Panadola Diction

Three gigs you say? For €30 you say? Spanking new music you say? Hmmmmm. What’s the catch? You don’t know? Oh.

So I dressed up as a teenager and went early. Being early had its benefits, I got a wristband, which allowed me to access the balcony level (haven of the elderly), but it also had its downsides - the Heineken hadn’t quite run out yet, so I had to drink a pint of slops dredged from the bottom of several kegs and mixed together in a plastic glass. (Note - Heineken wouldn’t normally be my beverage of choice, but there didn’t seem to be much else.) This pint of backwash may or may not have been the reason I felt totally shit yesterday. My eyes and elbows were sore.

MGMT were pretty shit. They bounced on to the stage and did a karaoke version of ‘Kids’ or ‘Time to Pretend’ (I can’t remember the difference) without the rest of the band, to a backing track. It was awful, and then to cap it off, the guitarist came on towards the end of a song, seemingly unprepared, and played a ridiculous trucker-rock ’solo’ at the end. What were they thinking? After that things improved slightly, with the addition of musicians and instruments, and the crowd got very excited by the other song that everyone knows (’Kids’ or ‘Time to Pretend’). They only had time for a seven song set, so maybe they played badly on purpose or something, in some kind of “I hate these shit promotional gigs” protest, or maybe they just aren’t very good. Admittedly, being first on, the venue wasn’t full yet, and the crowd were still sober, but it would be hard for me to recommend them as anything more than a 2-hit wonder. I wasn’t terribly impressed, especially considering the amount of hype surrounding this lot, and the reviews of their recent headline gig in the same venue. 5.0 out of 10.

The Futureheads, a reliable band with catchy, fun singles, whose albums I’ve never paid much attention to. ‘Decent Days and Nights’, some decent new material including single ‘Beginning of the Twist’, and crowd favourite, K.Bush cover ‘Hounds of Love’ all played loudly and with energy - no complaints, most people seemed to like it, as did I. I might even listen to their new album whenever it comes out. Maybe. And they seem like likable gents. 6.5 out of 10.

CSS, the cascading style sheets, ahaha, sorry. Anyway, I’d only previously caught these chapettes at Oxegen last year, and I think I was more concerned with welly-chafing than actually paying attention to them at the time. Lovefoxxx was expectedly loopy on Wednesday night, with her floral cat suit and huge hats, and they too mixed up some decent-sounding new material (from forthcoming album ‘Donkey’) with all the favourites from their debut album. CSS also get extra kudos, in my book, for being one of the few recognisable acts to ever play a gig in Carlow. You can’t doubt their work-ethic. (Other notables include Doves and Babyshambles by the way. Not that I saw any of them there, but it inspires some county pride in some unspecified part of me.) Anyway, train of thought derailed…. ah yes, CSS - good - they even gave out balloons and vodka, and they sounded great. 7.5 out of 10.

I’m not usually one for ratings out of ten, but just thought it might help to put the three bands in perspective. Well that’s all, away with you, weekend etc. Oh, and the grainy pic above was taken on my medium-tech camera phone - note the hat with attached bunches of flowers.

Yerwan at Fictional Sheep acquired a hape of tickets to the Black Lips gig in Crawdaddy, and offered me one, or two actually, so, liking free stuff as I do, I attended.

First up were/was The Mighty Stef. They/he were/was grand. Grand is a grand word isn’t it. Where I’m from originally, everything was grand. The weather was grand, school was grand, I was grand. Anyway, they/he played some aggressive cowboy sea-shanty music, and did their/his best to liven up the reluctant, sober and scared crowd.

Next were The Things, with their F-grade burger-rock. They weren’t grand at all. They were hilariously bad. 80% of their problem was their singer. He’s a fuck-pillar (insult from FS). “Come on yizz cunts, dis is a rock an’ rowel show,” he declared, “come on, yizz…… c.. cunts,” he went on, somewhat unimaginatively. The other 20% of the problem can be divided thusly - 15% the bassist’s haircut, and 5% the forgettable music. I’ve actually forgotten all of it. Forgettable music can, I think, be entertaining on a given night, if it’s not purveyed by deluded morons. I’ve never come across anybody so unjustifiably assured of his own greatness. The highlight of their set was when the singer left the stage (to climb things and look for attention), and the remaining three, the musicians, played a decent outro. Hold some auditions gents, and lose the (brain)dead weight. (By the way, if I’m missing the point here, and The Things are some sort of Spinal Tapesque parody geniuses, do correct me.)

I don’t want to seem overly negative, or unsupportive of Irish acts. I’m all for local talent, but it seems perhaps that all it takes is for some shitty Irish music rag to get behind a band, and suddenly talent is no longer necessary. Granted, there are a lot of indie-rock acts around, many of which sound similar, but that doesn’t mean bands with a slightly different sound are more notable by default. I’ve seen a lot of Irish bands in the last year, some of them excellent, but The Things were really bad last Saturday night.

Black Lips, according to wikipedia (a reliable and flawless online resource), have a reputation for urinating in their own mouths, vomiting and flashing, and also for catchy flower punk. Thankfully they stuck to the latter. The white-blazered guitarist did spend a lot of his time spitting into the air and catching it in his mouth again, but they were generally an entertaining, talented and completely shit-faced bunch of chaps. Most of their songs seem to fit one of three templates (straight punk, flowerier melodic punk, or bluesy/country/beard punk (I’m not good with genres)), but that didn’t seem to be a bad thing, it sounded great, and the mumbled interludes were likable, amusing and short. “Eh.. this is a good one,” said the leather-capped guitarist before one song. It was.

That’s all for today. Tonight I am going to see the poppy trio of bands CSS, The Futureheads and MGMT in the Academy. It will probably be full of teenyboppers, but it seemed too cheap to turn my nose up at. Wish me luck.

I have no inclination today. Inclination to do what? Exactly.

Here are some of the things floating around on the millpond of my brain:

• Why are Queens of the Stone Age supporting Linkin Park?
• Why do people buy novelty or retro bicycles? For example, the orange ‘high-nelly’ ones that used to be sold in that pointless shop on George’s St, which is now a pharmacy I think. Or, those San Diego style ‘cruiser‘ bicycles, which have no proper brakes. These both cost more than your average bicycle, they offer no advanced functionality (in fact they commonly offer reduced functionality), they make you look like a pretentious ‘tard, and they make people like me aware that you have no common sense. I’m all for novelty and retro in general, but not with bicycles.
• I won the Spanish lottery for the 2nd time yesterday. This time, I won €785,120. I have to call the nice lottery man on the premium telephone number later.
• Why won’t Stinging Fly hurry up and send me a rejection letter in response to the story I sent them? I need closure. (I know, it’s not even been two weeks…. I have no patience.) 
• It’s work-drinks tomorrow night. We accidentally invited a government minister who’s email is similar to that of one of the chaps here, he can’t make it, shame. He did ask us (via his personal secretary) to let him know how it goes though, as he was amused by the twelve “reply to all” emails that followed the group-invite, written in pirate-speak.
• Prague on Saturday.
• I have purchased a day-ticket to the O2 Wireless Festival in Hyde Park, for July 4th. Morrissey, Beck, The National, Guillemots, Siouxsie Sioux, Dirty Pretty Things, New York Dolls and Lightspeed Champion will be on show. I’ve never seen Morrissey live, and haven’t seen Beck since Witnness 2000, so, yes, good.
• I am definitely not going to Oxegen this year.
• I hope they add some more quality to the Electric Picnic lineup. But I’ll go for the pies anyway.
• Shouldn’t deodorant actually be called ‘odorant’?
• Is eating a whole block of cheese in one sitting worse for you than eating the same amount of cheese over the course of a week?
• Robots can ride bicycles (see above).
• I’ll stop this now.

Due to a slight party the night before, I very nearly didn’t go to this gig on Saturday night. Cleaning up a sea of ash-smeared bottles and cans whilst half-dead is painful work - but eventually it was all bagged, pain killers were sourced, a battered sausage was had, and I felt a little better.

So - Crawdaddy, a coke, nothing to sit on, not even a little leanage. Si Schroeder played a supporting solo set, which didn’t amuse me at all. Maybe he’s better with a full(er) band. I suppose I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, and I realise I was in a highly irritable mood, but seriously, I thought he was pretty brutal. Perhaps some of the songs were nice, pretty, deep. I don’t know. I couldn’t get past the weak guitar work and the mumbling. Sing up man, shave, strive for a pleasant guitar tone.

Other irritants included a constantly gurgling water/sewage pipe over my head, a group of people who stood at the back and talked loudly through the whole gig, and a complete cunt of a man and who stood right in front of my face just before DeVotchKa came on stage, then alternated between taking pictures with his huge camera and putting his girlfriend in a headlock whilst talking shite into her ear.

Despite all that, DeVotchKa were fantastic. The four multi-instrumentalists seamlessly blend varied influences and styles, and end up sounding like Mexicans lost in Russia. Or something. It’s easy to see how Beirut have been slotted into their vague pigeonhole. Frontman, Nick Urata, has a remarkable voice, and also chipped in guitars, bouzouki and some nice theremin playing. The dapper Tom Hagerman impressed on violin, accordion and keys. Spotty-dressed Jeanie Schroder (wo)manned the low-end on double-bass and sousaphone (massive wearable tuba), and Shawn King drummed well and made some trumpet cameos.

Don’t ask me what the songs were called, or what albums they were from. I have no idea. But it all sounded great to me. Isn’t it strange. . how four talented, enthusiastic musicians can distract you from homicidal urges. . .

This review is very late, but I’m a slow kind of guy. What’s the rush?

The Young Knives topped the bill at a busy, but probably not sold out Whelan’s last Sunday night. Harry Dartnall on guitar, his brother, ‘The House of Lords’ on bass and Oliver Askew on drums, sweat and spat their way through a decent set of material from their new album, ‘Superabundance’, and played several highlights from ‘Voices of Animals and Men’. The new songs, much like the old, are largely based on quirky lyrics, tight guitars and relentless choruses. The long banter-gaps between songs didn’t seem to take from the flow of the set, and the Dartnalls’ self-depricating humour was well recieved by the crowd.

New singles ‘Terra-firma’ and ‘Up All Night’ proved the best of the new batch, with old favourites like ‘Here Comes The Rumour Mill’, ‘The Decision’ and ‘Weekends And Bleak Days’, adding to a crowd-pleasing set list. One of the highlights of the show was a splendid rendition of Adam and the Ants’ ‘Stand And Deliver’ during the encore - undeniably entertaining stuff.

And a word for support act, Ungdomskulen: Well, actually, Ungdomskulen deserve more than one word. The three Norwegian blokes, who I initially thought were roadies, put on a highly entertaining show, with facial hair, thick spectacles, a fringe, a four-minute wood-block intro, falsetto vocals, expletives, Norwegian irony and epic prog-rock-meets-tongue-in-cheek-pop. They also were obliging chaps, who sold me a record for special price of €4 (if I could produce the exact change), and told me not to drink and drive. I don’t have a car. Czech out half of one of their songs in my podcast, here.

Hello there, fickle blog browser.

I was in Whelan’s last night, to see Be Your Own Pet. They played for something like 34 minutes, left the stage for 30 seconds, then played a one song encore. It was the shortest headline set I have ever seen. They hastened through material from their new album, Get Awkward, and threw in a few from their self-titled debut LP.

Of the new songs, only ‘Becky’ stood out as something slightly different from the rest of their uniform tunes. Of the old, ‘Adventure’ predictably got the biggest reaction of the night. Jemina was suitably energetic, but spent most of the half hour doing what I can only describe as ‘girl-at-a-hen-party-riding-a-mechanical-bull-dance’. The venue wasn’t sold-out, the crowd didn’t seem too bothered, the band didn’t seem too bothered, and it was on the whole, uninspiring stuff.

Save yourself approximately a fiver, go see Fight Like Apes instead.

And a word for support act, Zing: Medium-rare

I had heard that these fellows put on a good show, and they do/did, I can confirm. I’m quite the fan of bands who make some effort visually. I’ve paid to stand there and look at them, not just listen, so a band should appear interesting, or at least not look like they are just bored in a garage somewhere.

Thankfully, guitarist Noble’s face was blue, that was a good start. And the madman (not sure of his name) on keyboards/horns/air-raid siren was more than entertaining, he even managed to climb/jump/fall down from the upstairs balcony mid-set, tuba in hand. And Yan got french-kissed by a fat, topless man during the stage invasion at the end. Stage diving, banter, etc. So it would have been entertaining for the deaf.

Bonusfully, the music was great too. The set consisted mainly of songs from new album Do You Like Rock Music  and debut The Decline Of British Sea Power, with a couple thrown in from Open Season. While some of the new songs are epic and anthemic (Waving Flags, Lights Out For Darker Skies), they still seem to lack the punch and polish of some of the earlier stuff (Remember Me, Carrion etc). The set was brought to a close with the delightfully low-brow, and seeminly Soccer-AM inspired intro to (my current favourite from the new album) No Lucifer. Easy! I even got carried away and bought a t-shirt.

Fun fun.

And a word for support act, Halves - Bleaty.

P.S. - RIP to Jim Dubh On Music, who appears to have fallen on his blog-sword. Now I have one less blog to amuse me in work. Shame. It does make me wonder about blogging though. The reason for this blog’s irregularity is largely due to me wondering why I bother. It often seems like an excuse to not do any proper writing. But that’s another day’s post altogether.

In other news, I feel like listening to Pavement today. Reform you bastards.

In other other news, Cloney Audio are fresh out of Pro-ject Genies. There must have been a run on them.  

The most memorable gigs I attended this year (so far…)

• Led Zeppelin (O2 Arena, London)
• Arcade Fire (Apollo Theatre - Manchester) - Great venue and a fantastic show
• Interpol (RDS)
• Interpol (Oxegen) - If you have to see Interpol outdoors, make sure it’s at sunset in July
• The National (Oxegen) - Slightly better than their Olympia show
• Queens Of The Stone Age (Oxegen)
• Modest Mouse (Electric Picnic) - Great to see them, but the sound was poor
• The National & St Vincent (Olympia)  -Blogged about at length by Jim Dubh & econgirl
• Maximo Park & The Noisettes (Templebar Music Centre) - A surprisingly good show
• Interpol & Blonde Redhead (Alexandra Palace)

And the others that didn’t make the top 10 (including many great acts at the festivals, which may have made it in had I seen their full set/been closer to the front/not been hungover/not been eating an undercooked burger at the time etc…) :

Operator Please (Astoria 2, London), Fight Like Apes (Whelan’s), Fiery Furnaces (Whelan’s), Cold War Kids (Ambassador),  The Flaws (Whelan’s), Juliette & The Licks (Ambassador), Eagles Of Death Metal (Ambassador), Delorentos (TBMC),  Editors (Olympia), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Tripod), Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, The Hold Steady, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Maximo Park, CSS, Bloc Party, The Long Blondes (All Oxegen), Iggy & The Stooges, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Go! Team, Cold War Kids, Bjork,  Fight Like Apes, The Flaws, Rilo Kiley, Architecture In Helsinki, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Jesus and Mary Chain, Jarvis Cocker, Polyphonic Spree, Deerhoof, LCD Soundsystem (All Electric Picnic)

And I think that’s about it… good day to you.

Monday December 10th 2007 was a good day for me. Things went well. I got up at 3:30am to go catch a flight to London. That went well. Then I had a big dirty breakfast before catching up on some sleep in Hammersmith. That all went well too.

Maybe you can see where this is going?

The tickets and wristbands had to be collected at the venue (The O2 Arena (Millennium Dome)), and were only redeemable by producing your credit card and ID - security, touts, evil, blah di blah. Great. So eventually we (myself and the fantastic person who decided to give me her second ticket) were in the venue, in a decent spot - about 20 meters back from the left-hand side of the stage. A beerman sold me bottles of Stella from a backpack cooler. Super.

The crowd was quite unusual, for obvious reasons. Fathers and sons, Brazilians intent on holding up their flags all night, people who had flogged their spare to a stranger, hardcore fans who paid thousands for a single ticket, and strangest of all - no groups. Almost everybody at the gig only knew one other person there - which is quite different from your average gig, if you think about it. “Come on - this isn’t Noah’s ark!” shouted a steward to the slow, bi-linear queue.

A short film about Ahmet Ertegun (a remarkable man by all accounts) preceded the musical events of the evening, and was well received. The support was varied and interesting. Most of the acts only played one or two songs. Foreigner belted out “I Wanna Know What Love Is” and promptly got out of the way. Pete Townshend was replaced by Ronnie Wood on the bill. Neither turned up, nobody cared.

At 9:15 - Led Zeppelin’s first full set since 1978 began. It’s very hard to describe this without sounding like I am exaggerating, so I’ll keep it as factual as possible. The set was preceded by a short and amusing video montage of archive footage from some US TV station comparing the hysteria about their arrival in the states to that of The Beatles. Then it was straight into the music. For two whole hours.

They opened with Good Times Bad Times and Ramble On, before raising the bar with Black Dog and In My Time of Dying. The quality was maintained throughout, with Page sounding Huge, Plant screaming back the years, Jones laying the foundations and Bonham Jr beating the shit out of the drums.

An hour or so into the show and there had still been no lull in proceedings. The never-before-performed For Your Life even got an outing. If the gig had ended after Dazed and Confused (complete with violin-bow guitar interlude) followed by the appearance of Page’s double-necked Gibson magic on Stairway To Heaven, everyone would have left amazed, but there was still more to come, including an epic rendition of Kashmir to close.

This was topped off with two encores (Whole Lotta Love and Rock And Roll), to complete what must go down as one of the most mind-blowing gigs since…. since at least before I was born. I don’t know, I really haven’t been to many things that I can compare this to.

There was something strangely fantastic about seeing three old men (and Bonham, a middle aged man), who have nothing to prove to anybody, blow every other gig I’ve been to out of the water - both in terms of presence and musical brilliance. Page’s ability to play guitar in such an effortless fashion, where he appears to be making it up as he goes along (maybe he is), is jaw dropping. And Plant can still sing - I don’t know if some songs were tuned down a bit, but he didn’t miss a note, and still has the swagger and clarity of the original recordings.

It may seem relatively unimportant, but the lights and video show were spectacular - one of the best I’ve ever seen. The huge video wall was a constantly changing montage of colour, archive footage and live shots from the show. And there were lasers. And dry ice.

I could go on. But you get the idea. It all went well. We even made it back to Hammersmith before the chipper closed. A good day then.

Full Setlist:

1. Good Times Bad Times
2. Ramble On
3. Black Dog
4. In My Time Of Dying
5. For Your Life
6. Trampled Under Foot
7. Nobody’s Fault But Mine
8. No Quarter
9. Since I’ve Been Loving You
10. Dazed and Confused
11. Stairway To Heaven
12. The Song Remains The Same
13. Misty Mountain Hop
14. Kashmir
15. Whole Lotta Love
16. Rock And Roll

Good morning. 

I’ve been out of the blogoffice for a while, but I don’t really care. Sack me if you like, I saw a job advertised in the window of O’Neill’s pub yesterday - “Part-time cleaners required”. I could do that. I’m handy with a brush.

Anyway, I was at Interpol twice this past weekend. Like many other Irish panic-buyers, I was duped into going to both Interpol gigs - the Alexandra Palace gig in London, which was announced a couple of weeks before an Irish date was confirmed, and then I purchased a ticket for the Dublin gig too for good measure. And I am very glad I did.

To save me typing the same speil twice - here is a message I posted on Jim Dubh’s blog, in response to his reviews of the same two gigs:

“Hrm, not sure I agree with you completely here. I was at both gigs too, (Ally Pally and RDS), and it was the 4th and 5th times I’ve seen Interpol live.I thought the RDS show blew the AP show out of the water completely, and was their second best show after the mind blowing Oxegen set of 2005.

I thought the atmosphere was completely inferior at the AP show - most of the crowd didn’t know the album tracks and only got excited by the singles, it was too bright in the venue, and I thought the band seemed very casual and relaxed - which is fine, but I think Interpol are at their best when they are aloof and enigmatic. For me, the RDS show had a better atmosphere, a more knowledgeable crowd, and a more impressive performance.

Both sets were great, and pleasingly different from each other. While the AP gig had the E-bow loveliness of Take You on a Cruise and Scale, plus a rare outing for Specialist, the RDS show had Stella and Untitled. Great stuff.

Anyway, I probably should have just blogged about this instead of writing a whole spiel here. And in the grand scheme of things they were both great gigs. Interesting though, how two people can have such conflicting experiences at the same gigs.. .”

So there. One of my favourite non-musical moments of the RDS show was when some tool threw a red Christmas cowboy hat onstage (one of those awful plastic things that people sell outside gigs (who on earth buys these???? (Why do people use more than one question mark?!?!)), which landed at Paul Banks’ feet. He picked it up, said “Am I supposed to wear this?”, and tossed it back on the ground. Ha. I love it.

I’ve been on a good run of gigs lately, though I haven’t blogged on many of them (I may get around to it sometime). In reverse order, here are the latest ones I can recall:

• Interpol, RDS
• Operator Please - Astoria 2
• Interpol, Alexandra Palace
• Fight Like Apes - Whelan’s
• Fiery Furnaces - Whelan’s
• The National - Olympia
• The Flaws - Whelan’s

To top all that, I have the small matter of some old band of grandads, called Led Zeppelin next Monday in the O2 Arena in London… I’ve heard they’re alright. Also, there will be support from nobodies such as Foreigner, Pete Townshed, Bill Wyman, and the amazing Paulo Nutini. I think he’s a magician or something. Suite.

That’s all for now, my beautiful and rare readers.