Like all the other blogeurs I'm splitting to Stradbally tomorrow. I hope to meet up with all the blogheads available so keep an eye out for me, if you know what I look like and I'll do the same. I've been giving some thought to going to see Grace Jones when she's on, but only if she has her human cigar haircut. This year, I want to be sure to catch Donal Dineen DJing too. I'll be reviewing the whole shebang for Drop-D next week and am thinking of something along the lines of a gonzo piece featuring an over-sized friend of mine, out of his bin...and Christy Moore. See you all soon.
Trying to save every last penny available for next weekend's Electric Picnic means that alot of time has been spent lolling about the house in front of the oversized flatscreen (that actually came with the house?!) like a stroppy teenager, drinking coffee, watching shit television and getting understandably agitated at many many programmes. I'm sure nobody reads this blog for Big Brother news but it is absolutely necessary to alert you to the fact that life-size, inflatable sleazemonkey, GI Joe Mario came back for an excruciating cameo on Sunday to propose to dead-eyed shark woman Lisa in a stunt that was so irredeemably naff it made watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics - and subsequent handover to London - seem like a wonderfully inclusive spectacle that we should all embrace while wearing United Colours of Benetton cardigans and tickling little playful monkeys on the belly. I'm lying, of course, about the Olympic thing being in any way watchable. Mario and Lisa make me feel sick. I would rather watch my grandparents copulate loudly in front of me than ever see the two of them on a television screen again. They repel me to my very soul and I think I could probably watch 27 episodes of Grey's Anatomy back-to-back rather than have to see a single photo from their horrendous future nuptials. Jesus Christ. And as for the Olympic handover. What the fuck? A London red bus bungled into view with a bunch of ethnically balanced dancing Troglodytes whirling about with umbrellas until the top of said vehicle eventually peeled down to reveal the legendary Jimmy Page - now looking like a dulling, badger-like Chinese pensioner - and Leona 'reality TV singing sensation?' Lewis singing one of the greatest Zep songs of all time. Jesus wept. Then David shitting Beckham smiled vacuously at the little Blue Peter competition girl and booted a football into the braying masses, a football which I think one of the Chinese athletes caught and looked like he had just soiled himself with glee. Who was this aimed at? Is there really a lobotomised collective that watched it and thought 'yes, I am so glad to be a part of this wonderful circle of life, this championing of inclusiveness'? Maybe I'm just a bitter old bollocks and this really was wonderful but I doubt it. In other news, I have had interviews recently with both Calexico and Fucked Up that have made me feel glad to be alive and have helped build a little foundation of hope for the future. Joey Burns was a lovely man, full of knowledge and wit and Fucked Up's lead singer, Pink Eyes, proved to be an outgoing, chatty, shockingly honest interviewee. And the punk gig that happened after the interview was the most fun I've had in Whelans in a while. Thank god for the music.
No Age's last outing in Dublin was an excellent, if somewhat confusing, gig for the band. Most people were there as actual fans and as far as I recall there was no support and they came on fairly late. It also became clear they were used to a crowd that rocked the fuck out, but to be honest it was a Tuesday evening and a mostly sober crowd were not going to partake in much shenanigans. I still thought they put on a great show. A return gig has been announced for October 17th and they are to be joined by fellow noisemongers Times New Beth..I mean Times New Viking along with the unusual choice of Los Campesinos. This video for Keechie, made from some left over Eraser video footage, is not really a good representation of a full No Age show's loudness but it is still weirdly hypnotic in the way surf movies, Apocalypse Now and the album by The Field are. I remember my mother (who I'm sure doesn't read my blog but hi mam anyway) watching American Beauty with me, and more specifically watching that plastic bag scene saying 'that's not the most beautiful thing in the world; that's just a bloody plastic bag blowing around the place'. I like to think that, in their own ways, both Sam Mendes and my mother are right but I think on a certain day, the weirdest and most simple thing can seem really beautiful.
Now, for those of you who might know me, I like coffee. Alot. Living in Ireland in the present day, it has become as commonplace as pyjamas in a Ringsend newsagent to see a Spar on every corner of every suburb/main street of this godless island. Spar have an uncanny knack of not just inflating the prices but of doing so at a rate that would make you wonder if Mugabe has somehow managed to transpose his country's particular brand of inflation by some kind of osmosis (I saw a jar of instant coffee for 8euros in the Rathmines Spar earlier this year). But we all know how expensive Spar is and everyone needs to buy toilet roll at unusual times of the night...which they only ever seem to have in packets of four for 6 euro or else you can buy the Spar 'own brand' of two rolls in a packet - which is like wiping your arse with the party hat from a cheap Christmas cracker. Sidetracked again. Anyway, Spar in the UK struck a deal to have Tim Hortons coffee and doughnuts available in some of their outlets earlier this year and this has now spread to Ireland. Here is the problem. Tim Hortons coffee is fucking disgusting. Previously, many Spars provided Insomnia coffee, which is quite nice from actual Insomnia branches and not bad from the little machines they had in the Spars. These seem to have been removed and replaced with Tim Hortons shit-vending units (named as such because they vend shit, but if not properly maintained they probably become shit too). When you press the little button on the Tim Hortons machine, there is a fart of steamed water and then a shit-brown syrup concoction blurps into the cup mixing with the water. It doesn't look like coffee, smell like coffee or taste like coffee. And in the morning, I really want a decent cup of coffee. So if you are reading this Tim Horton; fuck off back to Canada and take your freeze-dried doughnuts with you. I know this post is a real 'I'm so middle-class my Guardian is about to burst into flames with my frustration' thing but just give me a real cup of coffee in the morning. Please.
I said I would stick up a mixtape/CD/file/rar thingy as a 100 post celebration so here it is. It's just a hodge podge of stuff that I'm either listening to, recently got or recently rediscovered and it has that Britney Spears song on it because it's funny...kind of. Anyway, hope you enjoy and the bloody thing downloads ok and does so in the right track order. Let me know what you reckon when you've given it a listen. And there is not much to connect the songs in case you think there might be..
For those who don't browse the old music blogs all the time, there is a 'new big deal' band floating around out there called Vivian Girls. I'll let Stereogum tell you about them and give you a listen to their excellent Where Do you Run To track from the forthcoming album reissue. It's the kind of music that reminds me of UCG (as NUIG was then known) and being out in Liquid nightclub in Salthill drinking shitty, cheap Black Russians and dancing to The Pixies and the fucking Smiths in the upstairs section. Everyone who liked 'alternative' music was there and it was fucking great. Does anyone sneak naggins into nightclubs anymore? Anyway, this song and the ones on their myspace remind me of those days. If you were in college anytime after 1995, I hope you understand what I mean. Lo fi and all-girl: what a combination (Note to reader: if this lot are all over the papers in the next while, then feel free to say you heard it here first (ahem) even though I heard it from massive music blogs GorillavsBear and Sterogum. There will be a financial reward for most shameless namedrop of There will Be Blog because I'm a whore. Nice.)
Thanks to Cha for the heads up on this. David Rees' cult comic strip Get your War On began soon after 9/11 as political satire and quickly grabbed a cult following. Rolling Stone regularly published the basic-animation works and they are also available in book form while, recently, Huffington Post's offshoot 23/6.com launched an animated series based on the comic strips. This is the first one. The comic strip art has always been fairly basic as it's so dialogue-driven and the style/sound in the new animated series has a kind of similar aesthetic to the excellent film Renaissance (if you're looking for a reference point)
The older I get, the more insidious and creeping my hangovers become. Back in college, you could roll out of your bed, onto the floor, curse at your pants that lie crumpled on the ground with your shoes at the end as if you literally jumped out of them, bungle your way downstairs and into the fridge (with a quick recess to spew your guts out) and have a hangover shaken off in a few hours. Those were the days. But now? Now it's like being woken up by a shadowy troll who shakes you awake, forces your eyes open, pries your lips apart and takes a vile troll-dump in your mouth. Then he takes you by the hand and leads you to the kitchen, saying: "Here, water will help you. Yes, yes, drink it all". Then he pokes and prods at you and hits you in the head sporadically, makes sure you are uncomfortable and turns up the telly that bit too loud. It's not right. That said I'm actually not feeling too bad this morning after a relatively tame scatter of pints last night in the not-quite-as-urinal-cake-smelling-as-usual Long Hall. And is it slander if I say that those Charlie's fast food Chinese places are hell on earth and I never want to be in one again. Christ.
If you are looking for a few things to divert yourself today, might i suggest this little nugget, sent to me by a mate. Get your conspiracy theory cap on. This ad will take you back...
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