Monthly Archives: April 2009

Summer Dresses & Pink Pyjamas

jimjams

The particular clothing habits of certain Limerick ladies was a popular topic of conversation this weekend. Last night, I celebrated Munster’s Heineken Cup success with my friend, Micha, and his girlfriend, Stefanie, both visiting from Germany. The combination of Munster’s magnificent win over the Ospreys and the bank holiday meant that the town was packed. This wasn’t a problem for Micha who had studied in Limerick for a year, although this was his first time back in four years. It was great to catch up on old times and to sample a couple of pints with him around the city. It was my first time meeting Stefanie, so she found the whole thing fascinating. Fortunately, she’s got a great sense of humour and a big laugh, and she seemed to enjoy her first visit to the best city in Ireland. Unfortunately, Stefanie doesn’t like walking. So we took her on a tour of the pubs in the city. A walking tour.

As we walked downtown and queued to get into one of the busier drinking establishments, Stefanie couldn’t conceal her amazement at the fashion show that the ladies were putting on for everyone. Even though it had been a warm, sunny day it had gotten cooler and drops of rain were starting to renew acquaintance with the streets of Limerick and with the heads of its citizens. Despite these conditions, a large proportion of the women were wearing summer dresses, short skirts, and little else. I had to explain to Stefanie that this was a common sight at any time of the year and it was the same in every town and city all over Ireland and Britain. I told her that I’ve often witnessed ladies shivering and complaining of the cold as they emerged into the streets during the winter months. At least they never have to worry about cloakroom charges or being unable to find their jackets at the end of the evening

Earlier today, Micha and Stefanie came in and said goodbye to me at work as they embarked upon the final part of their Irish trip. It’s a good thing that Stefanie wasn’t around this evening when two more of Limerick’s finest came into the internet cafe at which I work. This time they weren’t dressed in their summer clothes, but in their night clothes. And not just any old night clothes, but the brightest, pinkest pyjamas you could imagine. If wearing summer clothes in winter has become popular at nighttime, then wearing pyjamas in the daytime is also becoming a common sight in towns across Ireland and England. As the two ladies surfed the web, I decided to make their experience even more enjoyable. I put together a playlist consisting of songs to do with beds, sleepiness, and laziness. Here are a few of the songs I played for these two sleepyheads

Clothes Line Saga (Bob Dylan cover) – Suzy & Maggie Roche

Two Sleepy People (cover) – Devon Sproule & Paul Curreri

The Bed’s Too Big Without You (Police cover) – Sheila Hylton

Later…With Jools Holland

Later...with Jools Holland

Jools Holland‘s 34th season of Later kicked off on the BBC last week. I’ve been tuning into this show for years now and I’ve often seen lots of my favourites on it, as well as acts that would become favourites. The show features a half dozen different performers who play between one and three songs depending on the level of fame they have achieved. There is always a diverse range of musical styles on offer and, while I’m not into everyone that appears on the show, I always enjoy the live songs and occasional chats between the show’s genial host and guest. The regular Friday night show is preceded by a shorter taster episode that goes out on Tuesday nights. The first instalment set a nice standard for the series to follow and featured these six acts


The Specials are back together again and will surely be busy on the festival circuit this summer. The original line-up formed in Coventry in 1977 and lasted until 1981, after which they were known as The Special AKA. Gangsters was the first of seven seven consecutive top ten hits they had in the UK between 1979 and 1981

Gangsters – The Specials

Franz Ferdinand were formed in Glasgow in 2002. They won the Mercury Music Prize for their self-titled debut album in 2004, although their subsequent two albums have not shown any significant improvement. Recently, they performed their version of a Britney Spears tune on BBC radio

Womanizer (Britney Spears cover) – Franz Ferdinand

Karima Francis was one of two acts on the show that I hadn’t heard of before. She looks like Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan in I’m No There only with bigger hair. Vocally she has been compared to Joan Armatrading. Her first album, entitled The Author, has just been released. This is her version of a Kings of Leon tune

Use Somebody (Kings of Leon cover) – Karima Francis

Yeah Yeah Yeahs are a New York trio fronted by Karen O. Their third album, It’s Blitz, has just been released. Their version of a track by their fellow New Yorkers is from the charity album, War Child Heroes

Sheena Is a Punk Rocker (Ramones cover) – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Also from New York, Carole King had been part of a successful songwriting partnership with Gerry Goffin before achieving success as a solo artist. Tapestry (1971) is one of the best-selling albums of all time and has just been reissued. So Far Away was one of the songs that she performed on the show

So Far Away – Carole King

The Mummers were also new to me and I really liked their sound and look. They are the latest band to emerge from Brighton, even though their sound is quite different as it combines elements from marching bands and string quartets. March of the Dawn is taken from their first album, Tale to Tell, which has just been released

March of the Dawn – The Mummers

The Pub’s Got No Beer!

no-beeer

Easter has arrived again and tomorrow is Good Friday, also known as Great Friday or Black Friday. From midnight tonight until just before lunchtime on Saturday the sale of alcohol in public houses, supermarkets and off licenses is not permitted in the Republic of Ireland. Apparently, it will be possible to buy drinks on trains and at train stations with a bar, although you will need to produce a valid rail ticket as proof of travel. A small price to pay, surely. Not only that, but most supermarkets and off licenses will be extremely busy tonight as people stock up on beverages for tomorrow. The irony is that there will probably be more alcohol drank tomorrow that there would have been if the pubs remained open. It is, of course, always more fun to engage in a regular activity when that activity has been prohibited, even if it is only for 24 hours

I had considered attending the Great Friday Festival, a music event that will take place at a secret location in the environs of Limerick city. Unfortunately, that secret location will most likely be a field and the amount of rain falling at the moment has put me off the idea. If you don’t mind a little rain, you can find more information about the trip on an earlier post here. Instead, I plan to travel to rural Tipperary tonight to sample fine wines, even finer food, and the finest conversation at a restaurant called Roots. I’ve heard that the chef is quite accomplished, even though he’s from Australia. In the meantime, here are a few tunes for the day that’s in it, beginning with one from the land down under

Slim Dusty was a country singer from New South Wales whose Pub With No Beer (1957) was the most successful single up to that time in Australia. The pub does have some wine, but the clientele agree that “there’s-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear/Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer”. The song was translated into different languages and was quite popular in Belgium, Austria and Germany in the 60s. The song has also been recorded by The Dubliners and by Johnny Cash

Pub With No Beer – Slim Dusty

Jens Lekman is a Swedish singer-songwriter who now calls Australian his home. For folks in rural Sweden, according to this song, Friday night is bingo night. It’s quite a bouncy, humorous ditty with witty lyrics that seems to be both a celebration and a critique of Swedish country life. I don’t know if bingo is also prohibited in Ireland on Good Friday but, if it’s not, it might be an exciting alternative for anyone who’s at a loose end tomorrow

Friday Night (At the Drive-In Bingo) – Jens Lekman

Finally, I’ll part with a Celtic drinking song from a band that’s had more drinks that some small nations. The Parting Glass originated in Scotland at the end of the 18th century, though its tune was around a few centuries before that. The song travelled to Ireland where the lyric changed over the years. On his 1964 album, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Bob Dylan used the tune, but changed the words, for his own song, Restless Farewell. So, join with me as I raise a parting glass in the company of The Pogues: “Good night and joy be with you all”

The Parting Glass – The Pogues

Remembering REM

counting_sheep

Cover Lay Down is one of my favourite blogs and I’ve been following it since its inception in 2007. It’s a music blog and each song on the site is a cover version. In addition, all the songs featured are either covers of folk artists or folk versions of songs by non-folk performers. Last weekend, the band chosen for coverage was REM, the Athens, Georgia outfit who have been performing for nearly three decades now. The post features ten covers of REM songs plus three tracks covered by REM. You should definitely check out the versions by Grant Lee Phillips, Rosie Thomas and Redbird as well as REM’s brilliant version of Gentle on My Mind, a song made famous by Glen Campbell. Below you’ll find three more songs covered by REM. The original performers of these songs are certainly not folk performers, but I think that REM bring an element of folk to each of the tracks. Only one of the songs features drums and all three feature some nicely strummed acoustic guitar and at least two of them feature acoustic bass

The Troggs were an English group who had a number of hits in the sixties, most notably Wild Thing. Love Is All Around was a top ten hit for them in Britain and the US in the late sixties. In 1991, they made an album called Athens Andover with three members of REM. In the same year, REM recorded Love Is All Around as a b-side of their single, Radio Song, and also for their MTV Unplugged appearance. The song features bassist Mike Mills on lead vocals with Michael Stipe not doing too badly on backing vocals. Apparently, the song was also a hit for an alliterative English band a few years later, although that particular version seems to reside somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain

Love Is All Around (Troggs cover)

Arms of Love was the b-side of Man on the Moon (1993) from their album Automatic For the People (1992). The song was written by Robyn Hitchcock and would appear to have been kicking around on live albums by him since 1991. Hitchcock began his career in the late seventies with The Soft Boys and has mainly been backed by the Egyptians as a solo artist. He has also appeared with REM’s Peter Buck in The Venus 3. He is not related to Alfred, but has made minor appearances in two films by Jonathon Demme, who also directed Storefront Hitchcock, a live gig filmed in a department store

Arms of Love (Robyn Hitchcock cover)

REM performed a version of the Editors‘ Munich for BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge series in March 2008. The Editors’ original version appears on their debut album, The Back Room (2005). The song was also covered for the BBC by Corinne Bailey Rae in 2006. The Editors had previously covered REM’s Orange Crush

Munich (Editors cover)

Happy Birthday, Seán

5th-birthday
A person who never fails to put a smile on my face celebrates a significant milestone tomorrow. I’d like to wish a happy fifth birthday to my nephew, Seán. I’m sure he’ll have a great day with his brother, Patrick, and I hope he’ll share some of his presents with his younger brother. So, I’d like to share a couple of songs with my two nephews. The first song is for the birthday boy and is a version of Altered Images’ Happy Birthday. It contains a sample of Marilyn Monroe singing birthday greetings to JFK in anticipation of his 45th birthday in 1962. The other song is for his little brother who is not yet three

Happy Birthday (Altered Images cover) – The Wedding Present

Not Yet Three – Jonathan Richman

(What’s So Funny About) Peace Love & Understanding?

Ferguson & McGregor
It’s been an eventful week for the Rangers pair, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor. Last weekend, the two players were suspended from the Scottish team after they had been caught trying to summon up a bit of Dutch courage following their defeat by Holland the night before. Rather than taking their punishment like men the feckin’ eejits decided to act like a couple of schoolboys. As the cameras focused on them during Scotland’s subsequent match against Iceland, the two boys decided to give them the two-fingered salute. As a result the Scottish FA banned the boys for life and Rangers FC have fined and suspended them for a few weeks. This website was so shocked that they invented a new spelling for the word punishment.

While it’s obvious that the boys won’t be showing up on Mastermind any time soon, I think that their gestures may have been misinterpreted. Perhaps the lads were trying to put the bunny sign on each other, but they put their hands in the wrong place. Or maybe they were showing their support for their teammates with a V for victory sign. Surely, it’s possible that the fellas are fans of Star Trek or Mork & Mindy and were simply saluting their heroes. My guess is that they were only asking for some peace, love and understanding.

Bunny ears
V is for Victory
Nanoo nanoo
Live long & prosper
Peace

(What’s So Funny ’bout) Peace, Love & Understanding? – Brinsley Schwartz

Soul Finger – The Bar-Kays

The 50 Best Irish Music Acts Right Now (Almost)

Nighttime Limerick - A place rarely visited by Irish Times music journalists

Nighttime Limerick - A place rarely visited by Irish Times music journalists

Every Friday afternoon I buy a copy of The Irish Times and sometimes, if I’m up earlier, I buy it around midday. I used to buy it more often but at nearly €2 a pop I don’t think it’s such good value anymore. I buy it on a Friday because of its weekly supplement, The Ticket. It provides me with reviews, interviews and articles about music, bands, films and filmmakers that come from (or are coming to) Ireland. I read it as a cultural tourist because if I want to see the bands or films written about I usually have to travel to Dublin in order to do so

In Ireland, the national print and broadcast media are all based in Dublin. What can you do? It’s a small country and the largest concentration of people is in its capital city. What it means in terms of how the news is presented is that there tends to be a bias towards the capital city at the expense of the rest of the country.The situation is even worse for music and film fans who happen to live outside Dublin. Due the size of its population the majority of musical acts will only play gigs in the capital. Therefore, the majority of press coverage concerning live gigs tends to focus on Baile Átha Cliath

Today’s front page of The Ticket promised to reveal The 50 Best Irish Music Acts Right Now. I was intrigued. I’m Irish. I like music. I like lists. I like right now. As I queued up to pay for the paper and as I left the shop I wondered which of my favourites would be there. I wondered how many of the usual suspects would turn up yet again. Mostly, I wondered how many acts from Limerick would be on the list. I even wondered about the process they went through to choose the final fifty. I thought about the music industry figures and writers and maybe even musicians who must have been involved in the creation of this definitive list of recent musical talent from Ireland

While waiting for a cup of tea and a sit-down I had a quick flick through the list. Half of The Ticket’s 32 pages are given over to listings and today’s cover feature took up five whole pages of the remainder. As I skimmed through the pages I was equally surprised, delighted and puzzled by the selections on offer. It did indeed include many of my own favourites, the usual suspects and even a number that I hadn’t heard of before. But, the closer I got to the end the more I began to realise that I hadn’t seen any Limerick bands on the list. I sat down and looked at it more closely, but I couldn’t find a single act from Limerick. The closest person to Limerick that I managed to find was Clare-born fiddler Martin Hayes

As I looked at it again, I noticed a few more acts from around the country that were also missing. I also discovered how the list had been put together. What I had in front of me hadn’t been compiled by a diverse selection of music figures based in Ireland. Rather, it was an amalgamation of the collected musical preferences and prejudices of just four individuals: The Ticket’s music journalists. I must admit that I felt a little cheated. This list wasn’t The 50 Best Irish Acts Right Now. It was The 50 Best Irish Acts Right Now Chosen By The Four Music Journalists From The Ticket Section of The Irish Times. Admittedly, that is a bit of a mouthful and it would have been hard to fit on the cover. But that is what this list is

I too have my own particular musical preferences and prejudices. I agreed with some of the choices on the list, disagreed with others, and didn’t know enough about the rest to have an opinion, but I’m looking forward to checking them out. Over on the right you’ll see different groups of lists arranged by categories that link to various sites. The first link category is Bands From Limerick and it includes a number of Irish bands that happen to be based in Limerick. I’ve listened to their music in recorded form or seen them at gigs more than once and, while I’m not saying that all of them should be on The Ticket’s list, I find it hard to believe that none of them have made the grade. However, I must admit that this list is biased and prejudiced. I must reveal that, while I’m not married to anyone on my list, I am personally acquainted with nearly everyone in those bands. What can you do? It’s a small country. And Limerick’s a small town. An awful lot smaller than Dublin

Limerick’s Great Friday Festival 2009

She’s a Killer Queen

"Tell me, Mr Obama, what compression rate did you use?"

"Tell me, Mr Obama, what compression rate did you use?"

Baracka Obama is in Europe this week and one of his engagements was an audience with the Queen of England. To mark the occasion, the US President presented the British monarch with a shiny new iP*d. He also filled the player with videos of her 2007 visit to the US as well as mp3s of forty Broadway show tunes. My guess is that she already has these ones: There’s No Business Like Show Business, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and Send in the Clowns. Much of the comment concerning the gift has focused on its appropriatness, the legality of the mp3s, and alternative suggestions as to what tunes he should have chosen. What the American president may not have realised, however, is that Her Royal Highness already has an iP*d. Unsurprisingly, the songs on her favourites list are low on hip hop, punk and metal, but high on those show tunes and other easy listening favourites. For the first time here, I present the five most played tracks on Queen Elizabeth II’s iP*d

One of the biggest hits of the wartime years was The Andrews Sisters‘ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The song tells of a drafted bugle player who is unhappy because he cannot practice.  But things improve when his captain drafts more musicians into his unit and they form a band. The song was recorded in 1941 and was performed by the group in that year’s film, Buck Privates, for which the ladies received an Oscar nomination. In 1945, Elizabeth Windsor joined the Women’s Auxilliary Territorial Service, training as a driver and mechanic

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy – Andrews Sisters

In 1946, 20-year-old Elizabeth’s dad, King George VI, awarded the OBE to the popular entertainer, George Formby. Although often associated with the ukulele, the singer from Wigan actually played a cross between a banjo and a ukulele called the banjolele. Formby did much to entertain troops and keep the nation happy at home and both his songs and his films were popular during wartime. Leaning on a Lampost sold 150,000 copies upon its release in 1937

Leaning on a Lamp Post – George Formby

As part of her education, Princess Elizabeth studied French and still speaks the language fluently. La Mer by Charles Trenet was adapted into an English language version, Beyond the Sea, made famous by Bobby Darin in 1960. Trenet’s original was written in 1943 on a train journey with two of his friends. Bernardo Bertolucci’s film, The Dreamers (2003), made good use of Trenet’s original, though I do not think that this film would amuse the Queen

La Mer – Charles Trenet

Elizabeth II has been Queen since 1953. One of her duties is to attend the annual Royal Variety Performance, which brings together popular singers and comedians of the day. One of the attendees was Benny Hill, whose song, Ernie (the Fastest Milkman in the West) was a Christmas number one in 1971. This moving tale, based on the his experiences as a milkman, chronicles a bizarre love triangle involving a milkman and a bread delivery man as they compete for the affections of a widow on their route. The song was chosen by David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, on a 2006 episode of Desert Island Discs

Ernie – Benny Hill

In the days before iP*ds, computers, satellite TV and computer games the majority of families used to sit in front of the telly and watch programmes on the two or three channels that were available to them. For many years in the 70s, most families in England, including the Royal family, watched the Morecambe & Wise Christmas Specials in their millions. Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise were a comic duo whose regular show featured comedy sketches, lighthearted songs and weekly guests. Bring Me Sunshine was their signature tune and was often used to close their shows and I’m sure the lads wouldn’t have minded me using it here to close this post

Bring Me Sunshine – Morecambe & Wise