tell me why, i quite like mondays?

Nice to be back to normal again today. In and around town during lunchtime today and met up with Richie Egan aka Jape. I've bumped into Richie a dozen or so times over the last few years and i've always got a good buzz out of him. What I've never told him was that I'd never heard any of his music. That's a bit of a fib because i have seen him play live with David Kitt and The Redneck Manifesto and I'm sure i've seen him play a support slot as Jape. What i really mean is that i've never heard any of his recorded music. Being a proactive individual (and a logical conceptualist as I found out on a recent self-development course in work. Team building, problem solving and all that stuff involved. Freaky shit) I decided that I'd visit Richie's MySpace site and listen to his tracks on there. I'd heard an awful lot about that 'Floating' tune he did and luckily it's there on his site. He appears to have an awful lot of 'friends' on myspace. He only had two with him at lunch today.

I was deleting a load of e-mails tonight and i came across one from an old pal who moved to Germany a while back. His name is Sie Milligan aka Troubled Soul and you can listen to his latest beats and pieces on his MySpace site. I'm fortunate enough to have a few old mix-tapes (yes, I said tapes) of Troubled Soul and they really are the dog's nuts. All manner of funky material sliced and diced by the Belfast B-Boy himself. Props to the now Teutonic Troubled Soul.

I managed to pop into Oxfam on Parliament St for a couple of minutes and I was able to pick up the 12" of Beats International 'Dub be good to me'. I only heard the dub version of the tune a good many years after the release of the tune. It featured on the album 'Dub Infusions' which I think was released on the Best Seven/Sonar Kollektiv label which, like my old pal T-Soul, is based in Berlin. Here's the normal version to check out but I think its a bit stuttery in places.



I also picked up a white label 12" of the dub version of UB40's 'Return of Doctor X' which featured on their 'Present Arms in Dub'. There was an original 12" of Doctor X that came with the 'Present Arms' album but it's always handy to have the dub version also, you know yourself. Only €2, which may be good or bad depending on how much you like the tune. For those of you who are only familiar with the post-1982 UB40, you may be surprised to learn that they were once quite brilliant. The albums 'Signing Off' and 'Present Arms' are their finest works. The UB44 album was pretty good and then they entered a dramatic downward slide and you know the rest of the story. 'Red, Red Wine'. Need I say more.