In other news, Ladydoll are enjoying a busy buzz as they support the New Bloods on Sunday night at The Whiskey in their hometown of Cork. Later in the month you can catch them supporting the mighty Fighting With Wire in Dolans Warehouse, Limerick on 23 May.
Tuesday night saw HotPress/Tisch Spring 2008 videos premiere in a new home: Temple Bar’s Button Factory. Established events of the Irish music calendar, the premieres celebrate a series of short music video collaborations. Ten bands across Ireland work with student directors from New York’s Tisch School of Arts for a stunning audio/visual showcase of creative potential. The latest batch of bands to find themselves on the silver digicam screen were:
Tickets are priced €10 (daily) or €27 (weekender) and are available at Tickets.ie or on the door. More info…
Along with championing the celebrity of feminity, as a community-based, not-for-profit venture, Ladyfest Cork aims to raise awareness and funds for local charities and places emphasis on quality over quantity. Everyone is welcome to attend with many interesting preferences covered in the schedule to appeal to just about anyone. I personally love to see small ventures like this in communities around the country and wish the organisers and everyone involved a cracking weekend. If anyone has any photos to share, drop me an email (rockeroffher[at]gmail[dot]com)!
If I was a cool mutha, myself and the kids would be hopping into a VW bus and beetling bare-foot down to Cork for sure. Alas, I’m not cool and the closest I’ll get to beetles will be taking the bins out on Sunday.
It seems DownloadMusic.ie will get sued into non-existence if they don’t pay IMRO a license fee for people to be able to download music from their site. No matter if they are already dealing direct with the artist or not. It seems once you are in IMRO you automatically give them the right to be your money collector.
Read the debates on DownloadMusic.ie and Damien Mulley blogs. It’s interesting to read the responses from musicians regarding their rights to stream or sell music from social networking/personal websites….
Road Records celebrate Record Store Day tomorrow April 19th with an array of in-store performances and a four-day sale…I’m marking Record Store Day by celebrating Road.
Befitting a capital city, Dublin is home to many small music shops. Some are well-stocked, bright and airy, catering to specialist demands while some, like Sound Cellar, are dark and gloomy but well-stocked nonetheless. Tucked off South Great Georges’ Street, its mythical status furthered by necessary initiation/directions to find it, Road Records is an established pinnacle of independent music. No other retailer in Ireland can challenge its reputation as an invaluable resource for bands and fans alike and many a mega-friended MySpace bears the store’s avatar with pride.
RTE just don’t get it. I’ll go so far to say the national broadcaster is a bawling disappointment providing a lazy, uninspired schedule of programming failing straight across the board but particularly in its tacky corner of Youth Entertainment.
I realised this when our family returned to Ireland from a long spell in London. Raised on Jackanory, The Lowdown, Newsround, Knightmare, smArt, The Chart Show, TOTP and The Word (!!), I got a nasty shock that first afternoon jumping on to the couch for a slump’n’surf. Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons…imports, imports, imports. Whatever budget set aside for Irish entertainment appeared to extend to a turkey made of sacking and an occasional phone-in from Mona of Monaghan. DenTV’s for squares, twelve years later my two kids agree and refuse to watch anything but The Simpsons…and The Cafe. A show we watch together, I just about managed to get over standard cringeworthy-RTE presentation as it’s a chance for us to catch tunes from my desk and photos I’d be working on. I guess there was a special interest for me and the kids when they saw Noise Control giving it loads and we matched the animals to SEBP. That’s just us though and it’s lucky I have cool stories to spark genuine, early interest in home-grown music. What about the other kids? What’s making Irish music interesting and important to them?
