Monsters of Folk, Bright Eyes, M. Ward and My Morning Jacket

Going to see Monsters of Folk in The Hague (Dutch city, not William Hague’s gaff…though not would be quite novel) this weekend, and am pretty damn excited. They’ve been playing epic Springsteen-style sets and at the weekend they did a 40-song set in New York. It’s gonna be special, but a real pity they’re not doing a Dublin date. The small European tour (which will prob be their only one) also only takes in two UK shows.

Anyhow, for those of you who don’t know MoF, they’re made up of M.Ward, Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band), Mike Moggis (Bright Eyes) and Jim James (My Morning Jacket). Three of my favourite songwriters in one band, and I’m particularly a huge Oberst fan. So naturally I’m been on a huge Bright Eyes/ MMJ buzz this week. Below are some of my fav tunes from these songwriters, with some cool videos to boot. Enjoy.

 

Bruno leaves out the best bits

Finally got around to watching Bruno this week, and yep it’s pretty poor stuff with the exception of the scene where he’s on the Jerry Springer style talk-show discussing how he adopted his African baby after swopping an iPod for it! Great stuff. The best thing though about the DVD was the deleted scenes, many of which were in the mould of Bruno’s first appearances on The Ali G show back in 2004/ 2005. These were all done as interviews with people in the fashion world and are hilarious. He’s best when pulling the piss out of people who take what they do too seriously. The story style of the movie just didn’t suit the character in the way perhaps that it did Borat. Worth watching the DVD for those scenes alone.

Elsewhere, some of this would be nice today:

More on why it’s wrong to berate Pat Kenny because of his salary

I posted on this earlier in the week in what was of course a non-serious post about the (racist) intruder who berated Pat Kenny live on air last Monday. I raise the topic again, after reading Ian O’Doherty’s fine piece in today’s Independent. I don’t usually like or agree with much of O’Doherty’s columns, though I suspect part of his brief is to be as insolent as possible. His piece today though is one I agree wholeheartedly with, having argued the same points as his to someone earlier this week. Anyhow, take a read of it.

The Curse of Emigration, my arse!

Poor old Miriam. Jesus, David McWilliams – will you look what you’ve done? There she was last night broken-hearted with the rise of emigration in this country on last night’s Prime Time Special. The mother of eight seemed to represent every Irish mammy in the land as she spoke numerous times with a ‘ah isn’t it shocking’ look across her face. It all brought to mind a fine article recently in the Sunday Independent by Pat Fitzpatrick. In his piece, The Curse of Emigration, Fitzpatrick quite humourously wonders what the feck all this ‘lost generation’ talk is about. Sure isn’t there an upside, he quite rightly points out – fantastic cities, great craic, a summer that lasts longer than eight-minutes and beautiful women who crack up with laughter at the slightest mention of “thirty-three and a third”. Now if you don’t mind, I’m off to find Jezebel.

Airborne Toxic Event – Live Review – The Olympia, Dublin

Went to see The Airborne Toxic Event on Wednesday night (live review here) and wasn’t at all impressed – disappointed actually. I picked up their debut album back in San Francisco last May after reading an interview with frontman Mikel Jollett. I liked his back story – a novelist who after a failed relationship, finding out his mother had cancer and developing an autoimmune disease himself, found himself creating stories more suited to song than the novel structure. He thus formed ATE and released an acclaimed debut on an indie label, which was than picked up by a major (Island).

The album isn’t great. It’s really bland indie-rock in the mould of Razorlight. Lyrically there’s some fine moments though and, as you might expect, they’re quite good with forging story songs you can quite easily sink into without having to grapple with. There’s not much mystery, and that’s fine for a throwaway pop song. They hit gold with ‘Sometime After Midnight’, a song you’ve probably heard on the radio and one which many, it would seem, can relate to given its tale of unexpectedly bumping into an ex-lover in a nightclub. Its like a more emotive and better written version of ‘Mr Brightside’.

What kind of amazed me upon returning to Ireland (I’d been in Asia, Australia and new Zealand for the previous nine months) was that they were apparently so popular here that they were headlining the Olympia, a fairly large venue in Dublin – yet nobody I knew had much interest in them or nor had they been written about on the UK and Irish websites I kept tabs on. Anyone who had, described them as somewhere between Arcade Fire and The Strokes – which I didn’t really get at all on record….well only that they sounded like very very diluted versions of those acts.

Anyhow, I went along interested in seeing what they were like live (Although, in hindsight, I think I may have seen them support The Fratellis in 2007/ 2008. Jollett mentioned onstage that this was their fifth time playing Dublin having played three times this year alone). Perhaps they had something about them which translated better live than on record? So many acts find it hard to shine on both mediums. But nope,  they were poor. You can read my full review for State here. I wish I’d gone to see Mark Eitzel instead.

The Dirty 9s – Lucy Opus

Friday the 13th. Unlucky for some. Well it’s a big day for Dublin five-piece The Dirty 9s. They release their first single, ‘Lucy Opus’, today in advance of a debut album, ‘Stop Screaming, Start Dreaming’, which is due early next year.

All self-financed, they funded the record by winning a TG4 competition, where they sung As Gaeilge. It might be funny and odd to look back on, on YouTube but no doubt they’re the ones laughing – they bagged €10,ooo in the process and wisely put that into making their debut with a respected producer (and non-Irish), Greg Haver. Haver is best known for twiddling knobs on Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Life Blood’ and ‘Know Your Enemy’ LPs, as well as work with pretty much every Welsh act from Tom Jones to Catatonia to Super Furry Animals.

As for the single – well it’s an unashamed indie-pop song, and a rather good one at that. It’s of course very well produced and Haver has honed their fine way with melody, making for a track that might expect much radio play. They mightn’t like the comparison, but in parts they sound like a sturdier, indie alternative to The Script.  There’s also shades of Delorentos and Snow Patrol in there and, if anything, it’s  an indication that The Dirty 9s might well be an act to keep tabs on in 2010. Some will have minor quibs with the American tinge to Ferghal Moloney’s vocals, but then that hasn’t done much harm for a legion of Irish frontmen. Whether or not they have tunes of a similar, or better, standard on their forthcoming album remains to be seen, but nonetheless we’ll be listening. You can read a first review of the album here, which gives a fairly positive thumbs-up. As for singing in Irish, well they’re also quite handy with the Spanish language. Below you’ll also find a Spanish-language cover of Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’.

Meanwhile, check out ‘Lucy Opus’ below and the single is available now on iTunes & downloadmusic.ie

 

 

Why Pat Kenny deserves every penny (and every piece of land) he gets

Who else would give us such gold as this:

Pat Kenny on Charlotte Church’s sex life

Pat on break-dancing and ‘blacking up’

Pat loses it over the Toy Show

Pat, Jimmy Carr and the Austrian family holiday

Pat, so easy to impersonate

Clarence ‘Big Man’ Clemons releases his autobiography

“You want to be him but you cannot. Because in all the world there is but one
Clarence ‘Big Man’ Clemons.”
-Bruce Springsteen

He’s known as ‘the Big Man’, and few could argue with Bruce Springsteen’s nickname for his long-time E Street band cohort, Clarence Clemons. Fans of course will know him well, while those with a passing interest in The Boss will know him as the guy who appears on the cover, along with Bruce, on his classic album, ‘Born To Run’. Now, the saxophonist has just completed his autobiography, ‘Big Man’, which has just been released.

Clemons – aside from perhaps Little Steven Van Zandt and of course the Boss himself  – is the most charismatic member of the legendary band. He had a dubious (to say the least) solo career in the year’s when the band were on a hiatus, during the 90s, and he’s become fairly frail looking of late – now needing a chair (or huge throne) to sit upon on stage as a couple of hip replacements have seen him slow up.

Potentially though, he’s got an interesting ‘insider’ tale to tell of being in the legendary E Street band. One would assume however, that given that he remains part of the band and this is not a post-E Street memoir, that there’ll be no ‘dishing the dirt’ and it’s a book unlikely to court to much controversy…but we’ll see.

In the coming weeks a full review of the book will appear on this site, while I may also have a copy to give away. So keep reading!

In the mean time, here are some videos of Clarence Clemons talking about various stage of his and the E Street bands’ life. More videos will also follow.

Clarence on being told that Bruce was finishing the E Street band during the late 80s

Clarence on the death of fellow E Street band member Danny Federici

 

I Won University Challenge

Great documentary last night on people who have won the BBC’s extraordinarily difficult quiz show, University Challenge. Wonderland’s ‘I Won University Challenge’ looked at the lives of various, extremely clever, contestants and their lives.

Most will be aware of University Challenge – a game show where by teams of four from given British universities compete against each other in general knowledge. As you’d expect, the winners are sharply intelligent. And also, as you might expect, seem to be imbalanced to a degree and, for all the knowledge they have, lack socially. At least that was evident in the contestants chosen for this documentary.

It goes without saying that the programme’s producers doubtlessly cherry-picked those who they deemed most odd and eccentric of the bunch, though in fairness there was a couple of contestants there who seemed pretty ‘normal’, but felt socially excluded because of their intellect. What is most interesting, I thought, is that the show’s winners are amongst the cream of Britain’s youth – yet the nation would prefer celebrate someone who has won Big Brother or appeared on Wife Swap and swore profusely, as opposed to highlighting people with some sort of talent or gift; in this case a roaring intellect.

There was a girl called Suzanne, who appeared very normal, and was very pretty, but for all her brains to burn masked an underlying loneliness and isolation from others. I felt that to be quite affecting about the programme. It’s no revelation that society excludes many who aren’t ‘normal’. Those with disabilities, illnesses or – in Ireland especially – who don’t drink alcohol are routinely socially excluded to some degree. But being isolated because you’re extraordinarily intelligent? There was something about it.

Other interviewees spoke of having to ‘dumb down’ to try fit into society. There were many who seemed unable to direct their talent too. They fell into jobs as secretaries, temps, post men, etc. Now nothing against those jobs, but these were people with a level of intellect that could have gone so much further but for their feeling of not feeling like society appreciated them – or not being able to ‘fit in’. Many of course had their own faults. They are socially awkward in many regards, but it was sad to see.

It’s strange how we lament musicians, artists and other creative individuals who die young or squander their potential, yet never those who have hit heights in other areas – intelligence being the case here. And this made a very interesting subject matter, and excellent TV.

Those within the UK can watch the show here.

 

U2 manipulate the publicity machine once again and why they’ll play Glastonbury 2010

When it comes to using the publicity machine to their advantage, few can beat U2. They’ve garnered headlines worldwide in the last 24 hours with the announcement that they’re to stream a  show from the Pasadena Rosebowl in LA, live across YouTube, on Sunday night (3.30am Monday morning Irish time). All the pieces I’ve read have featured comments from the group’s camp on how they’d been looking to do something like this for some time and how it’s a first for YouTube, one of the world’s most popular websites. All the focus has been on it’s free streaming nature, but we all know there’s no such thing as a free meal.

It’s also been  mentioned – or rather implied – that all this is to benefit YouTube’s (which is owned by Google) bid to attract more advertising revenue as it bids to move on from showing short video clips to longer features and concerts. In the US it is already showing movies on demand, while it will also host a TV catch-up service on behalf of Channel 4 early next year. So what’s in it for U2?

Well they’ve been quick to prod out the line that sure weren’t they gonna be recording it anyway so why the hell not put it on YouTube? But one would assume they record every show in some form – if even for use on the huge screen they employ during their shows. So a plus for them has to be the assumption that filming costs will be covered by – or at least shared – with Google, as well as any revenue. They’ve also wheeled out the line that Bono will be urging fans to donate to his Red charity. Noble for sure, but then it does make everyone – including the U2 machine – coming up smelling of roses. And yes, in keeping with their status as the world’s biggest band, it gives some kudos to be involved in a project that has garnered global headlines and will appeal to a  global audience.

But the real reason they’re doing this YouTube webcast? Well they’ve convieniently got an album coming out on October 27 – two days after the webcast. Yep. that’s the 25th anniversary, remastered, all the bells and whistles version of The Unforgettable Fire. Did you expect anything less? It’ll be interesting to see how many songs from that record just happen to make their way into Sunday night’s setlist.

And as for Glastonbury 2010 – while I’m putting my money on U2 to headline the Saturday night. In fact, I would say the headliners will be Radiohead, U2 and The Rolling Stones. And why U2? Well the reasons given previously for them turning down the festival have been to do with broadcasting rights, as the BBC broadcast much of the headliners show live and U2 had problems with not being able to control and view how and what they were going to broadcast. One would expect that this YouTube live stream has meant they’ve become somewhat less precious about that.

They’re also just announced 2010 European dates for August, none of which are in the UK or Ireland, which opens up the possibility that dates are being kept clear for festival appearances. As such they may do the festival circuit over June and July with Pinkpop, Glastonbury and Roskilde possibilities. They’ve seen their good friend Bruce Springsteen do just that this summer, with great success and it’s unlikely they’d opt to play any other UK festival but Glastonbury given the regard in which it is held and the coverage and publicity such an appearance would generate. Being cynical, they may even choose to release a much talked about new album around that time – which would be their second new record in just over a year.

Crucially, they also apparently want to play. Bono said earlier this year: “I know lots of people who love music want us to play that. It’s something we’re working up our whole life to do. I think that we can commit [to the idea] that we really, really want to do this.” Two of the world’s biggest stars have recently headlined Glasto – Jay z and Springseen. Coldplay rave about it. The stage is now set for U2 to experience it and there’s no doubt, they’d put on a hell of a show.