July 13, 2007
Acoustic Little Wing
A great performance by Monte Montgomery - I love the way he rips the strings off the guitar at the end :)
Posted by dottie at 9:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Funky as funk!
Stevie Wonder and his band performing Superstitious on Sesame Street
Damn!
Posted by dottie at 9:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 2, 2007
Doug Sheridan
Doug Sheridan is gearing up to release an EP...
Doug who? Doug Feckin Sheridan is who!!
He's a legend. All round great bloke, fantastic voice and songwriting skills that you would kill for.
You can catch him this week:
- Wednesday 4th July 2007 - Sugar Club
- Thursday 5th July - Bewleys
Posted by dottie at 4:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 30, 2007
old is new - again
It finally happened - someone reinvented Rocket Network
No doubt it will be hailed as a breakthrough, never done before, blah, blah
Actually though, it looks like it might be pretty good!
Good points include gathering people together to enable them to make music again (if they are geographically separated from other musicians), education and 'Foster deep humanity by bringing people together without words and through feelings'.
Not sure about that last one...
I'd love to sign up to it and give it a shot though - it might be usefult to make music with some mates of mine who live in London
*thinks*
hmmm
Posted by dottie at 11:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 25, 2006
Grandmaster flash
Saw Grandmaster flash last night. Pretty good but still a bit of a dissapointment - possibly I was expecting too much?
Basically just a DJ set with pretty lame tunes really, but a bit of fun!
Posted by dottie at 3:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 9, 2006
This et al
My mate Gav is managing a great band in London This et al
They will be launching their album soon (sadly in the UK, so I wont be there!) but you can check out their tunes online (MySpace) and they will soon have them for sale too, so support some up and coming musicians.
You know its the right thing to do!
Comments
Gav
Only just noticed this one, big fella. Many thanks, from myself and the chaps in the band;)
Posted by dottie at 11:01 PM | Comments (1)
June 17, 2006
Lovely old chromatic mouth organ
This lovely old Hohner Chromatic Harmonica belongs to a mate of mine Garrett Ryan. I think he said he inherited it from his Uncle (I was the other side of two bottles of beer and a couple of shots of vodka and Absinthe at that stage...)
It must be from the 40's :)
Amazingly, it sounds as good as it looks!
Sweet - click this last image for a more detailed view...
I love old instruments like this. The detail that goes into anything from before mass-production really kicked in, before such things were designed and sold as instruments first and products second.
The attention to detail on the packaging is great. The quality is obvious as it has stood up to 50+ years of use and delivered the harmonica from the past to our present in near immaculate condition.
Did I mention it sounds great? It is lovely to play too - really solid, comfortable - reassuring that you can play what you want, it begs you to play it.
Oh yeah.
Posted by dottie at 4:40 PM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2006
CDLP's anyone?
Holy moly! Its here! The future is now!
This rocks. It uses lasers to position the read head over the groove and follow it rom start to end and then uses more lasers to read the information encoded into the grooves of the record.
Fantastic.
It even allows you to skip back and forth like a CD. When you first drop the LP into the player it will scan the surface looking for breaks between tracks.
The lasers read parts of the groove that havent been touched by a needle, so the sound quality should be perfect. Combine that with a pop filter and the fact that there is no thermal noise from a needle cartridge, or rumble from the motors, or hiss and pops from dust and scratches - you will hear exactly what is on the LP.
Me want.
Posted by dottie at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2006
Mouth music car ad
Honda advert using only mouth music for sound track
Posted by dottie at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
September 29, 2005
Jazz is...
Its often said that Jazz is the music between the notes and such zen like sayings. I've thought of a way to describe Jazz.
Older Jazz numbers usually follow a set kind of format. The head, which is usually a strongly melodic intro piece which usually introduces the main melodic themes of the piece. Then you can go through variations of verses and breakdowns which are essentially variations on the theme. The verses are usually where people get a chance to solo and often where things go a bit weird.
To inderstand what happens during these times imagine that everyone in the band playing a Jazz number is listening on a pair of headphones to the groove. No-one in the audience can hear what is playing on the headphones. The musicians play along to that. Things sound weird but it you know Jazz and especially if you know the tune you can hear what they play in relation to the original tune. Of course the musicians listen to what everyone else is doing and alter their playing accordingly.
More than that, with good players it is as if they are playing along to a musician playing along to the headphones so the tune they are playing along to is twice removed from the original tune. Far out daddio.
Modern Jazz is pretty much the same thing. Just without the ipods.
:)
Posted by dottie at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
February 4, 2005
No U2 to U too?
Dammit. Sold out in less than an hour.
I cant understand it - you're on the phone constantly redialing and reloading 10 browser windows on the internet. Surely, you have to get through!
Its a conspiracy!
Posted by dottie at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)
u2! U2!
Here I sit, reloading my browser, getting '502 proxy' errors from the ticketmaster.ie site.
Shoulda camped out in the cold with the other loonies...
Posted by dottie at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Modern music
Sometimes I despair of modern music. I look at the bands in the charts. Most of them can barely play or sing. They are just there to look good and be the latest target for sexual frustration and darts from the media.
Take it as read then that everyone is used to the idea that bands dont write their own tunes. Next thing will be teenage girls walking down the street - 'god yer man is so sexy, you know they write their own press releases yeah?'.
Taken to its logical conclusion the bands will outsource their public appearances to political refugees and take off to dark basements / tropical islands / spanish castles / whatever to write edgy editorials on how the life of a political refugee is the new rock and roll (experimenting with using a limited palette of verbs, exchanging nouns for verbs wherever possible and generally expanding the whole vocabulary of like vocabulary, you know?)
Simultaneously they will be seeding the public with tales of the shadowy real life of a political refugee. How it is filled with drug fueled parties, blond scandanavians with breast implants (not necessarily female...) and numerous love children fostered out to the Romany gypsy begging cartel for 100 euros a week (extra for the specially maimed ones...)
Or maybe not.
Posted by dottie at 8:14 PM
July 14, 2004
Gil Scott Heron calls it..
Gil Scott Heron wrote a song back in the 70's called 'H20gate blues' ie. Watergate blues where he bewails the ills that politicians rained on America at that time.
Wars. Energy crisis. Wire taps. Politicians lying and lining their own pockets at the cost of innocent blood. Sound familiar?
It ends with the words - "four more years, four more years, four more years of that?"
Amen brother.
Posted by dottie at 11:17 PM
June 10, 2004
George Benson, ladies and gentlemen, George frickin Benson!
Went to see George Benson, ladies and gentlemen George Benson(*) a couple of weeks ago.
He rocked. In fact he did more than that - he grooved!
He was great. The man is a guitar god. The effortlessness of his playing and man did he play, it was inspiring. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson - 'It made me want to be a better guitarist'.
Here you can see (well.... sorry about the image quality) his very lovely percussionist (yes, a lady...) who came down and sang a song with the great man. She fine.
I had a longer clip (10Megs) but it just wasnt uploading - sorry!
(Please download rather than playing it from the site - ta!)
(*) Note: Every time he was mentioned on stage they called him George Benson, Ladies and gentlemen, George Benson - I think he got his name changed, the same way that James Brown is now known as - James Brown, James Brown ladies and gentlemen. I think its like wearing a kaftan or something like that, maybe a 'tribal name' knida vibe?? Answers on a postcard please....
Posted by dottie at 3:04 PM
June 1, 2004
Flash! Beatles Come together
This is fantastic. I love this song especially from the Beatles and someone has done a fantastic job of making the basic figures used in the video expressive and full of character. Wow. Humbled.
Beatles 'Come Together' flash movie
Posted by dottie at 1:44 PM
May 6, 2004
Live music on a USB memory stick
The link below goes to a news article about a new service for sharing live music in music venues. The key to it is a system that records the gig as it happens and makes it available on a touch screen machine provided with USB ports and USB memory sticks. You pay $10 to take the gig home with you and share it with whoever you like.
Why free sharing? Well the band gets their cut of the $10 and they got a lot of free advertising from word of mouth, meaning more people at their next gigs and so on.
Excellent
Posted by dottie at 8:33 PM
April 29, 2004
Wednesdays with Emmet are ROCK NIGHT!
Emmet says Heh-roh!
We always like to relax a little bit.......
before rocking out!!
and then a little contemplation of our guitar godhood stops us from spantaneously combusting
This is Emmets (gay) amp. It really is white (and gay). Its a Brian May signature amp from Vox. It rocks as hard a s a very small white gay thing can!!
Actually it sounds fucking great! Especially using the Hughes and Kettner speaker!
Did I tell you that we are Queen fans?
Posted by dottie at 12:01 PM
March 3, 2004
Elliot smith
I'm listening to Elliot Smith right now - only found out last week that he topped himself!
Shit.
I dont want to become a brilliant song writer if thats going to happen!
The guy was a fucking genius. His songs just got under your skin. Nasty little things that festered and released psychoactive drugs straight into your bloodstream. Bitter love songs - yeah!
Say hi to Jeff for me wont 'cha?
Posted by dottie at 10:03 PM
February 26, 2004
Minibosses
Remember those platform video games at the arcades?
Remember those end of level monsters that took all your 10p pieces to beat?
Remember the tunes?
These guys do!
Rock and roll video games!
Posted by dottie at 9:15 PM
February 22, 2004
Emmet, Renoir, Villa-Lobos, Bach, some guy with a guitar and me
Went to see a brilliant thing today. It was brilliant for two reasons. One - it was free. Two - it was a virtuoso guitarist. Three - it was in the Douglas Hyde gallery. Four - he played Recuerdos de Alhambra' and two pieces made famous by Segovia (another guitarist) Sarabande and Gavotte by Bach.
Despite Emmet being held up by someone taking a questionnaire on how often he liked to scratch his nuts at classical concerts or something like that, and being so delayed that we had to sit beside a silly painting of Umbrellas (Parapluie by Renoir) it was great.
I havent heard live classical guitar since I took some guitar lessons 15 years or more ago. It was a wonderful experience. The hush of the crowd, the technique of the virtuoso performance, the setting (whle there was no direct sunlight, the area we were sitting in was suffused with sunlight from skylights lending a haziness to the air near our seats and we were right beside that lovely Renoir painting!). Fantastic. I want to see more!
Afterward Emmet and me went to see the exhibition of Francis Bacons studio which is mad. Never REALLY liked his work, but I have been fascinated by his studio since I learned of it either shortly before or after his death in 1992.
And damn if I didnt forget to take a picture. Me with the camera right there in my pocket!
I'll be back.....
Posted by dottie at 8:12 PM
Manzer Guitars and Pat Metheny
Just got to listen to Pat Metheny's one quiet night. Beautiful record. I really hope he develops more in this area of solo guitar playing, it shows a side a very compelling side to his great talent.
Anyway, on the recording he uses a baritone guitar made for him by Linda Manzer. She has been making guitars for 30 years and according to all her clients, each one is a cracker. Just look at the artistry of the inlays!
Pat has been commissioning guitars from her for years from standard jaz and flat tops to bizzare inventions such as the Picasso guitar where the brief was to produce a guitar 'with as many strings as possible'. I dont think its possible to fit more on there!
Posted by dottie at 8:00 PM
January 28, 2004
iTunes fucks you up
really pissed off, just downloaded the iTunes player to try it out and it rearranged the structure of my MP3 collection, all 13 Gigs of it (all mine, burnt from CD/LP).
Now I HAVE to use iTunes to listen to the music coz its not arranged by album anymore, but for some obscure reason by song title - artist - album. Jesus!
Plus I havent got id tags on most of the files as I never needed to before. I dont think I will ever get this mess sorted out.
I'm sure its a great program for those with id tags on all the MP3's. Get this, no id tag, then it doesnt exist in iTunes - and now that all my files have been scattered to the wind, it will take me ages to rearrange them in an order so that I CAN put id tags on them. Fuckers. Expesnive computers and eye-candy piece of crap, blinkered, blinkering, railroading, totalitarian software.
Apple makes things simple for you as long as you dont want to do anything your own way.
Think different? Think again.
Mac Expo this year? iPod mini? Garageband? please. We have had small MP3 players for years and Cakewalk band in a box for longer. Give me a break with the 'innovation' bullshit!
Dont get me wrong, this is not an anti-Apple rant (err....) I would love to use a Mac for its audio side of things, Audio Units, Max/MSP etc. Fantastic. I dont lik the aguar style ethos of 'you dont need to look under the hood' though. Things always go wrong, I want to know what when they do!
Posted by dottie at 1:01 PM
January 26, 2004
Sunday Night
Ah yeah, nothing sets you up for a productive week like a piss up on a sunday night!
Went to see a friend's brothers band play in the Foggy Dew in town. Pretty damn good! They do a mean Doors impression and not half bad at Radiohead either. All this from four unassuming guys playing for peanuts and the love of it. Live music rocks!
Met up with Mick and Doogie who were just back from snowboarding in France - many tales and broken hearts rather than broken limbs, which is always good!
Folks at the gig:
Steve Keogh and his lovely girlfriend Maria (just in from Greece). Steves brother is the lead guitarist in the band we went to see., so he was the main mover in getting us all down to the gig. Glad we went.
Mick and Rockie were downtown drinking coffee and beer all day. Nuff said.
Cedric and Alex. Cedric is a mate of mine from France who I met through my lfat mates at the time who were also French - Berangere and Vincent. Cedric had tried to get into a night club but was refused as they said he was too pissed. He kicked a pot in anger and nearly broke his foot. It was funny afterward.
I used to go to college with Alex and hadnt seen him in about 10 years. Bumped into him befoe chrimbo and promised to keep in touch. Nice bloke Alex.
Mr Doogitz. The nicest and maddest chap you'll ever meet.
After the gig we all ended up in Thomas Read's until they threw us out after midnight - actually pretty low key.
Promised Paulie that I would pop-up to his house Thursday night and jam some Neil Young tunes, guitars, harmonicas, bottle of wine, the whole nine yards.
Promised myself to make music a priority this year, it'll happen. Greased along by red wine, guinness and friendship, al lessential elements in making good music.
Posted by dottie at 2:21 PM
January 22, 2004
Music and memory
I've been listening to Dvorak's 9th Symphony (the 'New World' symphony) a lot lately. Its a lovely piece of music. I remember it from my childhood - my father had a copy. I always remember the Largo from it (thats the bit from the Hovis bread ad for all of you old enough to remember). It brings back nice memories of saturdays at home with me da. He always used to cook us 'ranch house grub' for our lunch which consisted of toast, tea, beans, sausages and streaky back rashers. MMMMMMM!
He was a gas man my da. He used to spend his weekends either working on his car (an old Merc 380se) which he insisted on maintaining himself. He was well capable of this as he was a qualified marine engineer and had served his apprentiship on the merchant navy between the isle of wight, England, France and Ireland. We never knew him as children because he was always away. Made up for it though. He learned a lot on those ships about life, engineering, jokes and er.... language! Whenever a spanner slipped on a nut or a hammer went astray he would turn the air blue effing and blinding. It was funny rather than frightening though - his turn of phrase was something to behold. Lots of complicated words buffered by explitives, ah yes, he taught is a love of language from a young age! :)
I really want to get my hands on a CD of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. The composers description of the story behind the music:
The Sultan Schahriar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating stories told for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, daily postponed her execution and finally repudiated his vow.
Good stuff. That was the other piece that was always played. Just hearing those pieces of music bring a vivid picture to my mind of my father in his old cords taking a smoke break and eyeing the old triumph mototcycle rusting beside the house (me da was in a motorcycle gang when he was a youngster - that all changed (well mostly) when he met me ma of course!)
Its been seven years and I miss him still.
Posted by dottie at 4:08 PM
January 17, 2004
Dance Music and New Music
Went out to Judge Roy Beans last night to send off Noel Milner in fine style. Met people I havent seen in a long time and others I see all the time. Not too much drinking, by me at least, which was nice for a change - I can actually remember the whole night and had a good time! Got a dirty dance from some girl in the bar who was trying her best to be Christina Aguilera (Dirty Girl tm) - she convinced me!
Afterward got back to Rory's flat on Hanlons corner to play didgereedoo and listen to Rory DJ until 6 in the morning - damn he's got some good tunes. Mostly deep house. We keep trying to convince him to get a few gigs for himself - he will, he will. Watch this space for news!
So got up today at about 11 - actually woke up in a spasm of pain from the feotal position I had slept in in the armchair after only a few hours sleep. Nice brekkie and then off to meet my brother, his wife and my niece. Little petal she is. Nice lunch in the Avoca Cafe and then off to a new music 'salon' in the Contemporary Music Centre on Fishamble street (Fishamble street is the place where Handels messiah was first performed - although the church where it was performed no longer stands. There is an archway that was part of the church and had a protection order on it. About 10 years ago there were apartments being built on the site of the old church and they wanted to remove the archway. There was a public hue and cry and a barring order put against them. However there was an unfortunate 'accident' where some machinery 'went out of control' and knocked the archway down. Well, more hue and cry and the building was stopped until the archway was rebuilt at much greater cost - ha. Justice prevails in at least one case). Anyway, its a very historic area - must tell you about Wood Quay another time....
The concert was great. It was four pieces played on solo violin - Darragh Morgan was the violinist, or fiddle player as he liked to say. The composers were in attendance and one of the pieces was a work in progress. It was great to watch the interaction between the composer and performer and a question and answer session was held after each piece.
The music was completely diverse. The first piece was written by Frank Lyons and was caled 'Dazed by the Haze'. It was based on themes from a live performance of Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. The violin was augmented by prepared samples played from a laptop. Lots of granular synthesis of samples from the violin and also from the recording on which the piece was based. Very interesting, but I think demanded a larger venue. The concert was held in the library room of the CMC which just held the twenty people who were attending.
The second piece was by Bill Campbell and was in progress and was based on Daragh tale of his flight home from Cyprus over christmas which was extremly turbulent and during which death was mentioned many times! The piece was a prelude and the main piece called 'Flight Home'. It was a lovely piece very much in the classical diatonic structure. Lots of double stopping and some understated arpeggios to suggest chords for the melody and strong harmonies. Really lovely - I would love to see what it becomes!
The third piece was written by Fergus Johnston (who apparently drives a taxi to augment his income as well as lecturing in composition). The piece was an excerpt from a series of pieces called Signals and was the 2nd Movement called 'Extended'. Apparently it came from another piece and was originally written as an electric guitar solo but was extended to this piece. It sounded like a piece of its time, it was written 16 years ago. Lots of fast passages followed by languid playing, odd intervals and rhythms, but a lovely piece also.
The last piece was written by Simon Mawhinney and was caled Barcode III. It was based around a lot of modern techniques which were informed by oriental music - quarter tones, half-stopping (not quite pressing the string onto the fretboard), and bowing near the bridge of the violin. Really evocative and sparse. Lots of harmonics and weird tonalities. The piece itself was based on short themes which were repeated throughout the piece in variations. Simon revealed afterward that he has synesthesia which means that he sees colours when he hears sounds. He desribed the object he saw when the piece is played as a spiky ball that coalesces and explodes as the piece progresses. He said one of his motivations for continuing to compose is that he wants to see more of these objects!
All in all some good music over the last 24 hours. Now I'm off to play some old video games before turning in early - exhausted now, so sorry for the lack of any insight in this long rambling post.
Night
Posted by dottie at 7:55 PM
January 14, 2004
Jazzadelic
Currently listening to: Miles Davis, In a Silent Way
I fuckin love jazz.
I fuckin hate jazz.
The difference? Jazz I love - conveys emotion, moves you, bewilders you, tantalises you, alienates you, drowns you and lifts you and drops you back into the world with a smile on your face and a little more hope that you can change the future no matter what it throws at you.
Bad jazz doesnt. Sell your instruments, burn the music, burn yourself. Harsh - but there you go. I like music. Bad jazz is not music.
Currently listening to: John Coltrane, Olé
Posted by dottie at 6:56 PM