Panadola Diction

I’d been looking forward to this gig for quite a while, as Real Emotional Trash has been a constant on my MP3 player since it came out. Pitchfork didn’t go crazy about it, and neither did I initially, but I found myself listening to it again and again.

Usually, high expectations are bad things to bring to a gig, but for some reason I found myself telling everyone that I thought the Jicks gig was going to be great (this was partly due to one of my friends pulling out, as the gig clashed with Holland vs Italy). Thankfully, I was right, and it was (great). A solid set of Malkmus material, new and old, was played with enthusiasm by the impressive four-piece. ‘Steve’ as he called himself looked like he was enjoying himself, especially during the instrumental detours common to many of their songs, and he also kept the crowd updated with the Euro 2008 scores. Ex-Sleater Kinney drummer Janet Weiss is probably the best female drummer I’ve seen live - very impressive, and both she and bassist Joanna Bolme chip in with backing vocals. Joanna Bolme’s main weakness seems to be her bladder - it’s not big enough to last a full gig. The ensemble is completed by Mike Clark, who fills the holes with guitar and keys.

Many of Malkmus’ tracks, especially those from the new album, could be described as indulgent - with their convoluted structure and proggy guitar detours, but these seem to translate superbly to the live show, with Malkmus and Weiss playing off each other and really giving it socks*, as they say. It seems that general guitar fun is vying for Steve’s creative affections, which were previously focused on lyrical fun, though anyone who has listened to Real Emotional Trash will know that the lyrics are as Malkmus as ever.

It was an entertaining and charming set, with fine renditions of ‘Cold Son’, ‘Gardenia’ and the sprawling title-track of the new LP - ‘Real Emotional Trash’. The highlight for me was ‘Baltimore’, probably the most indulgent tune of all. It’s just a great guitar-rock song, one that convinces you (if only for an hour or two) that you should find an electric guitar, plug it in and play it until the electricity bill arrives.

A three-song encore wound things up and Steve said his goodbyes, though the rest of the band seemed reluctant to leave, but I suspect the Tripod time-keepers were turning the screw. Despite Holland vs Italy turning out to be the best game of Euro 2008 so far (apparently - trying to catch the highlights on TV is nigh-on impossible, it seems), I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have been as entertaining as this gig.

Support came from the highly amusing Jeffrey Lewis, who warmed the crowd up admirably, with, amongst other things, an illustrated history of communism in Russia (which he somehow tyre-levered into a song of sorts), and the story of the Creeping Brain. Very strange - it shouldn’t work, but it does.

*Anyone know where this phrase comes from? It makes little sense to me. Giving someone socks seems like a very mundane thing to do. Here, I got you some socks.. eh, they’re 100% cotton..

Saturday evening was my first time to see Radiohead in the flesh. I was on a Willy Foggesque ’round-the-world-in-a-hurry trip the last time they were in town, at Marlay Park with support from Beck, and before that, I don’t know, I have no good excuse. So I was eagerly looking forward to ticking one of the few currently active bands whom I have never seen, but want to see off my list (other notables still on the list include Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Morrissey, and Morrissey gets ticked next month).

It was also my first time at a gig at Malahide Castle, and it was, generally, a very agreeable experience. Easy access via the DART, nice open parkland with big old trees and a castle (unsurprisingly), plenty of space, chips, cream cake, beer, toilets, friendly staff at the gate, etc. Also, the great weather kept things (toilets, people in impractical shoes) civilized, and the crowd in good spirits. The stage setup was pretty impressive, with lights and video screens and a dangly curtain of dangly things framing the band.

And then these songs were played, in this order:

01 15 Step
02 Bodysnatchers
03 Airbag
04 Bangers + Mash
05 Nude
06 Pyramid Song
07 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
08 The Gloaming
09 The National Anthem
10 Faust Arp
11 Videotape
12 Optimistic
13 Where I End And You Begin
14 Reckoner
15 Everything In Its Right Place
16 All I Need
17 There There

Encore 1
18 Exit Music (For A Film)
19 Jigsaw Falling Into Place
20 Climbing Up The Walls
21 Planet Telex
22 How To Disappear Completely

Encore 2
23 Super Collider
24 You And Whose Army?
25 Idioteque

So, as you can see, there was a lot of In Rainbows. For those who like numbers, here’s how that breaks down (though maths isn’t my strong point):

• In Rainbows: 9 +1
• Kid A: 5
• Hail To The Thief: 3
• OK Computer: 3
• Amnesiac: 2
• The Bends: 1
• New songs: 1

It was all very impressive, all two hours of it - they sounded huge when they needed to, and delicate they wanted to. Highlights for me included In Rainbows disc 2 tune ‘Bangers + Mash’, ‘Reckoner’, and the entire second encore, which included a brand new song, played solo by Thom on piano - ‘Super Collider’ (which got its debut the previous night apparently).

On balance, looking at the crowd I’d imagine a lot of people were hoping for a few more pre-Kid A tracks (especially when they closed the previous night with ‘Just’ and ‘Paranoid Android’), and of course I would have liked to hear a few of the classics, but maybe Radiohead were going on the assumption that the Saturday (being the quickly sold-out first show) crowd would have more… receptive fans, possibly, whereas the Friday show might attract more of a Best-Of crowd. I don’t know, I could be wrong, maybe they just play whatever they feel like playing, which is, and was, fine by me.

Bat For Lashes sounded interesting, but to be honest, I was more interested in the cream cake I was eating at the time. I couldn’t actually see the stage from my spot on the grass, but it sounded very Bjorkish. I’m usually not so lazy about support acts, but the sun and the grass seemed to demand lazing around and eating. There’s a review of it here (BFL, not the cake), which I largely agree with.

P.S. I took some photos, but haven’t had a chance to upload them yet - I’ll add one later. [done]

It’s been a while since I bought any vinyl, but I couldn’t resist a twelve 7’s for a tenner deal from Borderline Records’ stall in Temple Bar today. It’s mostly stale cheese, but there are a couple of nice finds.

Click the links for youtube videos (you really should, some are hilarious).

• Transvision Vamp - Baby I Don’t Care, mmmmmm Wendy James
  
• Supertramp - The Logical Song, if Jesus had big nose and a ginger beard…
  
• Foreigner - I Want To Know What Love Is, boosting lighter sales since 1984
  
• Chris De Burgh - High On Emotion, De Burgh’s twist on emo, awesome
  
• Baccara - Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, Euro Disco from 1977
  
• Whitesnake - Here I Go Again, more powerful balladry
• KC & The Sunshine Band - Give It Up, the first song I can ever remember remembering, 1983
  
• Jasper Carrot - Funky Moped, strange, very strange
  
• XTC - Making Plans For Nigel, one of my favourite songs
  
• XTC - Generals And Majors, another XTC classic, with video starring Dick Branson
  
• Big Trouble - Crazy World, I bought this because of its weird pop-up gatefold
  
• The 1977 Suzuki Grand Prix, interviews with Barry Sheene and other motorcyclists (video unrelated)

Joy Zipper, Long Island’s dreamy-melodic-indie-poppy couple (+ drummer) played to a sparse but enthusiastic crowd in Crawdaddy on Wednesday night. Tabitha Tindale and Vincent Cafiso seemed happy to be there, and were good humoured throughout, despite Vincent alluding to the place being a ‘rathole’.

Overall, they sounded pretty good, though Tabitha’s keyboard and vocals were sometimes a little too low in the mix. They played an interesting set, mixing up the old and the new, taking a few requests and playing their version of ‘Wave of Mutilation’, which appeared on Pixies tribute album ’Dig For Fire’ in 2007. An encore of ‘Christmas Song’ went down well, though there was no outing for ‘Baby You Should Know’ - probably their best-known song.

It was all fine and nice and unremarkable, and maybe a little harmless, which is not a word I’d like associated with me if I were a musician. The most remarkable thing, for me, was Ms Tindale. It hadn’t crossed my mind before the gig that I’d never seen Joy Zipper and had no idea what they looked like, so I wasn’t expecting her to be so aesthetically pleasing, with her head and her legs and the rest of her.  

Support was from Gavin Glass and the Holy Shakers, a crowd I’d not seen before, but apparently they’ve been rattling around for years. They were good - they have a few great tunes, and there were even peculiar spoken-word interludes from a verbose preacher. Entertaining stuff, but they weren’t as handsome as Tabitha.

I saw Tapes ‘n Tapes last year in The Village, and they were ok. Pretty good. They played the songs and left. But I liked the songs (I still really like their debut album ‘The Loon’). On Tuesday night in Tripod it was more of the same from the Minneapolitans.

I’m not entirely enamoured with their new album ‘Walk It Off’, it has it moments, but overall I think it is weaker than the first one. As a result, the set seemed somewhat diluted in terms of quality. Nevertheless, they played a decent set, with the highlight being a good rendition of ‘Insistor’, directly followed by latest single ‘Hang Them All’.

There was something missing though. It just didn’t seem big enough for me. The charm of many T’n'T songs for me is their ability to twist mellow verses into loud, epic choruses. This was exemplified by ‘10 Gallon Ascots’ on ‘The Loon’, and seems to be a recurring theme. For me, ‘10 Gallon Ascots’ was the most disappointing song of the night, as the supposed epic choruses sounded thin and lightweight. I don’t know, either a new sound engineer or new distortion pedals are needed.

I guess I’m nit-picking, but it’s always disappointing when a band doesn’t seem to do its recordings justice in a live setting. Other gripes included the lack of an encore (again) and the ridiculous Budweiser monopoly at the bar. The only beverages on draught at all these Bud-sponsored gigs are Bud, Guinness and Cashels - all served in cheap plastic glasses. (Or ‘plastics’, as they will be called when I’m in charge).

As for the support acts - Sons & Daughters were unconvincing. Poor sound again seemed to detract (the vocals were indecipherable (though that may just have been the Glasgow accents)). I saw them in around 2003, supporting Franz Ferdinand in The Ambassador, and I don’t remember exactly how that went, but they seemed like a completely different band on Tuesday - more like a band on a victory lap than a band trying to win my affection. The lead singer was wearing short shorts and a dress/top with her back hanging out. Maybe she was over for a hen night.

Port O’Brien were actually very good. They made lots of (good) noise, and mixed it up with some folkie ballads. They put in a lot of energy, and were quite amusing between songs, in a stoned, Californian kind of way - canvassing opinion on the Lisbon Treaty, and generally thinking out loud. Frontman Van Pierszalowski reminded me of a young Terry Bolea. We also bumped into some of them on Aungier St afterwards, and my exclamation of “Hey! It’s Port O’Brien!” seemed to make their evening.

Ireland, like a toddler, needs to be told what’s good for it, and gently spanked every now and then. If you were to allow toddlers to be democratic and rule the country, we’d soon all be eating Liga and staying up all night playing with stickle bricks, which sounds great, but we’d also have vomit on our shoulders and be sitting nonchalantly in our own faeces. Toddlers need a benevolent dictator. As does Ireland. I suggest me.

When I’m in charge, all train drivers will be made redundant and replaced by second-hand games consoles. My research suggests that a 16-bit processing unit would be more than capable of handling a train’s basic controls - i.e. Go and Stop. As a fail-safe mechanism, nerdy pre-junior cert students will be excused from P.E. classes to monitor the consoles (preferably Sega Mega Drives), and be on hand to take manual control in case of an unlikely emergency. These ‘Junior Auxiliary Inspectors’ will be issued train-driver’s hats and blue uniforms. All trains will run exactly on time, with 100% efficiency. Redundant ex-train drivers will be re-trained to do something else, possibly to manufacture hats.

On their breaks, the Jauxis will be encouraged to play the classic Amiga game, Sensible Train-Spotting.

As Emperor Joseph II said, “Everything for the people, nothing by the people.”

A lot of miserable bastards have been complaining about Indiana Jones - joyless deadweight scribblers from the freesheets and various shit-sprongers who had made their minds up before the film was even released.

No lead-in tales of the cinema today - straight to the verdict. I thought this film was great. Yes, it is silly, geographically inaccurate, unrealistic and cheesy……….. but hang on, so were the original three! The visuals have been updated to accommodate a cold war era palette, giving the film the look of a spruced up 50’s classic, and this is complemented by a John Williams score punctuated by Elvis and Bill Haley.  

The film hits the ground running with a great opening sequence, where Indy has a run-in with the delightfully bad Irina Spalko’s (Cate Blanchett) Commies in Area-51, before pausing for breath with the customary university scene. We are then introduced to young biker Mutt Williams (Shia LaBoeuf) before setting off on a chase sequence that more-or-less lasts until the end of the movie.

The action is great. There are some CGI scenes, but there is still enough fist-fighting and gap-jumping to make it classic Indiana. Ford makes the transition to aging Dr. Jones effortlessly, and this is probably his most watchable performance of the last fifteen years. He is, and probably always will be, the (thinking man’s) action-hero against whom all other (thinking man’s) action heroes will be measured.

Of course it’s not perfect. (My least favourite scene involved Mutt and some Tarzanesque action, but I didn’t spit out my popcorn and march out of the cinema.) It could have been better. It doesn’t have Sean Connery in it, it doesn’t have a paper-mache boulder rolling down a ramp, it doesn’t have a Hitler cameo. But it has other things (John Hurt, huge ants, quicksand). It’s not Saving Private Ryan, or Schindler’s List, or ET. But it’s not supposed to be. It’s just another Indiana Jones film.

I’ve read paperfulls of nit-picking reviews about IJatKotCS, giving it two and three stars out of five, but to me this film is blatantly entertaining, slickly put together and does exactly what you might expect from a sequel set 20 years after the originals. If you love the original three, I don’t see how you couldn’t enjoy this.

2 thumbs up out of 2.

The Muxtape has been changed. Here’s the new playlist:

1. Broken Social Scene - Lover’s Spit
2. Tapes ‘N Tapes - Hang Them All
3. Joy Zipper - Baby You Should Know
4. Pavement - In The Mouth A Desert
5. Siouxie and the Banshees - Israel
6. The Strokes - The Modern Age (Peel session)
7. The Young Knives - Stand And Deliver (XFM Session)
8. Radiohead - Bangers + Mash
9. Weezer - Pork And Beans
10. The Duke Spirit - The Step And The Walk
11. Operator Please - Leave It Alone

The title was inspired by a snippet of conversation last week on the way home from Broken Social Scene, where it was agreed that “He was milled by a car transporter” would be the coolest epitaph ever.

I’ve also realised that I didn’t list the songs from my first Muxtape, Jimasphixit, and now it’s gone for ever. So, for posterity, as far as I can remember it was something like:

• The Cure - Grinding Halt
• Black Lips - Katrina
• The Breeders - German Studies
• Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Cold Son
• Elbow - Grounds For Divorce
• Lykke Li - I’m Good I’m Gone
• Santogold - Lights Out
• My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
• Roisin Murphy - Dear Miami
• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds- More News From Nowhere

About two years ago, I went to the bar in Dicey Riley’s Garden and asked for two pints of Smithwicks. I paid with a red note and waited for my change. “40 cent please,” said the bartender. “Ahahaha,” said I, and I vowed never to go there again.

In the interim period I have heard two stories about the place - one involved Colin Farrell, and the other involved a bare-chested man trying to pay a waiter for a round of drinks with cocaine in the toilets, as he’d run out of cash. I think they were unrelated incidents.

Last night, against my better judgement, I went there to meet some friends, to celebrate multiple birthdays. I arrived at 9:30 and was asked to fork out a fiver to enter. Sigh. As I walked in the door, Ireland equalised against Serbia. Woo. I bought a pint of Smithwicks - €5.50. Argh. I met my friends and they told me I was sunburnt, I told them no, it was merely a hat-mark.

Then began two hours of constant harassment from ‘Praetorian Security’ - laughable suited assholes with hi-vis vests telling everyone that they couldn’t stand wherever they were standing. You weren’t allowed stand anywhere in the beer garden - only constant movement was acceptable, apparently. And then there were the heaters, which were on full-blast despite it being a warm evening. And the overcrowding. And the half-hour bar queues. And the music (bad). And the clientèle (vapid). And the €6 lager ( I felt like a peasant drinking my cheap ale).

If I were the son of a property developer and had a bland stripy white shirt with a little designer logo on it, sunglasses on my head and a slack jaw, I would no doubt go to Dicey’s Coke-yard every week and be very successful at pulling sparkly hellpigs.

I can just about understand why someone who worked nearby might go there for a couple of ciders on a sunny Monday evening, but as a venue for a weekend night out, Dicey’s makes no sense to me at all.

I made excuses, left early, headed for the other end of the scale - Carnival (a half-empty, dingy, perfect gloom-hole, with good music and a poorly-stocked bar), and thought about calling in the air strike.

I’m a bit slow with the review I know, but I’ve been busy managing at the frontline. I bought tickets to BSS a yonk ago, and as I had not seen them before I was looking forward to it, despite the other blogs which suggested that Sunset Rubdown or No Age might have been a better allocation of Tuesday night funds. Meh.

And it was great. The publicised no-support-act, three hour set did not materialise. BSS member, Charles Spearin opened the show with the first public performance of his ‘Happiness Project’ - an interesting piece of linguisto-musical experimentation, whereby he recorded conversations with his neighbours and subsequently chopped them up to find interesting melodies in their speech, to later be played over live. It worked quite well, was short and amusing, and seemed to lighten the mood in the slowly filling Vicar St.

I think there were eight BSS members present in total last Tuesday, including Brendan Canning, Amy Millan, Justin Peroff, Evan Cranley, a couple more whose names I didn’t catch, and of course Kevin Drew. They played a great set with plenty of crowd-pleasers and lots of amusing anecdotes in between, including details of what they had for dinner, and musings on Men At Work. A more detailed review and the setlist can be found here on this nice blog I’ve not read before.

For the last hour of the gig I had the dubious pleasure of standing behind a flailing crazy lady. She seemed determined to injure, and her repeated combo attacks of elbow-arse-stamp left me leaning backwards holding my arm in front of my face for safety. She then called me a bastard and complained that my friends were mocking her (they were merely laughing at my predicament). I told her to fuck off in a light-hearted manner, she seemed harmless enough. A few minutes later, after a wrist-elbow combo to the face, she turned around and hugged and kissed me like I was a long-lost puppy. All very confusing. Her male friend/bag-holder tried to distance himself throughout, and looked relieved when she suddenly announced that she was going home.

Anyway, yes, good gig, impressed, disgustingly talented musicians, good crowd, free tickets in exchange for fake email addresses (a choice of Tapes ‘n Tapes, Joy Zipper, Stephen Malkmus, De La Soul, etc. (already had T’n'T and Malkmus, De La Soul disappeared pretty quickly, so took Joy Zipper), not a bad Tuesday night at all.