2018-12-14 The Finns - The Cobblestone Dublin

Wow… Half way through December already. The year is nearly over and last night was my last gig of the year. Well… It’s the last planned gig of the year, but you never know what can happen!

Anyway, back to last night. The Finns were launching their debut album Creations in the Cobblestone in Smithfield, Dublin.

I’d heard plenty about The Finns, heard their music online, but hadn’t managed to see them live, so when I was told about the gig, sure I just had to head along! It also happened to coincide with my birthday celebrations, so it sure made for an interesting and fun night!

We got a full run through of the album plus a few covers thrown in for good measure! Stand out tracks on the night, for me at least, were:

Dissident
Queen of Camden Street
Banjo on My Back
Folk Man

If folk music is your thing, you’ll absolutely love what these guys do. The vocals are superb with some sweet harmonies all complimented by various string instruments and harmonicas. As it happens, I do like folk music, so I was in heaven! Oh and if you don’t like folk, well they threw in a cover version of a Chvrches song called The Mother We Share.

I mentioned my birthday above, so at the end of the night, I had the surreal experience of having the band and the audience sing Happy Birthday to me… I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that!!

So yeah, that’s it, you can buy the album on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music and of course in physical form from their website.

2022-03-26 Buskers on Grafton Street, Dublin

I took a walk around Dublin today, thought I'd check out the buskers on Grafton Street. There's a fine history of busking in Dublin, acts like Hothouse Flowers , The Frames , Rodrigo y Gabriela , Damien Rice , Paddy Casey , Kodaline and a host of others all cut their teeth on and around Grafton Street. It stands to reason that some of those busking today will be successful in the future! So, who did I get to see today? Well, check out the photos below: Zoe Clarke Allie Sherlock Paul Jenkinson

Bye Bye Spotify...

I ditched Spotify Premium this weekend. Why? Well, I read an interview with Daniel Ek , the CEO of Spotify, and I profoundly disagreed with what he said and his attitude towards musicians in the interview. So I said 'F*ck it', and closed my premium account. I still do have a free account* as many bands choose Spotify to release their music, so I'll keep it for that reason. What now though? Well, I'd created a large library of music on my home server over the last 20 years or so. Every time I bought a CD, it got ripped to the server. Every time I bought digital music from Bandcamp , Google or 7 Digital , they too got stored on the server, and that was fine for home use, it worked well. But now I'd dumped Spotify, what could I do, how could I access my music outside the house? I'd played around with software called Plex a few years back, but had no use for it. I ended up doing nothing with Plex, but for this project, I decided to revisit it. I knew that i

Interview with King Kong Company

Originally published 10/09/2013 on Chunk.ie So, there I was, wandering around the Electric Picnic wondering who I was going to watch next. One of the lads said he had heard good things about King Kong Company and that we should check them out, so off we headed to the Body and Soul Arena to do just that. As I mentioned in my review of the Electric Picnic, the gig was epic. I figured we just had to interview them here on CHUNK.ie, and here it is! First things first, congratulations on a storming gig at the Electric Picnic. It completely blew me away. Was this your first Picnic experience? We’ve been to many Electric Picnics over the years but just as punters, and it’s always been a great festival, so it was a fantastic experience to play at its 10 year anniversary. King Kong Company is a rather interesting name for a band, where or how did you come up with it? The name is taken from the film Taxi Driver. If you look closely, Travis Bickle is wearing a badge which says King

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