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Showing posts from September, 2020

A Love Letter to Music Venues

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
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2020-09-20 Unlocked and Live - Moat Theatre Naas

 A burlesque gig one week, a rock n' roll gig the next, it's almost like a return to normal.  Almost, but not quite.  The Moat Theatre has a maximum of 50 people in it tonight, not because of poor ticket sales, but down to COVID 19 restrictions. Anyway, tonight's gig is mainly a local affair.  On the bill are Acoustic Freeway, Pete Kavanagh , Saoirse Casey and finally, Paddy Casey . The gig itself was a fundraiser for the Moat Theatre to help it through these difficult times. I think everyone enjoyed the night, it was a rare chance to see some live music in the town.  Hopefully this will be the start of the return of gigs in Naas. Anyway, check out the photos below:
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2020-09-10 The Peacock Parlour - Kino Cork

February 29th 2020, that was the day of the last gig I'd gone to.  It was Jane Willow in the Cobblestone in Dublin.  It was also the last time I'd been in a city! I'd booked a couple of weeks leave in September, so, when I heard that the Peacock Parlour was taking place in Cork whilst I was on leave, I decided that was the place to be!  A night out at a gig, albeit a burlesque one, in Cork. Tickets were bought, hotel was booked and plans were set in motion! On to the night in question.  I arrived at Kino , was met at the door by security where we went through some Covid19 formalities. Once complete, I was shown to my table and staff explained how the table service operated.  On to the show...   On the night we were treated to some comedy, pole dancing, spoken word , drag and burlesque by Foxy P. Cox ,  The Wild Geeze ,  Miss LaVelle and many others. What more could you ask for??? If the Peacock Parlour pays a visit to your town, or if you are in Cork any time soon, I'
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Creating a Music Room

So it started out with picking up the Tape and Vinyl collections from my folks house... They've been sitting there looking at me ever since.  I had to do something, I had to find a way to store these pieces of history.  I also had to find a way of playing those cassettes! I made a plan, I was going to use my spare / junk room as a music room.  Somewhere I could go and listen to music in peace.  My musical equivalent of a Library! A skip was ordered, the junk removed and the project kicked off. As per usual, I got sidetracked with the tech side. I trawled through the online stores for a week trying to find anyone who sold a HiFi with a Tape Deck. Unsurprisingly, no one does. Next on the hit-list was Ebay. I searched for another week, but again, I came up with nothing. Anything I found was going to be coming from the US or Australia, and given the state of the world at the moment, who knew when it would arrive. I tried a local site, adverts.ie , and on the second day, found a Sony CM
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