Arthur's Day

Guinness is Celebrating its 250th birthday and in the process they're having their inaugural Arthur's Day on the 24th September.

Tom Jones, Estelle and possibly the Black Eyed Peas are going to be playing at James Gate and loads of bands will be playing in local pubs around dublin.

From what I can figure you can only buy tickets per venue, without knowing who's actually going to be playing.

There is a pretty extensive line up of acts, with something for all tastes including David Holmes, Soul II Soul, The Kooks and Jamie Callum

Their website is unfortunately an epic fail and takes aeons to load, so I got bored and gave up looking.

Lenny Kravitz at Marley Park

Rocked. Rocked. Rocked. And Yes, those are pictures of Lenny throwing himself at the crowd. Best Gig This Year.

Alanis was pretty cool too, she played for about an hour, but the sound was a bit dodge. 

When Lenny came on he tore it up, sound was pumped, and he is probably the sexiest man I have ever seen on stage. He was loving it too....

What shall we do with the drunken sailors?

I had the misfortune of going to Friday Nights Hal Willner's Rogue's Gallery Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys, as part of the Analog Festival.
What a shambles, someone would come on, stumble through a folk type tune, wander off, there would be a few minutes pause and someone else would shuffle on, god forbid they, or anyone else would introduce them. The whole thing was completely disjointed and disorganized, making a school concert seem like an efficient military operation in comparison. Shane Mc Gowan did a few rousing tunes and then poured beer all over the people at the front and started firing cans into the audience. Let's face it we deserved it for being dumb enough to tolerate their self indulgent tripe.
Maybe if we had been out on a pier with the sound of waves splashing and ropes jangling boat masts it would have worked better. Nah, probably not.

Heeeeeerrres GRACE!

Good news, Grace Jones is playing at Electric Picnic this year, and Joan As Policeman is confirmed, but we knew that already.

Oxegen 2008

Made it down to Oxegen for the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday, used the park ride and shuttle service and it all worked out fine. Gig wise the Saturday line up suited me better.

Music - Saturday
We popped into the Brian Jonestown Massacre to watch them self combust but they were pretty together, tighter than I thought they'd be and other than that not much to report. Newton Faulkner was on the Main Stage and for a guy with an acoustic guitar he held a good crowd closing with a cover of Bohemian Rhapsody which went down well. I ended up seeing a bit of My Morning Jacket in the Pet Sounds Tent because it was pouring rain. They were well into the performance and having fun, but ultimately boring. Legged it over tho The Ting Tings and had to fight our way in, they were playing in the Green Room Tent which apparently has the same capacity as the Point Depot and they were thronged. They played the tightest set, I loved it. Caught a little of The Wombats on the O2 stage just after, Snore Bore. I meant to go and see Holy F**K then but I forgot or got distracted or something. We went to Amy Winehouse on the main stage, probably for the wrong reasons really, I felt a bit cheap showing up just to see if she showed up. She came on and sang away fine, didn't really engage with the crowd (would you?) and left. Her kind of music is not really Main Stage stuff, she suits a more intimate setting better i think.
After that we popped in to Seasick Steve in the Pet Sounds Stage, swigging away on a bottle of Jack Daniels and busy blowing everyone away. I think it was a mutual thing, the more he played the more the crowd responded the more blown away he was. It was one of those occasions where you really believe the guy when he says "You're a great crowd" It was my festival highlight.

Music - Sunday
The weather was warm and sunny for the most part. The Feeling, on the Main Stage belted out covers, including A-HA classic Take On Me, which had everyone dancing. I popped into Prince influenced David Jordan, who was throwing himself into it to a tiny crowd. we caught The Stranglers too, just to hear Golden Brown, and fitted in a little bit of The Blizzards.

Festival Thoughts.
The festival overall was organised enough in so far as I could see. There seemed to be a pretty hefty Garda Presence and loads of Stewards.
The food offerings were pretty grim, most people opting for AbraKebabra, who had a lot of concessions stands, better the devil you know I guess.
We opted for Chicken On A Stick and had to bring it back because the chicken was raw.......
The Eco Cups kept the place clean enough which meant less rubbish underfoot when moving around, a big improvement on previous years.
The age profile seems to have gone up, yes there were loads of kids, but there were loads of thirtysomethings too, the line up maybe....?
The line up was really male orientated, very few girls on stage either as musicians or singers, it made the whole thing feel a little hey ho same ol'. I think that might be why Seasick Steve was so rockin', it was something different in a sea of boys with guitars singing identikit songs.
There is not a lot to do at Oxegen if a band you are interested in isn't playing, there is a funfair I guess.....
Lot's of cover songs knocking around.....I got the feeling a lot of bands had a better chance of getting the crowd going if they played them stuff they know (ie not there own stuff)
There are no more super groups.

Operator Please in Crawdaddy

I went to Operator Please in Crawdaddy last Tuesday night. The crowd was pretty small but there was an appreciative gang up the front. The drummer (who looks like he's 12) singer and fiddler were all fairly rocking, bass and keyboards less so ( I think the bass guitarist wants to be in My Chemical Romance). Highlights were their hits, Leave It Alone and The Ping Pong Song and an energetic version of Salt N'Pepas Push It.

Joan As A Policewoman in Tripod.

We went to see JAPW in Tripod last night, Great show! It was just Ms Joan Wasser, drummer Parker Kindred (great voice too), and Bass player Rainy Orteca, who also played support as Dead Air.

The first 45 minutes or so was slow and Torchy and built up to a big drumming crescendo with Furious. After that she stayed up and loud to the end. 

Joan broke her guitar at her Cork Gig the night before, and was having tuning problems with the replacement, this led to a lot of tuning pauses, with the audience calling out requests. 

She's very cool and had us all giggling, "Yes, Yes", she'd drawl, "I'll get to that" To be honest, I think the crowd was a bit shy...then someone called out "Are you going to Electric Picnic?" and she shouted "Yes Yes", and we all cheered.

It was a fun night, and we came home with a signed CD!

Tegan And Sara At The Button Factory

I went to see Tegan And Sara at the Button Factory last night. Great set, great venue. The changes they've made to The Button Factory are not that noticeable, especially when the place is thronged, as it was last night, it's more open now and the stage is a little more accessible. The sound was great, helped by the fact that the band were really tight and rockin out. Their fans were out in force treating them like mini Elvis's. In return, they charmed us all, interspersing the tracks with some pretty hilarious stories. Great Gig!!

Big Band, Small Stage

I went to see Mark Ronson in the Village last night, the gig was originally scheduled for the Olympia but got moved (ticket sales?) The place was tightly packed and although the doors opened at 7.30, the band didn't come on til 9.30. With no support act, too long a wait i think. The Village is not a venue for hanging around in.

Maybe there was no support because the band could barely fit the stage as it was, 3 guys on horns (The Haggis Horns) two drumkits, two guitars, keyboards, Mr Ronson, Daniel Merriweather, a rapper dude, and an excellent female vocalist...it was so much of a squeeze, the singers took turns coming on stage......

Were they good? Yes, they were tight funky excellent, there was great energy in the place and I was loving it.......until they exited stage left after 50 minutes...th th th th that's all folks!!!

We had some free passes to the Mark Ronson DJ set in the VooDoo lounge but we passed.

Electric Picnic 2005

While waiting patiently for this years festival here is a mini memory of The Electric Picnic 2005, me, my kid sister H and a large jug of Prosecco (nice)

I wonder if the "phone quality photo" will become a popular thing to replicate in the future, a filter option effect for a regular shot, like Sepia, B&W etc....




And here is the 2005 logo....This was the year that "Broke" Arcade Fire into the mainstream here, if I remember correctly they opened with Wake Up, and the entire tent joined in, it was, appropriately enough, electrifying