My brother is now the king of the car boot sales. He comes back with some top class stuff. Like this timely tune.
Last Sunday, he arrives home from Harold’s Cross with a bag of records. Loads of the things. Spanish folk to ‘novelty’ records and everything in between. A Crashed Records 7″ from 1983 caught my eye, if only for the title.
‘Cause I’m On The Dole – Don’t Mean I Can’t Rock N’ Roll was a 1983 number from the band Jukebox. The B Side is ‘I Washed My Jeans’(No point really if you’re on the Dole, who is going to see them?) The single was released on Crashed Records, based in the Donaghmede Centre of Dublin 13. Google has heard very little about the tune it seems, tragic as at the minute it’s National Anthem material. It’s not half bad either.
So turn up the speakers there (If you haven’t sold them yet) and give this one a play.
A cartoon from The Irish Times,July 9th 1983. Not much Rock N' Roll there.
*Alternative title was I’m a student so I obviously own several Joy Division albums, but I went with that line from Transmission*
Aware are one of the most important charities out there in my humble opinion, dedicated to fighting depression in society, and working with and for people of all age groups and backgrounds. Over 500 people a year take their own lives in Ireland, which I thought was a shocking figure when I first saw it.
Seeing as this time of year makes the anniversary of Ian Curtis’ suicide, some wise owls have decided to organise a charity night for Aware, jumping on the fact that anyone under 90 with functioning ears loves Joy Division. Charities like Aware need money, people like Joy Division, why not get contemporary Dublin bands to play a tribute night to Joy Division and raise money for Aware? Brillers.
The tribute night takes place on Friday May 14th, with 8pm doors. The venue, the recently (as in ‘the last time I was there it didn’t look the same as it was the time before that but it could be that way for ages’ recently) done up Crawdaddy. The door tax is 8 Euro,every cent of which will help Aware carry out important work.
Already confirmed are NEON STARS,FRIEND,THE VAGABONDS and SCHEME SOUL VISION
All proceeds go to AWARE
The night will also see screenings of Joy Division documentaries,performances and films such as Control.
It’s not The Dubliners, anyway. While no doubt everyone knows The Dubliners ‘Seven Drunken Nights’ from 1967, this Tom Archia tune from 1948 always raises a smile too. You’d have to get a chuckle out of Wikipedias piece on ‘Seven Drunken Nights’, stating that: “Each night is a verse, followed by a chorus, in which the narrator comes home in a drunken state to find evidence of another man having been with his wife, which she explains away, not entirely convincingly”
While it’s far more likely The Dubliners learned the basis of Seven Drunken Nights from Joe Heaney and the Irish language Peigin is Peadar, this is brilliant.
I’m really off the radar at the minute, to the extent I’ve got plenty of those “where are you” texts that when you respond with something like “in the library” you get another one two minutes later saying “No, I mean like in general lately”. I’m AWOL, shit-deep in Microsoft Word.
This made my day. I check those Facebook events too late to spot anything anymore (Nothing worse than spotting a great gig advertised over there and realising it started…..five minutes ago) but this stood out a mile.
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists have released three of my favourite albums to date. Shake The Sheets, Hearts Of Oakand Living With The Living. I play all three constantly, and even have a Ted Leo t-shirt (OMG) which is one of very few band shirts I’d wear around to be honest,it’s been there since I was 15 or 16 too.
Ted Leo And The Pharmacists- The Mighty Sparrow (From new album ‘The Brutalist Bricks’)
They’re neither an indie nor a punk band in my mind, and near impossible to label within traditional genres of music. They should appeal to fans of either genre. Their release of Rapid Response, an EP to benefit those arrested at the Republican National Congress in the U.S showed their political leanings.
This isn’t meant to be some grand sweeping statement on our part – it’s just a way for us to contribute SOMETHING real to the lives of real human beings, and show our material support for those whose actions and thoughts we value in this ideological struggle
Recent releases have hade a stronger sense of political identity, with songs like Bomb.Repeat.Bomb dealing with U.S Foreign Policy. Ted also writes a very good blog, over on the band site, which is worthy of a read. Read his post on Record Store Day, and nod in agreement.
The list of Ted Leo covers is mindblowing too, off the top of my head (with a sneaky MP3 player peek) it includes Samhain, Billy Bragg, The Waterboys, Cock Sparrer, Amebix, Generation X, Eddie And The Hot Rods, The Jam and eh…R Kelly. Along with Face to Face, they’re one of the only bands I think ever got away with a Stiff Little Fingers cover. Ted Leo, I salute you.
“Album closer “The Best Summer Ever” at last distills the band’s meteorological whorls into a psych-pop sunburst befitting its title” says Pitchfork. Translated,it’s just a bloody good tune, really.
If the blog has the look of a more history focused blog lately, due to the nature of many of my posts in particular, it’s more down to workloads than anything. A big massive pile of essays/assignments and other odds and ends (I know, smallest violin, right?) are keeping me within the walls of this fine West Dublin house. I don’t know if anything is happening in Dublin, it’s a 15 minute bus trip I can’t afford to make. Plenty of procrastination you can do in 15 minutes instead of sitting on a bus anyway.
Saying that, there are positives to spending all day at a computer. Who needs JStor or other academic resources (Like eh, Wikipedia) when you have Last.FM, the Hype Machine, and a never ending world of MP3 blogs. On occasion, I connect a name with a gig. As happened in the case of A Sunny Day In Glasgow.
Poor Glasgow, the ugly sister of Edinburgh really. Not that this band have anything to do with the city, being a Philadelphia project. Turns out I had some of their content sitting pretty in Windows Media Player already, most likely there from a ‘right click/save’ fest over the break, and on playing it went ‘ohhhh! That tune!’
One online account states that about a dozen people were there last time they played upstairs in Whelans, though this time, with the assistance of the much hyped Dum Dum Girls and all their internet popularity badges firmly pinned to their blazers, things should be different. While I never like the “what do they sound like?” question (We’ve already had ‘Robot Rock’ on here, what are people going to think ‘Shoegaze’ means…) I think Last.Fm is on the money with Asobi Seksu, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and their sort up there. Anyway, that’s why we embed music, isn’t it?
Whelans in May seems miles away. Now,If you’ll excuse me there’s a Word file with, quite literally, my name on it.
Is it the same? I don’t know to be honest, but it’s damn good. Leonard Cohen 2.0 is probably better than Vintage Leonard Cohen owing to a clean lifestyle , The Pogues 2.0 can still stand which is a success in itself, and a whole host of other 2.0’s, ranging from Roxy Music to Moving Hearts, haven’t disappointed the public too much.
I’m not exactly in a hurry to part with money at the moment (Pity the poor student) but a return from Blondie may change that. I can remember the first time I played Parallel Lines, and it’s been up the top of the pile since. That album has Picture This, Hanging On The Telephone and Heart Of Glass for starters.
Fair enough, The Hunter sucked (and sucked bad) but by the 1990s all was well again. Actually, thinking about it, maybe the Blondie 2.0 comment is a bit out of order, as I’m actually pretty fond of No Exit.
I can remember a painful trip to Ryan Tubridy on the couch during one of their last visits over, which was nearly as bad as listening to The Hunter, and only saved by a brief set at the end of the show. Saying that, I don’t think I’ve ever rushed into the room when I’ve heard the old dear yelling “that band you like are on the telly”. It’s normally Wikipedia researched nonsense.
There is something to be said for gigs like Blondie, The Specials and their sort when your Mam and Dad get an excuse to get their own Harrington Jackets out from under the stairs, but even if it’s not the 1970s, it’s worth a trip to tick another one off the list.
Perhaps a tad ‘NSFW’. If you’re too old to know what that means, never mind.
Firstly, before the song. They had me at this. It’s WB Yeats, if he was a Sega Mega Drive character.
That’s the cover of A National Light, coming in May from Dublin band The Rags.
I stumbled across this band on another website, you know the one. One friend posts it, another friend shares it, and the cycle continues.
Anyway, do I know anything about their music? Hmm, nothing beyond what I’ve seen in the video above, and the few tracks I’ve played over on their MySpace (remember that?). But christ, what a video. Yeah yeah, so it’s loaded with a load of randomers off the internet, this is true.
Look a bit closer but, and there’s a bit of Dublin in there. I’ve spotted two popular nightclubs and a familiar face or three. A couple of internet memes chucked in, a few eejits with guitars, big gangs of lads kicking seven shades out of each other (and that could well be from outside a Dublin Derby, if you believe the papers) and all I’m not really getting is Hitler. Suppose, when you’ve everything else in your music video……
The song is very catchy, it’s been in my head all day. I really like the sound of this one, and the fact it’s clearly a Dublin band from the vocals (Nothing like that ‘Never been to London’ indie-band accent) , not to mention how strong the lyrics are. On the back of this and the other songs I’ve heard on their site, I look forward to hearing more. There seems to be a slew of EPs and Singles out there already, before pixely-faced Yeats hits the shelves.
They’ll be in Whelans on the 29th of May, in a post-exam world.
“Our time was never really well invested
Or thoughtfully spent, keeping abreast of the rent
And when I walk home, it’s usually alone
That way I won’t lower the tone”
If you’re getting along to LCD Soundsystem next Tuesday (you lucky git) be sure to swing up to this one in The Button Factory afterwards.
It is in times of severe recession when charities need money most, but of course many of us don’t have the money to give. The fact that the doortax from this DJ set is going to the homeless makes it a very worthwhile cause, and for broke youngsters it’s nice to be able to dance like a fool and do your bit. It doesn’t take a genius to notice a major increase in the amount of homeless people on the streets of Dublin in the last year or so.
“all proceeds go to the ‘They Are Us’ project in aid of the homeless in Dublin”
Tickets can be picked up at The Good Bits, All City Records, or over on tickets.ie
Now, have a song. All 10 minutes of the Soulwax remix of Get Innocuous. God, I love this.
I’ll do anything other than write essays at the minute. With four or five of the dreaded things at my front door ringing the doorbell, I’ve disconnected the thing and set the phone calendar back a few days. Not really, but I’m not far off.
Anyway, yesterday during one of my ‘breaks’ from Microsoft Word I finally got around to checking out a Dublin band I’ve wanted to give a listen to for a long time now, The Cast Of Cheers. Not even the term ‘Robot Rock’ was putting me off. I’ll pop into town and buy the album I figured.
The.Album.Is.Bloody.Free
Write ups like this one, from Nialler9, convinced me it was worth the right click/save.
“The album is a fully-formed 33-minute blast of post-punk, looping post-rock, tightly-wound songs with echoes of touchstones like Battles, Foals and Death From Above 1979”
You can download the entire thinghere
Goose, which has been in my head all day, is the stand out track for me. For those of you who don’t like clicking external links because you haven’t read all the great, great content below this post, I’ve embedded it below here. Give it a play, and then do the right thing and fill your MP3 player.
Still, even after playing that a good five times, I’d be lying if I claimed to have a clue what Robot Rock is.
If I get those damn essays out of the way, 28th April – Whelans – with Crystal Antlers.
looks just a bit appealing.
Antlers being second only to Swing, and not Castles- in the Crystal Department.
We are big fans of Damien Dempsey on this Blog, so much so that if you go back through our history, I think theres three or four articles about the man. Last week he played a show in The Good Bits, as advertised on here, and support game from a good friend of mine, Ciarán Lenehan; If you haven’t heard of him, you will- he was picked by Dempsey himself to support after seeing him play a couple of songs in Peadar Kearneys. After his set, with Ciarán was tucking into a pint, Dempsey walked up to him and said “I don’t know what it is, but you have it…” True story.
I was given a disk of tracks by Ciarán a couple of years back and remember being blown away; I knew him in his days in Lugosi and Ellentic, and wasn’t expecting this sound from him, not by a long shot. A mix of new and old, trad and punk; think Frank Turner crossed with the man he supported at the gig below:
Anyways. Enough of me gushing praise, theres a dozen or so videos of him on the Youtube, or you can get some tracks here, or on his Myspace.
For those interested, Ciarán plays upstairs in Whelans on the 7th of April. I, for one, will be there.
Growing up (said the 2nd year student) , I think rap music wasn’t a huge part of it all for me in truth. A Tribe Called Quest, MF Doom, Gang Starr, Atmosphere and some other odds and ends featured alright, but I wasn’t getting invited anywhere with my LP collection to say the least. You could more or less write me off as ‘Hype Machine Hip Hop’
From the Irish school I didn’t know a thing, but was fond of Collie (…Is Ainm Dom is a top class album, even if only for the line “Music is the only thing I have a passion for, don’t care about fashion buy my jocks in Dunnes Stores” ) and Captain Moonlight, along with some odds and ends.
By pure chance I stumbled across this on YouTube today. Make of it what you will. It’s all the more interesting for me knowing absolutely nothing about this stuff in Ireland. For me, on the first listen, the Rawsoul lad hammers this one. Just a bit. No more nails against bluetack really.
About a million miles away from one of those Seamus Ennis posts, isn’t it?
“This depressing misfit is about as camp as Electric Picnic”
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 