more than just Irish acts to make decent 24/7 radio programming and then the argument is, like it has always been, about how much Irish music you have in the mix. In truth, the huffing and puffing which goes on about this issue is a bit of a smokescreen because all involved know the huffing the puffing hides the real issues, many of which are outlined above. The only way to prove otherwise is to forget about the current bunch of stations (including – DOI time – Phantom FM, where I do a weekly show) and start again. High time for someone who fervently believes that there is a radio audience for Irish acts who are currently getting blanked by the existing stations to get off the fence.

• We all protested

  January 23, 2012 @ 9:03 am | by Jim Carroll

  After the parties come the protests. In the last 12 months, you were no-one if you didn’t get out there, do some fuming, shake your fist and say that you were as mad as hell and were not going to take this anymore. Students, old age pensioners, the residents of Ballyhea and Clontarf, the various Occupy banner-holders, the Vita Cortex and La Senza workers, hospital patients, Dubs with bins, rural dwellers with septic tanks, well-heeled dog-owners and everyone else seemed to get annoyed, irked, unhappy, cross and raging (and even a mite dirty, in the case of the bins and septic tanks). People who don’t normally protest, really. We all protested.

  In some cases, the protests had the desired effect. A massive nationwide unhappiness with what happened towards the end of 14 years of Fianna Fail-led governments resulted in the Irish electorate turfing out the FF dynasties and failures last February to replace them with a Fine Gael and Labour government.

  Within six months, though, we were protesting at that FG/Labour government and the measures they were taking. The house never loses, but the government of the day who end up having take unpopular, unpalatable decisions which were agreed with our new paymasters under the previous regime and which never formed part of their raft of election promises can never win. It’s the reason why we don’t protest at the opposition all that much. Suddenly, the bet that FF will be back in power after the next general election doesn’t look as much of a wildcat punt as it did a year ago. We’ll probably protest about that too, if it happens because we vote for it, with those politicians whose default setting is protest (probably protesting at the fact that they’ll never get into power) leading the way.

  But while protests are a handy guage of popular anger about an issue of the day (or the issue of the day which gets the oxygen of a Liveline outing), you have to wonder what gets changed in the long-run. We’ve had the protests, but what’s next? Sure, there are short-term victories – for instance, Clontarf residents will point to the lack of a big wall blocking their houses from the sea as a victory, though none of them were getting too exercised about this three or years ago when it was first mooted – but such victories are more kick-the-can-down-the-road affairs. What will happen the next time that Dublin Bay decides to sweep across the Clontarf Road? Will every closed-down shop now mean worker sit-ins like La Senza before they get wages and payments to which they’re legally entitled?

  The bigger issues remain as constant as they’ve always done, yet our failure to tackle those issues is never quite addressed because we’re too busy fuming about other stuff. Take that well-worn, right-on political meme about the need for reform. Most of us pay lip service to this, but the truth is that we know full well that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. The people who can make the move on political reform are the politicians in power and we all know how that one goes. Political reform is a great aul’ argument to throw out when the chattering classes need something to chew over, yet the public appetite for it just isn’t there no matter what we think. If it was, movements like We (Some of) the Citizens would have greater strength and support. It’s a big issue, it’s an important issue, but it’s not an immediate issue so it gets kicked down the road.

  It’s easier to protest about stuff other than the stuff which really matters because we know in our heart of hearts that we haven’t got the will or the way to change the bigger picture. The big issues, the economic and political stuff of the nation, remain the same from one protesting or accounting period to the next. It’s as if we fear what might really happen if these were to change. We will fume and fumigate about the austerity budgetary measures being taken and extra taxes being applied to allegedly get this country out of the economic mess it’s in. We cheer when a couple of lads from various troika organisations who are sent out to answer a few questions get Brownebeaten on TV. We give it all a dirty look and let that pass for protest. You see, despite what we might think, we still have too much to lose to go hell for leather down a road which leads to the kind of change we think we’re for.

  It’s when you’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain that protest really works. Look at the changes in the Arab world in the last year. Look at the chances and sacrifices and blood, sweat and tears it has taken to transform countries which many though would never change. From Egypt to Libya, the protests happened and changes, in one way or another, occured.

  In 2012, there will be many more protests in this little country. More taxation and punative measures to pay for the high jinks and gallivanting of the 0.5 per cent will mean more anger, but probably little resolution or change. At some stage, though, the question needs to be asked: we’ve all protested, so what the hell is next?

• 10 things to look forward to before Euro 2012

  November 16, 2011 @ 9:16 am | by Jim Carroll

  (1) Huge upsurge in plastic hammer sales. There’s going to be mad overtime going in the Yiwu Tuozhan Plastics Toys factory over the next few months.

  (2) The Robbie-Keane-is-not-a-bad-lad movement finally goes into overdrive. Surely the lad has done enough at this stage to merit less of the slagging? Or does his propensity to stand in the wrong place on the pitch at the wrong time wildly waving his hands in the air like a member of the Wu-Tang Clan still count against him?

  (3) Jedward and other idiots making a concerted effort to get their paws on the official Irish Euro 2012 anthem. Wrong on every possible level. Can we just redo “Put ‘Em Under Pressure” in Polish and be done with it?

  (4) Marketing and advertising guys muscle in on the action. This has always happened with every major sporting occasion, but one can only wince in anticipation about what’s ahead for next summer as brands and stores attempt to flog stuff we probably don’t need using social media, viral ads and other channels the modern Don Drapers believe rule OK. The marketing meetings are probably already underway this morning.

  (5) Stephen Ireland’s pronouncement on what’s going to happen. You know it’s coming.

  (6) Live music promoters humming and hawing about what the hell they should do with acts they have on hold for dates which will coincide with the Irish games. Those Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fans who’ve already bought their tickets for the show Croker can rest easy – no games on June 26. You can also expect furrowed brows on the GAA front too, though reducing ticket prices might be an idea here.

  (7) The country’s pub owners rubbing their hands with glee at the gargle to be sold when the matches are on. Cocktail sausage sales also to increase.

  (8) Huffing and puffing about the RTE pundits. At their best, there is no-one like John Giles, Eamon Dunphy and Liam Brady and convivial ringmaster Bill O’Herlihy (a quick flick over to the Beeb will have you screaming for RTE’s wise men), but there are times when they’re caught out at the back. The addition of Graeme Souness and Dietmar Hamann have worked really well in the past so it will be interesting to know who else gets a call for a summer 2012 gig.

  (9) Roy Keane’s pronouncement on what’s going to happen in Poland and the Ukraine. See 5 above. It’s a Cork thing.

  (10) At least 3,157 more lists like this one.

• “It’s like something out of the Simpsons”

  June 15, 2011 @ 9:50 am | by Jim Carroll

  That was Two Mile Borris native Pat Shortt speaking about the proposed Tipperary Venue yoke in a big field near the village on yesterday’s John Murray Show on RTE Radio One. As you probably know, the development got the green light from An Bord Pleanála on Monday. It’s a great quote because all the venture needs to go with the 500-bedroom five-star hotel, huge casino, all-weather racecourse, greyhound track, golf course and a full-size replica of the White House is a monorail. No doubt that’s on the cards too. They didn’t get the go-ahead for the 15,000-capacity underground entertainment centre as it was “inappropriate”. But the hotel, casino, racecourse, greyhound track and White House? They were obviously appropriate.

  I’ve a pretty vivid imagination at the best of times, but I just don’t get this one. Whenever I go to Tipperary, I pass the turn-off for Two Mile Borris and I just can’t see thousands of high rollers, deadbeats, dreamers and people about to gamble away the creamery cheque driving down that road with stars in their eyes. Obviously those supporting the the €460 million venture (including horse trainer Aidan O’Brien, MCD Concerts’ boss Denis Desmond and casino operators Caesars Entertainment) have better imaginations than me. But driving by that big field on Monday evening, it was very hard not to think of this as one of those casinos which operate on Indian reservations in the middle of nowhere in the United States that you occasionally see from the road as you speed by.

  However, that’s not the comparison which everyone has been making. There’s been a lot of yakking about this as a Las Vegas-style venture and you can see where this is coming from. Las Vegas also sprung up in the middle of nowhere and the masses did come – and are still travelling there – in their thousands.

  The thing about Sin City, though, is that there’s not just one Tipperary Venue-style resort along the strip and Glitter Gulch; there’s dozens of them, one as outlandish, lavish and humongous as the next. Because the city has so many hotels and can offer very competitive deals on rooms, it attracts conventions every week of the year, which is what really pushes up the visitor numbers. If the Tipperary Venue wants to ape Vegas, it should play nice with the teachers and the public servants and persuade their unions to have their annual conferences in Two Mile Borris. What happens in Two Mile Borris, in those evening sessions when the teachers put away their packets of biscuits and pull out their acoustic guitars, stays in Two Mile Borris.

  Of course, Two Mile Borris could really turn out to be our Atlantic City, though “meet me tonight in Two Mile Borris” doesn’t have the same ring to it. If Las Vegas is where Los Angeles folks go to let their hair down, Atlantic City is located near enough to New York City on the other coast to provide Big Apple denizens with similar entertainment. The problem is that the city has become shabby and down-at-heel and doesn’t have the same 24/7 glamour and, as I found out a few years ago, a Sunday night wandering around AC’s casinos and boardwalk is not something to be recommended because there’s no-one around. Of course, that was just one night of the week but, for a venture like the Two Mile Borris resort to work, it probably needs to be doing the numbers every day and every night of every week. After all, if there’s no action in the resort, you’re don’t really have the option of jumping in your car and checking out the hotspots of Thurles, Cashel or Cloughjordan. That wouldn’t take long.

  Despite the arguments and the fuming, this one is likely to go ahead. The promise of jobs will keep the locals sweet (you can completely understand why they’re all for it because there’s absolutely nothing around the area to keep the locals at home, though it’s a moot point if these jobs are actually sustainable in the long term), the Gaming and Lotteries Act will be shuffled and there will be an elaborate hooley when the time comes to cut the ribbon. There will be concern expressed about the social effects of such a largescale gambling enterprise, but those worries will be batted away because there are jobs, the holy grail of Ireland 2011, to be had from the development. We can’t build service stations on our small network of motorways before they open, but we can build casinos in a big field in the middle of a field in rural Ireland.

• That queen and this country

  May 18, 2011 @ 9:36 am | by Jim Carroll

  During yesterday evening’s news, RTE reporter David Davin-Power made an interesting observation. Talking about the huge security presence which meant that the streets were not thronged with onlookers, Davin-Power reckoned that the streets would have been empty anyway, even if the city hadn’t been on the kind of lockdown usually seen in films involving an invasion of mutant aliens. There was never really going to be thousands of happy Dubliners wearing Union Jacks at Queen Elizabeth as she drove in her jeep up and down O’Connell Street.

  On the flipside, there was also never going to be thousands of angry-as-hell Dubliners protesting at the visit and waving their fists at the royal cavalcade. Capital city citizens have better things to do. The antis were always going to be largely represented by the usual hooded and masked coterie who come out on occasions like this. Dissidents and dissenters will be with us forever and will enjoy “sneaking regard” support from certain elements of the community. They’ll exist and get publicity and attention and enjoy the right to protest, but they’re a minority of a minority of a minority.

  However, there was never really going to be a huge public fuss over this visit. Nice old lady who is head of state of big country next door to Ireland comes to town. Nothing really to see here, bar 10,000 gardaí and Defence Forces personnel standing around, whinges on Twitter about problems getting around the city and complaints on The Frontline about the cost of it all. Life goes on.

  Of course, I’m not denying that there is huge symbolic importance to this visit and carefully stage-managed appearances at the Garden Of Remembrance and Croke Park because it puts the cap on the normalisation of relationships between the two countries. Yesterday’s wreath-laying ceremony and bowed heads were greatly significant, as every talking head on the radio and TV kept saying, and acknowledge what happened in the past, but it’s time to move on. The vast majority of those who live in this country (and on this island to boot) have long moved on.

  The normalisation of relationships between us and them happened a long time ago and in the simplest and most unpolitical of ways. It happened through culture, sport and the general yin and yang of everyday life. We watch British TV shows, we follow British football teams, we listen to British music. There are over 110,000 folks who consider themselves to be British living amongst us, according to the 2006 census. Some of us may even be married to them. We’ll still rib the Brits and their national sports teams and sportsmen when they wobble and lose their bottle in major tournaments, but that’s just inter-country japery. Once it’s over, we’ll take down the Jamie Oliver cookbook and prepare a nice supper.

  No doubt, the peace process in Northern Ireland helped matters too, but nornalisation was in train long before that long, tortuous process from terrorism to the ennui of everyday politics began. The biggest effect of the peace process for many of us in the Republic is that it means we can stop pretending that we care about what happens up north. We rarely voice that opinion, but deep down, the North is way down our list of priorities.

  Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth will get on with her visit. She and her husband will head to Croker and the horses and the Rock of Cashel and Cork, like any other senior British couple on a midweek break to Ireland. There will be a couple of boring dinners and probably some muttered complaints between the pair of them over breakfast about the springs in the bed in the guest bedroom in Farmleigh. It’s a state visit. Nothing really to see. Time to move on.

• Jedward have the last laugh

  April 19, 2011 @ 1:59 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Around about a year ago, there was a lot of guffawing about Jedward on the back of the pair getting their P45s from Sony Music after one single. But, as OTR noted when the story broke, you had to wonder who were the real dopes in all of this, as it was becoming perfectly clear that Jedward were not really in this for any sort of musical gain. Music was, after all, just one string to their rather bizarre bow and a pretty poor one at that so how any music company expected to make cash from them was anyone’s guess. You wondered just where the Grimes’ twins would go from there. One thing was clear, though: we hadn’t heard the last of them just because the Sony A&R department told them to sling their hooks.

  Fast-forward a year and Jedward are the ones with the grins. Several breathless stories last week told of a multi-million year for the pair thanks to gigs, personal appearances, product endorsements, advertising campaigns and anything else which will turn a buck for the buckos. They are even stars on the bar mitzvah circuit (and yes, there is evidence to show that this isn’t some whopper from the Louis Walsh spin machine). They are raking it in. The group who finished sixth in The X Factor two years ago are now doing better than anyone else from that TV show. Who knew?

  There are several lessons in all of this. Firstly, never write off two lads from Lucan with vertical-hold hairstyles who are managed by someone who can always find brass from muck. Secondly, never under-estimate the difficulties involved in trying to make cash from sales of recorded music in 2011 and beyond. And thirdly, Jedward are going to be with us for a very, very long time. Now, isn’t that a cheery thought for the afternoon?

• Cheering on the homebirds

  @ 9:53 am | by Jim Carroll

  There are several moments which stick in your mind from a performance of “I’m A Homebird (It’s Very Hard)”, which closed its run at Dublin’s Project on Saturday night. There’s the Nadine Coyle love-in, the championing of the Girls Aloud hoofer by Homebird writer and performer Shaun Dunne. There’s the ease at which the three onstage flit from monologues to choreographed dance moves. There’s the non-stop rush of ideas and notions and thoughts which come out in a flood of emotion, just as they would in real life when you’ve a bunch of twentysomethings discussing whether they should stay or go.

  But there was one line towards the end which was still running in my mind the following day: “there’s a fucking renaissance going on”. That comes in the middle of Dunne’s final speech before the stage goes black, as he talks about the reasons why someone should stay in Ireland rather than joining the thousands who’ve already left or are planning to depart for London, Germany, Australia, Canada and other places out foreign. Homebird is about that choice, but that particular line puts another iron in the fire.

  There’s no blame game in Homebird. As the notes which go with the show put it, “it is not about guilt or judgement on those who have have to leave; the reasons are completely understandable”. You only have to look at the headlines of a morning to see the extent of Ireland’s economic woes and you don’t have to be an economist to work out what this means for the generation of kids who are about to start or who have been looking for work. No-one is asking why these kids are leaving instead of staying. We know the reasons all too well.

  But Homebird is about making a very deliberate choice to go against the grain and then standing up for that choice. Not everyone is leaving, not everyone is taking the road which Irish Times’ letter writer Cian Caffrey described the other day, where you take “your skills, your education and your work ethic and apply them in a country where you are appreciated” (in his case, Australia). Instead of doing that, Dunne is making a stand for those who are vehement about staying here and making a difference, about taking their skills, their education and their work ethic and applying them in a country where they are needed, instead of seeking appreciation elsewhere. Again, from the show notes, “we have the choice to make things better, to redefine what we have here, to be both realistic and more idealistic about how we can begin to build Ireland again”.

  While it’s clear that Homebird doesn’t play the blame game about those who have left, it does baulk at those who sneer at those who remain and the Ireland they left behind. We’ve seen this aspect of the emigration game again and again in the last couple of years and it’s understandable because those who left are bitter about why they’ve had to leave. Yet, as Dunne points out, such an attitude is infuriating to those who remain. There’s a job of work to be done and it requires people with new ideas, fresh thinking and innovative methods. You don’t get that amongst the lads and lasses in the Dail, that’s for sure. But many of those with the ideas and will to change things are leaving and trash-talking the country as they do so. It’s easier, after all, to give out than contribute.

  Dunne’s enthusiasm for a renaissance isn’t just some sort of dramatic trope. There is a change in the air and there are people (the kids that Dunne’s work is aimed at, mostly) doing new things in art, theatre, music and performance. These endeavours are happening well away from the mainstream because that’s the place where you can go to develop and finetune your work at your own pace. It’s also happening there because those involved don’t really want to have any truck with the mainstream for now and the mainstream certainly is in no great hurry to embrace them either.

  Homebird makes you think about people we don’t think about all that much. When people talk about the lost generation, they’re usually refering those who’ve left this country and have no firm plans to come back. Sure, changes in technology and transport means they’re in constant contact with the country and can come back here at the drop of a hat on a cheap Ryanair flight. But there’s also a significant proportion of that generation who haven’t gone anywhere and have no plans to go anywhere. Perhaps it’s high time we concentrated a bit more on those who’ve stayed here, and like Dunne says, cheer them on. After all, it’s these homebirds rather than any diaspora-in-waiting overseas (who think virtual ballot boxes are the way forward) are the only ones who can help us get out of the mess created by our elders and so-called betters.

• When Michael Lewis came to town

  February 3, 2011 @ 9:43 am | by Jim Carroll

  It may be an idea to print off Michael Lewis’ article from Vanity Fair and keep it by the front door for when a canvasser from a government party calls by over the next few weeks. After visits to Iceland and Greece, Lewis decided to have a look at Ireland. To be honest, there’s probably nothing in the piece you haven’t read already. There are interviews with economists like Morgan Kelly and David McWilliams and politicians like Brian Lenihan and Joan Burton and the obligatory visit to a ghost estate or two. Irish readers may find some of the colour angles in the piece a little too green – the fairy forts, the local driver, Achill Island et al – but remember that this is for a much different audience.

  But makes the piece really resonate at the moment is how Lewis clearly and calmly points out the madness of what happened here in September/October 2008 with that bank guarantee scheme. Under the outgoing government’s watch, we, the Irish taxpayer, took the hit for a private gambling spree. There’s one line in particular which really needs to be thrown in the face of every Fianna Fail, Green Party and independent who ever supported the government (yes, that’s you, Messrs Lowry, Healy-Rae, McGrath Tipp South and McGrath Dublin North-Central): “across the financial markets…people who had made a private bet that went bad, and didn’t expect to be repaid in full, were handed their money back—from the Irish taxpayer.” It was the equivalent of going on a gambling spree on the craps and blackjack tables in a Las Vegas casino and getting your losses back as you stumbled out the door.

  As it happens, I’m reading Lewis’ The Big Short at the moment and it’s a great yarn. As he showed in Liar’s Poker and The New New Thing (I’ve yet to read Moneyball, but I’m hoping that Kenny Dalglish will give me a lend of his copy soon – can’t wait to see how Moneyball justifies spending £35 million on Andy Carroll), Lewis has a great knack for brilliant narratives which can explain complex things. In The Big Short, he takes us back to where the banking crisis began and how maverick financial outsiders like Michael Burry realised what was going on in the sub-prime housing market long before anyone else. As the bubble grew, Burry and a couple of others realised the lunacy of what was going on and bet against the house, so to speak. When the bubble collapsed and Americans started defaulting, well, we know what happened next.

  I’m already looking forward to Lewis’ next book. It’s called Boomerang: Travels In the New Third World and it’s based on his travels in Iceland, Greece and little old Ireland. We’re box-office, baby.

• “All of these candidates grew up during the Celtic Tiger and are spoiled”

  December 14, 2010 @ 2:20 pm | by Jim Carroll

  OTR is not usually prone to quoting reality TV star and car salesman Bill Cullen, but that quote caught my eye.

  In an interview wrapping up the current run of The Apprentice, Cullen bemoaned what he saw as the softness of the post-Celtic Tiger generation despite the current difficult economic times. “It isn’t getting any stronger and we need people who have the moxy,” he said about that proportion of the demographic who enter a show like The Apprentice.

  Of course, Cullen is no alone in bemoaning and belittling those who came of age in the Celtic Tiger years as being soft-as-shite. It’s a common perception which is usually articulated by those who can remember the Eighties and think this gives them the licence to say things like “it wasn’t like this in the Eighties, you know”. This statement is usually accompanied by a tut or a sigh or both.

  They’re right, it wasn’t like this in the Eighties, because that was over 20 years ago. A lot has changed since then so trying to compare what’s going on now with what was going on then is to miss a lot of points. Those who came of age during the boom – hey, let’s be optimistic, there may be another one on the way within the next few decades – or who are about to leave school and college grew up with certain expectations about education and career prospects because the country had changed and developed since the days when kids seemed to be reared for export. There would be an argument made by Cullen (indeed, it has been made by him before) that such expectations mean this generation has been molly-coddled and would prefer to let someone else do the heavy-lifting for them.

  But such an opinion is just a tiny part of the equation. While it may be felt by some that emigration is the only thing to be considered, there are many kids who are ditching that notion and planning to stick around to see what can be done. Time and time again this again, via events like Banter and Hard Working Class Heroes, I’ve met kids who grew up during the Celtic Tiger years who have no intention of hightailing it out of here now that bad times have come. They want to stick around to get madcap ventures, innovative ideas and interesting notions off the ground. Sure, they could head away on a Ryanair flight and join that traditional exodus to a foreign land, but they’ve no intention of doing so. After all, as I hear again and again, it’s their country every bit as much as this country belongs to the gobshites in power who messed things up and the thirtysomethings to seventysomethings who allowed those gobshites to mess things up (mainly by voting for Fianna Fail-led governments three elections in a row). It’s time for them to have a go.

  So when I hear people like Cullen and others like him talking about a “spoiled” Celtic Tiger generation, I wonder what the hell they’re on about. For every caricature you could paint – which would probably involved Fade Street and Take Me Out – there’s also plenty who’re cracking on with leaving a positive mark on this sorry little land and not just joining the wild geese who will always sing a chorus of begrudgery about this place from the safety of a foreign barstool.

• So, we’re here….

  November 29, 2010 @ 10:10 am | by Jim Carroll

  So, we’re here. I suppose when we were told repeatedly that “we are where we are” that this is where we were heading. The day after a march which attracted 50,000 people to Dublin city-centre, the Irish people, through our democratically elected government, signed up to a bailout which contains enough zeroes to cause your eyes to boggle and enough conditions to ensure we’re up the creek without a canoe or even anything which we could use to build a canoe for years to come. We could, I suppose, borrow some more cash from the IMF to build a canoe. Wonder what interest rate they’d charge for that?
  (more…)

• The man with the €27 million pension

  April 20, 2010 @ 9:36 am | by Jim Carroll

  No matter what happens in the future, Irish Nationwide will always be associated with Michael Fingleton and his €27 million pension. The building society have just unleashed their latest accounts and they’re not a pretty picture. Even the fact that there’s a volcano going loco in Iceland can’t disguise this one. Of course, there are very few financial institutions whose books look well at the moment, but Irish Nationwide resembles a turkey which has been plucked clean over the Christmas. There ain’t nothing left. Even the bones have been gnawed.

  When the fingers point, they will point at Fingleton. He’s the one who ran Irish Nationwide for 37 years and oversaw how that small-town society lost the run of itself with delusions of grandeur. He’s the character who’s to the fore in books on the strange rise and inevitable fall of the Irish economy by Shane Ross and Matt Cooper. We’ll be paying for the stupidity of that man in the fedora and other gombeens like him for quite some time to come.

  It didn’t just happen in Ireland. I’m currently reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s excellent book “Too Big to Fail” on Wall Street’s alleged masters of the universe and the colossal greed which fed every stupid decision of theirs is unavoidable on every single page. But, as is often the way, we seem to have bred a worse class of eejit here. Always happens for some reason.

  However, it’s the scale of Fingleton’s pension fund which continues to astonish me. As in, what is he going to do with all that dosh? Is he going to head to Las Vegas and hit the craps tables for a few days? Does he have one hell of a stamp collection or model railway habit to feed? Is he going to buy a rake of new hats and overcoats? Will he give it all to charity? Is he the only seventysomething gent out there with a €27 million pension fund and a “because I’m worth it” attitude to boot? Answers gratefully appreciated.

• Answer Ireland’s call – can you sing a song for Ireland?

  March 19, 2010 @ 7:28 am | by Jim Carroll

  There has been a huge reaction – good and bad – to The Duckworth Lewis Method’s alteranthem “Ireland, Ireland!” which was unveiled by The Irish Times during the week. Many people snarked that they could do better so here goes….

  The Irish Times wants people to write and record their alternative national anthems. The song can be in any genre under the sun and should be no more than 90 seconds in length.

  A judging panel, including the Duckworth Lewis Method’s Thomas Walsh and The Irish Times’ Shane Hegarty, will listen to all entries (the poor feckers) and pick a winner.

  The prize is a pair of Electric Picnic tickets, €500 spending money, a recording session at Beechpark Studios in Co Dublin and a slot on The Ray Darcy Show on Today FM. A selection of the best and more interesting entries will also be played on the show and will be available on irishtimes.com

  Entries, which don’t have to studio quality and should not be bigger than 10mb, should be emailed to anthem@irishtimes.com. The closing date is midnight on Sunday April 4 and there’s more information here.

  Go on, unleash your inner Phil Coulter. You know you want to.

• “Ireland, Ireland!” – a new national anthem

  March 16, 2010 @ 5:29 am | by Jim Carroll

  The Irish Times approached The Duckworth Lewis Method (AKA Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy and Thomas Walsh from Pugwash) to write a new national anthem.

  The result is an “alternanthem” called “Ireland, Ireland!” and you can listen to it here.

  So what do you think? Is this the new “Amhrán na bhFiann”? Is it better than “Ireland’s Call”? Can YOU do better? And anyway, do we even need a national anthem any more?

  “Ireland, Ireland!”
  by The Duckworth Lewis Method

  Ireland, Ireland damp sod of the earth
  Lost on the surf of the north Atlantic
  Ireland, Ireland, mounatins and mist
  Vodka and chips, it’s so romantic

  Joyce and Heaney, Beckett and Wilde.
  Bill O’Herlihy, Dunphy and Giles
  Evansm Hewson, Mullen and Clayton,
  Westlife and Jedward, the pride of our nation!

  Ireland, Ireland, once we were poor
  Then we were wealthy, now we are poor again
  Cows and horses, donkeys and sheep,
  Munster and Leinster, Connacht and *****

  Chinese, Polish, Africans too
  Doing the jobs we don’t want to do
  An Irish stew, a nation of nations
  Working for peanuts in petrol stations

  Ireland, Ireland you are the best
  Place to thw west of Wales and Scotland
  Sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell
  But I’d rather be Irish than anything else!

  (Written by Duckworth & Lewis, copyright 2010)

• The pains of being pure at heart

  November 19, 2009 @ 5:55 am | by Jim Carroll

  

• The Frontline and – oh vey! – Tommy Tiernan

  September 22, 2009 @ 1:53 pm | by Jim Carroll

  RTE’s new current affairs session The Frontline enjoyed a good start to its run last night. Sure, there were a couple of opening night niggles – they need to make the type on the info-ticker a lot bolder, Pat Kenny seemed a little hurried and harrassed as if he was trying to cram a two hour show into an hour and, wow, so that’s what Eamon Dunphy looks like without the services of the RTE make-up department – but these are ones which can be sorted out with time. Well, maybe not the latter.

  More importantly, the format, and how it served last night’s Nama subject matter, hit the nail on the head. Remember that The Frontline is replacing Questons & Answers so the most important thing for the new show is to get away from bland, set-piece questions from the audience and even blander set-piece answers from the panel. Instead of that hoary formula (which did serve Q&A well for a few years before it became the show’s downfall), we had Kenny wandering around the audience with his microphone and getting views and tales from what was going on in, as Fintan O’Toole later termed it, “the real economy”. It helped too that there didn’t seem to be as many party goons in the audience, though you had to admire the dude who used the opportunity to hawk a few houses in the midlands. Oh, and can someone please find an alternative use for Tom Parlon?

  Interestingly, the weakest link in the show was Kenny’s interview with Brian Lenihan. The Minister for Finance wiggled like a worm on the end of a fishing line and managed to escape relatively unscathed from the encounter. Sure, he wouldn’t have been so lucky in an one-on-one with, say Vinny Browne, but it’s also doubtful if Kenny would have been so lax on his radio show or if Browne would have been as thorough if he’d to keep a live studio audience engaged. Again, chalk it down to the opening night test-run. By the time The Frontline is a dozen shows into its run, government ministers might think twice about coming on the show.

  We’re unlikely, though, to see the unfunniest man in Ireland on the show and thank goodness for that. Yet again, he finds himself in the soup and, once again, he is probably laughing away to beat the band at the crack he has created.

  We speak, of course, of Tommy Tiernan, a comedian who has enjoyed huge success in Ireland by taking on the persona of that mad, loud, drunken gobshite in a woolly jumper that you cross the street to avoid. Thousands of Irish people, though, obviously don’t feel the same way and they have spent good money to sit through a few hours of Tiernan ranting, roaring and cursing at them. You keep hoping that he’s going to get some success elsewhere so he can go away and annoy other people, but then you realise that Tiernan is never going to do that. He’s as parochial as the parish pump.

  Yet again, Tiernan is in what he sees as his natural home (ie the limelight) after cracking a few Holocaust gags during a public interview at the recent Electric Picnic. Note, this wasn’t part of his actual show in the comedy teepee, this was a public interview so Tiernan’s high-faluting cant about specially-protected comedy environments does not apply. Naturally, because it’s Ireland and it’s Tiernan, the audience laughed their socks off. Tiernan, he’s such a hoot. He’s a mad bastard, a mad fecking bastard. Yahoo!

  Since the Trib ran the story on Sunday (and fair play to Ken Sweeney for digging it up), there has been a lot of fuming. This happens a lot with Tiernan so you could say that it has become his shtick: take a dig at some controversial subject and then sit back to wait for the reaction. We’ve been here before with Tiernan with his Madeline McCann and crucifixion gags, to name just two which kept Liveline in clover for days.

  But eventually folks will tire of the eejit who shouted “feck!” and will move along. Yes, there is such a thing as edgy comedy and some comedians are absolutely fantastic at juggling controversial subjects to the consternation and discomfort of their audience. But not Tiernan. When he takes on an edgy subject, all you get are the rants and raves of a very unfunny and increasingly deluded individual. It’s about time we sighed and moved on. Bet Pat Kenny is glad he doesn’t have to invite Tiernan onto his TV show ever again.

• The house of cards comes tumbling down

  August 13, 2009 @ 10:00 am | by Jim Carroll

  It’s probably a safe bet that very few property developers and bankers are regular OTR readers. They have other things to do this weather and I reckon they’re all Celine Dion fans to boot. Yet it’s probably a good assumption that the misadventures and mishaps of these lads in the building and banking sectors is going to impact on the lives of every single Irish reader of OTR in the years to come because we’re about to bail them out of the trouble their greed got themselves into.

  Some of you, like me, have probably spent the last few weeks following this sorry saga and trying to make sense of it all. From the sight of one-time masters of the universe running to the courts to seek protection from their creditors (funny how these anti-regulation champs always end up using regulations to try to save their own skin) to the increasingly unbelievable stuff flying around about how NAMA will operate, it makes for a lurid, quite far-fetched economic bonkbuster. You really couldn’t make up what you’re hearing as this tale of banks’n'builders’n'bandits continues to unfold in courtrooms and on abandoned building sites.

  But this is not some fantasy Truman Show (the Zoe Show?) where we’re just watching on and eating popcorn. As this one goes down, it’s the Irish taxpayer who will be footing the bill. Yes, the same taxpayer who gets a nasty letter for going a month or two behind with his or her mortgage payments is going to pick up the tab down the line for banks who appear quite happy to let developers walk away from their huge multi-million-euro loans.

  I have little time for conspiracy theorists but they might something to poke in the current situation. Look at the amount of economic hand-wringing which occured over the last few days as Liam Carroll’s (no relation) Zoe empire came tumbling down. Many who’ve lived in his apartments in his past may have wondered about how secure those bricks and mortars were in the first place, but they probably never expected this to happen.

  But as Carroll’s legal eagles scurried from the High Court to the Supreme Court trying desperately to prevent one determined bank from getting what it was owed, the other creditors sat back and worried what this would mean for NAMA coming in saving their skins. Liquidating some of Zoe’s property will, say the so-called economic experts who got us into this mess in the first place, lead to a fire-sale and a much lower current market valuation for the property under the hammer. This, in turn, will mean NAMA will get to pay less for toxic loans when the day comes for them to kick the wheels, spit on hands and do the deals.

  And this, say the bankers and economists, is A Bad Thing.

  A bad thing that the Irish tax-payer will end up paying less for damanged goods? A bad thing, say the gallery.

  A bad thing when a judge finds the rescue plan put forward by an “independent” bean-counter to be “fanciful” and “lacking in reality” and refuses to go along with the charade? A bad thing, nod the gallery

  A bad thing when this whole nasty scam created and maintained for the last decade by builders and bankers is finally seen to be the illusion it always was? A bad thing, sigh the gallery.

  While we don’t know what will happen next with Zoe – there is speculation that the other banks will do a whip-round to find the cash to pay off ACC and stop this liquidation in its tracks – we sure as hell ain’t seen nothing yet. There will surely be more of these escapades because this is one saga which is going to run and run and every week will bring another tale of woe as outlandish as the last.

  But we can be sure of another thing too. This weak, cowardly, unimaginative government – Fianna Fail, Greens and a few aul’ independents tacked on for good measure like a safety pin on a pair of suit trousers – we’ve lumbered ourselves with are going to do absolutely nothing to help us out of this one. We’re just the constituency who’re going to end up footing the bill. That’s something which is much clearer than the bottom line on any Irish bank’s balance sheet.

• The Oxegen attitude

  July 16, 2008 @ 11:47 am | by Jim Carroll

  There are two letters published in today’s paper regarding Brenda Fitzsimon’s photo in yesterday’s paper of security staff and cleaners putting out small fires on the Oxegen campsite and starting the mammoth task of cleaning up Punchestown Racecourse.

  From Gary Morrissey:

  “If a picture tells a thousand words, the photograph on page 3 of Tuesday’s edition,showing countless abandoned tents, sleeping bags and camping chairs, as well as other human detritus following last weekend’s Oxegen festival, speaks volumes for the attitudes of today’s Irish teenagers towards money, material possessions, hard work, the environment and their own self-respect. Who said the recession couldn’t come quickly enough?”

  And from Paddy Mettler:

  “I was shocked to see the picture of the Oxegen campsite. Looking at the mess, it really was beyond me how anyone could call this event a success. Granted, the whole site may get cleaned up by a third-party contractor, but I think the picture just speaks volumes about Irish society today. How people could just leave that behind them is a disgrace and negates any positive aspects of the festival.”

  After the last few Oxegens, people have fumed on and on and on about so many things to do with the festival and have directed their ire at promoters MCD. Yes, some of the problems at Oxegen in the past have been due to the promoters getting things like traffic and site management wrong. But a lot of the problems, especially the ones which relate to how people behave in a public space and respect those around them, have nothing whatsoever to do with the promoters. After all, it wasn’t the promoters who left the campsite looking like that (though I’m sure some conspiracy theorists will claim to have seen Dinny Desmond and his boys walking around with bags of rubbish). And, just in case you think it’s just teens and kids who’ll leave a place looking like that, you can probably expect to see the same scene re-enacted after the Electric Picnic, albeit with a slightly more upmarket brand of abandoned tent.

• 10 other possible grand gestures for a multi-millionare tax exile if he had his wallet open and was feeling flathulach

  February 14, 2008 @ 8:46 am | by Jim Carroll

  (1) Pay for ham sandwiches and cans of Fanta for everyone at the Ireland-Serbia game in Croker in May.

  (2) Pay the VAT on these sandwiches and beverages.

  (3) Pay the running costs of a couple of League of Ireland teams for next season, especially if one wanted to help football at a grassroots level in this country. What’s that you’re saying? There’s no publicity in that kind of thing? Surely that would never have a bearing on someone’s generous grand gesture, would it?

  (4) Pay Bertie Ahern’s make-up bill for the next 12 months.

  (5) Pay the VAT for (4)

  (6) Pay the fee for My Bloody Valentine at the Electric Picnic

  (7) Pay for the Cork hurlers, footballers and county board to spend a week together at a luxury spa hotel working it all out.

  (8) Pay for a cold buffet at the Irish Blog Awards.

  (9) Pay for a load of new telephone polls, copper wires and fibre-optic cables

  (10) Pay for a few new DJs at 2FM

• Joe Duffy’s research is done for the day

  January 22, 2008 @ 9:18 am | by Jim Carroll

  The new Lonely Planet guide to Ireland is out and there are already some choice highlights which will keep radio phone-in shows, outraged newspaper columnists and, er, bloggers busy for a few hours.

  Well, few will disagree with this summing up of the area in Dublin city-centre which really should have been turned into a bus terminal. Per the paper:

  Businesses in Dublin’s Temple Bar will be unhappy to see the guide referring to “crappy tourist shops and dreadful restaurants serving bland, overpriced food . . . huge characterless bars . . . pools of vomit and urine that give the whole area the aroma of a sewer”.

  That sound you can hear in the background is the sound of the residents of a large settlement in the south-east hauling themselves onto the high moral ground:

  Residents of Waterford will be displeased to see their city being demoted to a town. It says the “seedy port-town feel is still evident in places” but adds that its recent facelift has made it a more attractive place to wander.

  But, of course, there is an upside, as this passage from the guide, as quoted in the Irish Independent, shows:

  Beneath all of the garrulous sociability and self-deprecating twaddle lurks a dark secret, which is that, at heart, the Irish are low on self-esteem. They’re therefore very suspicious of praise and tend not to believe anything nice that’s said about them. The Irish wallow in false modesty like a sport.

  “Low on self-esteem”? Get me the number for Liveline now.

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