Pablo Discobar in Crawdaddy
More changes to gigs and a few added:
April 30th: Thingcheck in Spy (10pm)
April 30th: Pablo Discobar in Crawdaddy (late)
May 8th: Calvin Harris in The Academy [Just Added]
May 9th: Saturdays at Wax (4 Hour Set)
May 15th: Synth Eastwood Band
May 29th: Saturdays at Wax with Mark Alton
June 12th: Nightflight [Cancelled]
…
July 30th – August 1st: Airbound in Croatia [Just Added]
Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara
I’m speechless, which isn’t a good way to start a blog post, but what a game! The 61 year wait for a Grand Slam is over. It’ll be a long time before I forget that drop goal from O’Gara going between the posts. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
[Update 22/03/09] No videos of the drop goal on YouTube because of copyright issues but you can watch the highlights of Ireland’s 2009 Grand Slam winning game, including the drop goal, thanks to BBC Online.
I thought it’d be fun to take bad photos at the Choice Music Prize a couple of weeks ago and post them up. Or more correctly, I completely forgot to bring a camera so I had to make do with my iPhone + tipsy hands.
Jape's Interview
A Jape Lynott moment
Jape + big white box on head
Jape (still out of focus)
Messiah J and the Expert (white light)
Messiah J and the Expert (pink light)
Smoking is cool
Fight Like Apes strike a pose
Fight Like Apes (stripes)
Fight Like Apes (flash)
Fight Like Apes (stars)
Jape wins
Check out the bands above here:
Jape: http://www.myspace.com/richiejape
Messiah J and the Expert: http://www.messiahjandtheexpert.com/
Fight Like Apes: http://www.fightlikeapesmusic.com/
(Apologies to those I didn’t get pictures of!)
Fianna Fail via www.irishsentinel.com
It’s a long held belief of mine that the party poliical system as it exists now doesn’t serve the people. It serves the parties themselves first, the politicians second, their cronies third, and the rest of us if we’re lucky. I understand how hard it would be to get a majority on difficult decisions if there were no parties, but would it be wrong to expect our politicians to work hard in our interests representing our opinions?
Right now our government is spending valuable time trying to keep itself in power, time that it could be using to directly address some of the many problems affecting the nation. As the country steers listlessly towards bankruptcy, the people have finally taken to the streets, and there’s a lot more to come I’m sure. The people have no confiedence in the government and it is only a matter of time before it falls.
Not before time the idea of an all party emergency government is being mooted, a step that would hopefully restore some confidence internationally in Ireland PLC. It will take a radical move like this to help us out of this mess, and when the dust settles and the history books are written and the fingers pointed, the party political system will hopefully go under the spotlight and be exposed as the flawed, anachronistic millstone around our collective necks that it is.
As much as anything else, this episode is showing us of the need for real political leadership, forward thinking decision takers with top quality advisers. Right now it seems like we have none of these. Not that I blame Cowen & Company personally for everything that has happened, the seeds of which were sown a long time ago (oh how Bertie must be laughing now…). However, this government has spectacularly failed to protect, manage or restore confidence in the banking system and the economy as a whole.
It’s clear to me that we, Ireland, need help. We don’t have the right people in power to get us out of this mess. A Dail without parties would have realised this a long time ago and done something about it.
[P.S. It's also time for an end to the libel laws as they stand, or for our journalists to take a stand and defy them. The unprintable knowledge they have could have put an end to this government a long time ago...]
Fionn Izznit @ Soundcheck
… or this could be hell. 
The Irish blogosphere jumps out of the screen and gets all 3D for one night only when a fury of bloggers gets together to play music at Soundcheck in Spy on Thursday (i.e. tomorrow or tonight depending on when you read this). Here’s the line-up:
Nialler9
Jim Carroll
Rick O’Shea
Ian Wright (Thrill Pier)
NaRocRoc
UnaRocks
Sweet Oblivion
Rapture Ponies
Aoife McIndieHour
Bluebirds Are So Natural
Dublin Streets
Doors at 7pm, and free in until 11pm.
While writing this I was wondering what the collective noun for bloggers was, and realising there isn’t one yet, the best I could come up with in a hurry was a fury of bloggers. Anyone got a better idea? (I also came across this useful A-Z list of collective nouns of types of people.)
Panti's Blog
Not that she wasn’t before, but Panti got politcal on her blog over the weekend, and as a result is stirring up a bit of a debate over the upcoming civil partnership legislation, or more specifically over the lack of marriage rights for LGBT couples. Hopefully there will be some additional coverage of the issues involved as a result. Take a trip over and leave a comment. I am.
Here’s my favourite track, “A Safe Place”, from the new Simon Says EP on Stereotonic Recordings, their first release as it turns out. There’s also a launch party on in the Twisted Pepper this weekend, details here. The EP is available to buy from next week from all the usual online shops.
[Update 26/02/09] You can buy the EP from these places:
Gay Community News is celebrating it’s 21st birthday next week with a fancy dress party in Tripod next week, where they’re asking people to dress up as their favourite icon. To help promote it they came up with the above video viral… In these days of doom and gloom it got a laugh out of me.
Now more than ever it’s time to support the businesses and people you think are remarkable. Vote with your feet and and your wallets where you can or some of them won’t be here in a week, let alone a month. I think a lot of music folk here in Dublin have been shocked into action by the upcoming closure of Road Records, and while a record shop closing is not that strange an occurance these days, Road was always more than that, a centre point for like minded community of independent music fans. It will be sorely missed by many, and my personal best wishes go out to Road’s owners Dave and Julie. Two nicer people you will never meeet.
Here are some people and places I support when I can. I hope you will too.
Circus, Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, Dublin 2, Ireland
http://www.circusstore.net/
Abaka, 6 rue de France, 06000 Nice, France
http://www.abakashop.com/shop/
Conor, Mano, Ronan, and Graham – The guys from Carbon Dublin have moved onto bigger and better things
http://www.theunderground.ie/
http://www.manoletough.com/
http://www.ronanfitzgerald.net/houseisafeeling/
http://www.myspace.com/sianproductions
Pantibar, Capel Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
http://www.pantibar.com/
Many more to follow…
I’m finally back on the Internet in my own time so I can spend a bit of time writing, posting pictures, videos and music again.
There is much to write about at the moment, but proper journalists are doing a pretty good job of covering the Big Issues of our day so I’m going to leave most of them alone for now. I am pretty interested in how leaderless our country is at the moment though, and how this listless government is steering us straight into bankruptcy and perpetual debt. But that’s a thought for another day.
Tonight one of my favourite people in the city is having her beautiful birthday party not far from where I live, but because of the gloom monster hanging over the city I’m going to be playing it safe and lining my nest with philthy lucre indulging my musicality.
I’ve always been one for not letting jobs get in the way of having a real life but even I’m conscious of not falling foul of credit crunches and other undefined economic menaces. Still, at least the party starts early so I’ll get to go for a while before disappearing off into the night.
Things to do tonight (the 24th) for the rest of you:
Check out Calvin and Sol playing in Wax (Club Of The Week!)
Speedy J is in the Twisted Pepper
Pick one of the hundred or so Oscar movies that just came out
Come say hi to me in Pantibar