I was in Dublin city centre this morning for the first time in 12 months. The last time I was there was to see Jane Willow perform in the Cobblestone Pub on February 29th 2020. I never, not for a moment, thought things would turn out as they did. I was looking forward to a year full of gigs and excitement. I think we all know how that turned out. After doing what I had to workwise, I took a spin around Dublin before I headed home. I drove by the aforementioned Cobblestone Pub , the Voodoo Lounge , The Grand Social , The Workmans Club , The Sugar Club and ended up outside Whelans . I've had great nights out in each of those venues and in many more around the country! Dolans of Limerick, Crane Lane Theatre and Kino in Cork, Odd Mollies in Drogheda, the Moat Theatre in Naas, the Riverbank Arts Centre in Newbridge, the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, Visual in Carlow... The list goes on and on. 2017 and Helmet played Whelans. There I am partying with them after the s
Back in the day (by that I mean the mid 80s and early 90s), music came on Vinyl and Cassette Tape. Yeah, CDs were just starting to make headway, but CD players were still expensive. Me, being a poor student, stuck to the humble cassette tape. They were rugged, cheap, easy to record on and best of all, easy to create your own mixes. You could, if you searched, get C120 tapes, on which you could fit up to 120 minutes of music! Why do I mention this? Well, this week I collected my old tape collection from my parents house. It had been living in their attic, undisturbed, for the last 21 years. Actually, not only did I pick up the tape collection, I picked up my vinyl collection also! There were some absolute gems in the tape collection, Dignam and Goff , Power of Dreams , The 4 of Us , Blink , The Golden Horde , The Dixons , Ghost of an American Airman ... and that was just in one bundle! Only another 170 something tapes to get through! As for the vinyl, I haven't really gone th