2023-05-25 The Muddy River Band - Moat Theatre, Naas

I headed along to the Moat Theatre in Naas last night to catch Willie Headon, Pete Kavanagh and Pat Silke, otherwise known as the Muddy River Band, play a selection of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Van Morrison.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Dylan. Yes, he is, without doubt, one of the finest songwriters ever, but his nasal drone just turns me off his singing. As for Van? No, nope, never. Went to see him once, he looked like he didn't enjoy it and I most certainly didn't either. Still though, an incredible songwriter.

Neil Young... What can I say about Neil Young... As good a songwriter as the two above, but along with that, he rocks, I mean he really, really rocks. I got to see him many years ago when he played Slane Castle in Meath. What? Neil Young played Slane? He most certainly did, and Pearl Jam were also on the lineup. If you weren't there, you missed out!

You're probably thinking to yourself, why did you even bother going MJ? Well, the truth is, I knew some of the lads, I know what they can bring to the table and even if I didn't like the original artists, I was pretty sure that I'd enjoy their takes on some legendary songs.

I wasn't wrong. It turned into a fun night of music, and, as was said somewhere on the socials this morning, it was the kind of show that could go on the road. Lots of fun, lots of songs to sing along with and with a superb backing band. It was a magic night, so congrats to the lads on putting the show together!

Now for a few photos:

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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