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Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

‘1916 And After’

Posted in Dublin History, Events, Social History, tagged , , on October 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

“At first my only reaction was horror that Irishmen could commit such a crime against England. I was sure that that phase had ended with the Boer War in which father had fought, because one of his favourite songs said so:

You used to call us traitors because of agitators,
But you can’t call us traitors now.”

But the English were calling us traitors again, and they seemed to be right”

From Frank O’Connor- An Only Child.

This upcoming series of talks on the 1916 rebellion is interesting in that it is not geographically limited to the capital, but includes events at NUI Galway and Queens University Belfast. The event in Dublin, at Trinity College Dublin, will focus on ‘Imperial Cultures’. I will be on hand to provide a brief walking tour of some key sites to those attending the event. It is free to the public, but you’re requested to register in advance.

If you are attending, or are interested in the rebellion, perhaps these Come Here To Me pieces will be of interest to you:
This 1966 Irish Socialist booklet on the rebellion includes a number of rare articles.

How They Saw The Rising. The words of British Soldiers, Anarchists, Novelists, Poets, Medical Students, Revolutionaries and Daughters.

Sean Connolly plaque launch report. Includes audio and images from the launch of a plaque to Sean Connolly and his siblings, as well as Molly O’ Reilly.

Another perspective on the rebellion, from a Sherwood Forester who witnessed a friend “..shot through the head leading a rush on a fortified corner house”

The Thomas Weafer plaque on O’ Connell Street, so often overlooked.

The Pearse Street Fire Disaster. This article includes some previously unpublished images. Volunteer Robert Malone died in this fire in 1936.

Jennie Wyse Power’s shop on Henry Street is a unique plaque frequently overlooked.

The Teachings Of Patrick Pearse pamphlet from 1966 is interesting. It is the work of A. Raftery.


“James Connolly- Murdered May 12th 1916”

A familiar sight to Dubliners inside Dublin Castle ,a key site of the rebellion, frequently missed by the visiting eye.

The Yiddish election leaflet of James Connolly (1902)

An interesting piece on the Dublin home addresses of James Connolly.

Sackville Street.

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Miss Out?

Posted in Events, Miscellaneous on October 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The last of the Maser/Damien Dempsey prints will be on sale tomorrow and Friday in The Good Bits between 4pm and 8pm. Get down, all the profits go to The Simon Community. Can’t get a more deserving cause than that me thinks.

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Any Given Skaturday

Posted in Events, tagged , , , on October 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The launch night for this was a messy one. Skaturday is a monthly night up in The Workman’s Club, where myself and jaycarax from this parish and the Punky Reggae Party are allowed play some ska classics, and stuff from the broader family tree too. We launched this one on Arthurs Day (yeah yeah, it wasn’t a Saturday but exceptions can be made…) and the crowd seemed to approve. It will hopefully become a monthly.

Matt From The Dead 60’s steps in after us to see the night out. We kick off around 10pm. Bring yourself, your friends and your dancing shoes. The Workman’s is located on Wellington Quay, right next to the hotel Bono owns.

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Great Bolshy Yarblockos To You.

Posted in Events, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , on October 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If your team aren’t playing in a crucial FAI Cup semi-final rematch tomorrow like mine are, this could be well worth a look. One of my most played DVDs without a shadow of a doubt, A Clockwork Orange has been chosen to kick off a brand new Tuesday night Cinema club at The Grand Social, the brainwave of the people at Crackity Jones.

Where is that? It used to be Pravda. For a period everyone in Dublin thought it was about to be renamed Hector Grays, but sadly that seems to have fallen through. Regardless, I had a quick look when passing through town recently and the place looks excellent since the revamp.

The film club is a weekly one, taking place at 7.30 every Tuesday night downstairs. More importantly, it’s completely free. It’ll be followed by a night of music, with DJ sets manned by Crackity Jones DJs, Megan Fox & Indie Dublin.

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Don’t look out, look within. Change yourself, but to begin.

Posted in Dublin History, Events, Social History, tagged , , , on October 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Last night myself and hxci popped down to the They Are Us exhibition for a looksie, and to support an excellent cause. Getting there at 5.15 or so, we were well ahead of time and ended up carrying sambos up the stairs with a woman who told us “you’s will get your reward in the next life lads”.

We got a sneak peak on this trek up the stairs however, and a huge image of James Connolly which dominates the first room of a three room exhibition had us dying to see more. We resisted, and went to The Cobblestone. Oisin, a friend who completed the trio, went for a wander around the exhibition like a child who finds all the presents on Christmas Eve. He then came to the pub and told us all about it.

Enjoy the snaps, but get down to the exhibition in Smithfield. The aim is ambitious, €30,000 for the Simon Community. You can pick up one of the four prints you’ll see below here for €25, or €50 signed. It runs tomorrow, and more details are available on the site here. Lets hope they make the €30,000, and the rest.

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If found please return to The Cobblestone.

Posted in Events on October 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

Doesn’t take much to lure me to Smithfield, but the very promising They Are Us exhibition is taking place in Block T later on today. Hopefully see you there.

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Arrested Development (and not the really great telly show….)

Posted in Events, Music on October 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Arrested Development – Tennessee

I went to the cinema today (You’d nearly need to remortgage your house) and bought a jumper in American Apparel too (same story as the cinema really) , so of course it was only after parting with this money I stumbled across a flyer for an Arrested Development gig in Dublin. Next week. IN DUBLIN!

Arrested Development are one of my favourite hip hop acts, their albums would be up there with MF Doom and The Roots for me, you know those great hip hop albums white people who like indie rock end up owning for no real reason. A late 80s/early 90s act, it’s so often forgotten they scooped a Grammy Award or two and delivered a few U.S top ten singles. They were the anthesis of ‘gangsta rap’ which was on the rise at the time, and their feel good brand of rap was simply timeless. The influence of blues and soul music on the group was always evident, and Mr. Wendel and Tennessee in particular are tunes you still here frequently in clubs today. The group have been on the go once more since 2000, and are a rare thing in music: A reunion that isn’t totally crap.

They play The Button Factory on October 20th, which is next Wednesday.

Oliver Stone, you owe me nine quid.

Arrested Development – Mr. Wendal

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He shall not hear the bittern cry

Posted in Events, tagged , on October 13, 2010| 2 Comments »

I’m really enjoying the TG4 Seachtar na Cásca efforts. One by one, an hour will be given to examine the men who signed the 1916 proclamation. So far we’ve seen Thomas Clarke, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett. Plunkett was a man I knew very little about, and while I was very familiar with the other two men the manner in which their stories were presented made for fascinating viewing. Fintan Lane, Diarmaid Ferriter and other historians lend a great hand to the programme, and TG4 continue to use the perfect bilingual approach. Present the show in Irish, and have the experts speak in the language of their own work, be it Irish or English.

Tonight sees Thomas MacDonagh examined. He is, after Connolly, the most interesting of the seven men to me. His role in the foundation of the ASTI Union is so often forgotten, and he moved throughout the Irish literary scene too, immortalised in the beautiful Francis Ledwidge poem ‘Lament for Thomas MacDonagh’ from which this post takes its title. He was appointed a lecturer at UCD in 1911, and in 1914 was central to the foundation of The Irish Theatre in Hardwicke Street.

His translation of The Yellow Bittern remains among my favourite poems.

” The yellow bittern that never broke out
In a drinking bout, might as well have drunk;
His bones are thrown on a naked stone
Where he lived alone like a hermit monk.
O yellow bittern! I pity your lot,
Though they say that a sot like myself is curst —
I was sober a while, but I’ll drink and be wise
For I fear I should die in the end of thirst…..”

The programme will air tonight at 9.30.

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“Everyone speaks of Babylon, no one remember Rahab”

Posted in Events, Music, tagged , , , on October 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The good lads from the Alphabet Set have brightened up the Dublin Friday night skyline with ‘Roots Pon De Corner‘, a new night focusing on the best of “vintage roots, revival, rubadub & steppers” based in The Dark Horse Inn beside Tara St. DART station.

Brigadier JC (Roots Factory, Limerick), Tuathal & t-woc (Alphabet Set, Dublin) are the vinyl selectors on hand. Doors open at 8pm and the music winds down at 12:30am, which gives you ample time to head to that birthday/office/emigration party that you have to show your face at.

It’s free admission (you can’t argue with that) and pints are at a very reasonable €4.

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Against The Wall.

Posted in Events, Politics on October 11, 2010| 4 Comments »

This weekend sees the launch of ‘Against The Wall’, a book on the work of artists both local and international that has turned the infamous wall erected by the Israeli state into a blank art canvas to work from. Sometimes humour shines through, more often anger. Among the graffiti artists to add to the wall one finds the likes of household name Banksy and Ron English.

Before the book launch there will be accompanying events where street art inspired by the book will be painted at The Bernard Shaw pub. This will take place on Friday October 15 from 3pm.

Following this event, the book will be launched at Connolly Books, East Essex Street at 6.30pm.

More information is available from the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign over here.

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Go, fetch to me a pint o’ wine, and fill it in a silver tassie. (Review: The Silver Tassie at the Gaiety)

Posted in Events, Reviews, Social History, tagged , , on October 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Go, fetch to me a pint o’ wine,
And fill it in a silver tassie,
That I may drink before I go.
A service to my bonie lassie

From that song came the footballer, Harry Heegan, who won the cup and went to war, and the entire narrative of The Silver Tassie….Sean had spoken with great excitement and urgency of his treatment of the second act in the war zone on The Western Front.
–Eileen O’ Casey from ‘Sean’

The 1920s in Britain produced plenty of literature, plays and drama inspired by the ‘Great War’. The majority of this of course was almost nostalgic, reflecting the soldiers of the empire as a unified organisation of heroes. It was also for the most part the product of men who had been nowhere near the war, and C. Desmond Greaves remarked in his excellent study of the politics of Sean O’ Casey that in such works “..officers and gentlemen emitted the cosy sentiments of the cricket field”.

The cosy repackaging of the war was a long way removed from the view held by many in the labour movement of course. James Connolly had written in the midst of the war that “the carnival of murder on the continent will be remembered as a nightmare in the future”, a view no doubt shared by O’ Casey. In The Silver Tassie, O’ Casey’s excellent anti-war play, we see a rejection of the more comfortable version of events. Like Connolly before him, O’ Casey saw the war as nothing but the slaughter of working class men.

The Abbey rejection of The Silver Tassie is well documented. It was perhaps unsurprising, owing to the response to The Plough and the Stars in 1926, and the new direction of O’ Casey’s work. Yeats famously wrote to O’ Casey that “…you are not interested in the Great War; you never stood on its battlefields, never walked in its hospitals, and so write out of your opinions.” Yet O’ Casey had seen the horror of the war firsthand. While at St. Vincent’s Hospital he had been in the presence of men completely destroyed by the war. His own brothers had been in the British army, and like any working class Dubliner O’ Casey had seen men walking around the city as shadows of their former selves. The hurt caused to O’ Casey by the rejection of the play was perhaps clearest when he refused to meet Lady Gregory in London, despite her writing of her desires to see the play there.

Men of the 10th (Irish) Division.

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View from the roof.

Posted in Events, tagged on October 9, 2010| 3 Comments »

It should no doubt interest a few of our readers to hear that the roof of Liberty Hall is open to Joe Public tomorrow. The view is excellent, and completely destroys the myth that the Guinness Storehouse offers the best view of the city. It’s open to the public from 10am to 1pm, and there is disabled access. I got up myself a few years ago when Siptu opened the roof to the public to mark May Day, and thought the view was well worth the trip.

It’s all thanks to the Open House Dublin Festival, celebrating the architecture of the city.

Here are two videos on YouTube from the roof, taken by YouTuber thebettyfordclinic

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