Electric Picnic

Well here goes:

Friday arrived with me having to work til all hours, I was crying my gypsy tears all the way down to Stradbally, well not quite all the way. I was glued to Jim Carroll's on-site blog entries to keep me going.

Headed down and all was fine until I turned off the motorway, where I sat for 4 ½ hours in my motor, watching the sun go down, and listening to 2fm coverage of the Manics and Hot Chip. To make up for it i decided to think about going to see the manics in November.

Arrived when I reckon Bjork was probably just about on stage. Arrived into the camp-site around 11.30 where my tent was already set up…big up to aoife, laura, ruth and siobhan.

Headed straight for the main site with the nog and ruth, who were already well enjoying festivities. It was time to play catch up, so we wandered around the sound. I think I caught the sound equivalent of a glimpse of LCD Soundsystem, but I can’t even be sure. Met many people who wandered to our table to ask us random things, and in fact ended up trying to get some guy a job…all part of the fun.

Left the girls and joked up at boardieland outside the inflatable church. It was very nice to re-acquaint myself with who I now call old friends, and some new ones, one of whom it turns out works with my dad…weird. Headed to silentdisco and had the best time, I believe in a thing called love was played, and some Russian gypsy accordion music…you can’t go wrong.

Headed back to camp where I accused some poor cork boys of stealing our seats, sat with them for a while, they turned out to be very friendly chaps, and then ruth heard my melodic night time screeching, and I made her come with me. We re-visited silent disco but it was closed. But was just about time for bed at that stage anyway…

Woke up Saturday to find my inflatable mattress had deflated in the night, my hips hurt, went into the main site, to find some vaguely survivable toilets. The ones on stilts in red were a no go area. Headed into the main site, still in pyjamas. I find that any sense of decency or dignity goes out the window at these things.

Headed into the main site, and had queued for the crappiest breakfast I’ve ever experienced. Me and O’Cons or spuds as we vaguely christened her once, were not hugely impressed with those rotten rolls. We pottered around for a while before heading back to camp to get dressed and sort ourselves out for the afternoon.

Discussed going to Marlena Shaw, but time sort of ticked on and kinda missed out on her.

Headed for Chk Chk Chk or !!! (cool site btw) in the Electric Arena, and they were deadly. They were really a highlight, have their last album, and have listened to it a fair bit, but they put on such a great show. The lead guy has the energy of about 10 energiser bunnies…in fact the whole band were on form. There was a lot of tongue in cheek crazy dancing and fun times. I think !!! were prob a highlight…afterwards for the rest of the weekend, I kept looking around thinking the lead singer was behind me…
anyway it kept turning out he wasn't but that hair, that act, that energy, that show. Wow!

Was trying to time things to see as much as possible, so nipped up for a bit of Bonde De Role, who i think are great fun. Love that james bond song. They came on after annie mac who we saw a tiny bit of. I thought they were good, but a bit of a poor man's CSS. good auld craic though for your sat afternoon.

Right afterwards we nipped down to M.I.A. i had been really looking forward to seeing her, had been reading a lot about her, and she was the talk of the town (probably just in my head). Had a good gawk when i got in there. The sound wasn't the best, but i think she was pretty phenomenal. I've tried to describe her sound to people, and i keep saying lame-ass stuff like fusion, world, hip-hop, and then just saying look ill make you a copy. She's destined for greatness.

This is becoming a novel, so i think i should finish up...or else save it for another day...thats lame, ok in a nutshell

Magic Numbers - Summer Funners
chair-o-planes
polyphonic spree - damn good fun
lost vagueness - where i nudged the air around Jarvis Cocker (swoon, if only i had my camera)

Sunday
tones of the gospel choir from far away - very pleasant opener
Bat for Lashes - Excellent, bells, shiny things, sounds brilliant!

Dans le Sac vs Sroobius Pip: this deserves more than a single line of words. These guys were deadly, my good friend Catch put me on to these guys, and in a word...like WOW!!! they were so good, at one stage, scroobius whipped out a copy of the periodic table, learning and tunes all in one. he also did a cool tune where he changed hats, and ties and stuff, im all for teh dramatics. Really great act thought with Dans Le Sac turning out beats, and Scrobius doing sort of spoken word singing.

together Dans le Sac vs Scroobius Pip and !!! rocked my world, well my weekend at least.

UNKLE: outside the tent, still sounded electric
The Go! Team: bleedin packed in that place, not as good as i thought they'd be and the sound was a bit pants.
Legged it to some Primal Scream who were grand, maybe a little bit dull, so, legged it to the cinema tent, to dance for footloose was a-playin.
Nipped back to Main stage, for Movin on' up, by primal scream. It was pretty much the song i wanted to hear, and it was pretty deadly on return!

headed to a sort of weird soul dance session in body and soul, fell down many times, but had so much fun. while trying to get into body and soul, got vaguely crushed in teh queue, it was very weird, and the only bit of sort of half bother for teh whole weekend, (except the toilets on stilts!)
stayed on for mad techno-ie rave which was brill-city!
headed for silent disco where i met up with some buddies to dance away the sadness at leaving ep.

things that were funny to us: We built this city on sausage rolls, and an on-going joke about hats, hatlone, hatlethe, hat “the cope Gallagher” the hats and a little lady, and the hat man who we invited to primal scream and then swiftly lost. playing the dancing-to-the-music-in-your-head-and-your-friends-guessing-0what-it-was-game, mini disco in teh hall of mirrors place, gorgeous bbq garden, sunshine, home made jackets, wandering, chatting, dancing outside the food stalls to kate bush, missing the ghost train, etc.

Oh and i saw John Reynolds, i was very impressed,

and Duke Special fell out of his hammock beside us. on film.

don't have any pics yet, soon hopefully

if anyone reads the entirety of this....fair play and fair dues, and i'll bring you out for a pint and quiz you!

Back to Life

Back to reality...

Electric Picnic was so so so much fun, i haven't gotten the chance to write anything down about it yet...so here's an entirely unrelated picture to keep occupied in the mean time. The boys are in some new flick called Cassandra's Time or something...(i've heard it's not so fantastic)

Hubba Hubba

Pic is from RTE, from...Venice, le sigh

Longest Day Ever

I'm dying to hit the road down the picnic. Where pretty much everyone already is...have figured out will prob miss the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain :( was really looking forward to them. Hoping to just about catch Hot Chip, and def a bit of the Manic Street Preachers. Hopefully catch bits a good bit of Bjork, The Good, The Bad and the Queen, and def Modest Mouse...Am torn between those last two, good to be finishing off with LCD Soundsystem though, and i heard Donal Dineen is doing some DJ sets!

Come on 5.30!

!!! are on at 3 o clock tomorrow....weird, MIA right after, I'm there.

Special Guest on Sunday at 5 in the Crawdaddy stage...sounds interesting!

Top 10 most embarrassing...

Celebrity before they were famous ads.

HA HA HA

find it here

and

The pillowig :/
very strange

Picnic

Holy crap, the picnic is tomorrow, i don't have a mat to sleep on, my sleeping bags from tesco, i have nothing packed, and i had a flight tyre this morning. Ominous sign, but...wwwaaa wooo weee woooww!

yay for the picnic

yay

This takes me back

For some bizarre reason, Glenroe has popped into my head today. I think it may have stemmed somewhere from the memory of Dinny Byrne, and then there's Teasy, and Miley and all! Great programme in it's day, it takes my right back to sunday evenings, bath then Where In the World with Teresa Lowe (which my uncle was once in) and then Glenroe, and then bedtime, 'cos you know Monday is a school day.



Ah glenroe, have had the theme song in my head for the day, that's a very weird youtube i found on my travels.

Then i got thinking of childhood songs and programmes and stuff and Holy moly but i found Bosco,


My favourite urban myth was that Marian was a junkie after she appeared on it, although maybe she was who knows?

I discovered that there are a bizarre number of Bosco related youtubes on, eh youtube.

and finally on today's very unstructured post (i know this is gonna irritate me later)

I also found some hilarious Batman quotes (from the original Adam West of course) which made me laugh my ass off:

Batman: "That's one trouble with dual identities, Robin. Dual responsibilities."

Robin: "Where'd you get a live fish, Batman?"
Batman: "The true crimefighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin."

Bruce: "Don't dip your oar in this sordid sea, Dick. You might be besmirched."

Batman (after cracking a safe): "It's not difficult, if you have steady nerves and a good ear. Quality is destroyed by the tenor of criminal life."

Robin: "You can't get away from Batman that easy!"
Batman: "Easily."
Robin: "Easily."
Batman: "Good grammar is essential, Robin."
Robin: "Thank you."
Batman: "You're welcome."

Anyway childhood movies and stuff for the win.

It's amazing how some of these things just took me right back, and it's amazing what you share with someone when you start talking about this sort of thing.

I also loved Thundercats.

Hyperventilating

New Heroes, crappy promo







the cast look so non heroic in real life, i suppose that figures!

i love heroes

Cat Face

This is genuinely so so so funny,

Cat face
He's got the body of a cat, and the face of a cat







*directly from the mind of Aoife

So daft

Look closely, from engrish

EP Line-up

Of sorts is here

Ukelele Orchestra of GB yay!

Mixtape

I know it's not anywhere near Valentine's day but...
XOXO, Exo is doing a little mix-tape, i just like the site.

Pirate Update!

I met the pirate...well that's actually a fib, but I got an email from the great one!
Check out their Myspace

Turning Pirate is about getting the most out of things. Being nice to folk. Meeting brilliant people, putting on brilliant events and gigs and bending the rules.

Turning Pirate presents

Pirate Sounds

The Spiegeltent, Thurs Sept 13th, 10pm

An evenin' o' seafarin' hearty collaborations will brin' together some o' Ireland..s grooviest, funkiest, smartest, sassiest, sweetest musicians, singers an' dj's t' make new versions o' old things an' old versions o' new things. Some o' Irelands best known artists an' least likely combinations be brought together fer an evenin' that be set t' clash styles, blow horns, bang yer drum in a way that will be havin' both dance deck an' stage dancin' t' a whole new beat.

Egos keel haul th' plank in a musical mash-up night that celebrates havin' fun through th' medium o' dance!

Come wi' yer seafarin' hearty dancin' shoes t' music provided by a bunch o' buccaneers, a gang o' n..er do wells, a motley crew o' all-sorts indeed but nay a captain hook in sight.

Artists involved include th' likes o' Rhob Cunningham, Cathy Davey, Mikee Dee, Josie Doherty, Sally Foran, Carla Gallagher, Gavin Glass, Lisa Hannigan, Clive Haughton, James McMorrow, Mundy, Tim Neosupervital, Ronan O..Snodaigh, Pete Pamf, Steve an' Joe Wall, Superfly, Tomo Osander, Cormac Curran, Colm McCathaigh, Sophie Merry and plenty more surprises t' be announced.

Shipmate dress suggested but nothing..s essential 'ceptin' yer sweet presence.

Keep yer beady one good eye on myspace.com/turningpirate fer line-up additions an' sneak preview videos.

Fer further information contact Una Molloy: una@turningpirate.com

Tickets 18 euros from www.fringefest.com,1850 FRINGE (374643) or in swabbie from th' box office, Temple Bar information centre, 12 East Essex St, Temple Bar or Spiegeltent Box Office, Georges Dock.

Spiegeltent

Spiegeltent is coming. Spiegeltent is coming. And they are bringing Pirates, YES!
The man, Jim Carroll, who is a legend, has it as always here. Check it out immediately.

*that's a pirate on the moon, that is.

Electric Picnic Map!

woo! i think it's still sort of provisional for the mo. Paint Ball camp here i come. all in prep for teh big event, you'd think it was a wedding or something! woo!

True Professional

Bill Murray is cool

Laughing my ass off, Bill Murray is a genius. He did some crazy stuff in Sweden, like stealing a little electric golf cart from a hotel and driving it down a main road. He's my favourite person, possibly in history.
Alex Needham from the Guardian has it en Anglais here.

Thanksgiving Turkey

I'm going to Boston, for Thanksgiving. Oh my God this is so exciting. I'm heading over, family gathering, loadsa folks around, 24 hour supermarkets...i'm practically drooling at all the miles of...just stuff...that's over there! wopah!

now to work on getting an upgrade to first class, or else a couple of dozen calmer downers for that flight.

woohoo!

Right

So it's the run up to the picnic, only 7 sleeps to go, and i was thinking of the stuff from last year that was great, actually i had to go look up where i had written it before, and i got to thinking how no one will prob care, it's like there's nothing more boring than other peoples' holiday snaps, this is a similar idea....so maybe it's not the best. Anywho:

Electric picnic: bacardi, yeah yeah yeahs, rufus waintright, michael franti and teh skatalites, champagne in the ticket ticket place, dr. mike, harem fantastic tent, ultra nice wristbands, unfloodable tents, great sleeping bags, me and jules' saturday wander, body and soul candle maze, dancing, rasher sandwiches, jelly shots, i say neosuper, you say? yesh itsh very nice, chris martin? silent disco friends, july, new old flames? old old flames, meeting all the people, sunburn, difenes, Karl Spain and his woman.

I have no idea who dr. mike was

This is unbelievable

Well i suppose it is from a site called WeirdAsianNews

Not just a pretty face

Clive James talks about the ideal face, Marlon, Greta, Louise and Harrison step right up...

Otherwise Bruce Willis will go on thinking that he is being charming when he purses his lips...He has been pursing them until they bleed ever since his first days in television, and he is still pursing them as he comes swinging in through the plate-glass window to mow down a row of central European heavies in Die Hard all over again.

Also wow at that star

From the opposite of the makers of Facebook

It's Arsebook

Halloween doesn't have to be scary

I love the Buena Vista Social Club, and Duke Special and Alabama 3, oh yeah! And Sligo has them all! woohoo! Halloween is getting booked up for me now.

Sligo Live

The 2007 Sligo Live Festival will take place on the holiday weekend of October 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th & 29th!!!
SLIGO LIVE will soon be announcing an exciting line up which will be a "must go" for all fans of Irish and roots music.
This year will see many exciting innovations to the festival programme which will be filled with top quality music, energy and fun.
Watch this space. All news will be announced on this site in the coming weeks...

Shuffle, upagus, opagus, Shuffle

are doing a shuffleopagus....(sp???)
Anywho, they are using listeners playlists (shock horror!). Basically turn your mp3 player on, set it to shuffle and note down the first ten songs. I think Tom Dunne started it off a few weeks ago while filling in for Ray D'Arcy (who's off with the roses), and Ann-Marie Kelly did it this morning.

It's so funny! I was actually sad to tear myself away from my radio. People write in with who they think sent in the playlist, and what kind of person they are, sad Glen Hansard feckers who drive beemers, manic depressives, There was one who said they thought the person had an oversized arm! (mega lol)
Anyway it's difficult to put into words, but really you should check it out so funny....
I think it's on at 11 am on Today Fm

and the purpose of this post? well it got me thinking about what my music says about me...so i'm lashing up my shuffle list:

1. Moloko – Sing it Back (Live)

2. !!! – All my Heroes are Weirdos

3. Nat Turner - You are my sun sign

4.Arctic Monkeys - You know I'm no Good

5. Led Zeppelin – Black Dog

6. Supergrass – Pumping on your stereo

7. Modest Mouse – Dashboard

8. Sly and the Family Stone – If you want me to stay

9. Primal Scream - Country Girl

10. Leonard Cohen – So Long, Marianne

Anywho, i love this divining your personality information through music, food of life, yadda yadda.

*the pic is of the infamous music trip. fairly lame i know*

Any newspaper?

This is a site i stumbled across, that has EVERY NEWSPAPER IN THE WORLD, more or less anyway.

Well it has 12,000, you'd be reading for a long time with all that.
Anywho it's called Newspapers24

Check out teh final final EP line up here

Find out about ancient civilisations here

Condensed Movies
it's very funny

Armageddon
Directed by Michael Bay
NASA
An asteroid is coming. We are in trouble.
Nerd
You must blow it up from the inside. Probably.
NASA
Let's teach drillers to be astronauts, on account of drilling is too hard for astronauts to learn.
Bruce Willis
Instead for a ninjillion dollars, we will only do it if we don't have to pay taxes anymore, because audiences can relate to that.
Audience
I can relate to that. Therefore, I love it.

THE END

I think Judy Garland went

THROUGH the toilet...

It's the lovely lovely Rufus



and my favourite...in his tights at Glasto

Electric Picnic Final Line Up

Is here.

Including
Beastie Boys, Bjork, Hot Chip, The Undertones,Chemical Brothers,Manic Street Preachers, UNKLE, Mixmaster Mike, Ladytron, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Fionn Regan, Soul II Soul, Magic Numbers, The Good, The Bad and the Queen, The Go! Team, Nouvelle Vague, Rio Kiley, MIA, Fujiya & Miyagi, Modest Mouse, Serena Maneesh, Bat for Lashes, Camera Obscura, Sons & Daughters, Marlena Shaw & Orchestra, Primal Scream, Oppenheimer, Simple Kid, Patrick Wolf, Jarvis Cocker, The Flaws, Ukelele Orchestra of GB, Polyphonic Spree, Ratatat,!!!,LCD Soundsystem,Si Schroeder,Architecture in Helsinki,Delorentos,Fight Like Apes,65 Days of Static

Woohhooo!!
Edit: More Picnic News: Here, chilled off licence beer, It's prob only gonna cost about €10 a bottle, or "standard off-licence prices" hhhmmmmm,

PRE-ORDER YOUR BEER FROM OFF-LICENCE...CHILLED.
In an ongoing attempt to improve services to festival goers we have launched a Pre-Order facility for the Festival Off Licence, a first for a music festival. Instead of lugging your two slabs of beer all the way to Stradbally & through the fields we are now able to offer you the facility to pre-order your beer (or cider) online and collect them, chilled, at your leisure after you pitch your tent on site.
The festival Off-Licence allows festival goers to purchase beer and cider at standard off-licence prices. Located in the campsite and open Fri-Sun, festival-goers will no longer need to stock up in advance. Opening Times: Fri-Sun 12pm-9pm. (Pre-sales to be collected by 6pm Sat.)
“I feel customers at music festivals bring cans on site as they feel they get better value off site in surrounding off licences. We have done a survey of the prices and our prices are an average of those we have surveyed. We have worked closely with Heineken Ireland to create what is the only Pre-Order Festival Off Licence anywhere in the world. We hope it will be well received by our customers attending Electric Picnic 2007.
It will go live on the at www.electricpicnic.ie on Monday 20th Aug”, said John Reynolds (Electric Picnic promoter)

(it looks like i've only just discovered the bold button :?)

Love this kind of thing

Even thought it's fairly old news

Staff at a drinks stand in the Netherlands resort of Zandvoort were amazed to find a 2.5-meter (8-foot) Lego man washed up on the beach Tuesday. It was rescued from the water and placed upright on the beach, to the delight of children. Nobody had any idea where the smiling Lego figure had come from, but there was speculation it might have come over from England, while suspicious pundits on the Web site Reddit feared it might be a Trojan horse "full of small Lego people about to attack Holland." However the ungrammatical slogan on the figure's chest, "No real than you are," led via a Google search to www.egoleonard.com, a Dutch Web site which appears to belong to an artist or art collective. Perhaps the mysterious figure is just another work of environmental art.

From Spiegel Online

This is so cool.

This here, I'm not sure if i need to link it, or jpg it, (i'm not that up on the old world of computing ya see). I'll link it, but go see it anyway, it's cool!

Never-ending

I think I blogged about David Shrigley before.

Oh yeah i did, here.

Cover Versions

I have a love of cover versions. I really like them. Not all of course, only the good ones, but obv what's good to one is complete pants to another.

I think I first got into them from Radiohead's cover of Carly Simon's Nobody Does it Better. Which is a song I love.

I just like when people take a song, and mess around with it, and make it their own. A bit of tweaking can go along way. There aren't many cover versions that outshine completely the original, but they are mostly entertaining and interesting, and some definately do improve on the original. In fact scrap that, there are some that are just much better.
Johnny Cash, Seu Jorge, Jack Black (for comedy value), Otis Redding, The Slits, The Flaming Lips, Nina Simone

So further to that, vis-a-vis, ergo, the Observer Music Magazine, which i must say I really enjoyed last Sunday (especially that letter about Manu Chao, bring him some exposure please) is doing some bits on cover versions.

Top Covers
They give a fairly comprehensize list of covers here, when i was going down through it i was like oh yeah, i remember that, or, oh wow i didn't know that existed. Anyway check it out, it's a bit of fun.

Weird note: As i was mooching around for other Covers bits and pieces i was at the Times Site. Which had a link to....This, i'm confused, is there some kind of joke going on here that I don't know about?

Anyway they (The Times) also have some Covers sort of stuff right around here.

I think my current favourite is All along the watchtower. Oh yeah.
But here's some Radiohead...I hope, no speakers on my comp and i just youtubed it, so fingers crossed!


Note to self: must get some mp3s up here soon.

actually i'd also like to add Hotel California by teh Gypsy Kings to this, now that's good, and and...
i can't stop :?