New blog on the way!

 

Apologies to my four regular readers for the lack of updatiness of late, I’ve been very VERY busy writing for the totally wonderful Totally Dublin… they’re tough task masters Anyway, thanks to the slew of lovely and talented people at TDHQ, we’re hoping to attempt some form of a collective online info centre for all things creative, entertaining and trivial. Watch this space. 

 

xx Sheena

Jape scoops Choice Award

The lovely and talented Richie Egan AKA Jape was announced the winner of the 4th Annual Choice Music Prize last night at a ceremony in Vicar Street. Jape beat out an extremely high calibre of nominees including RSAG, Halfset, Messiah J and the Expert and Fight Like Apes.

Below is a clip of the Hot Chip-esque ‘Strike Me Down’.

 

A nice cup of tea and a sit down with Greg Wilson

 

 

Legendary Electro-Funk DJ Greg Wilson is in town tomorrow night to share his wealth of experience and industry knowledge with an audience in The Twisted Pepper over a nice cup of Barrys Tea before taking to the decks for an extended set. 

Lucky me got to interview Greg for Totally Dublin’s website so if you’re interested in what the man who has been the main influence in the careers of Norman Cook, A Guy Called Gerald and Shaun Rider has to say for himself, you can take a peek here. 

 

Greg was also the first person to mix two records together live on television in 1983 on ‘The Tube’, presented by a very young Jools Holland. The clip below is priceless

Grainne Duffy – Rather Go Blind

As seen on ‘Other Voices’ tonight, Grainne Duffy proving that Irish women can sing the blues. Is it just me or does the incessant background chatter add to the charm?!

 

Competition Time!!

 

Thanks to the lovely folk responsible for Hush at the Royal Albert Hall, I have  tickets to give away for the gig on the 24th February. The show will feature Ben Onono, Roxy Rawson and my personal favorite, Orphans & Vandals. All you have to do to get your mits on a pair of tickets is leave a comment telling me ONE of the acts performing at Hush. 

Good luck!!

Airplane food just ain’t what it used to be…

Admittedly, this is one doing the rounds on blogging sites all over t’internet at the moment, but it was too good to pass up. Best complaint letter ever! (Afterthought: Maybe we should get this guy to have a word with Michael O’Leary…)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________-

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:

 

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation: 

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: 

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: 

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: 

 Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly…

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Original text swiped from here http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blog/editors_corner/article/11975/

Thanks to MMG to alerting me to this one

MacBecks

MacBecks, a musical comedy about a certain footballer and his demanding popstar wife, is currently running at the Olympia Theatre, before moving to the Cork Opera House on the 2nd February for a 2 week stint. I went to see the show at the weekend and would highly recommend it – it will brighten up an otherwise dreary January day. Afterwards, I caught up with Paul Reid, who plays MacBecks in the show, to grill him on how it felt to play the larger than life role that satirises this  ’certain celebrity footballer’.

 

My interview with Paul for Totally Dublin can be read here. 

Hush at The Royal Albert Hall

Back in August ‘08 I posted something akin to a slushy love letter to a song that I had heard from little-known band, Orphans & Vandals. The song is called Mysterious Skin and it remains firmly in my top 10 tracks of 2008. Much to my dismay however, Orphans & Vandals did not become the overnight success that I had predicted, but rather seem to be something of a slow-burner. This, I have decided, can only be a good thing. Rather than becoming the next band to fall victim to the turbulent trappings of superstardom, Orphans & Vandals are slowly winning a mounting fan-base that will stick with them for longer than the time it takes to sign a contract. The only issue that I have with this refusal to play nice within the world of  indie-scene whoredom is that we never get to bloody hear them, much less see them.

Imagine my delight, so, when I discovered this:

Orphans & Vandals will play alongside ‘beautifully peculiar’ violinist Roxy Rawson in support to Ivor Novello Award nominee, Ben Onono, on the 24th February ‘09 for Hush at the Royal Albert Hall. Hush, which takes place within the intimate confines of the Royal Albert Hall’s opulent Elgar Room, has played host to such highly acclaimed acts as Absentee, Hot Club de Paris and Slow Club. Hush was designed to give emerging artists the opportunity to play at the historic Royal Albert Hall and also to give the venue itself a chance to transcend genres and generations by appealing to a younger and more eclectic crowd.

Headliner on the night, Ben Onono, is best known for his work in the dance music industry and has collaborated with the likes of Fatboy Slim and Bob Sinclair in the past. In 2008 Ben was nominated for the prestigious Ivor Novello Award for Songwriting for co-writing the hugely successful ‘It Just Won’t Do’ with DJ Tim Deluxe. Born in Cardiff, Onono moved to West Africa as a child where he cultivated his musical tastes. As a classically-trained pianist, Onono’s latest album sees him return to his roots with sublime acoustic melodies that incorporate a twist of electronica resulting in a sound that span continents and gives a fresh perspective on world music.

Roxy Rawson has been closely compared to Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor (and there’s more than a hint of similarity to 2008’s media-darling Florence and the Machine, in her vocal cords). Rawson is set to join the burgeoning list of LadyPoppers expected to make waves in the music industry in 2009. Her classic violin and piano training and her capricious attitude to songwriting combine to produce a playful yet polished collection of songs that are just off-kilter enough to separate her from her peers.

So if you find yourself in London on the 24th February, my advice is to snap up a ticket to Hush. At just £10.00 (£7.50 in advance) you’d be mad to miss it. Further information and tickets available here.

Can’t Hear My Eyes

This song has been looping around in my head for the best part of a week now so I thought I’d try to exorcise it by  sharing it with y’all.  The track, I Can’t Hear My Eyes, is the latest from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – which is really more of a project than a band.

Pink, self-indulgent control freak or visionary musical genius, depending on who you talk to, was first thrust into the spotlight in 2003 when he gave a homemade CD-R to Animal Collective, which led to him becoming the first act to be signed to their newly-formed record label, Paw Tracks. Since then he has built a steady cult following, stopping short of receiving the critical acclaim that label-mates Animal Collective have garnered, due perhaps to his obscure production techniques. Pink records much of his material at home using simple recording equipment in order to achieve a sound as ‘un-produced’ as possible. His albums are littered with tape hiss and production blips that make them  sound like they were recorded on a mono cassette recorder in someone’s garage circa 1970. Influences can be picked out when listening to his music and patches of everyone from Hall and Oates and Roxy Music to Frank Zappa and  Talking Heads are sewn together to produce a sound that is decidedly un genre-specific (that’s what we like). Forced to describe it, you could say that his music is something of a new wave, 1980’s pop, lo-fi kind of muddle, but the afore-mentioned eccentric recording techniques give it a lovely gritty finish.

I love it anyway… let me know what you think.

Free Art Friday

 

If you’re at a loss for summat to do tomorrow, why not saunter around the city picking up some free art along the way? Free Art Friday is bringing em, free art, to the streets of Dublin with guerrilla-style drops at various locations around the city. Organised by Will Saint Leger, All City Records and Micromedia amongst others, Free Art Friday provides an opportunity to make art accessible to everyone by asking artists of all disciplines, working through a variety of mediums, to submit pieces for the event. On the back of each piece will be the artist’s name and contact details so that you can get in touch and tell them where their beloved work has found it’s new home! More info available at http://freeartfridayireland.wordpress.com/. 

 

Happy hunting!!!