blog! a rhythm?

I was reading the newspapers that built up over the weekend and I stumbled across a feature on Gerry Anderson. Not to be confused with the talented tv producer and writer, Gerry Anderson, the one I'm talking about is the not quite as talented bloke who always turns up on BBC Northern Ireland or BBC Radio 4. He's apparently courting controversy these days by claiming that Gary Glitter is a decent old skin.

The picture of Gerry served to remind me of a time about 15 years ago when the trad/folk band I was in entered the Opportunity Knocks talent contest held in Ballyshannon. I considered us a supergroup of sorts. We had a singer who went on to voice the character of Shadow in Bear in the Big Blue House. We had an accordion player from Cavan who was the only person I ever heard make that particular instrument sound good (Welcome to Hell! Here's your accordion!). We had a wonderful guitarist from Rossnowlagh and another talented bloke from Clondalkin and then there was yours truly on percussion. If my memory serves me correctly we won and collected a grand in prize money. Our win came courtesy of three independent judges: the aforementioned Gerry Anderson, the then Late Late Show in-house pianist Frank McNamara and someone else I can't remember. Needless to say we went on the batter with all the judges and other contestants afterwards and ended up in a boozer called Eoin Roe O'Neills I believe. The gargle flowed all night (probably at our expense) and Frank kept banging out tunes on the piano until the small hours of the morning. As the sun started to rise I realised that we had to get to Sligo to make a train back to Dublin. I distinctly remember the scornful look on my mates's mother as she collected us to bring us to the airport. Three drunk smelly blokes sitting in a car at about 7.30 in the morning pretending to be sober. I had some kind of lucid moment around Ben Bulben as that's the only part of the journey I remember. I think I kept calling it Ben's Bulb. That kind of stuff counts as funny when you've been drinking all night. What wasn't funny was the trip home on the train when we were collectively blanked by a clearly hungover Frank McNamara. That's stars for you. They're your best buddy one night and then your yesterdays news.

What the fuck all of that has to do with the rest of this post is beyond me. I'm banging on about that kind of nonsense when ther's things happening on the music and blogging scene all around me. In Dublin news a couple of new places have opened in the city. The first is actually new. It's some boozer called Le Cirk on Dame Street and it has some notions about being a jazz lounge. It appeared from behind hoardings some weeks ago and is trying to find its feet. I sent my wife and her mates to it the other night but they were having none of it and left after one drink. Maybe jazz isn't their thing. Apparently the music bookings are being taken care of by ex-Jazz FM boss, Ollie Dowling. The former pirate radio mogul will hope that this return to jazz promotion is more successful than his efforts with the Bleu Note on Capel St. The other new, but actually not new, venue is The Twisted Pepper on Middle Abbey Street. This was previously Traffic and for some reason I managed to never go there when it open. As such I've no idea if Twisted Pepper is any different. The Wobble Crew were promoting a night downstairs and it featured my old junglist muckers Don Rosco and Naphta. I only hung around for a while to check out Don Rosco and T-Woc weave some dubstep madness and missed Naphta as a result. The lure of my slippers and a hot cup of Ovaltine was too much for me. I legged it.

The DEAF weekender draws ever closer and I'll remind you again that the only place to be this Thursday evening is in The Sugar Club for the Sweettalk with Steinski, Maser and Alan Gilsenan. I'll be there. Carrying a copy of the FT under my left oxter and with a pink carnation in the lapel of my sports jacket. Another event worth checking is the White Noise gig being promoted by Mici Durnin and his cohort Darren of Maximum Joy promotions. I only met Mici at the tail-end of the summer. We had some oldschool football kickabouts with a motley crew of participants from the likes of The Jimmy Cake, Dave from Road Records and Claude from PIAS distribution. It harked back to those football games on the local green that would go on until it got pitch black. If someone had arrived with an empty glass milk-bottle full of water it would have completed the picture. Anyhow White Noise play The Sugar Club at 8pm on the 26th October. A DJ Set from Broadcast will follow.

I have it on good account that Twenty Majors forum is the place to be this weather. I went over just after it opened and it asked me to register. I hate to admit it but I'm a lazy auld shite when it comes to registering on websites, so I didn't. In any event, I have it on good account that it's working out nicely.

I'd read about the Casino in Marino way back in school. It featured in our art history studies back in secondary school. Yesterday we went en famille over Donnycarney way and visited the Casino. You can imagine my disappointment when I found there was no blackjack table there. Instead you're treated to an architectural wonder of symmetry, creativity and trickery. It's the bleeding business. We went on the tour with a German mother and daughter and some bloke who looked like he'd been forced there by his mother. We all had to put on slippers before they allowed us walk on the nice parquet floors. Freaky buzz but a top buzz.

Finally, it pains me to say it but the fabulous Blogariddims series has come to an end. Fifty blogariddims later, Droid, Slug and the rest of the weareie cru have called a halt to proceedings. These guys have achieved huge admiration for crafting podcasts for general consumption to anyone with an interweb connection. I for one believe they have covered themselves in glory. Well done chaps. You can check out the hugely convoluted but higly entertaining series of posts by all 10 contributors to the final blogariddims over on weare.ie. And here is the very first post by Droid

the politics of blogging revisited

A couple of topics seem to be exercising the minds of Irish bloggers this weather. The first concerns the art of blogging as perceived through the musings of several people. The subject was raised last week on Spanish Exposition but I only got around to seeing it today. As usual the bus departs and Matt Vinyl is left stranded at the bus stop somewhere outside Moycullen. The post managed to spark some debate amongst concerned bloggers all over Ireland. Even as I speak the storm in some nice wedgewood china cups still goes on. The quality of blogging is a subject that I encounter on a regular basis in blogs but one that runs out of steam fairly sharpish. Opinions are like shoes, everyone has them except the people that don't. Some people like their own style of shoes more than others. Some people don't like shoes at all. Some people like hemp slippers instead. I treated the subject of blogging back in my early days on the blogosphere. I've just re-read what I wrote and to be honest not much has changed in the interim. I'm not in it to win it, nor am I here to impart any wisdom to the world. It's always been an outlet to indulge my own passions and interests. It's a bit like the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Trinity, sometimes it has interesting stuff but a lot of the time you just wander right past it. I think I like it that way. As with most things that I turn my hand to I soon find out that there are others who are infinitely better at it.

The other topic that seems to be generating a fair whack of keyboard action is the result of last weeks referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Politics is a peculiar subject but in much the same manner as blogging, everyone always likes to give their tuppence worth. If you can imagine collecting all those tuppenceworths and putting them in a jar and eventually emptying them all out and counting them you'd soon find that you had a lot of tuppences worth fuck all. It's the shoes analogy all over again.

When trawling through the many responses to the outcome of the referendum and when reading the media coverage there is a consistency in the feelings of those who called for a Yes vote. It would appear, according to these commentators, Ireland got it wrong. This is a strange kind of reaction. How can you get a vote wrong? It's a pretty simple option. You're either for something, or you're against it! You can, by all means, not have an opinion either way. Judging by the turnout it would appear that such is the feeling of 47% of registered electors. That means that more people couldn't give a fuck about the Lisbon Treaty than voted for either the yes or no camps. The people of Ireland have spoken: We don't give a fuck!


Back on topic Ratatat, the Brooklyn based electronica outfit, recently released their new single 'Shiller' on seven inch and I bought it today. Malheureusement, I managed to leave it in work so I've no idea what it sounds like. If you want to find out then go and buy it yourself.

happy birthay to Matt

Believe it or not (and I include myself in this) this blog is one year old around now. I was reminded of the fact when I saw a documentary on the Irish cricket teams exploits at last years Cricket World Cup in the Carribean. The documentary was produced by Shimmy Marcus who has had a hand in several good projects over the course of his career thus far. Included in his catalogue are a load of videos for Irish bands, the movie on Aidan Walsh, the brilliant 'A Dublin Story' and a movie featuring me auld pal Wuzza Conlon. Shimmy is also a legend for the great videos that he's uploaded to YouTube. The film-making pedigree of Shimmy might have been helped by the good genes he got from his Da, the acclaimed documentary maker and ex-Chairman of the Irish Film Board, Louis Marcus. Well done to the Marcus family, a family with an abundance of artistic integrity.

I'm not sure what all that had to do with this blog being one year old but I do like an aside every now and then as any regular readers may attest to. This is my 196th post and to be honest I never thought that I'd keep it up this long. I only started the blog to exercise my penchant for inflicting music upon whatever audience might be out there. With increased family responsibilities over the last few years I've had less time to indulge my pastimes of playing out or doing internet radio so I sought to fill the gap elsewhere. I was also spurred on by now defunct blogs that had been started by friends. Whereas their initial enthusiasm died out I've somehow managed to write something on average every two days for the past year. Anyhow, here I am a year on and its as good a time as any for reflection. And that was it.

I picked up an old Trojan box-set release called 'Good Times Skank' that was compiled by Joey Jay (brother of Norman) of the Good Times Sound System. It has five seven inches of some excellent reggae and includes King Tubby's "Serious Version", the Abyssinians "Yim Mas Gan", the Aggrovators "A Ruffer Version" and Delroy Wilson with "Better Must Come". It's skanktastic.

the politics of blogging and bob byrnes biro stuff

I've been at this blogging lark for just over one month now and a few things have become clearer. There seem to be a number of blog types out there, namely the self-obsessed type, the informative type, the vindictive type and the ultra specialist type. They range in quality from downright shite to intriguingly brilliant. I would hope that my own blog straddles both qualities in being 'intriguingly shite'.

I've been grappling with what exactly my own blog is actually purporting to do. I started writing it because I believed there was enough interesting stuff going on in the vinyl and turntable world. I still believe that this is the case but over the last few weeks I'm wondering if I've strayed from the original cause. It's been ranging in type from informative to self-obsessed and anywhere in between and an increasing amount of nostalgia is creeping into my writing.

At first I thought that it was becoming a little like a diary of old, my thoughts and musings formulated into words. However I don't think that my blog is introspective enough to accept that charge. I never expected that this blog would be widely consumed by the computer-friendly world but the hit rate is slowly and steadily creeping up.

This brought me to thinking about the relationship between bloggers. I tend to surf the web, find some interesting blogs and if i like them I post a link on the right hand side of the page. I've done this with a few blogs at this stage. It appears that there is a reciprocation on most bloggers parts but then it turns out that there are a number of bloggers where there is not. Then it struck me! They probably just think my blog is shite. All I can say is that there is no accounting for taste.

I was strolling through Dublin today doing my cursory round of high street and second hand record stores when I came across the latest edition of 'The Shiznit' comic freezine. The latest issue, Issue 4, is the best yet. I've been fortunate enough to pick up all of them so far. The best thing about them is that they are free. Quality at the right price. Their writer and creator, Bob Byrne, knocks out his comic (or is it a graphic novella?)when time and cash allow and I for one commend him for his efforts. Check out his website here and download previous issues of The Shiznit here. Bob also blogs on his website in the 'Rants' section. It lightens my heart to see that people are still passionate about stuff that isn't really mass fodder. Harking back to the start of this post I suppose that this is also why I keep writing this blog. It's never going to be everyone's cup of tea, Christ knows that i get pissed off with it somedays, but I reckon that there's enough sad stoner vinyl-loving saps like myself who may inadvertently stumble across it and maybe even like what they see.

Bob Byrne, we (well me anyway)salute you for your illustrative efforts. Long may you hold a crayola in your hand.

spring is in the air

It was a beautiful day here in Dublin. The sun in the blue sky (where it should be) and the birds whistling in the trees. The flowers are starting to bloom and the buds are opening on the trees. There's a real feeling of spring in the air. Most people would not be aware (including a lot of irish people) that Ireland centres its various seasons around ancient celtic festivals. As such we are more than midway through our Irish spring.

I spent most of today painting my kitchen with 'Cooking Apple Green' by the Farrow & Ball paintmakers. As such it now looks like a kitchen from a Jane Austen novel, or more to the point it looks like a kitchen in a drama adaptation of a Jane Austen novel.

One of the remixes (he's 4 years old) came down to breakfast this morning singing '59th St Bridge Song' by Simon & Garfunkel. He then asked if I had it so I proceeded to dig out a copy for his listening pleasure. He made me play it four times. I played him some more tunes by Messrs Simon and Garfunkel but he wasn't impressed at all.

I was reading the UK newspaper 'The Guardian' today, and along with a map and stickers of the 'Seven Wonders of the Ancient World' the guide part to it was going on about this guy called londonlee who has a blog. i was checking it out and it's very good, so good in fact that it's going into my recommended blogs on the right.