The Indie Hour Says Goodbye…
Heathers – What’s Your Damage?
…to badly updated blogging. And, yes, to the radio as well. But only for a bit.
Tomorrow night I’m delighted to say we will be joined by Heathers. At 9pm on 103.2 Dublin City FM, we will be playing through their bleedin’ brilliant album Here, Not There, which will definitely be at my Best Of End of Year list thing. It’s class. I’m really looking forward to chatting to Heathers about the album as well as their US Tour with Ghost Mice, from which they returned today.
Tomorrow also hails the last indie hour for about a month. I’m going to take a wee break to regroup and freshen up the show a bit. The second Thursday in July was my fourth year broadcasting on Dublin City FM. In those years, the format hasn’t changed too much so I think it’s time for a bit of a shake-up. I’ve also only ever missed about 7 Thursdays in all those weeks so I’m looking forward to going out for a beer after work on a Thursday should I feel like it!
I’ll be back on Thursday nights from 9 to 10pm on 103.2 FM from September 4th onwards. I’ll be popping by this blog anyway in the meantime with updates of gigs and all that. I’ll have to do a bit of a Mantua post-festival thingy. And I still have to post the last three weeks of the show as podcasts!
So in the meantime, do tune in tomorrow night. Especially if you haven’t heard Heathers yet. They’re completely amazing. Gush!
Mantua…bring it…
My first attempt at a shakey face at the Mantua Music Festival in Roscommon, 2007
Mantua is going to be a giggle this weekend. Last year was a laugh, and this weekend down in Roscommon promises to be even better.
If you haven’t got your ticket yet, and you have yet to define your plans for the August Bank Holiday weekend, head to the Mantua Project website for details on how you can join in on the frivolity of a weekend in a field with a bunch of lovely, lovely people.
Fight Like Apes build a tower in Wicklow…
Jaime, Maykay and Tom Apes on the indie hour last year by Ian Oliver
We were joined tonight by Tom and Jaime from Fight Like Apes (pictured above) , who were a barrel of buckfast fuelled laughs. They weren’t drinking Buckfast during the show, but many of the tales they regaled us with had a Buckfast subplot. It was heart warming.
Anyway, they’re playing in Tower Records on Wicklow Street, Dublin, tomorrow at 5pm so you should head down for a bit of lightsabre cock-sucking action. You heard me. Lightsabres.
The mp3 of the show will be up on the blog soon…
Having to fight like an ape tomorrow night…
Do tune in tomorrow night from 9 to 10pm on 103.2 Dublin City FM when we will be joined by Fight Like Apes.
As you can see from the photo above, we had a right auld giggle when the Apes visited us just over a year ago. This time, Adrian and Tom will be with us to talk about their new album and maybe give us a sneak preview of a few of the new tracks. Oh, I do hope so.
If you miss the show live on the wireless, I’ll have it uploaded on this here blog as soon as possible.
Brazilian Time OR How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Radio with Brazilians
Rodrigo Teles flies over Jonathan De Andrade, Aoife Mc & Aoife Giles photographed via remote control by Aoife Giles. Which incidentally is pretty flippin’ cool. Remote control photography. What next?
The title of this blog post refers to the fact that Brazilians (to make a hilariously redundant sweeping statement on a nation of nearly 190 million people) are wondiferously laid-back. It’s not as if Irish people are known for punctuality or rigidity but we have a lot to learn about taking it easy from our South American brothers and sisters.
At about three minutes to broadcast time on Thursday the 3rd of July, Rodrigo Teles of Super Extra Bonus Party fame and his friend Jonathan De Andrade are still burning the tracks they want to play on the fast approaching indie hour to CDRs from Jonathan’s impressive collection of Brazilian folk music on his Apple Mac. We still haven’t worked out a playlist for the show, although we had met the night before in The Cobblestone and talked about our idea for the Brazilian special over creamy pints of Guinness with the other guest, Aoife Giles.
I’m starting to get a bit panicky and Aoife Giles looks at me with a wry smile and laughs. ‘This is how things always happen in Brazil. You just have to resign yourself to it and have faith that it will all work out in the end.’
And work out it did. I’m really happy with this show, our third indie hour crash course, because I think we managed in an hour to introduce people to a sliver of what Brazil has to offer musically.
It was Rodrigo, from São Paulo, who I approached first about the idea a few months back and it was he who introduced me to Jonathan, a percussionist from the north eastern state of Bahia. I’ve known Aoife Giles for a few years through mutual friends and was interested in getting her perspective of Brazilian music as an Irish person who lived in São Paulo for two years. Rodrigo and Jonathan were taken aback by Aoife’s perfect São Paulo accent the night before in The Cobblestone, and while they talked freely in Portuegese over the aforementioned creamy pints, I thought for the eight millionth time that I really must learn another language.
I digress. Rodrigo, Jonathan and Aoife came on the show and spoke about their own experiences of Brazilian music and what it meant to them. Brazil being so huge means that there were naturally hundreds of genres and sub-genres that we could have discussed. Limited to an hour, we decided to approach it in a more personal way, with each of them playing two tracks that they felt highlighted some of their favourite styles of Brazilian music.
I chose Take It Easy, My Brother Charles from Jorge Ben to start off the show, and followed it with Domingo No Parque from Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes, both lifted from the excellent Tropicalia compilation which Niall introduced to me last year.
Jonathan chose Jimmy Cliff’s samba reggae version of No Woman No Cry, as an example of the blending and mixtures of genres within samba that he first identified with as a young musician. He also chose the live version of Chover from Cordel do Fogo Encantado and he told us how Brazilian music is all about sharing and mixing it up. He spoke about how we all need to pull down the walls and share music around the world, and that surely that’s what we’re all here for – overstepping the boundaries between cultures and using music to identify with one another.
Aoife continued with the theme of the sharing aspect of music in Brazilian culture. Her introduction to Brazilian music began as part of a youth theatre group in Dublin where a teacher taught the group a lot about Samba. When she got to São Paulo, her Brazilian friends were delighted to tell her about their music and she soon realised that Brazil’s musical landscape is so much more diverse than one might expect even from such a huge country. She also spoke about working with the project of Digital Culture, commisioned by the office of Gilberto Gil, one of the fathers of Tropicalia who is now Brazil’s Minister for Culture. Aoife picked Caetono Veloso’s gorgeous track O Leaonzinho about a little lion and Mestre Ambrosio Pe-de-Calcada which makes one want to get up and dance.
Rodrigo, MC from Choice Prize winners Super Extra Bonus Party, talked to us about São Paulo hip-hop and the similarities between how Brazilians and Irish people blend styles to create new music. He played the very funky Sossego from Tim Maia as it was something his father, a São Paulo DJ, would have played in one of his sets and it reminds Rodrigo of the different musical styles he grew up listening to. We finished up the show with another Rodrigo recommended track, this time from Marcelo D2 called A Maldicao Do Samba which highlights the fusion of traditional and hip-hop styles of Brazilian music.
We could have kept talking for a few more hours but sadly ran out of time. Perhaps we can do a Brazilian Time Crash Course Part Two. Bring it on.
Jonathan, Aoife Mc, Aoife Giles and Rodrigo. Now that’s how you strike a pose. Word.
MP3
Brazilian Time: The Indie Hour Crash Course #3
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David Turpin and a residency in Whelan’s
David Turpin by Mark Duggan / White Noise Visuals
The rather lovely David Turpin joined us a few weeks back on the 19th of June to talk about his album The Sweet Used To Be. The soft-spoken Dubliner told us about supporting Cathy Davey the following night in The Olympia, about recording his debut album in a way that he was finally content with after four or five years of trial and error, and about his July residency of Whelan’s. David Turpin is upstairs in Whelan’s every Wednesday for this month, and check out his myspace to find out more details on that.
As well as listening to a few tracks from David’s album, we started the show with Christopher & Andy from Jape’s Ritual. We also listened to Ann Scott’s Mountain from her album We’re Smiling, we heard Little Messy from Grand Pocket Orchestra, and nialler9 recommended Pivot’s In The Blood from the Aussie’s Oh Soundtrack My Heart album. We finished up the show from Something Global, a taster from the anticipated debut album from our old friends Fight Like Apes. Fight Like Apes will be returning to the indie hour this Thursday 17th of July, so do tune in for that. In the meantime, you can have a listen to the Apes on the show last year, and you can download our interview with David Turpin below. Enjoy!
MP3
David Turpin Thursday 19th June
I Am So Cow…oh no, wait…
I declined a weekend at a racecourse somewhere in Kildare in favour of a (long overdue) sorting out the auld flat weekend. It’s been wonderful. A rain and rape-allegation free weekend. I’ve been in the comfort of my own home with my quite rubbish but functioning internet connection voyueristically having a gander at State every now and then to see what I’m missing. And Niall has been updating me with text messages. Best one yet: “Went to Justice. Too many drug addled. A limited choice of prodigy, national, manics and the verve. May go home soon.”
So I took the opportunity today to have numerous cups of tea and read the Observer Music Monthly and waddle around my flat in my pjs, before tackling the auld reorganisation of my flat. For a soundtrack to my somewhat reluctant domesticity, I chose So Cow’s latest album I’m Siding With My Captors. I received this album from one of my favourite Irish artists a few months back, and bafflingly, it’s taken me til now to get around to giving it a proper listen. I’m a fool.
You may remember So Cow’s visit to the indie hour last year to talk about These Truly Are End Times. I’m Siding With My Captors revisits the lo-fi distortion heavy ditties of the previous work of Brian Kelly. Once again offering endearing lyrics tackling issues such as full taxi ranks and falling in love on the bus, it’s sung in the style of a late 50s American garage rock artist trapped in the body of a thoughtful Galway man with access to some modern but basic electronic software. It’s like part two of …End Times except it’s got a few more twiddly bipply bits and it’s got loads of cool dual guitar solo scale-happy riffs which I like a lot. The backward love song theme from …End Times is repeated with Shackleton:
One day I’ll write the song you deserve, babe
I’ll give it all I’ve got
One day I’ll write the song you require
Until then La La La.
Bless him.
So Cow is playing at the Hefty Horse night in Anseo on Camden Street this evening, along with Beatpoet and Story of Hair. Story of Hair were with us on the indie hour last Thursday, to talk about their up-coming debut album. Anyway, it’s 5 euro in, doors are at 8pm and if you’re not in a burnt out tent somewhere in a muddy field, you should head down.
Oooh! The album just finished. I’m going to play it again and get back to my dusting.
Brazilian Time Tonight…
Do tune in to the indie hour at 9pm tonight on 103.2 Dublin City FM when we will be learnin’ ya via our Indie Hour Crash Course #3: Brazilian Time. With us will be a few luminary guests who will be sharing their experiences of Brazilian music and culture – and we’ll be playing some mighty tracks in between.
If you miss it live, you can come visit us again on the indie hour blog, where the mp3 of the interview will be available in a few days.
Mp3hugger…
I nearly forgot…check out mp3hugger’s Indiecator Volume One compilation. As Compost Heap pointed out in his post about Seagull Poo, the compilation is “the same price as a daycent bag of Pic’n’Mix and about as varied”. Nice.
I still owe you two mp3s of my own from the last two Thursdays…I’ll do my best to get them up this weekend.
Sorry….
A little mouse apologising to the blogging community on behalf of the indie hour. Sorry.
My blogging has been erratic of late. I’m sorry. Here are four excuses:
1. My day job is teaching tefl. As you may have noticed, Ireland is currently overrun by hordes of chattering Spanish kids. I’m teaching them. They take so much energy my fingers are too pooped to type at the end of the day 😦
2. I don’t have access to the internet at work.
3. My flat is an internet black spot and I have to use the USB modem thingy. It’s quite slow at the best of times, but at the moment it’s not working at all. Bum deal.
4. I went on my first hen weekend last weekend and it took a lot of preparation (L plates, condom-and-willie-covered-veils, the Penis Pokey book, etc) and is now taking a lot of recovery.
I’ve now got a back log of mp3s and I’m sorry about that.
The first mp3 is The Indie Hour Crash Course #2, when we were joined by a pretty incredible bunch of Irish songwriters. I met Jinx Lennon, Captain Moonlight, Mumblin’ Deaf Ro and Carly Sings in Dublin’s Central Hotel before I went away to Barcelona for Primavera. We had a wonderful chat about songwriting, with a focus on lyrics and how each of their different approaches to lyrics in their own music.
I was really excited about this show because I love all four of those artists, and I thought it was a unique opportunity to get all of them together. I was, however, slightly unhappy with the end result, as there was an unexpected amount of background noise which left me with no choice but to edit quite a lot of the good stuff that was said out of the piece.
The songs in it are great though. We played a track from each artist and they all recommended one as well. I think the programme worked well, but I don’t think I executed the idea as well as I could have done. Let me know what you think anyway.
So….really sorry that this is nearly a whole month late. The following mp3 was originally broadcast on Thursday the 5th of June. I hope you enjoy it.
MP3
The Indie Hour Crash Course #2: Lyrics
The Indie Hour 