RIP The Indie Hour

January 16, 2009 at 6:43 pm (The Show)

Aoife Mc in the Dublin City FM studios with Brazilian guests

Hello there.  I think this may be my last post on this blog.

Sometime between debating whether to eat the brussel sprouts or not and having my seven millionth mince pie over Christmas, I decided that, what with the New Year and all, it was perhaps time to let go of The Indie Hour on Dublin City FM.

I’ve been putting on the show every Thursday night since June of 2004.  In that time, I’ve had an absolute blast.  I got to witness first hand the most recent growth of our own home-grown music scene.  Although I’m sure it’s the same for anyone who is involved in music during a certain time frame, I felt that I witnessed a pretty exciting time in Irish music.

When I started the show, all those many moons ago (gather round children), we were at the tailend of our tolerance of singer-songwriters.  Some of the better singer-songwriters (like Robotnik then known simply as Chris Morrin) found Korgs somewhere and started making bleepy noises to go along with the tales of heartbreak.  I got a demo from a band called Super Extra Bonus Party who had a bleedin’ Brazilian MC and sent hilarious letters with their CDs.  I had a really funny show with The Butterfly Explosion where EVERYTHING went wrong (I only realised when we were on air that I didn’t have any headphones, two of the mics weren’t working, and I played a track from their EP which was the one they had planned to play live in the studio.  Big time cringe).

Jinx Lennon visited us on average once every year to talk about bubble electricians, Fight Like Apes came down after the release of their first EP and again before the release of their album, The Jimmy Cake came in for a chat (well, not ALL of them obviously) and RSAG blew me away both times he came on.  Mumblin’ Deaf Ro provided us with what is still my favourite interview of the whole four years.  Then there was the Adebisi Shank and BATS of this world, who were LOUD.  And deadly.  And The Vinny Club gave out to me live on air for not listening to all the demos that I got in the post.

Through the show I’ve met some great people and got to talk a whole load of shite in front of a microphone (after about the first year I kind of forgot that people were actually listening).  I made the decision to call it a day really because I felt that personally I’d taken it as far as I could.  It was starting to feel like a teeny weeny bit of a burden and I never, ever wanted it to be like that.  It has been the most fantastic and fun and brilliant hobby and I wanted to stop when I still felt like that.

However, those of you who simply can not live without hearing my bizarre trans-atlantic dulcet tones (I grew up in Saudi Arabia, that is my explanation for my accent) fear not, as I plan to pop up on various podcasts here and there.

You can of course check out the monthly nialler9 podcasts, and I hope to be moving the indie hour format to a monthly podcast to be hosted on nialler9 as well.  How does that sound?

Before I sign off here, although I will still be blogging in some form or other – I was toying with the idea of starting a food blog – I’d just like to thank a few people for their support of the indie hour, as a show and a blog:

Ian Oliver, Mary Healy, Niall, unarocks, Fenster, sinead gleeson, nay, the good people at CLUAS, Allen from The Ballroom of Romance, Barry ‘Stress 7 inch’ Lennon from The Richter Collective, Cillian, Declan and Richie at Kaboogie!, Damien Mulley, The Lovely Girls at Entertainment Architects, the lads over at EgoEccentric, Thrill Pier, Darragh and Loreana, Jim Carroll, The New(ish) Journalism and Rapture Ponies.  There are lots more people but I’ll stop there.

One last big massive thank you to all the bands who made the effort to come down to the East Wall Studios and have a chat about their music.  Without them, the show wouldn’t have been as good as I like to think that it was.

The archives from the shows from the last two years are up on the web, and I’d be really happy to think that people would like to peruse and listen to them for some time to come.

The last show I did with guests was before Christmas with the bloody amazing Heathers, who released my favourite Irish album of the last four and a half years last year with Here, Not There. Between Christmas, moving house, the recession, and going to the gym, I haven’t managed to put that up on the blog yet, so I’ll get that up on our podcast archive as soon as I find which unpacked cardboard box it is in. Word.

So, it’s not really goodbye…it’s see you later.  *sniff!*