samsonsdiner

Art O'Neill ultra marathon report

2012-01-16T00:08:00.001-08:00

Ken’s Art O’Neill Challenge
Blog Entry 1.

This will be a short blog, 2 or 3 entries. Partly to track my experience of the Art O’Neill Challenge (which takes place tonight) and partly to show how my intake of Pro-Argi 9 helped me get through it.
However, I haven’t got through it yet!
Two bits of background – firstly the event itself – it’s a 55km overnight ultra-marathon (you can run, hike, or a combination) from Dublin Castle down and over the Wicklow mountains to the Glenmalure Valley, thus replicating the famous flight of Art O’Neill and Red Hugh O’Donnell in the 16th Century. For more info on the event they have a great website www.artoneillchallenge.ie and the event also raises some crucial funds for Dublin/Wicklow Mountain Rescue.
Next, a few comments on my preparation.
Ok, so it hasn’t gone perfectly! But, when does training ever go perfectly?!
It’s been a mild winter, but since December I’ve had a lingering cold/cough. This is very unusual for me, ever since I started taking Pro-Argi 9 my immune system has been excellent and I think it’s been at least 18 months since I had a cold. I also woke up with a bad neck strain 4 days ago, but thankfully that has diminished.
Basically, my training has been quite unscientific – just runs at the weekend, athletics sessions on Tuesdays (Crusaders AC) and other miscellaneous bits of running/walking/stretching/gymwork etc.
However, I slept well last night and will try for another nap around teatime before making my way in to the city centre.
Nutrition wise, I’ve been trying to eat sensibly since Christmas (battling a bit of weight gain!) and obviously am carb-loading since yesterday. I’ve also upped my intake of Pro-Argi 9 in the last few days, to 3 scoops a day. For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, it is the best arginine supplement on the market. I sell it myself (with my business partner Paul) and can also get you involved in selling it (if you’re interested in a nice simple 2nd income).
A brief word on the product – arginine is a Nobel winning food supplement which creates nitric oxide in the body and has been having revolutionary impact on many health issues, especially anything cardio related. It’s also amazing for energy and for athletes. But there’s way more information on our website www.heartdiseasemiracle.com and please contact me at ken@heartdiseasemiracle.com or by phone or Facebook if you want more info.
Anyway, back to tonight’s event.
I am officially listed as an ultra-runner, thus setting off at 2pm, whereas the walkers set off at midnight. Realistically though, I won’t run it all, just the road parts, and on the mountains I aim to run the flats, and the safe downhills. Otherwise we’ll have to see. One thing for sure, I’ll be running very slowly! I’ve never attempted anything like this before, and my previous longest mountain race I’ve done was 22 miles/38km (nearly 5 hours), plus I’ve done a couple of road marathons.
Ok, if I don’t report back before the race – watch out for my blog posting to say how it went! All going well, I’ll complete the race in less than 12 hours, thus finishing by 2pm on Saturday afternoon, and should be back to my laptop in Dublin by evening.
Good luck to all the other participants and let’s hope we all have a safe night on the mountains!
Ken

Blog Entry 2. 9 Hours 25 minutes later!

Well it's over and I'm glad to say the race went well!

For anyone who didn't read my first blog entry, I was doing the Art O'Neill Challenge - a 55km overnight ultra marathon (you can run, hike, or a combination of both) from Dublin Castle over the Wicklow mountains to Glenmalure, in tribute to the legendary prison escape/run by Art O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell in the 16th century.
This year, just for good measure, the organisers chose Friday 13th as the date!

Arrived at Dublin Castle just before midnight to see the hikers off - and then in to register, and finally, off we went running through the Castle gates at 2am out to a bemused Dublin - 80 runners in hi-vis jackets no doubt being a strange sight to bleary-eyed pub-goers staggering out of the chippers..

I'll try not to make this blog too long, but just to back-track a bit and talk a bit more about my pre-race preparation. I said I would mention nutrition. It's such an important part of long distance running, and I usually get it fairly right. This event though I, not quite – and my stomach wasn’t in great shape throughout the race. Even though, for about 36 hours before the race I was keeping it simple, plenty of carbs, litres upon litres of water, vitamins and things like dark chocolate to store fat (no jokes please!) Plus, of course my 3 Synergy products, Mistify, Phytolife and Pro-Argi 9. Some readers may not be interested, so I won't go in to more detail here, but please feel free to read more about them on www.heartdiseasemiracle.com, or to contact me for more info. Final word on it - Pro-Argi 9 is amazing for energy, and definitely helped me through my first ultra-marathon!

The only other things to mention about preparation are Kit (which I mostly got right), Sleep (I got a crucial 2 hrs sleep at Friday teatime as well as a fairly good night's sleep on Thurs) and Training (it went as well as could be expected - given a lingering cough and a sore neck).

So, to the race!
I was running with Justin and Jacqui, and we stuck together all the way to the mountains (30K of road), and were also in touch with Aidan, who had set off at 1.15.
Our plan was to run all the road parts, all the trails/fireroads and any safe mountain downhills and to walk the extreme uphills and the parts with very bad terrain. We mostly stuck to this plan!
The road part was (as expected) long and boring, enlivened only by the excitement of the event and camaraderie of the other runners, plus the knowledge that runners got attacked last year by locals in the countryside just beyond Tallaght (and no, not by animals!)
Anyway, nothing untoward happened, and we made it to the first transition stop in Kilbride (20K) in just over 2 hours.

By this point I had already made 2 mistakes. Firstly, I think we ran the first part too fast. For me, anyway. This was to lead to problems later!
Plus, I was wearing too much and my core body temperature was probably too high. It was a perfect night mind you - great visibilty and quite mild for the time of year. Temperatures I think ranged from about zero to 5 degrees.
Also, we spent a little too long in transition - it's amazing how long it can take to change top/runners, rearrange kit (for the mountain section to come), and have a bit of soup. Lessons learned here about Kit logistics!
And, oh yes, mentioning soup, that reminds me – as I said before my stomach was NOT in good shape for most of the run. Whether it was nerves (probably not, maybe it had a small impact), something I ate (not sure), or just the overall shock an event like this does to your body (most likely), I really couldn't take in much sustenance throughout the race. My total food intake was - one energy bar, one banana, one cup of soup, one bowl of porridge and one coffee - which is NOT enough food for an event this physical and this long. And I just couldn't stomach any of the electrolite drinks or Lucozade I had brought with me, and thus realised I was going to be very short on liquids, as I only had 2 bottles of regular water. Despite filling these bottles up at every transition station, I got quite badly dehydrated over the 9 hours.

Anyway, after the first break, off we went on the final 10k of roads, passing Dave and Don (from my job) walking, who seemed to be performing great and still in good spirits, until we hit the mountains proper at Black Hill. At this point Jacqui went off on her own, which looking back, she probably should/could have done earlier, as she is an amazing runner and was being held back. Likewise later in the race I was holding Justin back, but on the other hand, the company of another runner helps in other ways - eg keeping morale up. I should also mention that Justin did a great job of navigating us over the mountains - despite excellent moonlit conditions and 450 other people on the hills it's no easy task, and we made great progress - always taking the quickest lines.

At the top of Black Hill and on to the gap beside Mullaughlaveen (Billy Byrne’s Gap?) it was quite cold and windy, and (now nearly 4 hours in) our feet were completely soaking wet. Having said that I was happy with my decision not to wear waterproof socks, I just wore thin merino lining socks (thanks for the tip, Aidan!) underneath regular long-distance running socks and mountain runners. Once you keep moving, your feet don't get cold.

Terrain at this point was tricky, but manageable. My head torch wasn't really good enough (it wouldn't take a genius to realise a good head-torch is rather important for running over the Wicklow mountains at night!).
And this is the thing I'm most relieved about, sitting at my computer the day after - that I didn't get a single injury the whole night! Despite copious opportunities to twist an ankle in a rabbit hole, or fall off a peat hag, or slip down the Art's Cross climb(!), the worst thing that happened was about 6 or 7 falls - mostly in the latter stages by which time my brain wasn't really working but thankfully none of these falls did any damage.

From the gap, we made it down (a couple of hours later) to the start of a forest, and on to a trail. But, for the last half hour of that open mountain stretch - the most magical part of the event happened - you've probably guessed it - daybreak! Just a lovely transition from moonlight to daylight as the vista of the rest of southwest Wicklow towards Table track opened up, just amazing - as had been looking backwards at the trail of head torches back towards Black Hill, and earlier again - looking back to Dublin city and the sea from high up in the Dublin mountains.

After this, magical moments started to become thin on the ground (!), as the race was really taking a toll. I was dehydrated, under-nourished, and my legs were starting to get very sore, and my back/neck a bit sore too. I'm sure sleep deprivation was a factor too, but because we were running, or at least walking fast (on open mountain) we HAD to concentrate - I imagine sleep deprivation was a bigger problem for the walkers.

From here we had about 30 minutes of trail, until we arrived at the 2nd transition station. This time we kept it quick - just swiped in and out again (with our timing chips), a quick bowl of porridge, a coffee and a water refill, and off we went on to Leg 3.

This was to prove the most ferocious. For me, at least. Buoyed a bit by being finally in daylight (it was a lovely morning) and the porridge, this soon faded as we hit the open mountain route up to Art's Cross. We hadn't 'recce'd' this part, but Justin continued to do a great Nav job, and we did it in good time. But, the terrain was difficult and the final part up to the Cross itself was 'hands and knees' stuff. This had a couple of impacts - incredibly draining on energy and legs (which were by now not functioning at all well) plus my gloves/hands got soaked for the first time, leaving me with cold hands for the remainder.

From Art's Cross, it was a long flat-ish slog in a newly emerged fog (ironically visiblity had been better at dead of night) across sloshy peat-hags and finally downwards to a trail and on to what even my tired eyes could see was finally the Glenmalure Valley, and thus, not far from home!

From there it was a long (for me anyway) 4km or so, on trail (with the river on left) to the finish. By now, I was running like a very elderly person, but at least I was still running, and 9 hours and 25 minutes after I left the city centre, I crossed the finish line. They had a proper finish line with banners, and everybody got a bit of a clap when they finished. The event organiser was there as I crossed the line, a chap called Gearoid I think, and I was glad to shake his hand and congratulate him on an amazing event. The toughest thing I've ever done? God, yes! Would I do it again? Possibly not. But -I learned a lot - about preparation, logistics, nutrition, pacing, and how to deal with a long race mentally. My plan now is to continue to be sensible about my running (my knees are doing ok, but I need to be careful) and continue to measure the impact of the products I take to help with my running (and my health in general) especially the Pro-Argi 9.

Post race, I caught up with friends in the Glenmalure Lodge for a bit, prior to the bus back to Dublin. Next morning now, and I feel ok actually, had a long nights sleep, plenty of food and a hot bath, with a massage to follow in 2 days time.

A big thanks to my fellow runners - there was so much camaraderie out there, even though it was getting like a zombie movie towards the end, as people staggered towards the finish - and a huge thanks to the organisers and to Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue who were out in big numbers and made us all feel safe on this endeavour which some of my friends have variously described as mad, nuts, bonkers, you name it!

The last thing I'll say is, I hope everyone made it safely through the night, and congratulations to Eoin Keith for winning the event, shattering the record (previously held by, um, Eoin Keith!) by 90 (count 'em) minutes - with a winning time of 5 hrs 26 mins.

See everyone on the hills again soon..

My sites/blogs;
www.heartdiseasemiracle.com
www.irishmortgagedebtforgiveness.blogspot.com
www.samsonsdiner.blogspot.com
www.kencowley.com (content coming soon)
email: kencowley@ireland.com or ken@heartdiseasemiracle.com
Tel: 00 353 (0)85 7129060

2011 Review of the Year

2012-01-04T08:26:00.000-08:00

Indicative of the times we live in, this was a bad year for me for attending concerts/plays and albums purchased etc, but that doesn’t mean I don't have plenty to say about it!

Gigs

So, let me start with gigs. I can’t remember when I last saw so few concerts in a calendar year, and it wasn’t just recession related – there really weren't that many I was bothered about. I only saw a few Dylan shows, and have reviewed them independently on the blog, so just to reiterate it was a pretty good year for the now septegenarian performer.
The setlists have improved (marginally) but it’s the quality of the performances that really hit home this year. And it’s mainly visual. Audio wise, he continues to do (mainly) interesting things with what’s left of his vocal chords, but visually he is out front of stage now for over half the show, mainly without guitar, and is moving around and throwing shapes as only a 70 year old Bob Dylan could (or would) do. It’s hard to explain how this works and how it so dramatically improves the show, sorry but it really is a case of ‘you had to be there’(barring, that is, the somewhat lacklustre October Dublin show). It's not all visual though, the music is good too, and the shows are well worth downloading.
Dylan’s support act on the winter tour was Mark Knopfler and it was interesting to see a few of the Knopfler sets, even if every night is identical. It may seem obvious - but the most interesting thing about his show is his guitar playing, especially as he plays very few Dire Straits songs and mumbles the lyrics. Charisma wise he trails a long way behind his tour-buddy Bob, but he made up for this with his nice guitar contributions to Dylan’s sets (usually on the first 3 or 4 Dylan songs of the night) and in his perfectly timed hand-gesture during a moving tour-closing ‘Forever Young’. Again, there’s an element of you had to be there, but here’s a link to a decent youtube of that moment (it happens in the final verse) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja8rJ-0H7kc&feature=related
The Dylan shows were the only ‘big’ shows I saw, and were my favourites of the year. Runner-up was definitely Gillian Welch in the Grand Canal Theatre, also reviewed on this blog at the time.
Probably my 3rd favourite show of the year was a very enjoyable performance of Mahler’s 5th Symphony in the National Concert Hall. I’m not particularly expert on classical music, but his symphonies just have so much going on, and in a live setting you can get completely lost in them. Oh, and classical music is great value! In Dublin anyway..
Earlier in the year, before she became an 'arena-artist' I saw Imelda May in Vicar Street and it was great to see her strong rockabilly show in this small, and local (she was born and raised a few streets away) setting.
Another artist I saw in Vicar Street was Richard Thompson, only the 2nd time I’ve seen him, and as expected - the show was funny, literate and choc-full of great music. All from one man and a guitar, which is not usually my favourite format. Mind you, having said how good this show was, I would still love to see Richard sometime with his band, knowing that he is as good electric as he is acoustic.
Oh yes, and Paul Brady also played a really good show in the same Dublin venue back in April, showcasing the variety in his back catalogue with no little style and vigour.
The other band I enjoyed a lot this year was the Waterboys who I saw twice, once supporting Dylan in London, and then on their own at the atmospheric Tall Ships festival in Waterford. Both shows were very good and I must say I’m torn between their Yeats show and their ‘standard’ show. 2012 bodes well in that the band plan to do a compromise show, doing a set of Yeats songs, followed by a set of Waterboys songs.
Finally, just to mention some of the other acts at that Dylan festival show in London – the Waterboys shone brightest, but also of interest were sets from Christy Moore (not as good as normal due to a poor sound mix) and the Cranberries (ditto) and the Gaslight Anthem – who were kind of ‘Bruce meets The Clash’ with a fanatical young following.

Live artists of the year

Bob Dylan
Gillian Welch (with David Rawlings)
Mahler’s 5th Symphony by the RTE concert orchestra
The Waterboys
Paul Brady
Mark Knopfler
Richard Thompson
Imelda May

Films

I had a somewhat more prolific year for films than gigs, and there were plenty of good 'uns.
Top of the pile was the amazing Martin Scorsese documentary on George Harrison, which I was lucky enough to see on the big screen. Choc-full of great footage, much of which was new to me, and no little insight in to the story of one of my favourite artists. The best contributions were from McCartney, Ringo and Olivia.
The King’s Speech came out around New Year last year I think, and deserved all its awards. A classic period biopic/drama, it had great acting, writing and directing – which is about all you need in a film.
Hugo was a magical film about childhood and early Cinema and was a rarity in that it actually merited being in 3D – it also had a great storyline and was an unusual genre for Scorsese to tackle. Having said all that, it wasn’t really a children’s film – too long and too slow probably, but for this adult(!?) it was just fine!
Midnight in Paris was another solid Woody Allen film,as were his previous few, not that that stopped all the critics slavishly calling it a ‘return to form’. The same thing happens all the time with R.E.M. albums! Well, not anymore, now that they’ve retired..
Anyway, back to films - the 2nd Sherlock Holmes film was fairly entertaining, yes of course it was ridiculously over-the-top, but that was the intention I imagine..
The Adjustment Bureau was a witty and enjoyable adaptation of a Philip K Dick story, which as with all his stories, left you pondering longer than most writers.
The latest Pirates of the Caribbean was a (very)slight improvement on recent installments, especially the London scenes.
The Maids on the 7th Floor was a hilarious French 60s-set comedy, hard to see anyone in Hollywood ever coming up with something like this. It also had something to say, about French and Spanish culture and immigration etc.
The only other non-English-language film I remember seeing in 2011 was The Skin that I Live In - a creepy Almodovar film about possession, revenge and other themes, which almost worked. A bold effort though, and very enjoyable.
Other films I saw that had their moments but didn’t set my world on fire were things like The Guard (over-rated) and Rum Diary (a bit rambling).
Early 2012 looks like being a good period for films – I’ll try and review some of them on the blog, (eg The Artist), plus some others I missed in 2011 (eg True Grit)

My top few films

Living in the Material World – George Harrison documentary
The King’s Speech
Hugo
The Adjustment Bureau
The Maids on the 7th Floor
Midnight in Paris
The Skin that I Live In

Plays/Shows

As with concerts, it was a quiet year, I think I only saw three. And one of them was a musical, so really it was only two!
Both were enjoyable though, especially Pygmalion in the Abbey. It’s such a strong play, full of lines that you’d recognise from THAT musical (ie My Fair Lady, for which Pygmalion was the source), and very well acted by the ensemble cast, especially Risteard Cooper as Higgins. I’ve said it before (I think!), but Cooper is very underrated as an actor.
Hay Fever was ok as the Gate’s summer play, but it’s not my favourite Noel Coward play and would only give it 7/10.
The musical I saw was Spamalot, a silly but enjoyable Monty Python romp. It had some good singers – and the script is not bad, with some nice local Dublin ‘tailoring’ – however a mark deducted for Phil Jupitus who seemed to be sleepwalking through his part.

Best Play

Pygmalion

Art

It was a quiet year for art in Dublin as the National Gallery is partially closed for renovations. And I never got around to seeing the Frida Kahlo exhibition in IMMA. I did get to see the highly lauded Leonardo exhibition in London though, thanks to 3 hours of early morning queuing! It was very enjoyable, and seemed to have nearly everything that survives of the great man, barring the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper!
I also got to spend a few hours in the Prado in Madrid, which is one of those museums overflowing with old Masters on a scale that takes the breath away. On a lesser scale, but full of similar quality art is the neighbouring Thyssien Museum which I also visited during a very enjoyable weekend in the Spanish capital.

Exhibition of the Year

Leonardo – National Gallery London

Albums

Not a vintage year, but not too bad either. I don’t know if it’s creeping old-age – but there just aren’t so many albums I’m interested in being released these days. It was great however to finally see a new Gillian Welch album, and it certainly ranks close in quality to her first 4 albums which were a hard act to follow to say the least. The songs seemed to work better live though.
And, conversely, the reverse seemed to be the case for the new Wilco album! But, I haven’t had it long, and it needs a few more listens before I can really rate it.
For now though, my album of 2011 is Tom Wait’s new one ‘Bad as Me’. Full of roaring rockers and gorgeous ballads, the songs are snappier and somewhat more effective than on Real Gone. Great arrangements and singing (yes, singing!) too – and boy would be great to see this album in a live setting.
Other good new albums include PJ Harvey’s ‘Shake England Shake’ albeit it's slightly overrated - and The Black Key’s boisterous El Camino. And there were lots of good songs on the Noel Gallagher debut.

Albums of the year

Tom Waits Bad as Me
Gillian Welch – The Harrow and the Harvest
Wilco – The Whole Love
PJ Harvey - Shake England Shake
The Black Keys – El Camino
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

Books/Web/Apps/Blogs

Again – mainly re-reading old books, and stuck in magazines and newspapers as well as stuff about music or running.
So, really, the only one outstanding new novel I read this year was the ‘new’ Sherlock Holmes book ‘The House of Silk’ by Anthony Horowitz. It was the first time the Conan-Doyle estate has sanctioned a new novel and Horowitz seems to have really captured the feel and style of the original books, not to mention that it is as ‘un-putdown-able’ as Doyle’s best!
I also really enjoyed a great book about mountain running called ‘Mud Sweat and Tears’ by Moire O’Sullivan.
Online and via Apps, I enjoyed content from the Irish Times, New York Times, Evening Standard, thejournal.ie and more. Plus lots of great websites and blogs. Some more examples;
www.expectingrain.com
www.imra.ie
www.mountain-runner.com
www.adriandenning.co.uk

TV

Ok, anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for period dramas, especially if set between, say, the 1880s and the 1940s.
So, I was always going to like Downton Abbey. It may have the occasional unintentionally funny line, and the 2nd series had a slightly rushed feel about it, but it’s still a cleverly constructed piece of television and it isn’t topping the ratings for nothing. That said, the X Factor also tops the ratings so what do I know!
Plus, I was always going to like South Riding. Nowhere near as popular as Downton Abbey, but this small 3-part 1930s drama (adapted from a novel) was top notch, most notably for the performance of the amazing Anna Maxwell Martin.
If I had to choose one programme though as the best on TV at the moment I’d have to go for Sherlock – the contemporary re-imagining of the Conan-Doyle stories. However the first season was 2010 and the 2nd season started on New Years Day 2012, so I guess I’ll leave my actual review for the moment..
Other period dramas I saw were the BBC’s Great Expectations (it was ok), the Young James Herriot (a bit disappointing really) and Sky Atlantic's Boardwalk Empire (it started off ok, but got quite boring after a while, frankly), oh and while I’m not wild about Dr Who, the Christmas Day special was quite good.
Which leads me to ask – barring Sherlock, did I see ANY CONTEMPORARY drama in 2011?!
Phew - Blue Bloods to the rescue! A fairly bog-standard NYC cop drama – some people didn’t like it – but I thought it was pretty solid, not the greatest writing of all time, but good acting and nicely directed (it kept you wanting to know what’s coming next).
In 2012 I resolve to watch The Killing and The Wire (yes I still haven't seen The Wire)!
And leaving drama aside, I watched a fair bit of news, music programmes and documentaries – none of which really stood out, maybe other than the BBCs Frozen Planet.

Top few TV progs

Sherlock
Downton Abbey
South Riding
Frozen Planet
Blue Bloods

Misc

Culture Night - always one of the highlights of the year in Dublin. And it’s completely free. Amazed more people don’t go to it.

Personal stuff

A tough year, but a really good one for the reasons that matter..

Final word

This blog is mainly about culture, and sometimes about running, but please see my short list of websites (below) which are about other matters.
And keep an eye on www.kencowley.com where I'll be launching other writing and expanding on other projects in the coming months. There's nothing on that site yet, but please feel free to bookmark it!

See you all down the road in 2012..

Ken Cowley
www.heartdiseasemiracle.com
www.irishmortgagedebtforgiveness.blogspot.com
www.samsonsdiner.blogspot.com
email: kencowley@ireland.com or ken@heartdiseasemiracle.com
Tel: 00 353 (0)85 7129060

Review of Dylan at Hammersmith November 2011

2011-11-24T04:26:00.000-08:00

I thought I’d write a wrap-up review of the last few shows on the Dylan/Knopfler tour, focusing especially on the last show, but also touching on the entire tour, and where the Never Ending Tour is at (for me) as 2011 draws to a close.

Essentially this has been a good tour. By any standards. But especially by the standard of Dylan’s last few half-decade or so of touring. My opinion is that there has been a steady improvement since 2009, following a steady decline since 2001. That decline was very gradual though, and there were great periods within it, eg Fall 2002, Fall 2003, the likes of Bonnaroo, Barrowlands 2004, Fall 2005 with the altered band line-up, Fall 2006 which had the fillip of the Modern Times songs, etc etc. But 2007, 2008 were not so great really, so it’s been good to see a steady improvement since then.

However that does not mean his voice has improved. Far from it! The Dylan we see on stage today does not have anywhere near the vocal range of the late 90s/early ‘00s, nor even that of 2005. Coupled with this problem was that he seemed to get so fed up of singing some songs that he began to phrase them in ever more bizarre ways. In the heyday of the N.E.T. this was one of the ‘selling points’ for regular attendees, the fact that not only did he regularly change the song arrangements, but he also changed the phrasing, often from night to night. But, at that time, the ever changing phrasing seemed to have some point to it, and he usually found some way to make the phrasing fit the song, or whatever emotion he was trying to convey on the particular night. In recent years, while he can still achieve this when he wants to, there have been occasions when the bizarre phrasing didn’t seem to make any sense at all. Some songs seem to be guiltier of this than others, eg Hattie Carroll and Hard Rain. So good to see things improve on this front and that he continues to do 'interesting' things with what are left of his vocal chords.

All of which brings us to a mild November day in Hammersmith last Monday. The tour had been notable for several reasons. Firstly, of course, having Mark Knopfler as an opening act. Having seen the opening night of the tour in Dublin 6 weeks ago, I had been disappointed he played not one Dire Straits song, so it’s been good that he’s added Brothers in Arms and So Far Away to his set. The rest of his set is pleasant rather than inspirational, the most interesting thing for me being his guitar playing. He has definitely added something to Dylan’s sets too, as from mid-tour on he joined Dylan every night for the first 3 or 4 numbers, just playing guitar, and making a nice contribution to the band’s sound.

The other notable thing about the tour is Dylan’s increased engagement with the audience. From Glasgow onwards he had been out in the middle of the stage much more than usual (up to half the numbers) – and in a much more energetic way, moving around almost like a boxer just holding the microphone in one hand and his harmonica/harmonica mike in the other hand and/or using the mike stand as a prop of sorts. This has made the shows considerably more enjoyable visually, and haven’t hurt the musical performance at all, quite the opposite actually.

By the London shows, the level of energy from earlier in the tour had perhaps ebbed a little, but was still very evident on some songs. So, what were the highlights of the London run? Here are a few examples;
Mississippi – very enjoyable new bouncy arrangement, making this the best live version certainly since 2001
Blind Willie McTell – amazingly this is (arguably) even better than the great arrangement he had been using since 1997, now cast in a genre that’s hard to define – part country, part stomping 1920s dixieland jazz (if that makes any sense!), punctuated (and finished) with some of the best hand-held harmonica you’ll ever see
Man in the Long Black Coat – this great song from 1989 has been transformed from a slow atmospheric number to a powerful up-tempo opportunity for Bob to stalk the stage barking out the verses in his best 2011 growl, again with fine harmonica
Forgetful Heart – I’ve seen some amazing versions of this since the song came out on Dylan's last studio album in 2009, but the one on Sunday at Hammersmith probably tops them all. This is 2011 Dylan at his best, and by far the quietest song he performs these days (Dylan concerts are now very loud rock affairs, with very little acoustic or quiet songs). Anyway, he gave this song an incredible vocal in London and performed it very theatrically too, like some kind of torch-song, really communicating with the audience like he used to in 1995 or 1999 or earlier in his career. At times during this performance I felt he was incorporating the spirit of older performers, not the blues/country guys he normally reminds us of but people like Sinatra, Fred Astaire, even Charlie Chaplin.

These are just a few highlights – lots of other songs were also very well performed over these 3 nights, and my only complaints are that he plays slightly too many ‘by-number’ rock/rock’n’roll/blues numbers, and obviously we’d like a bit more set-list variation - his set-lists having become a bit more static (by his own high standards of variety that is) in the last couple of years, but this tour saw a small but significant improvement in variety. So overall just a good solid run of shows, ending a very good tour.

The final thing I want to talk about before I sign off is the last song of that last show. Up til then it had been a pretty good show, of a similar standard to the previous night, and definitely better than the first Hammersmith show, but now we were to get a performance/moment to take the show to another level.

I had been wondering would he ask Knopfler out for one final song, and sure enough there he was, strapping on his red Strat(?) and, adjusting the microphone in the middle of the stage. So, wow – we were to get a vocal duet – something that had not happened thus far on the tour (he had only played guitar with Bob to this point), and indeed, I can’t remember the last time Bob performed an actual proper vocal duet with someone – maybe Norah Jones in 2005?

Anyway, it really was the special moment that people have been talking about. Ok, perhaps nothing extraordinary musically, but just a very genuine and (presumably) relatively unscripted moment and it led to a lovely communal feeling of warmth spreading across this great old London venue. The song of course was Forever Young –Bob taking the 1st verse, Mark the 2nd and sharing the 3rd. As people will know, not just from other reviews but from the youtube vids(!), Knopfler sang the lyric ‘May your heart always be joyful, may your song always be sung, and may you stay forever young’ right TO Bob, and gestured with his arm to Bob on the line ‘may your song always be sung’ to which the place erupted. You’d have had to have a heart of stone not to have enjoyed it, and if Knopfler was ever to win over the Dylan audience, he did it right there.

The song finished up with a solid harmonica solo from Bob (this tour having seen a very high standard of harmonica playing by the way), and the artists exchanged hugs with Bob giving Mark plenty of acknowledgement, showing friendship and respect between these two artists (and collaborators of old) in equal measure.

It was a fitting end to a decent year’s touring. With no rumours or news yet, who knows what 2012 will hold, but let’s hope, as he approaches 71, that he keeps it fresh, enjoys himself and is not done yet.

Review of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at the Grand Canal Theatre Dublin 17 November 2011

2011-11-18T01:38:00.001-08:00

I haven’t written a concert review in a while, but it would be reprehensible to let an appearance in Dublin by Gillian Welch go without mention.

As usual it was one of the concert highlights of the year, and a very successful return to Dublin on the back of her new album ‘The Harrow and the Harvest’. She usually plays Vicar Street but this time sold out the (larger) Grand Canal Theatre, a good achievement indeed in recession riddled Ireland.

Anyway, on to the show. At around 8.15 herself and Dave came on to a loud welcome and kicked straight into a powerful opening ‘Tear My Stillhouse Down’ before giving us a nice ‘Scarlet Town’ the evening’s first song from the new album. The audience was a bit quiet for the opening few songs, a fact noted humorously by Gillian, after which things livened up considerably. And of course, humour always being a big part of a Gill/Dave show, tonight was no exception, their songs often being so grim (in theme at least), it’s nice that the two of them are so hilarious in person. The only other artists I’ve seen who come close to being so funny are probably John Prine and Tom Waits.

They’ve also added in a nice little theatrical element – on the song 'Six White Horses' Gillian does some tap dancing (clog dancing?) and some percussion on her legs – doesn’t sound so good on paper (!) but very affecting and amusing on the night.

Anyway, leaving theatricality aside the main reason a packed house had turned up on this mild November night was to see and hear great music. And the show was jam-packed with great music. If I had to pick my top two performances of the night I’d opt for 'Wayside/Back in Time', a strong tune from the underrated Soul Journey album, and one I’d never seen them do before. Song of the night though had to be 'Revelator' – it really is their masterpiece and while it’s always a tour-de-force live, tonight seemed to take it to a new level – containing some of the most spine-chilling guitar I’ve heard in a concert for a long time. Dave got a thunderous and well deserved ovation at the end of it.

It really is amazing the power of this music – normally I’m not a huge fan of acoustic concerts, but what is generated by these two, just with guitar’s, voices (and occasional harmonica and banjo) beggars belief. Dave is not a strong solo singer but (ala Mike Mills) is a terrific backing singer and one of my favourite guitar players of all time, and likewise Gillian is one of my favourite singers ever.

Other highlights were; the 2 covers – Neil Young’s 'Pocohantas' and Jefferson Airplane’s 'White Rabbit', typically powerful versions of 'Look at Miss Ohio' and 'Caleb Mayer', plus some of the strongest songs from the new album - my favourite of which were 2 gorgeous performances - ‘Dark Turn of Mind’ and ‘That’s the Way that the Whole Thing Ends’, 2 quiet songs cleverly placed in the encores but mixed up with some of the livelier more throwaway (albeit entertaining) songs like ‘I’ll Fly Away’ and ‘Jackson’.

So, much as I enjoyed the Dave Rawlings concert in Belfast last year (where he and Gillian kind-of swapped roles) and his own album was quite good too, it’s been amazing to have a proper new Gillian album and tour. Let’s hope we see them again soon!

Review of 'Justice for Believers' album by Dublin band The Roj Light

2011-08-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

Justice for Believers is the first proper album by The Roj Light, a Dublin band fronted by Roger Whelan. It’s not just me that thinks they are a promising band, there have already been some good reviews and talk about the band, indeed Roger himself retired from a career in international cricket to pursue his musical vision, and I’m pretty sure he’ll get there.

This album is a good start. Right from the off it grabs you with opening up-temp number Laura. This song was also on a single and you can see why. Very catchy, and it shows off the Roj Light’s sound at its best, ie a bright indie-rock sound, reminiscent of Oasis or the Smiths but with a more interesting twist (I like Oasis but they could be a bit leaden at times), in that there is a touch of Stone Roses in there too – a band with more diverse influences than Oasis. It’s interesting to see influences pass down the decades like this, whereby we can see the Beatles being filtered through Oasis to bands like the Roj Light via the more psychedelic musings of the Stone Roses and other 1990s bands.
I even fancy I caught a strain of the crisp guitar lines of early Cult albums, but I could be wrong..

Anyway, enough of influences – there’s nothing wrong with being influenced, but the Roj Light are original enough to stand out. Lyrically the songs are quite diverse, and are not afraid to tackle the major malaises facing Ireland today, taking stances many of us might agree with now where we wouldn’t have in the past. The main example of this is a song called ‘The 2016 Rising’, which has a very innovative video on the band’s website www.therojlight.com

Other songs I liked were a solid ballad called ‘The Scars Upon Our Heart’ with some nice dreamy guitar work noodling away behind the vocals, followed up on the album by a strong rocker ‘Death To All Cynics’. Musically, this song is typical of the band, with really good rhythm guitar played over some fine drum/bass interplay, with ‘ragged but right’ guitar solos which don’t overstay their welcome.

But I won’t focus too much on individual songs - this is an album to let wash over you, and indeed there are several promising new songs from the band on their website now, suggesting album no 2 is in the pipeline. So, go check them out! Highly recommended!

Dylan in Cork and London, June 2010

2011-07-04T02:12:00.000-07:00

I usually write gig reviews hot off the press with the sound of the music still ringing through my head - however I’ve been very busy since the 2 Dylan shows I saw last month, so am only getting around to it now and therefore my recollections may be a bit hazy!

Firstly, I went to the Cork show. Dublin’s southwestern capital was looking well on a mainly sunny day as a carload of us (myself, Jim, Mike, and John H) made it down around lunchtime. Dropping one of our party (regular readers might guess which one!) off at the queue at the venue (a big marquee in the Docklands area), the rest of us spent the afternoon having lunch, strolling around the city centre, and catching up with some other friends at a specifically organised live music event in a pub.

After that it was down to the gig, and we all did surprisingly well in getting positions at or near the front of the stage, and then the hour’s wait for the lights to go down for this tour opening night. Sure enough, all was as usual, lights down, spoken introduction by Al (no intro music), no band changes, Bob looking fighting fit in black hat and suit, and straight in to an absolutely barnstorming ‘Gonna Change My Way of Thinking’. As good an opener as he’s had for many years, this one is just perfect for his current vocal range and immediately we were aware everything was good - artist and band in good form, with a great sound system in the tent and the vocals blaringly up front, just as I like it.

From there, it was straight in to a nice ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, Bob out front with no guitar, the familiar current fast-ish country arrangement, with a defiant but not annoying emphasis on the 2nd line in every verse, as is his wont these days on some songs. Plus some amazing harmonica!

Next up was a re-arranged ‘Things Have Changed’, with a bit of spiky stop-start action going on, worked really well, but at subsequent shows it was more a case of ‘The Arrangement Has Changed’ with this song and not always for the better in my opinion.

From there it was on to ‘Tangled up in Blue’. I’ve grown to like (if not love) it’s latest arrangement, by my count the 4th radically changed version of this song in the last 8 or 9 years alone, with Bob out front and almost dancing – it was a real crowd pleaser once they figured out what the hell song it was!

And I really must say the best thing about these shows is how animated Dylan is, and has been pretty much since late 2009. By my count, at the Cork show he was out front for about 8 of the songs, played guitar on 2, and was only stuck in behind the keyboard on about 5. What a change from 3 or 4 years ago! It’s great to see him engaging with the audience much more, and all the ducking and diving and expressiveness with mic and harmonica etc. This engagement/animation was of course to be taken to new heights at the infamous Milan club show the following week!

Also he’s putting much more effort in to his vocals. The condition of his voice is certainly no worse than it was in 07/08, and although he doesn’t have the range or the flexibility of the late 90s/early ‘00s golden age(!) of the Never Ending Tour, he’s still finding it in him to be damn expressive when he wants to be.

Anyway, back to the show - ‘Levee’s Gonna Break’ had a bit of a re-arrangement, more of a jump blues now than a rockabilly/blues number, as did ‘Highway 61’, now recast as a kind of swing number, or at least more country than what we’ve come to expect from this blues-rock warhorse. ‘All Along the Watchtower’ is also quite dramatically rearranged, and despite cutting out the song’s famous descending chord sequence I have to say I now quite like it, it’s forced Bob to sing it better for one thing, and the band do interesting things in the murk of what is now nearly a ‘song without chords’. I should mention Stu gets to play a lot of lead in this song as he usually doesn’t get to play much despite being more talented than he gets credit for. Charlie Sexton, a player who in my humble opinion is slightly less talented than he gets credit for doesn’t get to play much these days either. In general I like the way the current band is playing and the current song arrangements, but Bob letting his guitar players off the leash a bit more wouldn’t do any harm.

I won’t go through every other song played, so just to mention that ‘Simple Twist of Fate’, ‘High Water’ and a massive ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ were other examples of show stopping songs on the night. But yes of course I’ve left the best to last – as ever Ireland seems to always get a little setlist surprise from Bob, as well as (arguably) getting some of the best show(s) of his recent European tours, so tonight in slot 7 we got an absolutely gorgeous rendition of one of his best ever songs, ‘I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine’, complete with lovely new arrangement and a killer vocal.

So, that was Cork, and after some end of gig chat with all our friends, it was back to Dublin and thence to London in time for the Feis two days later. This is a new version of the old Fleadh festival in Finsbury Park, and as before it is a muddy and drunken (but fairly good natured) affair. It is supposed to be a celebration of Irish music, and given that Bob is all but an honorary Irishman these days, who better to headline on day one!

I won’t discuss all the support acts, especially as many of them (Christy Moore and the Cranberries especially) seemed to suffer from a bad sound mix, and only one of the support acts is worthy of a superlative review anyhow - this being the cracking performance by the Waterboys. As ever, the Scottish/Irish outfit put on a killer show, judging their audience nicely, by mixing in big hits, with less well known songs but nothing too demanding for a drunken, rain-sodden crowd wedged together in a big field waiting for Dylan to come on. Mike Scott has added a pedal steel player to the band, and this guy certainly adds something, especially on a gorgeous pedal steel soaked version of ‘You’re a Big Girl Now’ with Mike quipping that Dylan is unlikely to play it himself later on but that if he does, we’ll be getting TWO versions of a great song in one night’. This was one of two covers on the night, the other being a northern soul encore, with Mike and band showing us they can do funky as well as any other music style. The opening song was done in a funky arrangement too, maybe alluding to future directions?
Anyway, to finish up, I’ll just mention one more setlist highlight, a version of ‘September 1913’, a poem by W.B. Yeats which Mike has put to music (along with a dozen others, which the band have toured as a bigger show in its own right, with album to following in September), and it was great to see it done in the context of the regular (smaller) Waterboys touring band.

So, with the Waterboys having laid down a marker, and perhaps the other most popular band on the day (certainly with the younger people in the audience) having been Gaslight Anthem (must check ‘em out..), Bob came on for his 90 minute headlining set, just as the crowd had got even more wedged in, drunks everywhere, several people taken over the barrier from fainting, too much booze etc. But it was another solid performance from our man, with several setlist changes from the Cork show, including set highlight - a remarkably quiet ‘Forgetful Heart’ which was a brave choice for such a boisterous audience, and one that worked in no small measure. Otherwise, most of my Cork comments stand at least for the repeat songs played, with my 2nd favourite song of the night being ‘A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall’. Never my favourite Dylan song, and one that has suffered from ever more bizarre vocalising in recent years, tonight his sing-song/talking staccato type-thing actually worked, and by the closing verse he had the audience totally reeled in. I think it works if it seems he is actually trying to emphasise particular lines or words with some sort of purpose, rather than just re-styling a song because he’s sick of singing it.

Anyway, another very solid performance all round, with excellent sound (the recordings from this tour thus far are very good too, although some of the Feis discs have unintended comedy in them from the noisy crowd – my favourite overheard comment being ‘oh-oh look out, we’ve got a puker here’!)

Final mention must go to the closing song, a version of ‘Blowing in the Wind’ which some people didn’t like. I thought it was very good, and instead of the normal closing harmonica solo, he soloed the hell out of the song on guitar, showing that as we know, he can play some decent almost technical guitar, when he wants to!

From there, off we went in to the night, my short Dylan jaunt over for this tour. Dylan wise, we continue to live in interesting times!

Review of Circuit of Avonbeg mountain race May 2011

2011-05-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is a short report about the Circuit of Avonbeg mountain race, which I took part in today. It's a race on the calendar of IMRA (Irish Mountain Running Association), and is one of the longest, toughest ones of the year. Check out www.imra.ie for more info on this great sport - much of which, in this country, takes place in the Wicklow mountains.

It was a truly spectacular race today. Relatively lucky with the weather, at the start I didn’t think visibility was going to be good, but it picked up, and from the top of Lugnaquilla we could even see the sea! Otherwise it was chilly, windy, sunny at times, and about 3 big showers, but could have been worse.

Anyway, thanks to Aidan for all his navigational help around the course – we kept apace with each other for most of the race, and when we separated, I did get a bit lost I must confess, and wasted quite a bit of time scrambling around in miscellaneous forests near Conavalla, including falling on my ear more than once!

But, to start at the beginning – we took our time going up Lug (the first of about 6 peaks we were to climb), making it in a comfortable 90 minutes.
From there, we had the most enjoyable part of the race - must have been quite a few miles of the most blissful downhill mountain running you’re likely to come across.
From there it was up to Camenabologue, the first manned checkpoint, and then down to the bottom of the valley, from where my aforementioned adventures happened.
But, no harm done (apart from getting soaked and a lot of minor scrapes on my leg), and managed to catch up with Aidan somewhere between Lugduff and Mullacor (the final manned checkpoint).

By that stage the whole field (35 runners) had got very spread out, and indeed I hardly saw anybody throughout the 2nd half of the race – of course by the time I got to Mullacor, the winners – and well done to Colm Hill on a sensational winning time of 2.30 ish (I think) would have long been in the clubhouse (so to speak).

Anyway, from Mullacor, it was basically down to the Wicklow Way, and a slow trudge back to the finish line, which I crossed in a not so impressive 4 hrs 35 mins.
But, hey, at least 30 mins of that was spent going the wrong way!
The entire race is approx 1100 metres of ascent, and is approx 26 kilometres in length, although I reckon I ran closer to 30.
So, lessons learned for next year (brush up on my navigational skills), and a great day out in the Glenmalure Valley (the most scenic part of Wicklow), albeit maybe the toughest single sporting event I've ever taken part in.

Highlights – the great descent from Lugnaquilla and the descent/flat parts from Conavalla through to the saddle between Lugduff and Mullacor.
Lowlights – I don’t mind the sore muscles in my legs, but I could do without the 2 big blisters (one on each toe!).

Most of all though, I’d like to say thanks to the volunteers, especially the race director and the summit marshalls.

Looking forward to cracking 4 hours next year.

Paul Brady concert review - Vicar Street 1 April 2011

2011-04-02T03:09:00.001-07:00

Having won a pair of Paul Brady tickets (thanks Radio Nova!), and really only being a middling PB fan, I went along to Vicar Street last night with minimal expectations.
First a quick pint in a great local pub, The Thomas House, and in we went, grabbed our seats, and about a minute later out came the unassuming singer from Strabane, Co Tyrone.

The night was nicely split between solo and band performances, with seemingly every genre from Brady’s past represented, rock, pop, some lovely trad songs and a jig/reel or two, along with several from his current album (Hooba Dooba), one of which was a gorgeous solo piano song – something to do with a mother and son, will have to check that one out further. Plus, he played at least 8 or 10 very well known songs, so really everyone should have gone home happy, and I reckon they did.

I don’t know if he generally tours with a band, but tonight he had two good players with him, a chap I didn’t know on keyboards, and Bill Shanley on guitar, who I’ve seen several times before as his main job is in the Ray Davies band, lovely guitar player.

Writing this on the hoof, so, to some highlights;
• A truly gorgeous rendition of The Island, PB just stood at the centre for this one holding (but not playing) his guitar, letting the keyboard player play the big piano in the corner, and play it really well, plus some nice fills on acoustic from Bill.
• There were lots of special moments like that, Brady’s lyrics which often spoke to previous hard times, now seeming sadly relevant again
• He only mentioned the country’s current woes a few times, and his demeanor throughout was very relaxed and good humoured - I’ve been to lots of concerts, but there really was a great rapport last night between artist and audience – the whole night was just full of good music, some reflective moments and everybody seemed to feel we were acknowledging hard times, but realising that nights like this, and music in general, don’t just comment on the times we’re in, but also serve to help us escape them for an hour or two
• A rocking version of ‘Nothing but the same old Story’ brought back to us the sheer power of that song, a visceral indictment of past experiences of Irish people abroad. And, ok, we’re not seen as murderers any more, but pariahs of a financial hue now perhaps?
• Absolutely amazing rendition of Arthur McBride, just solo on acoustic guitar, I have rarely seen a major artist ‘live’ a song as Brady did this one last night, especially as he must have played this one a thousand times before
• The Homes of Donegal was an anthemic rendition in the 2nd last song slot
• Many more highlights, which without a setlist I’m struggling to remember, but even the poppier songs, not necessarily my favourites, were very well done, and boy can he write a decent pop song?!

So, to wrap up, it was just a nice unexpectedly good night of music. With all the talk of U2, Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, Horslips, Phil Lynott, The Frames (oh yeah, forgot to say Glen Hansard guested with PB for one song last night) it’s easy to let Paul Brady slip under the radar. A pity, because as last night showed, he’s one of our most talented artists of the last 4 decades – in voice, musicianship, songwriting – all of which he showcased gracefully and with good humour last night for 2 hours in Vicar Street. 9 out of 10.

Ken

Review of Wicklow Way mountain race March 2011

2011-03-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

This is my first race report, have only been doing IMRA races for a year, but finally thought I should put pen to paper.
It’s hard to explain how much I get out of mountain running as it seems to have overtaken many of my previous pastimes (obsessions?!) such as golf, concerts, road running etc. I find running much simpler than golf, you just have to KFR (keep f***ing running!), and mountain running, while not simpler than road running, is a million times more satisfying, and (arguably) easier on the body. It’s the perfect sport really –
Competitive? – Certainly, but not overly so..
A mental challenge? – you’d better believe it, as you face your 4th or 5th summit on a long race and your lungs and legs all but giving out..
An escape? - it’s simply the best escape you can have from the real world - charging up and down mountains requires at least 100% concentration, every step is different, the terrain and scenery changing by the minute – definitely the most magical way to run, and one of the best ways to enjoy the breath-taking Wicklow mountains, or any other mountains for that matter.. and the weather doesn’t matter a whit, just adds to the challenge..
And of course, it’s one of the most sociable forms of athletics or sport, definitely some of the most unpretentious and likeable sportspeople you’ll meet..

So, as you’ve gathered I LIKE mountain running.
Which brings me to last Saturday, and the Wicklow Way Trail. Preparations weren’t perfect (are they ever?), had overdone it completely at a Crusaders AC session on Tues, was stiff for days after that, gym Wed, gentle jog Thurs, forced myself to do nothing Fri, didn’t sleep great – about the only thing I did right was 500g of pasta on Fri night, and off to the start with me and Tony on Sat morning.
What was perfect though, was the organisation – a very difficult race to manage, with a shuttle bus system taking everyone out to Ballinastoe and TWO races to manage (about 30 hard core runners were doing double the distance of our race ie 50K!), and a long trail to be manned, watered and photographed. So, well done to Dermot, Mick and all the other volunteers.

Our race (the Trail), was a 15.5 mile (25k) affair along the Wicklow Way from Ballinastoe to Johnny Foxes, and a few minutes after midday, off we went - a cool foggy morning and about 170 of us taking to the hills.
However just to make us feel ever so slightly inadequate, at about the same time the Ultra runners came through – they were doing the exact double of our race, ie 50km out and back! Some of these guys looked remarkably fresh, despite being halfway through a race much longer than a marathon and over about 6 mountains!

Anyway, we set off up the trail, and towards Djouce. I kept it quite easy at the start, knowing my legs would need every ounce of energy as the hours wore on. It was a fairly steady incline and soon enough we hit the boardwalk near the JB Malone memorial. Not knowing whether to ‘pose’ for the nearby photographer, or take in the Lough Tay view, I stumbled a bit here, but no damage done and proceeded on at a reasonable pace to Djouce. Luckily we didn’t quite have to do the summit, as the Wicklow Way veers right around the shoulder of the mountain, at which point I had a bit of a stitch and lost some ground, recovering enough to enjoy the great heathery/boggy descent from Djouce down to the turnstile. This sort of descent is my favourite element of mountain running, when you can really feel at one with the world and lash down a mountain knowing the terrain is relatively safe (ever since twisting my ankle last year I’ve lost my nerve somewhat and for now am taking it easy on dangerous or rocky terrain).

From there, we went on down to the river, and up the nasty first bit of the ‘mountain that becomes Maulin’ – this is my term, maybe it has another name (!), and then turning right and down on the nice trail that soon gives us the great view (to our right and below) of the Powerscourt Waterfall.
At this stage I was running pretty well, a bit (but not too much) behind some of the people I usually aim to keep some sort of pace with (hello Justin, Tommy, Tony, Vanessa, Zoe etc), probably in my usual mid-field position.
Decided to up the pace a bit on the zig-zagging fire road and on down to Crone car park. Probably overdoing it a bit, and then (2nd mistake) drinking just a bit too much water at the first water station. Other than that, I got the food and drink about right throughout the day.

I should mention by the way, that there was a good bit of banter and chat throughout the race, especially the earlier part – towards the end everybody seemed to be dying on their feet, and things were much quieter!
And, this is where I was also starting to struggle – realising I had over-done things a bit down to Crone, had very little energy for the big climbs up Curtlestown and Prince Williams Seat.
Especially the nasty ride from the road near the hostel – boy is that steep!
And then the seemingly endless trail up Prince Williams..
After that, at least things were mainly downhill or flat, but I was running on empty by now.
Have never particularly thought I had great mental strength – although found out in 2009 that I do have a little bit, when managing to polish off a sub-4 hour marathon in difficult circumstances (by my standards that was a good time), so trying to draw on this, I soldiered on, legs and lungs feeling like they were at a marathon-esque wall.
I wanted to come in comfortably under 3 hours, and just managed it, at 2.42, shuffling over the line, legs almost gone, but a great feeling of satisfaction and camaraderie all round!

After that a nice few drinks in Johnny Foxes and a meal in another runners’ house - thanks Zoe - (a sociable and hospitable bunch, as I was saying, mountain runners..!), and all in a gruelling but enjoyable day completed.
This is 4 days later. It took 3 of those for my legs to recover, but already looking forward to the next mountain race (albeit hopefully a shorter one!).

Ken

Review of 2010

2011-01-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

So, 2010 eh? - a year many people are glad to see the back of, especially in Ireland.
But economic meltdown notwithstanding, life goes on, especially music, films etc, and thank God (or whoever) for that.
So, here’s a rundown of some of the things I enjoyed most this year.

Concerts

Bob Dylan x 4
Paul McCartney – RDS Arena Dublin
Leonard Cohen – Lissadell House Sligo
Waterboys x 2 – Abbey Theatre & Wexford Opera House
Wilco – Open House Festival Belfast
Ray Davies – Grand Canal Theatre
David Rawlings / Gillian Welch & Old Crow Medicine Show - Belfast
Crosby Stills & Nash – o2 Arena Dublin
Iron Maiden – o2 Arena Dublin
Redneck Manifesto – Roisin Dubh Galway

Not a vintage year, but not bad. I went to less gigs than usual, but seemed to choose well.. Saw 4 Dylan shows and all were all very enjoyable, especially Ljubliana (a boiling hot little gym hall) and Thomond Park Limerick (a drizzly breezy afternoon in a partially full big rugby stadium). It was a poor year for Dylan setlists, but great to see him more engaged and out at the front of the stage again.
Budgets only permitted one of the (ferociously expensive) Leonard concerts, but every word you read about how good and special these nights were in the grounds of Lissadell House (Sligo) was true. Never to be forgotten. Artist and band at the peak of their powers, oh, and some new songs too!
I’ve already reviewed the two Waterboys concerts I saw of Yeats poems put to music on this blog, so I won’t go over old ground, except to say it’s a much better idea than it sounds! Some of the best tunes Mike Scott has ever written, and really an amazing show both in concept and execution.
McCartney in the summer in the RDS was very good (he’s always good) but not quite as special as the smaller o2 arena show 6 months earlier. And he needs to change his banter.
Wilco in Belfast gave a suitably raucous and textured performance for their first ever appearance in Northern Ireland. They are still easily my favourite current band.
The gig the next night, David Rawlings/Gillian Welch and Old Crow Medicine Show was also enjoyable, but left one looking forward to the next proper Gillian album and tour.
Other enjoyable gigs included Crosby Stills and Nash (harmonically nice but not earth shattering) and Iron Maiden (call me old fashioned but it was marginally too loud and they played too many new songs!).
Redneck Manifesto in Galway (as part of a stag night!) was the pleasant surprise of the year.

Albums

Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town box set
Dylan in Mono and the Witmark Demos
John Lennon - Double Fantasy Stripped
Beatles Red & Blue albums
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street remastered
Richard Thompson – Dream Attic
Blizten Trapper – Destroyer of the Void
Neil Young – Le Noise
Arcade Fire - Suburbs

A really bad year for albums I thought. I concede that 90% of what I listen to is old music, but given that I listen to a LOT of music, that still left me disappointed with this year’s 10%.
There are quite a few contemporary bands I keep an eye on – the likes of Arcade Fire, Blitzen Trapper, Grandaddy, Wilco, REM, Bon Ivor, Band of Horses, Megafaun, Artic Monkeys, Foals, to name a few– but only the first two of these released any decent new material it seems, in 2010.
Neil’s new album Le Noise was ok, still haven’t got my head around it to be honest, and I was never a fan of solo electric guitar albums!
Richard Thompson’s Dream Attic was good, and there’s ALWAYS 2 or 3 amazing songs on any RT album. Plus it was an interesting way to present an album with a live disc (only) of the main songs and an outtake disc.
John Lennon's Double Fantasy received the stripped (plus the regular album remastered) treatment, and in the main, was an improvement. Great to hear the vocals even more up-front.
Otherwise the two big releases of the year for me were Dylan in Mono (his 1st eight albums) and Springsteen’s Darkness re-release.
Our appetites for the Dylan set was whetted by the Beatles’ mono (and stereo) releases the year before, and while this was not as radical (or arguably as necessary), you can never have enough versions of Blonde on Blonde (!), and many of the songs on many of these seminal albums have benefited from the new mastering and the mono presentation. That said, I haven’t got overly excited about it – I probably need to listen to it more (on headphones). The Witmark Demos set was ok, nothing new or startling, but if you never had any of this material before, it would be worth picking up to hear how Dylan evolved from 1962 into 1964 or so.
However, my album of the year (if you can call it an album) is the Springsteen set.
Essentially it is a re-mastered Darkness on the Edge of Town (from 1978), which has always been my own favourite Bruce album and has never sounded good on CD before. Well, now it does!
Plus we have all the bonus material – starting with a 2 disc set of outtakes from Bruce’s entire period between Born to Run and Darkness. Don’t forget this was a 3 year period when he was legally prevented from releasing anything, and he wasn’t only writing dark anthems such as would appear on Darkness – he was also writing glorious pop songs, many of which appear on these discs. There are too many gems to mention amongst the poppier songs - but suffice to say we can now see how he got from Born to Run to The River. Oh, and there are a couple of anthemic songs too – a bigger band version of Racing in the Street and the unreleased The Promise – both incredible finds.
Finally, there are also 3 dvds in the set, with some great archive and contemporary material relating to this period.
The Beatles Red & Blue albums were nice to have, and of course, using last year's remastered versions, now sound amazing (mainly taking the stereo options I think), but are probably not essential, except to Beatles completists, or people like me who first fell in love with the band through the 1970s vinyl version of these albums, or perhaps of course to Beatles newbies?
Final album to mention positively is another remastered job - this time my favourite Rolling Stones album - Exile on Main Street, which like the Bruce album, always sounded a bit nasty and tinny on CD, so here it is in pristine nick, along with some great bonus material.

Films

Une Prophet
Let the Right One in / Let Me In
The Way Back
White Ribbon
The Road
Nowhere Boy
Robin Hood
Whatever Works
Alice

Not a bad year for films, but I feel like a bit of a fraud here because I missed quite a few of the year’s big films.
Out of what I DID see, some of my favourites were;
A Prophet – film of the year this one – a truly incendiary French prison drama, with some really good acting and storytelling.
White Ribbon – possibly from 2009, but I saw it early in the new year, a poetic take on village life in early 20th century Germany.
I saw BOTH of those child vampire films – Let the Right One in (in Swedish) and the American remake. Both were chilling, hard to say which was better really.
The Way Back was an underrated epic road journey film, which admittedly did lose it’s pacing a bit in the 2nd half. Catch it in the cinema though – a great LOOKING film.
Avatar was ok. Very nice to look at, so probably only worth seeing on a big screen, and just about the only film I’ve seen that really merits the 3D thing.
The new Narnia film (Voyage of the Dawntreader) really didn’t need to be in 3D, and like all of the Narnia films was a bit of a disappointment.
Robin Hood was pretty good. Hope they make another one.
Alice was a bit ho-hum. Helena Bonham Carter was the best thing about it.
Nowhere Boy was a decent biopic of the young John Lennon despite the lead actor not being very good.
The Road was a bit flat. Very depressing, so much so it made the Irish situation not seem so bad!
Whatever Works was a surprisingly enjoyable old style New York Woody Allen film – I think it was written ages ago, and I don’t think it even got properly released over here – I saw it in the Dublin film festival.

Books

The Road
The Lovely Bones
Born to Run
Just a Little Run Around the World – Rosie Swale Pope
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks

This year I seem to have been reading more books about running and mountains (!), so again I didn’t get much fiction read (apart from a bit of old stuff)
The Road was pretty good, as was The Lovely Bones, in both cases apparently much better than their respective films (I haven’t seen the Lovely Bones)
I also read a few music books, but none were outstanding.
Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks was a good insight in to how the Queen of Crime worked and put her plots together.
To pick 2 highlights of books I read about running – Born to Run was inspirational, but not as much as Just a Little Run Around the World, by a woman who did just that. It took her 5 years!

Plays

After the Dance
Chopin in Paris
Les Liasons Dangereux
Arcadia

I went to fewer plays than normal this year.
Chopin in Paris was a very enjoyable piece about, well, Chopin in Paris. Written by Miriam Gallagher, it featured a very good acting performance in the title role and some sensational piano playing!
Les Liasons Dangereux was a reasonable Gate adaptation of the famous French play.
Arcadia was awful I thought. Probably not a bad production, but maybe Tom Stoppard is just not for me.
However, one of the very best things I saw/did all year was After the Dance by Terence Rattigan. I’ve already reviewed it on my blog, but would like to say that ever since then the play has ‘grown on me’ a lot, so I’d like to ‘upgrade’ that review from ‘fairly positive’ to ‘exceedingly positive’. That’s the bloody problem with blogs, I guess!
Anyway, it has resonated with me a lot this play; the strength of the acting in particular (amazing cast), and a top notch production and writing. It’s set in the 30s (written in the 40s?), and I’d strongly recommend it if a good version comes back.

TV

Downton Abbey
Sherlock
Any Human Heart
Upstairs Downstairs

The first three of the aforementioned were worth the price of my Sky subscription alone.
Downton Abbey has got a lot of column inches already but suffice to say it was worth all its good reviews, just a good old fashioned lush period drama with really good writing and production values. And don’t forget it was not a period adaptation, but a brand new story.
Any Human Heart was very different, but no less gripping. I was unsure about this one at the start, but it just seemed to get better and better (only until the last episode, which flagged slightly) as we sank further and further in to the life of this man traversing his way through the 20th century. It was funny, insightful, dark and gritty.
Sherlock was the best contemporary drama I saw this year, and yet was also somehow rooted in the late Victorian / Edwardian world of the original Conan Doyle books. However, if you don’t like period stuff, don’t let that put you off. This was a modern series in every sense, with some staggering acting and scripts. Perhaps it looked a little low budget, but I’m sure that’ll change in season 2, after the first season was such a hit.
The new Upstairs Downstairs was enjoyable, but suffered a bit in comparison with Downton Abbey. It was a bit claustrophic and one or two of the storylines didn’t seem to work. There was some good acting though, especially from the ever reliable Eileen Atkins.
Most other TV seemed to me to be rubbish, the occasional documentary notwithstanding. I seemed to tune in to radio more than TV in 2010. Although both radio and TV could be very depressing if you listened to too much Irish economic reportage (best to stick to Lyric and Nova!).. Hoping for better news coverage (and for better news) in 2011!
PS – I usually have a section on Art, but didn’t get to many exhibitions this year. I’d highly recommend the Metsu exhibition in Dublin though – finishes sometime in January I think.

The Waterboys Yeats show, Wexford Opera House November 2010

2010-11-07T04:27:00.001-08:00

Having seen the opening night of this show (''The Waterboys present An Appointment with Mr Yeats'') earlier in the year in the Abbey Theatre, I thought I'd try and kill two birds with one stone by seeing the show again and also getting to see something in the newly refurbished Wexford Opera House.
Both elements turned out to be worth the 4 hour round trip.

The show was not sold out and it was a fairly quiet audience, but yet again I was blown away by this new Waterboys project. For anyone not familiar with it, Mike Scott has put about 20 Yeats poems to music and has been intermittently touring it as a concert since earlier in the year. Apparently there is a dvd on the way, and hopefully a cd too.

Put simply, these are some of the best songs he's ever written. Obviously he's 'working' with a somewhat noted lyrics writer (!) but full credit to Scott and band for the strength of the tunes and the arrangements. I think it must be something to do with the meter or the rhyming (I'm no expert on these things) or the fact that Yeats was musical himself that makes them so good. I heard Scott say in an interview recently that he heard Yeats could be seen tapping his finger in ryhthm while he wrote his poems, so maybe it's not a leap to say that if he was writing today, he'd possibly be a singer-songwriter rather than a written poet?

And, even beyond the lyrics, some of the songs go off in to extended musical areas that thrill an audience, using classic Waterboys dynamics and incorporating the skills and sounds of this ten piece version of the band.
The lyrics also sit in very nicely of course, and it's a selection of Yeats poems that range in topic from love to politics to mysticism, some of them very obscure. Indeed the only truly household name choices are Lake Isle of Inisfree and September 1913.
Both of these work very well, with Lake Isle given a straight blues treatment and September 1913 a suitable mid paced epic style.

Some of my other favourites were;
The Song of Wandering Aenghus - a nice slow piano led opening, building up to add more instruments, with some nice solos from the horn section, especially flute.
Down by the Salley Gardens is cleverly done to what seems to be the tune of The Lakes of Pontchartrain and works very well, nice trombone solo on this one.
Sweet Dancer is one of my favourites, faster than some of the other songs and very catchy.
White Birds - truly epic song, another builder, and nice bird like flourishes at the end from Steve Wickham's fiddle.
Mountain Tomb is a powerful short song (changed arrangement from last time?)
Let the Earth Bear Witness, nicely done to the backdrop of Iranian protests on a screen, which apparently influenced him when writing the music, and destined to become a Waterboys anthem - it would be great if they played some of these songs at their 'regular' shows.
Mad as the Mist and Snow - this one done in a very theatrical way, a fiddle led epic
Politics - another really good blending of Yeats and Waterboys, not a poem I'd ever heard of, but one of the highlights of this great concert.

As before, they finish with some more familiar encores, Stolen Child (their first Yeats experiment, a one-off song from the Fisherman's Blues era), a very rocking Don't Bang The Drum, and a crowd pleasing Whole of the Moon, sending everyone home happy.

Don't miss the chance to see this show, playing in Dublin tonight, and then touring again soon in the UK, I think.

Leonard Cohen at Lissadell, Sligo 31 July 2010

2010-08-03T01:30:00.001-07:00

The press and fan reviews have all been so superlative that I feel I am just weighing in with nothing new to offer - but I just couldn't pass up offering a few thoughts on this amazing night, so here goes;
It was yet another extraordinary show. Leonard has now played ten shows in Ireland since his resurgence in 2008. I've been to five of them, and despite the relative sameness of the setlists, have enjoyed each one more than the last. Well, almost!
Certainly, Saturday night in Sligo was my favourite. AND, I got 5 new songs, 3 of which are brand new songs apparently from the forthcoming new album. Good to see him shaking up the setlists.
The best of the new songs is Born in Chains, a wonderful epic with gorgeous melody and lyrics. A song Leonard and his current band were born to sing. And, indeed, he generously gives each of the girls a verse each to sing. Here's a youtube of it from Saturday night;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f37lh9LqRs
All the other new songs were excellent too. And, the 'regular' numbers still sound as fresh as they did in 2008. Hallelujah, I'm Your Man, If it be your Will, Marianne, Anthem all were highlights for me. This is such a tasteful and good humoured band - and the sound always seems amazing at Leonard concerts, relatively low volume, well mixed, Leonard's voice sitting nicely on top..
Finally, a word on the venue - a really gorgeous place for a concert, complete with great atmosphere. Benbulben mountain, Sligo bay, the Lissadell house itself, what's not to like (logistical transport problems notwithstanding), no wonder Leonard was moved to quote Mr Yeats!

Oh, and did I mention - the show was 3 hours and 45 minutes!
Hoping it wasn't my last Leonard show..

For good measure, here's another youtube, this one of 'Hallelujah', many thanks to the taper;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRT2i8QJBG0

After the Dance, play review

2010-07-07T01:49:00.000-07:00

After the Dance, by Terence Rattigan is a thoroughly enjoyable play set in the inter-war years, extremely well staged and acted in the Lyttleton auditorium of the National Theatre in London.
It's set amongs a dissolute crowd of people mainly in their late 30s who were too young to fight in WW1 and are going to be too old to fight in WW2.
The only thing of note that they did in their lives was to party their way through the 1920s, and now even they are starting to think how shallow it all might have been.
As one of the play's great lines says, 'they used to be the bright young things, but maybe they weren't so bright, and now they're not even young'
The plot mainly concerns two relationships, one a marraige (supposedly) of convenience, and the other of a younger couple, one of whom loves the alcoholic male party of the other relationship. There are several other characters, the most important of whom is a supposedly apathetic friend sponging on the rich alcoholic, but who turns out to be more perceptive than all the others put together.
Anyway, suffice to say, that it is a very well written play, with some excellent social insights into life in the 1930s, and very well developed characters. All the actors were good, but especially the leading 4; Benedict Cumberbatch, Nancy Carroll, Adrian Scarborough and Faye Castelow.
I tend to love anything set in this era, so perhaps I am biased, and therefore really loved the play, but I would maybe concede that some of his other plays, such as the Deep Blue Sea, perhaps have a bit more to them.
Highly recommended though.

Dylan Limerick review

2010-07-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

(pic from Thomond Park, 4 July 2010, with many thanks to the photographer Graham Martin)

So, Bob Dylan's first visit to Limerick, his 2nd visit west of the Shannon and his (I think) 26th show on this small island (24 of which have been since 1989)
As is usual with Irish shows, I was hoping it wouldn't be a disaster, or at best, only a mitigated disaster, fearing the 'repercussions' from disgruntled fellow countrymen. However, my fears were unfounded, as this show not only maintained the high standard of the Dylan live 2010 experience, but was actually the best of the 4 shows I saw on the current tour, and clocking in at 2 hours and 18 songs, was also the longest show of the tour, and with 4 encores, it was looking like he didn't want the show (nor the tour) to end.

But, lets go back to the beginning. A drunken, but fairly good natured crowd, who had enjoyed the adequate but not exactly overwhelming support bands, got straight into the thick of enjoying Bob's rollicking Leopardskin Pillbox Hat opener, and indeed the first 3 songs (all of which were different to the previous night's Hop Farm festival show) were very enjoyable.

Then, he repeated Just Like a Woman from the night before, complete with crowd sing-a-long bit (well, sort of..), prior to giving us many more highlights, such as swampy Together Through Life opener Beyond Here Lies Nothing, complete with trumpet solos, the new arrangement of Tangled up in Blue (which is somewhere between a fascinating 're-imagining' and a train wreck!) and a top notch hat-trick of Time out of Mind songs, Trying to get to Heaven (gorgeous), a scintillating Cold Irons Bound and a spiky version of Lovesick.

Best song of the night for me though was probably Workingmans Blues - my favourite song from the Modern Times album and a song that he had never played in Ireland. Such a poignant song, especially nowadays, and sung with a pathos that could only be conjured up by THAT particular cracked and wheezing voice.

In fact, for the casual Irish Dylan fan, it was a cracking setlist, with Bob treating us not just to that song, but also playing 3 songs (Beyond Here, Change Coming on and Jolene) from the current album Together Through Life, meaning he has now played four of them here in Ireland (and this an album he has yet to play a single song from at any UK concert!)

Another major highlight of the show, was Bob's general demeanor, with an even more animated approach than has been the case thus far in 2010. It's just so good to see him out at the front of the stage again and engaging with the audience, along with his ever more eccentric stage movements, harmonica flourishes and facial expressions. Not to mention some reasonable guitar playing (his organ playing remains as wilful as ever!). All of this animation is any amount of times better than the insincere chat one sees from other artists (yet no doubt, people will still complain that Bob isn't chatty enough).

The best example of just how animated he is now was on the set closing Ballad of a Thin Man. For over 6 months now, this song has been extraordinary every single night, reminding me how unusual it is for Bob to not get sick of a song, and either drop it, or simply start singing it with the most bizarre phrasing he can think of. Ballad of a Thin Man seems to get more majestic every night, and tour to tour, city to city, it leaves the audiences ecstatic as the main set comes to a close.

Anyway, after the end of the main set, we were all set for 2, or perhaps 3 cursory encores, but Bob was having such a good time and it was such an enthusiastic audience (down the front anyway), that he stayed on for 4 songs, with the biggest highlight of all being the Irish debut of the relatively rare recent song - I Feel a Change Coming On. And just in case anyone was in any doubt that he played if for the James Joyce Irish writer connection, on production of the line in question Bob and bass player Tony exchanged huge grins with each other. Like a Rolling Stone of course went down as well as it always does, with the mixed age Irish crowd roaring the chorus as lustily as any Scottish or Italian crowd!

Before I close, some negative points - after all, no concert is perfect; the band did seem to have some on-stage technical problems during one or two songs (didn't really affect anything), and some clown in the crowd pointed a green laser pen light at Bob for the last song or two (other artists have in the past been known to storm off stage for such an offence). Also, the venue was too big really, and with that swirling wind, I imagine the sound (which was perfect down the front) can't have been great in that big stand down the back.

But, to finish on a positive note a jaunty Blowin in the Wind with nice closing harmonica solo wrapped up proceedings, leaving most people very happy, and bringing another really good European tour to a close.

And I must say Limerick was an enjoyable experience overall for this Leinster rugby fan, even despite hearing the news that Bob had requested four (count 'em, four!) Munster rugby jerseys for himself! (Thomond Park is the home of the Munster rugby team)

Finally, a brief note on the previous day's show, at the Hop Farm music festival in Kent. A very enjoyable and scorchingly hot day out, met lots of people I hadn't seen in years, and found it a pleasant adult oriented rock/folk festival which was (mostly) fairly well organised. I wasn't massively impressed by the earlier artists, but Mumford & Sons certainly drew a crowd, and a grumpier than normal Ray Davies still managed to give us enjoyable set. Bob played a disappointingly short set, but it was very well performed, and had some amazing highlights, not least of which was that pink shirt!

See everybody next time..

Bob Dylan Ljubliana review

2010-06-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

Phew. 33 degrees all day, and 29 degrees at night in a stuffy little gym in Ljubliana. Everybody was baking, none more than Bob, who was pouring sweat after just a few minutes. But this didnt stop the hardest worker in show business (now that James Brown is dead) giving us an extremely good show. I,m on the road (and using a peculiar keyboad, so apols for any unusual punctuation), and don, have much time, so I,ll just make a series of general pointsm rather than write a long review;

- This tour seems to be a step up in standard again, even from the US and Japanese shows
- He seems fit and healthy (and sporting a wedding ring)
- He is extremely engaged and animated
- He is out at the front of stage for approx 8 of the 16 songs
- lots of great harp playing
- he has a new guitar, looks like a dull brown strat, not as nice as last year,s Duisenberg
- Tony Garnier was seated for the entire show, rumours of a leg injury( Bob may end up the last man standing of his NET band, not to mention, he,ll probably outlive us all!(
- the crowd was fantastic, extremely young, and no doubt in good form partly due to having just beaten Algeria in the World Cup!
- continuing the football theme, for me the only ,own goal, of the night was Rolling and Tumbling (he has so many much better blues songs than this one)
- but that minor blip aside, there were simply incredible versions of many songs tonight, Don,t Think Twice, Tryin to get to Heaven, Just Like a Woman, plus a lovely new arrangement of Simple Twist of Fate
- The main highlights for me though were the (by now) tour de force Ballad of a Thin Man, and maybe the best Blind Willie McTell I,ve ever seen!
- The band have matured, Charlie really fits in now, and Donnie was even audible on a few occasions!

That,s all I,ve time for. Maybe will update again after Padua. Ljubliana is a beautiful town, and Slovenia has some stunning scenery. Gonna drive to Padua via Lake Bled and down the Adriatic via Trieste.

Ken

Best of the 2000s

2009-12-30T03:05:00.001-08:00

Best of the 2000s

I promised in my review of 2009 to be brief, and didn’t really succeed, so I’ll try and make this one short, really more a series of lists, than any big analysis. Who the hell remembers the early part of the decade anyway?! – I know time flies when you get older, but my memory ain’t what it used to be..
The lists are perhaps in some semblance of order of preference. Looking forward to arguments, contradictions, fallings out, etc..

As I mainly review albums, films and concerts on my blog, I’m going to mainly stick to those three for the purposes of my 2000s review. I have written about plays, art exhibitions and plays in the past, so feel free to scroll back.

But, to cover them briefly –

Plays - I saw lots of great plays at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, (the likes of Friel, Pinter, Chekov, Wilde etc) but if I had to pick out two others, I’d go for Shadowlands (with Charles Dance) in London a few years ago or All My Sons at the Abbey about ten years ago.

TV – somewhat hit and miss, but the good stuff was very good including The Sopranos, The West Wing, Bleak House (BBC 2006), Sense & Sensibility (BBC 2007), Jane Eyre (BBC 2007), The Office, Peep Show etc. Plus some good documentaries. There’s a theory that the higher quality of TV drama is down to not just HBO but much of the talent moving into television that in the past would have worked in film.

Sadly, the dross is still out there. Reality TV is a depressing concept – is this the best people can come up with? And it’s hard to know whether to feel sorry for people who watch X Factor or not. If they just enjoy the excitement of the format and the personalities, maybe that’s ok. But are people not being deluded if they think this is anything innovative or original from a musical point of view? Such a lot of fuss over what is essentially a karaoke show, with nothing but bland covers of old songs. Maybe the Rage Against the Machine Christmas No 1 victory will shake up a few kids out there to maybe think about forming a band, or writing a song of their own. And to think that Louis Walsh is Irish, my God are we partly to blame for the boyband / X Factor phenomenon (?!) – and to think Ireland used to be known for great bands, great songwriters and quality traditional Irish music! Anyway end of rant..

Books - as usual, I’ve been reading way too much about music, and a lot of old fiction, and recent non-fiction. But, if I had to pick three recent novels I’d go for; Never Let Me Go, Birdsong and Atonement. And still, nobody makes me laugh like P.G. Wodehouse.

Album wise, it turns out to have been not a bad decade. And this, despite the supposed demise of the album, and despite a large proportion of my favourite artists being dead or retired! (Grateful Dead, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Lennon, etc to name but a few).

It was a typically productive decade for Bob Dylan, by any standards – 3 very good albums, a major outtakes box set of recent material plus more older outtakes/live sets too, a Christmas album, over 1000 concerts, 100 radio shows, a major documentary, a self penned feature film, major art galleries all around the world exhibiting his art, plus lots of odds and ends, tv appearances, film soundtrack songs, tribute album songs, etc etc. Not a man who (now nearly 69) will have to rely on a state pension!
Wilco hit a peak with 3 incredible studio albums. Gillian Welch seems to have slowed down, but released 2 good ‘uns.
McCartney released about 4 albums; one great (Chaos), one very good (Flaming Pie), one not bad (Memory Almost Full) and one mediocre (Driving Rain).
Ditto Springsteen, who was busy too, with a decade choc full of tours and albums, mixing it up with both the E Street Band and his amazing 17 piece Sessions Band, plus some solo stuff.
The return of Leonard Cohen to live duty was a contender for highlight of the decade, but I’ve covered that already in earlier posts.
Jack White and Ryan Adams both had prolific decades. Two artists I like, but quality control not always their top priority.
We saw very good swansong albums from George Harrison and Johnny Cash, certainly the two biggest musical losses of the decade from my point of view.
There were also excellent albums and concerts from the likes of Tom Waits, Neil Young, Radiohead, but in terms of newer artists, I was glad to make the acquaintance of The Waifs, Blitzen Trapper, Richmond Fontaine, Foals, Fleet Foxes and Sufjan Stevens.
So, maybe the future is in ok hands.

Hard to pick a favourite live concert of the decade, so I’ve cheated a bit and just done a list of my favourite live artists of the decade (with some selected shows).

Film wise, I think the 2000s continued on from the 1990s with a good smattering of decent films every year amidst a lot of dross. But things have continued improving since the 1980s, a decade which was a bit of a low watermark for cinema. If I had to choose one film from the decade I’d go for Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

Albums

The Beatles – Remastered box sets
Bob Dylan – Modern Times
Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Bob Dylan – Tell Tale Signs
Bob Dylan – Love & Theft
Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
Paul McCartney – Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Gillian Welch – Soul Journey
Gillian Welch – Time (The Revelator)
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco – A Ghost is Born
George Harrison - Brainwashed
R.E.M. – Accelerate
Johnny Cash – American III
Tom Waits – Alice
Tom Waits – Blood Money
Sufjan Stevens – Come on Feel the Illinoise
Bruce Springsteen – The Rising
Neil Young – Prairie Wind
Fleet Foxes
Ryan Adams – Gold
Paul McCartney – Flaming Pie
Bruce Springsteen – Magic
Gosford Park soundtrack
Radiohead – Kid A
The Waifs – Up All Night
Bruce Springsteen – The Seeger Sessions
Welcome to the Welcome Wagon
Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
Tom Waits – Mule Variations
The Rolling Stones – A Bigger Bang
Madness – The Liberty of Norton Folgate
The Waifs – Sundirtwater
Sufjan Stevens – Michigan
The Fireman
Blitzen Trapper – Furr
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am
Johnny Cash – American IV
Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake I’m Dreaming
Iron Maiden – A Matter of Life and Death
Levon Helm – Electric Dirt
Solomon Burke – Don’t Give Up On Me
Richmond Fontaine – Post to Wire
Brian Wilson – Smile
Raconteurs – Broken Boy Soldiers
Lambchop – Nixon
Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose
Merle Haggard – Roots Vol 3
Aimee Mann – Smilers
Foals – Antidotes
PJ Harvey – Stories from the City
Duckworth Lewis Method

Live Artists

Bob Dylan (some of my favourites were; Barrowlands 04, Wiltern LA 02, Portland 01, Hammersmith or Shepherds Bush 03, or anything from 2000, 2nd Boston 06, 2nd NYC 09)

Leonard Cohen
Bruce Springsteen
Paul McCartney
Wilco
Gillian Welch
The Waterboys (surprised how much I’ve come to enjoy these guys)
Tom Waits
The Rolling Stones
Solomon Burke (contender for gig of the decade actually, Vicar St a few years ago)
Patti Smith
Camille O’Sullivan (not just a cabaret type artist, but a great song interpreter too)
Ray Davies
John Prine
Aimee Mann
Metallica
AC/DC
Iron Maiden
Merle Haggard
Classical - various performances, mainly at Dublin’s National Concert Hall – two that spring to mind were a version of Mahler’s Symphony of 1000 and an Arvo Part festival.

Films

Pan’s Labyrinth
Gosford Park
The Lives of Others
Downfall
An Education
Atonement
White Ribbon
Gran Torino
The Wrestler
Juno
The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers
No Country for Old Men
Slumdog Millionnaire
Volver
Glorious 39
Master & Commander (The Far Side of the World)
There Will Be Blood
The Aviator
Million Dollar Baby
Dean Spanley
The Reader
Changeling
The Departed
28 Days Later
Casino Royale
The Painted Veil
The Dark Knight
Sherlock Holmes
Inglorious Basterds
Joyeux Noel
The Pianist
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Bourne Supremacy
The Hangover
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
City of God
Gladiator
Being John Malkovich
Eastern Promises
Apocalypto
Walk the Line
The Young Victoria
Up
The Other Boleyn Girl

Review of 2009

2009-12-29T02:19:00.000-08:00

Ken’s Best of 2009

Ok, this year, I’m also doing a best of the Decade review as well, so I’ll make both a bit briefer than usual. Brevity not being one of my great skills, but I’ll give it a go! Please let me know if you think I've forgotten anything, or any other feedback..

Albums

The Beatles – Remasters (mono and stereo)
Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
Madness – The Liberty of Norton Folgate
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
George Harrison – Let it Roll (best of)
Duckworth Lewis Method
Dave Rawlings Machine - Friend of a Friend
Roy Orbison box set

Well it certainly turned out to be Bob Dylan’s year. Hot on the heels of the incredible Tell Tale Signs collection (plus countless more concerts, radio shows etc), he releases a surprisingly quickly turned around, yet sturdy new studio album; Together Through Life. I think I gave it a fairly middling to positive review at the time, however, it has grown on me since then, and the songs play well live.

The other main release of the year was of course, Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart. Naturally, I’m joking. Not that Christmas in the Heart wasn’t enjoyable (as well as being very bizarre). His croakiest ever vocals(?) set to the most traditional Christmas arrangements you’re likely to hear!

No, the release of the year for me had to be the big Beatles box sets. I don’t think I got around to reviewing them at the time, perhaps daunted by being unable to think of anything new to say about the greatest body of work of all time (I would argue that the only individuals who can measure up to the Fabs’ seven year recording career would be the likes of Mahler, Beethoven, possibly Dylan, or the very best great writers, painters etc).
Anyway, that statement is quite enough hyperbole out of me for one year!
I made a few rough notes after my first few listens of the box sets, so here are some bullet points;

- Everything sounds extraordinary – like brand new recordings, even though these are only remasters and not remixes - the separation between the voices and between the instruments is now exceptional, not forgetting these recordings date back nearly 50 years
- In general I prefer the mono versions, especially albums like Revolver and Sgt Pepper. The White Album is very debatable, quite a big difference between the mono and stereo versions of many of it’s tracks
- Revolver – Eleanor Rigby really stands out, as does Got to Get You Into My Life. Also, For No One - I suggest you listen to the mono For No One loudly – I tried it just with my ear up against a speaker – Paul’s vocal is unbelievable – sounds like he’s right beside you
- Sgt Pepper is incredible. Especially in mono. Like most of these new versions, the album works well on all formats, but listening to it on headphones is SO revealing
- Basically, everything sounds better now. All your favourite bits, whether it be - the piano solo in In My Life, the sound of John and George’s voices duetting on You Really Got a Hold on Me, that strange organ sound on Beatles for Sale, the trumpet solo on Penny Lane, or the guitar solo on Something - they all sound clearer and punchier
- Help – a supposedly inferior album, now perhaps not so inferior?
- And my God, the quality of the backing vocals throughout the box sets are so good – one forgets that due to the happy coincidence of two random working class lads from Liverpool turning out to be two of the best ballad singers AND rock singers AND songwriters of all time, plus a good runner-up in George, plus excellent musicianship (Paul and George especially), plus the chemistry between the 4 of them, and the production; one can forget that John, Paul and George are all astonishing backing singers too, creating harmonies that for me, easily beat Crosby Stills & Nash, the Byrds, or the Band, or any of the 60s girl bands
- Some random things that sound better in stereo – I Am The Walrus, parts of Rubber Soul, the rockers on the first album, Michelle, plus possibly much of the Hard Days Night album, this most perfect pop album ringing through with their ever improving Rickenbacker guitar sound and those double tracked vocals. Feel free to skip straight through to If I Fell – boy does that song sound good!
- Finally, my advice is don’t get too hung up on the mono/stereo debate (perhaps I should take my own advice!). Just enjoy the music – if it’s your first time dipping your toes properly into the world I am envious; if you only have them on vinyl or the old CDs, it is very advisable to get the new ones, preferably BOTH box sets.

Otherwise 2009 was not really a vintage year for albums. Of the other discs I mentioned at the top of this piece, Madness punched well above their weight, and Wilco slightly below theirs. Also very enjoyable was the debut album from the 202s, a promising Dublin band (an interesting mix of electronica/indie rock/singer-songwriter, currently getting a lot of radio play and working on their 2nd album) – check them out on http://www.myspace.com/the202s.
The Dave Rawlings album was ok.
Finally, I don’t normally review live albums, and given the ease and quality of downloaded live recordings it seems the live album has become a devalued currency, but there were three of note this year;
R.E.M., Paul McCartney and Tom Waits. All pretty good, especially R.E.M., with their adventures in rehearsal/rarities from the Olympia a year or two back.

Concerts

Bob Dylan – various shows; Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin (1), New York (2)
Paul McCartney – O2 Dublin
Leonard Cohen – O2 Dublin (2nd night)
Bruce Springsteen – RDS Dublin (2nd night, although the drizzly 1st night was also good)
Wilco – Vicar St Dublin (both nights vg)
AC/DC – O2 Dublin
Ray Davies – Town Hall, New York
Lyle Lovett - Olympia, Dublin

A good year. I have already reviewed all or most of these concerts on my blog, so I won’t rake over old ground, but, really, McCartney and Cohen have to stand out. Two artists at career live peaks – giving unforgettable performances of very high emotional intensity. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who was at either.
Hard to believe they are pushing Bob down into 3rd place, given some of the Dylan highlights of the year – the new songs, the fact that he is spending considerable time back out at the front of the stage, a reinvigorated band etc. Plus his tribute to George Harrison in Liverpool (playing Something).
And it’s also fair to say Wilco, Bruce and AC/DC (in the 02) gave excellent performances in Dublin. And I was delighted to finally see a Lyle Lovett show.
Saw the 202s in The Academy, an excellent new band (as mentioned in the album section) in a very good Dublin venue.
I didn’t go to many classical performances this year, I only seem to remember a piano/violin type trio doing Schumann in the Hugh Lane Gallery, which was enjoyable and free! Also free, was the only Festival I think I went to in 2009, the ever enjoyable Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures.
I don’t really remember any poor concerts at all in 2009, perhaps because I didn’t go to as many as in previous years. I doubt 2010 will be as good, but here’s hoping.

Films

An Education
Gran Torino
Sherlock Holmes
Dean Spanley
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Up
The Hangover
Glorious 39
Star Trek
Inglorious Basterds
The Young Victoria
The Reader
The Changeling
Defiance
Cadillac Records

Sherlock Holmes really was surprisingly good. Who’d have thought Guy Ritchie would make a decent film, and a decent period film at that? Downey Jnr is not bad as Holmes it’s fair to say and it IS an exciting film, with a good support performance by Jude Law (I don’t think I’ve ever said that before!) and a good (if silly) plot and excellent visuals. My only complaints are;
- It’s just a little too over the top for my tastes – as a big Holmes fan I’ve no particular problem with them messing with the books, but they could have cut a few of the action scenes.
- Robert Downey Jnr’s accent/dialogue coach should be shot!

Gran Torino was yet another top notch Clint Eastwood film - that must be about 6 or 7 very good films in a row from the aging director. And let’s not forget his acting– with a fine performance (his last?) from the man himself in this one.

Dr Parnassus was enjoyable. A bit of a mess, but not deserving the critical mauling it got.

Glorious 39 was a bit of a hotch potch of genres, but a beautifully atmospheric pre WW2 drama by Stephen Poliakaff. Very well acted and thought provoking, it's certainly not flawless, but I thought it was the most underrated film of the year.

Two films I never thought would make a list of mine as they are genres I don’t usually bother with, but Up was a charming cartoon and The Hangover a truly funny gross out comedy which had more good lines than any comedy I can remember in recent years. PLUS it also worked as a good thriller, ie you really wanted to know what the hell happened to those guys!

Other films I loved this year included; Inglorious Basterds (riotous WW2 Tarantino flic), District 9, The Young Victoria and an enjoyable re-imagining of Star Trek.

But I think my favourite film of the year for me was An Education. This was a classic period film set in the early 60s, ie 50s London on the cusp of swinging 60s London. It is a biopic based on the journalist Lynn Barber’s autobiography, with a standout performance from Carey Mulligan in the lead role.
I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a few other films, not a bad film for cinema, all in.. Here are some films I loved but I'm not quite sure if they were 2008 or 2009; The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionnaire, Vicky Christina Barcelona.
And here are some 2009 films I regret that I haven't seen yet; White Ribbon, Katyn, Let the Right One In, Avatar, Moon, Anvil.

Plays

Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant – Abbey Theatre
Present Laughter – Gate Theatre
2 short Brian Friel Plays – Gate Theatre
All My Sons - Gate Theatre

Not too many theatre trips for me this year, and those I went too I mostly reviewed earlier in the year, so feel free to scroll back to earlier parts of my blog. I saw one or two turkeys (including a disappointing Shakespeare at the Nat. Theatre in London), but the four mentioned above were all extremely good. The Birds at the Gate, as adapted by Conor McPherson and with a good cast, was a bit of a curate's egg at best.

Art

Corot-Monet Landscapes – National Gallery London
Vermeer – MET, New York
Baroque - V&A
Rodchenko & Popova - Tate Modern
Waterhouse – Royal Academy
Dylan Drawn Blank Series - Birmingham

I didn’t go to too many art exhibitions this year, despite attending an enjoyable History of Art course in the Autumn, but the few I've listed were very enjoyable, especially the first two. Less so, was the Munch exhibition in our National Gallery. Nothing against Munch, but black and white prints can be quite dull. I also went to the Bacon thing in the Hugh Lane, which did it’s best to change my opinion that he was only a chancer, and somewhat over rated. Still not sure really. I also visited the Frick in New York for the first time (very good), and Kenwood House near Hampstead Heath, which has a nice collection too.

TV

I watched very little television this year, mainly because I haven’t the foggiest how to use my DVD recorder. But such is life.
The only thing I can really remember is Into the Storm, a follow up to The Gathering Storm, a TV biopic of Churchill. For some reason it just wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but credit to Gleeson for successfully taking on the role which Albert Finney did so well earlier.
Was Little Dorrit this year? A terrific follow up from Bleak House.
Sport wise, it was a great year for Irish rugby – watching Ireland finally win a Grand Slam was unforgettable.
I saw a few episodes of 30 Rock, a very funny new American comedy written by Tina Fey. Hoping to catch up on things like Cold Blood (vampire thing?) and The Wire next year. Finally finished all the box sets of Foyle's War, classic WW2 drama.

Personally, it was an interesting year. Quite a few highs, and some lows. One example of each?
Low - Getting burgled.
High - Running over the finish line of the Dublin Marathon in just under 4 hours. Is it really possible to be a complete physical and emotional wreck, and yet feel such elation, all at the exact same time? Will I ever feel a buzz like that again? Who knows, but I can only try..
Happy New Year!

Paul McCartney Review, the 02, Dublin 20 December 2009

2009-12-22T00:38:00.000-08:00

I’ve been saying to myself recently that I need to cut out the superlatives in my gig reviews. Either that, or start going to some bad ones!
Hardly surprising then, that Paul McCartney in the 02 (Dublin) was emphatically NOT a bad gig.
Having queued for a couple of hours in the sub zero Arctic wasteland that was the Dublin docklands yesterday, we got a nice spot about 3rd row centre, and waited for our feet to thaw out, and for a Beatle to appear before our eyes. Then, sure enough, just about 8.15, one appeared. And a very healthy looking Beatle it was too. McCartney is in amazing shape for 68, and makes a good case for the benefits of vegetarianism!
But, of course, our main concerns were more his vocal chords and musicianship, and it’s safe to say these are even healthier.
From the opening moments of Magical Mystery Tour (‘Roll Up, Roll Up..’) through to the closing lines of the show (‘The Love you Take, is equal to the Love you Make’), the strength of McCartney’s performance never wavered. Of the 4 or 5 Macca shows I’ve seen, this was surely the best. Just a perfect occasion, great venue, great sound, great atmosphere, an almost flawless concert.

It’s hard to describe how emotional a Paul McCartney show is. I think it is just how much we all have those songs in our heads, and how they are such a part of the landscape. Also the fact that the Beatles never toured after ’66 has raised the importance of seeing the songs now in conditions much better than in the 60s (better sound etc, plus great arrangements and performance). I was born shortly after the Beatles broke up, so for me it is not direct nostalgia, as I fell in love with their awesome body of work as a child in the 1970s, and indeed at 37 years old, I was far from being one of the youngest in the 02 last night. I think it’s true to say there is a shared universality to the Beatles music that has an extraordinary effect at a McCartney concert – eg I heard one male radio presenter this morning saying how he was in tears on at least 4 occasions!

Anyway, in case I’m getting carried away, I’ll come back down to earth and do a bit of regular song-by-song reviewing;
- Magical Mystery Tour is his best opener, just seems to work well, nice background imagery on the big screens
- Drive My Car – sometimes played as opener, a classic rocker from Rubber Soul, also works well in slot 2
- Jet – catchy slice of Wings pop, not a favourite of mine, but goes down well
- Only Mama Knows – it’s a pity he abandons his albums so quickly, and why does he ignore the best song from ‘Memory Almost Full’ (Mr Bellamy)? However, Only Mama Knows is a good rocker, and works great live. While I’m having a ‘go’ at the setlist – I also regret that he has 100% abandoned the ‘Chaos and Creation’ album (2005). Arguably his best album since the 70s.
- Flaming Pie – he still does the occasional song from this decent album, and the title track is as good as any
- Got to get you into my Life – after two relatively unknown songs, the crowd go wild for this song – the big brass part is a good hook at a live gig, played of course by Wix Wickens, a key band member. Every unusual sound you hear at a McCartney concert is played by him – at one point on Sunday I spotted him simultaneously playing a keyboard part with his hands and a trumpet part with his mouth via a device attached to his head! Apart from the colouring provided by Wix though, credit is due to McCartney and his band, for not relying on over the top arrangements – these guys manage to breathe new life into the Beatles songs, yet still keep things relatively simple. The guitar players and (especially) the drummer, all get the thumbs up from me
- Let Me Roll It – competent and powerful, but I’d say it would get tiresome if one went to multiple Macca gigs
- Highway – first of two bloody excellent songs from the experimental Fireman album. These really work well, and fit in nicely to the setlist
- Long and Winding Road – I suppose (other than the opening song for impact), this was the first really big emotional heavy hitter of the evening. One of those songs that he has done every single concert since God knows when, but you would never know it.
- I Want to Come Home. Brand new song. ‘’Classic Macca ballad’’ are my early thoughts. Evidence of his melodic genius, lyrically nothing unusual.
- My Love. Classic 70s power ballad, tonight with a heartfelt tribute from Macca to Henry McCullough (in the audience), who played the famous guitar solo back in the day.
- Blackbird. Stunning solo acoustic performance, both guitar wise and vocally.
- Here Today. The John tribute. In truth, not really a great song (1982), but genuine all the same
- Dance Tonight. When I first heard this one, I thought ‘surely a song as bad as that can’t be that catchy!’, but my feet were tapping on Sunday night, despite myself.
- And I Love Her. Nice semi acoustic arrangement.
- Eleanor Rigby. Always powerful. A nice low key arrangement with backing vocals and strings (via keyboard). If anyone says to you McCartney doesn’t write good lyrics, play them this song. Or Penny Lane.
- Something. Paul really does play a great version of this, night after night. Having seen Bob Dylan play it in Liverpool this year, I thought I’d never experience anything like that again, but watching McCartney on stage, with those pictures of George on the big screen, as the guitar player plays a lovely version of the famous solo, it came close.
- Mrs Vandebilt. McCartney gets a bit of criticism for not changing his setlists much, but to be fair, every new tour, he does add in a few new ones, and a few re-introduced Beatles or Wings numbers. This is one of my favourite Wings songs, so I was ecstatic to hear it. A truly excellent arrangement, works very well, and the crowd loved it despite it not being overly familiar to everyone.
- Sing the Changes. Another Fireman song. Very uplifting.
- Wonderful Christmas Time. Well, being 20 December, no big surprise. I’m sure even Macca wouldn’t claim it to be a classic, but good fun on the night
- Band on the Run. Always good.
- Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da. Not his greatest Beatles composition, but who’s going to complain with a White Album tune world premiere (ie, premiered this tour). Also, it works well live, and the arrangement is very reggaefied and uptempo
- Back in the USSR. Amazing rocker, night after night, which perfectly exemplifies the tightness of this band
- I’ve Got a Feeling. Was great to see this introduced a few years ago. Nice dirty riff, showing off the rootsy feel of the Let it Be album
- Paperback Writer. One of the highlights of the show for me. Such a good song, and I think, one of 7 or 8 new ones for me, at this show.
- A Day in the Life / Give Peace a Chance. So good to see him tackle the John verses on this classic Lennon/McCartney song, not an overblown version either (Neil Young, I’m looking at you!), semi acoustic, with some use of effects for the transitional sections, segueing cheesily if effectively, into Give Peace a Chance
- Let it Be. Another emotional showstopper. No other words come to mind.
- Live and Let Die. Ok, the only out and out major showbiz type performance of the night, with massive explosions and pyrotechnics (down the front you could feel the rush of heat from the fire!), but massively enjoyable, not to mention appropriate, for this over the top rock opera type Bond number.
- Hey Jude – a great song, even if the singalong bit has been done to death, but very enjoyable, and brings the main set to a close.
- Day Tripper. Another debut for me. Nicely done.
- Lady Madonna – not a song I’m crazy about for some reason, but the crowd love it as Paul plays some nice rocking piano
- Get Back – popular rootsy rocker
- Yesterday. An ever so slightly over rated song in my opinion, but boy does he play it well
- Helter Skelter - clever putting it just after Yesterday, as these two songs showcase the two extremes of McCartney – from gentle ballad to the loudest out and out rocker in the Beatles canon. If truth be told it’s probably not a very good song, but is quite unique and works well in the encores.
- Sgt Peppers / The End. He’s been playing these two together for years now, and they are always a stunning conclusion, encompassing a great band performance, and finishing with the famous lines about the love you take, etc.. Almost 3 hours later, it’s a fitting end to a show we may not see the likes of again. Happy Days. And Happy Christmas!

Review of 3 Bob Dylan shows, United Palace Theatre, New York, November 2009

2009-11-23T00:38:00.000-08:00

As is often the case during the American Fall, I found myself this week taking in a few U.S. Bob Dylan shows. Well, with the dollar so weak, and flights reasonable, it would have almost been reckless not to(!), so off I flew last Tuesday to New York.

This time, I was at the final three shows of what has become an already much celebrated tour, with Dylan finally playing most of the songs from his new album. This album, Together Through Life, is one of three he has released in the last year or so. The others having been both roundly ignored in concert, ie the Tell Tale Signs outtake collection, and the oh-so controversial Christmas in the Heart.

But this tour was notable for more than just new song premieres. Firstly, the return of Charlie Sexton to the band has added much more than I thought it would. I liked Denny Freeman, but Bob had all but stopped him playing in recent times, whereas Charlie has been given a much wider remit. Having said that, like all the best Dylan sidemen over the years, he knows when to hold back, and when to play a bit more, pending what his eccentric boss is up to. Also, one could argue Charlie is a better guitar player than he was 8 years ago.

The second development of note, is the return proper of Dylan to the centre of the stage. Having spent a few years hiding behind that keyboard, recent 2008/2009 tours have seen him dabbling with the front of the stage again, but this Fall, he seemed to throw caution to the wind, and is now playing 1-2 songs a night on guitar, plus another 4 or 5 right out front sans instrument, just Bob, his microphone stand, a lot of expressive (!) hand and arm gestures, and some exquisite harmonica.

The overall effect was both visual and musical. The visual, given Bob’s bizarre way of moving, his ever more elaborate suits, AND the hand gestures, seemed to combine in presenting a sort of Sinatra-esque demented cowboy appearance, but one which the crowd loved and responded to.

Musically, the lack of a keyboard or guitar on these songs, meant that Bob can concentrate on both his vocals and the audience, and his manner of achieving both certainly suggests an artist with a new found self-confidence.

And so, to the songs themselves. Where to start? Well, with show opener, Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, I suppose. A classic bluesy slab of gospel and a nice statement of intent from this reinvigorated band and artist, albeit he only plays it every 3rd show or so. And it’s always good to see him re-introduce songs from his Christian albums, especially in a venue that doubles as a Church.

The new songs are, to a man, very well performed. My favourite song on the album, I Feel a Change Coming on, is done very well, and the line about having ‘the blood of the land in my voice’ gets a good response. However, the most successful interpretation has got to be Forgetful Heart. Already fairly radically re-arranged (and it’s only out few months), this song is the first genuinely VERY slow, VERY quiet performance/arrangement we’ve had in a long time. Absolutely perfectly phrased, it’s true to say that even in a somewhat boisterous New York audience, you could hear a pin drop. Well, almost!

There were excellent performances too of things like Beyond Here Lies Nothing (fantastic to see and hear a trumpet in a live Bob Dylan band) and If You Ever go to Houston. Even songs that I thought were pretty mediocre on the album, such as It’s All Good and My Wife’s Hometown, were transformed in a live setting. And Jolene swings accordingly – a good choice for the mid encore song.

However, it’s not just the new songs that fare well. Virtually everything is good at the moment, a few dull moments notwithstanding (Ain’t Talking – I’m looking at you!) but I must especially single out Cold Irons Bound, Desolation Row, Workingman’s Blues (he puts in such a good vocal on this one that you wonder is it the same artist who is croaking his way around that Christmas album), and the current shows’ undisputed tour de force, the set closing Ballad of a Thin Man. Sung and performed with an intensity and passion, and at a perfect stately pace, that for me it topped any versions of this song, well, except 1966 I suppose. Worth googling on YouTube I suggest.

Overall, a really excellent tour, which it could be argued, saw some of the best shows since 2001. Or, if that's too controversial, I would at least say that 2009 was a good step up on 2008, with this Fall tour the year's best.

Before I sign off, a couple of quick points to mention – firstly, the venue, (the United Palace Theater up in Spanish Harlem) was stunning. Originally designed as an incredibly ornate 1920s movie theatre, it is now mainly used as a Church. Or the Church of Bob, as it transpired this week..

Secondly, a few of us went to Ray Davies the night after the Dylan shows. Ray was playing in the equally gorgeous New York Town Hall, a historic mid town venue. It was a good show, by an underrated songwriter who, for me, is pretty close to Dylan’s league. The most notable thing about this tour is the addition of a choir to the band, adding a fine extra dimension to all those classic Kinks songs.

Finally, the Dylan show on the 17th was a bit of a landmark for me, so thanks to Susan for the front row seat!

See everybody next year hopefully..

Two short Brian Friel plays

2009-09-20T05:08:00.000-07:00

A short little Friel festival here in the Gate, confusingly I think it has nothing to do with the Theatre Festival, which also starts around now.
Anyway, it comprises 3 plays - Faith Healer and two one act plays - Afterplay and The Yalta Game. Having seen Faith Healer recently - I decided to go to the other two. Conveniently one was at 6.30 and one at 8.30, thus allowing for a quick'n'spicy Korean meal in Dublin's nearby new Chinatown area.
First up was Afterplay, a nice piece imagining if a character from Three Sisters met up with the niece of Uncle Vanya. The pair meet in a Moscow cafe, about 20 years after the events of the earlier plays. It's obvious from the start that they are both not over those events, and that she copes with her loneliness with drink and he copes with his (and other problems) by deluding himself and those around him.
Nothing much happens, but it's full of typical Friel dialogue, and has a resolution of sorts, and overall it works pretty well. Well acted too.
The 2nd play I saw, The Yalta Game, I preferred by some margin. Also very well acted - this one is also a 2 hander, with Risteard Cooper and his female companion, both very convincing and engaging.
The play is based on an episode in a Chekov short story, thereby completing the evening's Friel tribute to his Russian hero, and has even better dialogue than the earlier play. Cooper's character is holidaying alone in Yalta, and has his eye out for romantic distraction. Well, he soon finds it, and the play concerns their dialogue with each other and with themselves. I've never seen such overlapping between solilaquay and 2-way dialogue work so well, and there are some very funny lines. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say the short flirtatious affair turns into something more serious, allowing Friel to introduce theme's such as obsession and over-imagination. Oh and there's a dog too. Probably.
Worth seeing, at the very least just to see Risteard Cooper, who one would have thought would have only been good as a comic actor (his most famous role is as a TV mimic), but this is the 3rd time I've seen him in a straight acting role, and bloody good he is at it..
Recommended.
Ken.

Wilco - review of the 2 Dublin shows, August 2009

2009-09-04T01:57:00.000-07:00

So, another two stunning nights from the band that keeps getting better!

Having always loved music but being unable to purge a constant nagging feeling that all the best music was really made long before I was born, Wilco perennially manage to put this feeling on hold.

They really are our generation's Beatles. With a splash of Dylan. And Neil. The Band, etc. Even Radiohead. However, there are plenty of other decent (and not so decent) bands around who hark back to those sort of roots; but what Wilco bring to the table is something much more original, adding their own contemporary twist to forms of music that have never really been bettered.

Anyway, to the music. Touring on the back of their 8th disc, 'Wilco (the album)' a decent follow up to what I think was their career best ('Sky Blue Sky'), this time they have achieved even better results than usual in the live incarnations of the new songs. Only out a few months, the new songs have evolved naturally into really fine arrangements, and all fit in well alongside older material. Songs like One Wing, You Never Know, I'll Fight, Sonny Feeling were all excellent, and not surprisingly went down very well with the Dublin crowd - a town Wilco play so much, these almost feel like being at hometown gigs.

The Sky Blue Sky songs continue to impress, from the by now show stopping 'Impossible Germany' to gorgeous quieter country-ish numbers like You Are My Face.
I think all 8 albums got a look-in over the 2 nights, with I think about 15 different songs the 2nd night, and some real rarities, such as John's turn on lead vocals ('It's Just that Simple') to 'Magazine Called Sunset' and older ones like 'Passenger Side'.

As has been well covered in the media, this is the most stable Wilco lineup to date, and each musician brings something to the table, with the music wonderfully layered, yet never sounding convoluted. From amazing vocals, guitars, drums , to swirls of 60s sounding keyboards, combining everything from exquisite country to experimental rock blow outs; plus the two Krautrock-esque regulars ('Bull Black Nova' and 'Spiders'), there's never a dull moment seeing such a genre-bending band. And most importantly, I really don't think there's ever been a band who know how to 'build' a live version of a song better than Wilco, using dynamics that always feel natural, yet avoiding some of the (slight) self indulgence of the 'Yankee' and 'Ghost' tours. The longest song (excepting 'Spiders') is about 6 minutes, and both Dublin setlists just work perfectly, playing a good smattering from the new album, some rarities, plus all our favourites really. And Jeff was in very good form, funny and engaging, actually the whole band looked to be having a great time, not to mention the audience.

I know I write a lot of positive reviews, but this time, believe me! Two great shows! Both now available for download on www.dimeadozen.org

Finally, a positive mention also for support band, Blitzen Trapper, who are well worth checking out.

Ken.

Recommending 'Present Laughter' in the Gate Theatre

2009-09-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

Another cracking light summer play from The Gate, extremely well produced as we've come to expect.
Most of the acting was pretty good, notwithstanding the occasional accent lapse or descent into hamminess, and the set and costumes absolutely top notch, but the main reason for recommending it is the stunning performance by Stephen Brennan, in the lead role.
I don't think I've ever seen him in anything other than comedies, so have no idea of his range, but seeing him last week just confirmed that I wasn't imagining how good he was in Private Lives some years back.
Present Laughter is probably my favourite Noel Coward play (of the 3 or 4 I've seen), and Gary Essendine is no easy role. A massive amount of dialogue and I don't think the character is ever off the stage, but Brennan handles it with the ease of a really great comic actor.
Anyway, the run is nearly over, so if you're in Dublin, don't dither, go to it..

Short review of 'Alls Well that Ends Well' National Theatre, London July 2009

2009-08-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

He really should have called this one 'Much Ado About Nothing', not 'All's Well that Ends Well' (which also kind of gives away the ending..!)
Not one of the Bard's best perhaps, bit of a flimsy plot, and no-one I've spoken to has any idea why the heroine would be interested in that chap, with events all seeming a bit contrived.
But, I hadn't been to a Shakespeare play in quite a while, so it was nice to hear the language again, and the main auditorium in The National is a superb venue.
And, there was at least one top notch performance, as the fellow who played the King was really good, huge big beard (naturally) and a powerful vocal delivery. Just like you'd expect a Shakespearian King to be.
The rest of the cast were a bit ho-hum though. As were the costumes. It was supposed to be a period costume production, but some of the cast were wearing watches and in one scene the females all wore American 1950s style dresses! And at times they were hard to hear.
So, a bit patchy, but mildly enjoyable nonetheless.
I should point out that the set design was quite good, so at least I'm finishing on a positive note!

Leonard Cohen Review Dublin 20 July 09

2009-07-21T01:56:00.000-07:00

So, my 3rd Leonard show, my 1st on this tour, and the 2nd of 4 nights he is playing in the o2, of which I'm also going to Wednesday's show.
All of which irrelevance adds up to another sublime 3 hours in the company of a still charismatic but ever so slighty slightly frailer Leonard , and added (I think) four songs to my tally that I didn't see him do last year; The Partisan, Waiting for a Miracle, Sisters of Mercy and Famous Blue Raincoat.
And damm good they were too. Everything was good actually. As is well known, Leonard doesn't change his setlists too much, so the best approach is just to absorb the best presentation of lyrics/poetry set to song you're ever likely to hear.
It was so good to hear The Partisan and Famous Blue Raincoat. I was struck listening to the French verses in The Partisan how much of a European sensibility there is to Leonard's music, especially with this extraordinary band, who are even tighter and more empathetic than last year to my ears. The girls (who seemed to be battling colds) were excellent, with the cartwheels particularly appreciated!
Rumour has it Leonard is also battling a cold, and his voice did sound somewhat hoarse, and maybe he was protecting it a bit by not overdoing the big notes, but no complaints - he was as expressive as ever, despite this.
The venue is great, this was my first ever seated show in the new Point, and boy have they got the sound perfect. Just perfect.
Overall then, just as good as last year, perhaps the atmosphere at that final wet night outdoors in Kilmainham (Dublin) last year just topped it, but a night to be savoured just the same.
Wednesday can't come soon enough..

2009-07-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2N5xPCze38
Bob Dylan Performs 'Things Have Changed' At The 2009 AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute To Michael Douglas

Review of 2nd night Bruce, RDS Dublin 2009

2009-07-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

A completely different show tonight. Not just the weather, which was mainly dry unlike the previous night, but a different feel, not to mention a very different setlist (of tonight's 29 songs 14 were not played the night before!). There was a bit less chat from Bruce tonight, although he was no less animated, in a set chock full of classics from the 1st 4 albums, plus a generous smattering from the new album, 2 covers and (I think) 3 Bruce penned songs that were never on studio albums (Trapped, Seeds and American Skin).

The sound was not 100% (vocals a little low), but it improved as the night wore on. Probably a slightly less Greatest Hits oriented set, the crowd still loved it, as band and artist played near definitive versions of some of the man's very best songs, and some of my favourites; No Surrender, Promised Land, Spirit in the Night, Prove it All Night, Jungleland, Trapped, Rosalita; all bloody amazing. Of the lighter songs - Sherry Darling (a request) was very enjoyable, and croud pleasers like Proud Mary and Glory Days were also well received.

Springsteen may not be my favourite artist, but I don't think anyone comes close to him, live, really. An E-Street band show is one of the best communal experiences going - people like it for all sorts of reasons, ok it's very crowd pleasing and a bit hammy at times, but musically this big sounding band has arguably never sounded better, and twice this weekend in Dublin, we could all forget about our troubles for 3 hours, which can't be a bad thing.
Finally, a quick nod to the camerawork, which was very well done, and added a lot to the show.
Lets hope we see Bruce back here again in the not too distant future.
Ken.

Review of 1st night Bruce RDS Dublin 2009

2009-07-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

After standing in the rain for 3 hours, feeling, if not bedraggled, well certainly far from draggled, and with not much more to think about than what the opening song might be, it was all worth it when he opened with the oh so appropriate, Who'll Stop the Rain!
Who, indeed..
Anyway, the constant rain didn't deter band or audience from having a great show. Another huge performance as we've come to expect from the ageing Boss these days here in the RDS.
After the surprise opener, they launched into Badlands with some gusto. At first I thought the sound was not great, but I realised wearing a hood was affecting it, so I took it down. Better a wet head than a muffled E-Street!
Having only been keeping a vague eye on matters Bruce in the last year, it was nice to note the few changes in the show, such as the addition of two of the Seeger band backing vocalists, the gimmicky but nice song request sign collecting thing, and we also got some family related guest appearances later on, vis a vis Christopher Clemons on sax, and a youthful looking Bruce child, Evan Springsteen, on guitar.
But, the big change, of course, are the new songs from Working on a Dream. And actually, he played nothing at all I think, from the previous album, Magic.
Of the new ones, I was so pleased he played my favourite one, Kingdom of Days, and the title track is a very catchy Boss single which went down well with the Dublin crowd. I don't seem to like Outlaw Pete as much as some, but I must concede, it works very well live. My Lucky Day was also well performed.
The show seems to have a 'recession theme' both in some of Bruces's chat, and also in selections such as The Ghost of Tom Joad, Seeds, Johnny 99, Hard Times, The River etc..
I don't have any complaints about the show really, maybe one or two of the rock'n'roll numbers here and there flagged a tiny bit, but a really good show overall.
Other personal stand outs for me were the requested For You, given a great Bruce vocal on top of a fine band arrangement, and the gorgeous Hard Times, a song that's been done by almost everyone, it seems, since it was written in the 19th Century. But few have done it as well as this.
Roll on Sunday, which can only be as good, or better. And probably drier..
Ken.

couple of recent issues/events.. Jackson, Glastonbury, new play..

2009-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, I haven't had much to write about lately, so here's a few thoughts on some recent things cultural..

1. Michael Jackson. It's supposed to be inappropriate to speak ill of the dead, but what the hell, he must be dead a week by now, so here goes.. I just can't understand the international outpouring of extreme grief. I'm sorry for his fans and family of course, but what are we really grieving for? An insanse, bewildered and no doubt, miserable, former artist. I say former, because when his last piece of work? And after you've answered that question, when was his last decent piece of work?
And is his body of work not very small anyway? 3 or 4 decent albums, and a bunch of fine pop singles with the Jacksons. Admittedly, he was very talented, an original singer, a very good dancer (although in 200 years, I reckon Fred Astaire will be the 20th century dancer people still talk about), and he made a strong contribution to the cross over appeal of black artists.
BUT what on earth are all these lunatics talking about who say he was the FIRST to do this?
I mean, are you telling me the following amazing and groundbreaking black artists had NO white fans? Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis?!!
Finally, a lot of his work had a lot of strong involvement from 3rd parties, be they songwriters or producers such as Quincy Jones.
I am not putting him down completely, he was very talented and he meant a lot to people, but can we have some perspective?
.. and I didn't even get in to his crazy, irresponsible and out of control private life..

2. Glastonbury. Jeez, I should have gone to this one. A line up to dream about - Bruce, Neil, Madness, Quo, Blur, Specials.. All of whom seemed great in the, as ever, top drawer BBC coverage. I'm a little sorry I skipped Neil's Dublin show, although the one to see it turns out now, was his London show, with that very special duet on Day in the Life with McCartney.
These big shows / festivals are very enjoyable these days, as they seem better organised than in the past (notable exception : Slane), so I may go to Glastonbury again someday (was there in 1998), and Electric Picnic, which despite it being a little too dance-orientated for my tastes, I enjoyed last year, plus someday I'd LOVE to go to Bonarroo. Of course, there are many very good smaller and cheaper festivals running in cities all over the world - one example being the Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures in Dun Laoghaire Dublin, which launches it's 2009 (29-31 Aug) programme tommorow, here http://www.festivalofworldcultures.com/

3. The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant.
A new play by Tom Murphy in the Abbey Theatre. Based on an old Russian novel (and don't let that put you off), I found this a fascinating play, all about family, property, power, being poor, being rich, being poor again.. I suggest you go see it not knowing too much about it, but suffice to say the acting is very good, ESPECIALLY in a jaw dropping performance from Marie Mullen. Get a seat in the front section, and watch a powerhouse performance from this little old (apols - middle aged!) woman. My God, she must be exhausted after this every night..
Highly recommended.

Next up;
2 x Bruce
2 x Leonard
2 x Wilco.
.. plus the Noel Coward play in the Gate.

Now, all we need is a decent film to come out sometime..

post tour hello

2009-05-13T04:21:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post to say thanks and hello to all the people who responded to my tour reviews. I can't seem to work out how to reply individually!
Especially to Angela, Roderick from California and Jay from Duluth, apologies. If I don't have your email, you can email me directly on kencowley@ireland.com

Review of 2nd Dublin show.

2009-05-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

So, 6th May arrives and the end of the road dawns for this eventful Dylan tour.
I was at the opening night in the tiny Stockholm Salon Berns club, and here we are, 32 or so shows later (Bob, that is, not me - I wasn't at the whole tour needless to say!) in the massive new 02 Arena (Point), for the 2nd of 2 nights.
As widely discussed, the 1st night was extremely strong, everyone I spoke to thought it had been an exciting, adventurous and appreciated performance, with one obvious highlight when Bob finally debuted a song from the new album.
Sadly, the Irish Times had another opinion, Tony Clayton Lea, in a mean spirited review seeming to be mainly disappointed that Bob wasn’t very chatty. If you want to hear Bob be chatty, I suggest you go download one of his radio shows (for free). If you want two hours of ambitious albeit uneven, and passionate, music, communicated via some very hard work from Dylan to a young enthusiastc Irish crowd, well you could always pay 49 euros (plus booking fee), and come down to the Point either of those two May evenings. Or you could choose not to.

Anyway, on to the music. I was also at the 8 UK shows, and both the Dublin’s easily rivalled Glasgow for best show I saw. Other contenders being Birmingham and Sheffield.
3 standout moments - ‘Billy’ in Stockholm, ‘Something’ in Liverpool and 'If You Ever go to Houston’ in Dublin. Meaning I missed ‘One More Cup of Coffee’, but you can’t have everything!

Dublin 2 opened with a strong hat-trick of Wicked Messenger, Girl North Country and the much admired new Man in the Long Black Coat. Following it with Stuck Inside of Mobile could be construed as a bit of an own goal, but it was well performed, and was followed by a superb set of 4 very heavy hitters – Blind Willie McTell, Desolation Row, It’s Alright Ma and Po’Boy.
Simply put, these were as good vocally as you will hear from Dylan. They were sung quite straight, with less eccentric phrasing than the previous night. Dylan was also slightly less animated than the previous night. He was very much concentrating on his musical performance, giving it one last shot I supppose, before leaving Europe. I was front row, and could see between songs how weary he looked, which is not surprising after such a long tour. 10 years ago, he was doing 20-25 show tours. Now at the age of almost 68 he has upped the stakes to 30-35 shows!

In conclusion I may have seen better shows in the past, but I’ll be surprised if I see better in the future, and if we never seen him again over here, well he sure went out on a high.
Closing highlights were another strong Rolling Stone, another delightful run through the new song (this time with harmonica solo), and the tour wrapped up with his current closer Blowin in the Wind, Bob then taking another long bow at the front, peering out, tired but appreciatively, into the cavernous arena.

Finally, a quick point-out to the band, who despite some criticism from fans and (it seems) Bob, were superb tonight. Watch out especially for Tony on bass on the new song when you download the show – some nice and unusually extrovert playing from the bandleader.

If Bob continues 2009 in this form, and the other new songs are as successful as ‘Houston’, it will be a good year indeed..
See everyone again soon I hope.

Ken.

brief 1st Dublin show comments

2009-05-05T16:20:00.001-07:00

Just a few comments on Dublin, post gig, and post pub, so somewhat weary..

- Extremely young and enthusiastic audience, or so it seemed where I was
- 1st 4 songs astonishingly good, Bob very animated, feeding off the crowd, strong strong vocals
- Next section lulled somewhat, Bob losing it ever so slightly, some more eccentric than usual vocals
- Main set, nothing too exciting in terms of song choices, perhaps other than Red Sky
- Any fears of the gig going down hill in audience terms were waived though by a very strong closing Thunder and Rolling Stone
- and, of course, the encores included the long awaited new song debut, with Bob opting for If you Ever go to Houston. Spectacular performance, way better than the album, excellent vocals, Bob leaning into every line like he'd been waiting for weeks (31 shows?) to play the damm thing!

.. oh and yes, the organ (almost) perfectly replaces the accordian!

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Ken.

the Scottish shows

2009-05-05T01:51:00.000-07:00

So, Bob wraps up his UK tour with a fine brace of Scottish concerts!

I mean, when was the last time he played a bad show in Glasgow? Amazing audiences in this city. Bob really appreciated it too, standing out front for ages at the end, and touching his heart in a gesture of gratitude. Jeez he even looked like he might have meant it!
Some people like a nice quiet audience, but I reckon gigs are a two way street, and for atmosphere, Bob’s best audiences are arguably Glasgow and Italy, plus possibly Ireland.
Anyway, the SECC was also the best and most consistent show I’ve seen on this tour. Extraordinary vocal performance on many of the songs, certainly as good as those battered vocal chords will currently allow.
He opened with this newly countrified and rocked up Maggies Farm and followed with a perfect Don’t Think Twice. The harmonica is having a good tour, and I suggest you check out this performance for a fine example.
Next we got the great current arrangement of Till I fell in Love with You, a good example of this bands strengths, despite Bob’s current habit of keeping the guitar players tightly reined in.
Other highlights of this fine concert were a contender for my favourite ever vocal on Workingman’s Blues and a gorgeous Every Grain of Sand.

On then to the prettiest city on the tour, and despite rumours that Edinburgh audiences are too posh to cheer (?!) there was a great atmosphere in the beautiful Playhouse theatre for what I thought was a fine show. Some others thought it a bit dull.
Again, a good night vocally with Tangled and Trying to get to Heaven early set highlights.
But, the real meat of this show for me, was the fact that he played FOUR songs on guitar. This really gives everything a lift, it was just like old times with Bob out front, quite a bit more animated than usual, and playing some ragged but solid leads on this nice new guitar he has (a Gibson?).
The best of these songs was I Don’t Believe You, a song that is usually a bit of a snoozefest for me. And, of course, to get Just Like a Woman on guitar as 2nd encore instead of the relentlessly overplayed Spirit on the Water was a big bonus. Other well performed songs were Po’ Boy, Rolling Stone and a seemingly slower than normal (?) Blowin in the Wind.
Admittedly there was no ‘rare’ song in ‘slot 12’ as hoped for, and I don’t really find the song he played in this slot, Ain’t Talkin, too exciting any more, but hey, a good show overall, and fingers crossed for two good nights in Dublin to wrap up this long and eventful European jaunt..

Liverpool Review and other recent tour thoughts..

2009-05-02T06:39:00.000-07:00

Well, as a friend of mine said about the Liverpool show last night, it was the show that had everything!

-Bob was in furious mood most of the night, glaring and fuming at guitar player Stu, who at one point stopped playing, put his hands in his pockets and did a bit of his own fuming
- Chaotic security, obviously unprepared for the usual stage rush by audience en-masse when the lights go down at seated Dylan arena shows. It took them almost half the show to get everyone back to their seats
- Exuberant, young, drunken, but good natured audience
- Bob 'attacked' by a well meaning stage invader during the last song, Tony Garnier putting his life 'on the line' to keep his meal ticket (sorry, I mean, his boss!) safe, although it really took sound guy Jools to semi-rugby tackle our new friend off the stage, and Bob carried on relatively unflustered..

- Also, it was the normal 2009 solid show. Some decent song performances, some snoozing opportunities

- BUT, of course, the only thing REALLY worth talking about, is Bob's oh-so-appropriate cover of The Beatles' George Harrison penned, 'Something', right in the Fabs' hometown of Liverpool. Who'd have thought he'd do this?!
As a Beatles fanatic (fresh off the 'Magical Mystery Bus Tour' the day before!), it was a very emotional moment. Not something I'd admit to normally, but hey, I'm among friends.
He seemed to give it a lovely vocal rendition, similar to his only other rendition of it, in 2002, when he dedicated it to his 'buddy' George, around the occasion of George's 1st anniversary.
A nice band arrangement including a thoughtful rendition of the song's famous guitar solo by Denny Freeman.

Otherwise, I don't have too much to report from the tour. I was planning to review Roundhouse, Cardiff and Birmingham, but I just didn't have much to say about them. Solid shows all, enough has been written about the Roundhouse and it's (to say the least) anti-climactic setlist, while Cardiff was good, and Birmingham perhaps the best overall show I've seen. That, or Sheffield.

The main talking points of the tour seem to be;
- Roundhouse setlist
- the new album
- Bob's problems with his guitar player(s)
- the rare songs he has played

I've mentioned all these points in this blog at one point or another, but I just wish he'd sort things out with the band, and stop stropping around in an apparent hissy fit every 3rd show or so. It's entertaining in it's way, but not really what the audience is paying for, and surely it's very unfair to his hired hands, who SEEM to be trying to play what he wants them to play, or more importantly what he wants them NOT to play. Sack 'em, or, sort it out in rehearsal, would be my humble suggestion!

But, this is a positive review. Liverpool was unforgettable. Let's see what Scotland and Ireland will bring forth..

Ken.

Review of Dylan Sheffield and 1st London

2009-04-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

So, this uneven but relatively interesting tour winds it's way to the UK, and kicks off with a surprisingly high standard show in the less than inspiring venue that is the Sheffield Arena.
1st 3 songs were a bit of a snoozefest, but, from Boots of Spanish Leather through It's Alright Ma was as good a run as I can remember.
A simply gorgeous Boots; Bob out front on guitar, with the stage backdrop bathed in some sort of bizarre lighting. Great vocal too. Levee was as hot as ever. Sugar Baby, one of the best songs from it's album, given a nice rendition.
Tweedle was great (wow, did I really just say that?!) - Bob out front, sans guitar, cowering and diving like an old bluesman with a hand held harp, doing this thing where he sings and blasts the harp almost in the same breath. Quite innovative really, similar to Lovesick earlier in the tour.
Po' Boy though, was the song of the night. This complicated song (melodically anyway) has been given a fine subtle new arrangement, and Bob nailed the lyrics.
It's Alright Ma has gained from a new punched up riff, but after this, the show became more predictable.
A good opening UK night though.

On to London, and the o2. A lot of people hate the venue, and it is ENORMOUS. But, I kinda like it. A very iconic structure, all out on it's own down there in north Greenwich. And post-gig, I'm happy the Underground was off, as travelling by boat down the Thames (as many did) sure was a novel way to attend a Dylan show.
Anyway, gig wise, possibly a shade under Sheffield in overall quality, and nothing extraordinary setlist wise, but again at least 4 or 5 songs that were worth the trip hands down.
Chimes of Freedom is not always sung well, great song or no, but tonight was the best I've seen, since the songs re-introduction. ie it was nearly as good as those great 2000/2001 versions.
I won't dwell on the songs that bore me as it is possibly my own fault for seeing too many shows, but stuff like Hattie Carroll, Things have Changed, Rollin Tumblin, Highway, Mobile.. you get the picture. Anyway, there were only a few nap opportunites tonight.
Other highlights were a slower quieter (almost acoustic) Hollis Brown, an amazingly well nailed vocal in Workingmans Blues, and tonights great visual moment - Bob out front on his own for Till I Fell in Love with You. I haven't seen him strike so many poses since 1995! He's still no Mick Jagger needless to say, but good to see him come out from his batcave in behind that keyboard, have some fun, and actually interact with the audience. Well, almost!
Oh, and the sound was perfect tonight. Incredibly well mixed, Bob's voice booming out on top of the band. Sheffield had been good too, albeit marginally too loud.

Band wise, they are ok. Doing well on the new arrangements, and Stu Cimpball is slightly more to the fore than in the past. Even gets to play a 'classic rock' style solo in Watchtower, which I suppose makes a change from Denny Freeman's more rootsy endeavors. Don't get me wrong though, I am a big Denny fan, but why on earth has Bob stopped him playing his amazing solos in Spirit on Water and Deal Goes Down?!! Surely, it could'nt be because he used to get spontaneous rounds of applause from the audience?!
Anyway, onwards and upwards.. Roundhouse tonight..

Review of the new Bob Dylan album 'Together Through Life', April 2009

2009-04-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick review of ‘Together Through Life’. Hot off the press, just one listen, and even that was in the car! But, it sounds great in a car. It’s a fun record.

Sound wise, it is not far off the last 3 albums, but sweetened by the predominant accordion of David Hidalgo. As other reviews have said, it is a Tex-Mex bordertown sounding album. Bob’s voice is good. Dog-rough, but good. Doesn’t seem to be any harmonica. Lyrically, not sure yet.

My first general impression songwise is that it is not quite up to the (accepted) high standard of Time out of Mind nor even to the (less accepted!) high standard of Modern Times. I love these two albums. Together Through Life for me is I think going to be closer to Love & Theft, which I thought of as an interesting exercise in genres, with one outstanding song (Mississippi).
And this album, too, has one outstanding song in ‘I Feel a Change Coming On’.

So I’ll start with that one – what a song! There’s very little I don’t like about this song. It is upbeat, optimistic, lyrically possibly a reflection on how good life and love can be, despite ageing. It’s the best band performance on the album, and probably the best vocal too. Also in an album short of guitar solos, this song has a lovely one, presumably played by Mike Campbell.
If all this album has given us is this song as an addition to the canon, then it’s definitely worth your 20 euros. A song that I think is one of his best latter day major songs, to file with Workingmans Blues, Nettie Moore, Missisippi, Not Dark Yet, Trying to get to Heaven and Standing in the Doorway.

Beyond Here Lies Nothing is an excellent album opener. Kind of rock-y and swinging but also swampy and murky if that makes any sense – it’s the only song on the album that in any way reminds me of ‘Oh Mercy’.

The much touted Life is Hard doesn’t live up to expectations. It is quite European sounding, but has he ever written a slower song. It’s almost moving backwards! Jury out on this one.

My Wife’s Hometown is my vote for worst song on the album. A mediocre re-write of a Willie Dixon song (duly credited, to be fair), presumably I Just Want to Make Love to You? Waste of time. He’ll probably play the bloody thing to death in concert too.

If You Ever go to Houston – nice song. The way he uses the accordion on songs like this reminds me a bit of the way people like Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, even latter day The Band, have used this instrument. I thought I wouldn’t like such a reliance on accordion, which is an instrument I am ambivalent about, but it seems to work I must say..

I won’t review every song, but two that I love (and suspect other people will not!) are Shake Shake Mama and Jolene. These are in the field of recent Dylan songs that veer between rockabilly and a kind of jump blues (not straight blues), which I love, and are great great dance numbers. His recent day musicians seem to have really got good empathy with each other in making these numbers swing. So, in other words, these two songs are this albums Summer Days/Thunder on Mountain/Someday Baby/Levees Gonna Break..

There are a few mid paced typical brooding gloomy type songs on the album that I quite like, such as Forgetful Heart. Not much else to say about them at the moment.

And, finally, I hate to finish on a negative note, but another of my least favourites is the closing track ‘It’s All Good’. Sadly, the title is somewhat inaccurate. This sounds like an Under the Red Sky outtake. Hopefully my opinion of it will improve.

Overall, though, I’m happy. 8 out of 10. Lousy album title though!

New Bob Dylan song free download

2009-03-29T23:41:00.000-07:00

Well, if Beyond Here Lies Nothing is representative of the album, I'll be a happy camper. A great swinging rock number. Bluesy, but the accordian gives it a lovely melodic feel. Gorgeous guitar work - dunno who it is, but it sounds like Denny Freeman, despite the rumours he isn't on the album. Maybe it's Mike Campbell.
Terrific vocal too. I've literally just had one listen, so haven't considered the lyrics. For me, the music is more important anyway..

It's on http://www.bobdylan.com/ as a free download. But, hurry - it's for 24 hours only.

Ken.

Dylan ignores new stuff and debuts 36 year old chestnut in Stockholm..

2009-03-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

So, lots of pre-tour talk about whether he would play stuff from recent outtakes set 'Tell tale Signs' or even debut some songs from his new studio album (due in 3 weeks). But, no, ever perverse, he decides to debut an old chestnut from 1973 instead - 'Billy' from the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid soundtrack.
.. which was great! Quite similar in arrangement to Romance in Durango from 03! 6 mins long - LOTS of verses, and easily the best vocal of the evening. Possibly some new lyrics - lots of references to cantinas and senoritas and whatnot.
Otherwise, not a bad show, especially considering it must be at least 4 months since he has performed. The sound was so-so, the bass was way too loud, and the drums a bit too high as well. But, at least Bob's vocals were high in the mix.
Absolutely gorgeous venue though, 130 yrs old, extremely ornate - and lots of associations with old Swedish writers apparently.

Spent the earlier part of the day walking around the old town, and in the excellent National Art Museum. Stockholm is a beautiful city. Later that night it was like a winter wonderland, with 3 or 4 inches of snow having fallen during the show.

Back to the show.. No band changes, other than Denny/Stu/Tony bizarelly positioned all facing Bob in a line!
Other highlights included Trying get to Heaven, I Believe in You and an incredible new 'walkin blues' type arrangement of Cry Awhile.
Contrary to some reports it was Riverflow where he played guitar, not Things have Changed. He also came out and sang without any instrument at the front of the stage for the first half of Honest with Me and the 2nd half of Cry Awhile.. There was harmonica on about 8 songs, and of a very high standard, on several occasions out front with hand held harmonica mike.
Otherwise, it was a standard show, lots of predictable songs were played as well as that rare one, and things were spoiled a little bit by the poor sound - jeez I even think Tony's bass sounded out of tune to some extent to my ears..
Bob's voice was pretty good, he seemed in good humour, although he looked alarmingly uncomfortable when singing or playing guitar at the front of the stage!

But, a good show, with one extraordinary highlight and an enjoyable, albeit short, trip.. Glad I went.. Roll on UK/Ireland..

Revew of 'Cadillac Records' film

2009-02-15T00:28:00.000-08:00

Another strong music biopic about American music, at least the equal of I Walk the Line and Ray. If you have ANY interest in American music, especially black music of the 50s, I guarantee you will enjoy this film.
It differs from those other biopics in that this one is about a label, the Chess label, so we get nice little snapshots of the stories of all the major artists therein, framed around the central story of the well meaning Polish immigrant label founder, Leonard Chess.
It tells the story well, never straying too far from the conventions of this type of film, but what really raises it up, is the feel for the period and the sheer majesty of the music.
Whatever your thougths about modern day black music (for me it's somewhat disappointing, rap and hip hop not being my bag, and the good old fashioned singers like Alicia Keyes seemingly lost in mediocre material) - surely no one can deny how good this stuff was, and how historic.
Each of these amazing artists of the period seemed to bring a new musical revolution to that studio on Michigan Avenue, be it Muddy Waters' electrified version of the country blues of his childhood, aligned with the urban harmonica of his less than stable friend, Little Walter. Or the almost non human sounds from the throat of Mr Howlin Wolf. Those guys really did create the blues as we now know them.
Even more creative, was the extraordinary country/r'n'b hybrid of Chuck Berry, which tied in with his clever lyrics and stage act, really was the start of rock'n'roll.
Finally, the incredible voice and life of Etta James, more than adequately played here by Beyonce Knowles, could arguably be the stuff of it's own full biopic.
The other actors are all good too - especially the actors playing Muddy Water's wife, and Little Walter. Adrian Brody is his usual quietly impressive self as Leonard Chess.
The film's key device is an unobtrusive narration by the actor playing Willie Dixon, who was one of the main songwriters at Chess. Both his songs and the narration are more than enough to tell us the social history behind the story of Chess and the music.
But, bottom line, the music (played by current day blues guys and sung mostly I believe, by the actors) drives the story, and is why you'll enjoy this film, preferably on some enormous screen where you can appreciate this slice of 20th century history blazing out of a good surround sound system!

Film Review - The Wrestler

2009-01-18T01:36:00.000-08:00

I've seen a lot of films since Christmas (it's 18 Jan 09 now), a lot of them were very good and are getting a lot of coverage. For example The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire. Anyway, I might review them later.
But for now, I want to dwell on The Wrestler, which I saw a few days ago. My expectations were so-so, indeed I only went to it as Slumdog Millionaire was sold out, and given a choice between The Wrestler and Bride Wars, well you work it out..
But, it seems all the good notices for Mickey Rourke were valid. If anything, they've understated how bloody good he is. He is so believable, and the whole film is very believable.
It's also extremely visceral, partly due to the hand held camera style but also due to the extremity of the wrestling scenes. I dislike wrestling even more than I dislike boxing, but you have to respect the commitment of these guys (I suspect the other wrestlers were real, and not actors) and how much they put their bodies on the line. Actually, that's one of the themes of the film really, how everything Rourke does in his life is either damaging his body or his psyche, and all his attemtps at doing the right thing (be it trying to reunite with his daughter or retire from wrestling) seem doomed to failure. And of course, as we know, it's all paralleled neatly with the actor's own life.
So, be warned, this is no feel good movie, it's actually very sad and depressing. The only cheerful things, are the few flashes of humour and the glorious if somewhat cheesy 80s hard rock soundtrack. Plus that great new Springsteen song.
Only for very occasionally veering towards some of the cliches of this genre, I would have given it 9/10, so I'll give it an 8.

Ken's Best of 2008

2008-12-30T04:58:00.003-08:00

Well 2008 has almost gone it’s not-so-merry way, but there were cultural compensations a plenty for anyone overly depressed by financial woes.
Firstly, to one of the main reasons we all exist – live music!

Gigs of the Year

Bruce Springsteen
Leonard Cohen

I saw somewhat less concerts than normal this year, but quality made up for quantity, and the reason I only list the above two is that they were head and shoulders above the rest.
For me Leonard was a typical 2nd tier singer-songwriter prior to 2008, probably in my top 20-30 artists, fine lyrics of course etc, but he just didn’t do it for me the way other artists do. But seeing him live has changed all that. The single biggest surprise of the year was just how damn good he is live. And how funny, how warm, how graceful, how charming. Just like Bob, Van and Neil then?! Not.
I saw nights two and three in Dublin, with night three just shading it. Incredible vocal performance and a long powerful well constructed setlist with a terrific band. Rare too, to have audience and critics in agreement as much as they were that weekend. The old argument that his music is depressing was also put to bed, each concert being three hours of the most uplifting music imaginable. Highlights – Anthem, So Long Marianne, Take this Waltz, Hallelujah. Enough said.

Tough to call, but possibly Bruce just shades Leonard. I saw all three Dublin shows, each one better than the last. I never thought he’d top the quality of some of the recent years live shows (including those memorable nights with the Seeger Sessions band), but these were awesome, and surely were at least close to his earlier 1970s/80s peaks? The E-Street Band have never seemed more panoramic yet tight, and the singing and showmanship of rock’s greatest live performer rarely better.

Just to pick two hair-raising moments from these artists – never mind Pop Idol versions, one of the best moments of the year was when Leonard soared in to the chorus of Hallelujah with his three passionate but subtle backing singers and band behind him on a drizzly summers evening in Dublin. Secondly, on the 1st night Bruce came on stage in the RDS, to tumultuous applause, and man and band launched into a searing version of Promised Land – everything perfect; the sound, the volume, the weather, the atmosphere and the performance..

Anyway, I did see some other good concerts in 2008, including three Dylans – an above average performance in Helsinki, an emotional night in St Petersburgh for his first ever Russian show, and a below par night in Tallin.
Tom Waits was quite good despite that ridiculous venue in the Phoenix Park.
Neil Young was very good in Hammersmith in the Spring, but had lost just a little of the magic of this band and tour by the time he brought it to Malahide. Almost one third of the main set comprised ‘No Hidden Path’ – I’m all in favour of long songs if the jamming is purposeful, but this was very trying for a festival type audience.
Speaking of festivals, I went to Electric Picnic for the first time and enjoyed it a lot. The clichés about the wonderful vibes (not to mention food!) are mainly true, lots of interesting cultural activities to enjoy, but, for me personally, way too much emphasis on dance music. However, there were some great performances, such as;
Wilco - the festival highlight for me not surprisingly
Foals – a rare thing for me to like a modern band this much. It’s very clinical mathematical music, I don’t know how they do it but they manage to make music that is both very catchy and yet sounds extremely bloody complicated!
My Bloody Valentine – seeing them live helped me ‘get’ them where I never did before. Normally I dislike music this loud, but they have a wall of sound type thing going on that genuinely is much better this loud! Earplugs definitely required.
Michael Franti and Spearhead – infectious
Franz Ferdinand – very catchy
Candi Staton – excellent old school soul
Conor Oberst – fine band he has these days
Sigur Ros – is it prog rock, are they the new Floyd (or even Radiohead)? - whatever it is it sounded gorgeous on a warm Co. Laois evening
Electric Picnic disappointments;
Sex Pistols – competent, but tame
Nick Cave / Grinderman – tuneless nonsense I thought.. I seem to have very mixed opinions about Mr Cave these days
The likes of Duffy, Elbow, Sinead O’Connor were ok. No strong opinions.

Other enjoyable gigs this year were Al Green, Camille O’Sullivan, The Jayhawks (well two of ‘em anyway, the two that do the harmonies, gorgeous stuff..), Chuck Berry, Lisa Hannigan and Little Feat.
The Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures was also as good as ever, almost as good as Electric Picnic and about 150 euro cheaper (ie free!)

Classical wise, I saw the final night of the Arvo Part festival, which was mesmerising. I’ve been listening to his music on cd for a few years, but to hear this stuff live was another thing altogether. He was in the audience himself and made a nice speech and signed autographs. A la Harold Pinter a few years ago, he seemed overwhelmed yet delighted at such a fuss being made of him in a strange land. Speaking of mesmerising, so was the RTE concert orchestra’s performance of Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrows, also in the National Concert Hall.

That just leaves my 3rd favourite gig of the year, ie runner up to Bruce ‘n’ Leonard. It was The Waifs in Whelans. They are a cracking alt-country/Americana type band, despite singing in Australian accents a la Paul Kelly! Amazing harmonies between the two sisters, and some really good songs. It was great to see them in their more recent rocked-up incarnation, although the semi acoustic set in the middle was a reminder of how they sounded in their early days. Anyway, it was all good..

Albums

Not a vintage year, so I’ll flit through my top few;

Fireman – somewhat experimental was this Macca/Youth collaboration but it still ranks as a bloody good Paul McCartney album. None of your ‘Dance Tonight’ nonsense either.
Fleet Foxes – stunning harmonies, west coast rock that somehow reminds me of English folk music (at it’s best)
REM – A definite return to form, albeit I have never believed they lost their form as much as some others did. But, this is a rocking little 35 minute affair that has at it’s heart it’s simplicity and Peter Buck cranking out more of those REM defining riffs (much as Keef cranks out Stones defining riffs on THEIR best albums). If you are sceptical – I’ll wager just the first 4 songs on the album will convince you
The Kinks – Picture Book is a great box set. But why does every reviewer say they were rubbish after 1970. They weren’t you know!
Lisa Hannigan – loved the album. But it was more fun live.
The Waifs – Sundirtwater is a very good Americana album. The new Lucinda Williams album nearly is.
Metallica – incredible return to form and to their patented genre defining chug-chug sound. For me it easily joins their impregnable quadrilateral (Lighting, Puppets, Justice, Black album)
Neil Diamond – incredibly this one was even better than his previous effort. Which was also produced by Rick Rubin. A good year, then, for Mr Rubin. Having moved on from Johnny Cash, this year he did two of my albums of the year, Neil Diamond and Metallica. He also did the very solid new Jakob Dylan album. The big questions remaining for him though, are, will he be able to salvage the forthcoming U2 album, and will he get his wish and produce a Bob Dylan album any time soon?

Disappointments this year? Well, the AC/DC and Oasis albums were nowhere near as good as the reviewing sheep seemed to think. The Guns’n’Roses album was not bad though. No masterpiece, but worth a listen. And try as I might, I just can’t get into this Damon Albarn Monkey Chinese opera malarkey.

I’m continuing to download a lot of live music. I usually fall in love with a new genre of music most years, or discover one I’d previously discarded, so this year I’ve been leaning towards choral classical music, especially the likes of Tallis, plus blues and some heavy metal. Other artists getting a lot of rotation on my Ipod for one reason or another include, Sufjan Stevens, The Kinks, David Bowie, George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead..

But, the release of the year has got to Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs. A bloody amazing set, and topping most year end polls it seems. Basically it’s outtakes and odds and ends from 1989 to the present day. I know it’s not very original to say it, but his cast offs are indeed often better than the albums they were cast off from! I have made myself a one disc compilation version of the 3 disc released product, and it is seriously one of the best single discs I’ve ever heard. What’s not to like? - Girl from the Red River Shore is just a gorgeous ballad, Cross the Green Mountain also one of the very strongest latter day Dylan songs, a civil war tale well told, all those amazing versions of Dignity, Missisippi, the Bromberg outtakes, the 2 amazing acoustic album rarities. And great to get an insight to how he works, vis a vis the Time out of Mind sessions and all those chopped up lyrics and constant re- arrangements. No wonder he’s never happy with his albums, and has to go out and play them live for 20 years!

Films

No Country for Old Men was as good as people said. There Will be Blood not quite, but not bad. Juno was very funny, extremely well acted and had a lovely soundtrack. In Bruges was very funny, the 2 lads as good as each other. Sweeney Todd was splatteringly good. Quantum of Solace was a competent Bond movie, but was woefully lacking in the comedy and sex departments. Indiana Jones was a decent effort, if not quite worth the wait. Easy Virtue was funny and looked good but very light. Eastern Promises proved, as did Australia, that Naomi Watts is the new Nicole Kidman, and doing it much better. Albeit, Australia was an interesting, if confused, failure.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was a worthy adaptation of a great childrens book, but my top 2 of the year were the chilling Orphanage (produced by Guillermo del Toro so therefore somewhat influenced by The Devils Backbone and Pans Labyrinth) and the top notch Batman film, Dark Knight. I’m not an action movie buff particularly, but this was extremely well done, and very well acted by both Heath Ledger AND Christian Bale.

Plays

I didn’t really enjoy No Mans Land to be honest. Great acting, pity about the play. However, I should point out I do like SOME other Pinter plays, so I won’t feel too bad about putting down the work of a guy who died the day before I wrote this review!
Three Sisters was a bit disappointing too. Just because it has the names Chekov and Friel on the billboard, did not, in this case, a perfect production make. It just didn’t ring true.
So much for Dublin plays.
I saw some great things in London however – humour and poignancy in very affectionate adaptations of The 39 Steps and Brief Encounter and, finally, one of the best things I’ve ever seen – Shadowlands. Sometimes a cold and clinical actor, Charles Dance was just perfect in this as the awkward but deeply feeling CS Lewis, telling the story of the relationship between the Narnia writer and Joy Gresham.

Books

I very much enjoyed ‘What I talk about when I talk about Running’ – interesting thoughts from this Japanese writer, very useful for anyone interested in running, or writing, or life, written in a very simple way.
I’ve also enjoyed dipping in to Tony Ring’s ‘The Wit and Wisdom of PG Wodehouse’. Anyone who’s sat near me while reading a PGW knows he’s my favourite writer. It’s nearly, but not quite, too much to have all these one-liners compiled. Nothing can replace the original novels, but if you need a laugh quickly, this book is your chap.
I’ve also been reading Saki (thanks to a friend for the recommendation) – very droll and dry stuff, hard to believe it was written so long ago.
I’ve come to the conclusion this year that I much prefer Philip K. Dick short stories to novels.
And finally, my book of the year, is Hard Rain. It’s a series of pictures of the world taken by Mark Edwards, all linked to the Bob Dylan song ‘A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall’. Themes include global warming, poverty etc. It sounds po-faced, but is very far from that. I highly recommend going to the exhibition (if it’s still playing in your country), buying the book, or at least looking at the website www.hardrainproject.com

Art

I’ve popped in to the National Gallery in Dublin this year quite a bit, but can’t really remember any interesting exhibitions they had. Unlike the Hugh Lane, which had its fine 100 year exhibition. I really like this gallery, notwithstanding it’s silly exultation of that clown, Francis Bacon!
I saw some good exhibitions in London – the dark, gloomy but powerful Camden Town paintings, the Renoir Loge paintings at the Courthold, and the amazing Hammershoi at the Royal Academy. This fella was new to me, and it was very enjoyable.

Radio

Radio wise, I’m not listening to that much, mainly Lyric FM with the odd thing from Radio 1, Phantom, Anna Livia, Today FM or Newstalk.
Best thing on the radio by a mile STILL, is Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour – Season Three is the best yet. Now syndicated in Ireland on Phantom FM.

TV

I didn’t watch much TV either in 2008. The best two things for me by far were both on the BBC, Sense & Sensibility and Little Dorrit. I quite like Jane Austen, but if you compare her to Dickens she lacks a bit of humour and her characters can seem dull. Little Dorrit was full of everything that’s good about Dickens, a great adaptation, nearly as good as Bleak House from 2006. Having said that, Sense & Sensibility was the best Austen adaptation I’ve ever seen, better even than the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson film or any of those Pride & Prejudice(s). The performance from the two lead girls, especially Hattie Morahan, was top notch.
Otherwise, I watched bits of the occasional drama series, such as the silly but enjoyable Bone Collectors. Never saw the likes of the highly rated Spooks or The Wire.
Not much decent comedy on either it seems, but some good documentaries, and schedule changes notwithstanding the BBC continues to impress with The Culture Show and Later with Jools Holland.

Finally, some miscellaneous highlights of the year – Barack Obama, Padraig Harrington, Dublin Culture Night, your man from the Frames and whatshername winning the Oscar for best song, getting back into listening to vinyl..
Can’t think of anything else, roll on 2009, fingers crossed we all keep our jobs, our houses and our good (?) taste!

Ken.

Article on getting into P.G. Wodehouse

2008-12-30T04:56:00.000-08:00

Article on getting into Wodehouse
Published in ‘Wooster Sauce’ quarterly journal of the P.G. Wodehouse Society

Quite a few years ago, shortly after I first subscribed to this journal, the editor, Tony Ring, asked me to contribute an article on getting into Wodehouse. As my writing is somewhat less prolific, not to mention less funny, than our hero, I think I’ve done pretty well in banging out these few hundred words in the subsequent half-decade or so.

I first got into PGW as a child of about 12 or 13. My grandfather, a witty and articulate man, was a Wodehouse fan, and between him and his son (my uncle) they had quite a few of the books. The first one I read was ‘The Inimitable Jeeves’, and I really think I had the exact same reaction to it as I have had to every PGW I’ve read subsequently. I still laugh aloud almost every page and find him as rewarding as I ever did. Like most great comedy, it stands up to repeated reading, in Wodehouse’s case by virture of the cleverness of the sentences. Quite simply nobody has ever written so many funny lines.

My grandfather was a solicitor in a country town in Ireland. I was raised in Dublin, and I’ve always been intrigued by the popularity of Wodehouse in former colonies such as Ireland and India. I think it is probably due to the fact that we recognize the world he is writing about, and despite, or even because of, our disapproval of that world, we find disappearing into it for a few hours to be a great escape. And, of course, as well as having a strong affection for the Edwardian world of his youth, Wodehouse also sends it up fairly unmercifully.

Edwardian England was in many ways not dissimilar to Edwardian Ireland, as we did not get our independence until the 1920s, and even subsequently, have retained a lot of the culture we share with the English. From a literary point of view, the Irish have always enjoyed well constructed English writing, indeed contributing to it ourselves with our Anglo-style writers, such as Shaw, Wilde and Beckett and our more Hiberno-style purveyors, such as Joyce, Yeats, Friel, Kavanagh and McGahern.
I’ve also enjoyed anything Wodehousian I’ve ever experienced outside of the books, with the notable exception of that recent mediocre adaptation of Piccadilly Jim, which if not overwhelming me, certainly left me far from whelmed. I am a big fan of ITV’s Jeeves & Wooster series, and I also enjoyed the West End version of Anything Goes from a few years back. All in all, looking forward to many more years of PGW-related good humour.

Ken's Best of 2007

2008-12-24T10:21:00.000-08:00

Ken’s Best of 2007

Albums

Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Bruce Springsteen – Magic
Led Zeppelin – Mothership

Only one real contender for me for my album of the year. Wilco’s new one is still by far my favourite Wilco album, and as they are by some distance, my favourite (current) band, it was no contest. Just a perfect album, leaving behind the slight excesses of its two fine but ambitious predecessors. This is much more rootsy, very country soul in style, with the White Album era Lennon fixation of the Ghost is Born album still in evidence. But it all comes down to the tunes really, and have Wilco ever given us a finer set? Highlights are hard to pick, but Hate it Here, Side with the Seeds, Impossible Germany spring to mind.
Bruces’ album is also excellent. Very breezy and catchy, despite some heavy lyrical concerns. Well produced as ever, and benefiting from a slightly more natural sound than The Rising. Pretty much four classics in a row now from the Boss (Rising, Devils & Dust, Seeger Sessions, Magic) – and apparently he’s currently writing for a solo album.
The only other album I’ve enjoyed almost as much is the Led Zep compilation. It just sounds so good. I don’t have anything new to say about the music itself really.
There were a lot of other decent new studio releases in 2007, all of which have great moments and are very enjoyable, but to a man, are either somewhat over rated, or a bit of a dip in form. These include;
Neil Young, Iron & Wine, Ryan Adams (his best since Gold admittedly), Plant/Krauss, Arcade Fire, Ray Davies.
The Amy Winehouse album is pretty good, and I haven’t heard the new Levon Helm yet.

Concerts

Bob Dylan – Birmingham
Bruce Springsteen – Belfast
Wilco – Vicar Street 2nd night
REM – Olympia 4th night
Gillian Welch – Midlands Festival
Rolling Stones – Slane
Ray Davies – Vicar St
Camille O’Sullivan – Olympia
Patti Smith – Vicar St
The Waterboys – The Point

Another phenomenal year for gigs. Really hard to pick my favourite, but Dylan’s Modern Times jaunt reached a serious peak in Birmingham. Capping off a fine UK tour, with excellent renditions of the new songs and one of his best bands ever, a return to the old man playing guitar, and some great setlist choices (House of the Rising Son in Newcastle and Working Mans Blues in Birmingham).
But, Wilco came very close. I saw 3 – Shepherds Bush (1st night) and 2 unbelievable nights in Vicar Street, of which perhaps the 2nd was the best. Great setlists, Tweedy in fine form, and the best band of the last 15 years at their peak, touring their best album. What more could you ask for?
Well, how about Bruce and the E Street Band, at (arguably) a peak of their own. I caught the Belfast show, and if I see anything better in 2008, I’ll be very lucky. Funny, emotional, entertaining, swinging –all attributes of the Sessions Band a year earlier, but a more rocked-up E Street Band had all these too, in spades.
Lots of other good stuff too, that in an ordinary year would be gig of the year contenders – fine performances from Gillian and Dave, The Stones, REMs new adventures in the Olympia, a cracking Ray Davies set in Vicar St, and the bones of a musically fascinating new show from Camille in Bray and its continuation in the Olympia. Patti Smith played a blinder too and I also enjoyed Duke Special (boy is that guy talented?), Arctic Monkeys (almost as good as the hype), Manic Street Preachers, John Prine (despite sound problems) and the ever rollicking Old Crow Medicine Show. Classically, Sarah Chang with the English Chamber Orchestra was good and the only other thing I remember was a Sibelius symphony coupled with a very enjoyable performance of Elgar’s violin concerto.
Happy Days. Or, should I say, nights.

Films

Atonement
Pans Labyrinth
I’m Not There
Lives of Others
Stardust
The Counterfeiters
Bourne Supremacy
Apocalypto

I didn’t see too many this year, so this is pretty much my top few, in order. I think I need to see some comedies in 2008!
Atonement more than surpassed my expectations, and easily lived up to the book. Fine performances from Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, not to mention the young Irish girl, Soirse Ronan, this is a measured quiet film to watch again and again.
I can’t overstate how good I thought Pans Labyrinth was. But it’s easily my favourite fantasy film of the last few years, not to mention my favourite Spanish civil war film! If you missed it, get the dvd. Guillermo del Toro is extremely creative; it was an awful pity he turned down the Narnia film.
I’m Not There is also very creative. Definitely an arthouse film, this is not going to trouble the multiplexes. Not all of it works, but no argument that the music does as it is impeccably placed and ties it all together, where the lack of narrative doesn’t. The 6 Bob Dylans don’t all work either, but Cate is sublime (is there anything or anyone this actress can’t play?). Heath Ledger also good. Visually, it is a fascinating film, well edited and for anyone with an interest in Dylan or the 1960s it’s worth a look.
Lives of Others was stunning. Low key and well scripted and acted. A very sad film, it tells a great story and tells it very well.
Stardust is a superb fantasy, extremely entertaining.
The Counterfeiters is another good German language film. Not as good as Lives of Others though. But, it’s a nice quirky take on a little known yet true concentration camp story from WW2.
The Bourne Supremacy was better than the 2nd one and almost as good as the 1st one. As good as thriller as you’ll see. Even better than last year’s back on form Bond film.
Apocalypto was also a thriller of sorts, kind of a period chase movie, set in the jungle, and highly enjoyable.
The Golden Compass was a decent effort, much better than the reviews said, the young girl lead was especially good.

Plays

Nothing too extraordinary for me this year.
A nice new run of Uncle Vanya in the Gate, the Brian Friel adaptation. Catherine Walker really impressed in this one.
Anna Karenina was also very good earlier in the year, bookended by a terrific version of Philadelphia Here I come in early December by 2nd Age Theatre company.
Having exhausted the likes of Wilde and Maugham in recent years, the Gate’s summer show in 2007 was Noel Cowards Private Lives, which was as funny as expected. The standout in this was a fantastic comic performance by Stephen Brennan.
I suppose the most notable thing I saw this year was Long Days Journey into Night in the Gaiety as part of the theatre festival. Notable not only for the excruciating length at 4.5 hours, it is a riveting play as you watch this family fall apart. James Cromwell was as good as I had hoped.

Radio

Theme Time

Really only one thing – Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, which continues to amaze and amuse. Nice to see it syndicated on Irish radio, Sunday nights’ on Phantom 105.2
I also enjoyed the JK Ensemble, Jazz Alley and Green Room Cinema show on Lyric FM. Pretty much everything on Lyric is good. I must be getting old.

Sport

Harrington

One thing – Harrington winning the British Open. Very emotional, and not just for him. 1947 was a long time ago.

Art

Hogarth
Canaletto
Polish

The best exhibition I saw was the down and dirty yet moving Hogarth in the Tate, closely followed by his more polished contemporary Canaletto, in Dulwich. Very enjoyable too was the exhibition at The Queens Gallery in Buckingham Palace. The old lady certainly has an art collection to be proud of – e.g. some fantastic Caravaggios. I also enjoyed the current Polish one at our own National Gallery, as it had 6 or 7 paintings that I really liked.

TV

My Boy Jack
Cranford
Room with a View
Sopranos
The Ruby in the Smoke

TV was pretty good this year. Not much good comedy (Extras and Peep Show is about all that springs to mind). Some great period dramas. I thought Cranford was going to be too twee, but it turned out to be in parts, hilarious and heart breaking. Best acting of the year by far.
My Boy Jack was a near perfect 2 hour TV film about Kipling’s son going to the trenches in WW1. The standout performances I thought were actually David Haig and Carey Mulligan, rather than the slightly over feted Kim Catrall and Daniel Radcliffe.
Room with a View was a more than decent new version, with a great breakthrough performance by Elaine Cassidy from Co Wicklow.
Ruby in the Smoke was a drama packed adaptation of a Philip Pullman period yarn.
The final few episodes of the Sopranos maintained the high level of the programme at it’s best. Personally, I liked the ending.
I saw some of the new Poliakoff dramas, and enjoyed them to different extents. My favourite one was the very original Capturing Mary. Ruth Wilson was amazing as usual. Ditto Maggie Smith, and I never knew David Walliams was such a good actor.
Other things worth a mention were;
Extras, Old Curiosity Shop (although it was a bit underwhelming) and Life on Mars.

Books

Again, I seem to get bogged down in newspapers, music mags and old stuff. I hope to read more fiction in 2008. But here are some things I enjoyed in 2007;

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks – one of my favourite books now for sure, a wide ranging story, but its depiction of the misery of the trenches is the strongest part.

Atonement by Ian McEwan - best to read it before the film, a fine book.

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman – also known as the Golden Compass, very enjoyable fantasy fare.

I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for the first time recently, a surprising page-turner, very atmospheric.

A new Agatha Christie biography by Laura Thompson is pretty good.

..and I’m halfway through the very inventive Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

Ken's 2006 Review

2008-12-24T10:14:00.000-08:00

Ken’s Best of 2006

Albums

Bob Dylan – Modern Times
The Beatles – Love
Tom Waits – Orphans
Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions
Neil Young – live at the Fillmore 1970
Johnny Cash – American V
Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People say..

The Dylan album easily tops this poll, prob in my top 15 or 20 Dylan albums already – amazing band performance, much better vocals than we’ve heard recently and every song sounds like a genre piece from the 30s or 40s but not in so subconscious a way as Love & Theft. I’ve listened to it more than any new Dylan album I can remember (even Time out of Mind). Strongest songs – Nettie Moore, Workingmans Blues & Thunder on the Mountain. I just can’t warm to Ain’t Talkin though.
The Beatles Love album mostly works great. Obviously controversial to even attempt to remix what one music writer called ‘the greatest cultural achievement of the 20th century’ (ie the Beatles body of recorded work). Highlights are the Word/What You’re Doing/Drive my Car mash up and the new string arrangement over George’s demo of While My Guitar. I think the album will stand up to repeated listening, but at the end of the day we’ll still go back to the 13 original albums.
The Waits set is extraordinary – who knew he had so many gems tucked away, and the new songs are very good too.
The Neil release is a bit of a tame beginning to the much vaunted archive project – and only 5 out of the measly 6 songs are new to boot. But that said, it is a great document of an early Crazy Horse peak, especially the two loooonnnnggg songs!
The Springsteen album was surprisingly good – even if he did try to fleece us by re-releasing it 6 months later with bonus tracks. I never thought songs associated with the worthy but interminably dull Pete Seeger would be so swingin..
Ok so the Johnny album was obviously recorded over 3 years ago (one presumes, as he died in ’03) so it’s not really a new album. Well the vocals were at least. And then they added the music. Or something like that. Anyway, it’s all good. Esp the last song he ever wrote –Like the 309, but also the great covers of Further on up the Road, Legend in my Time and 4 Strong Winds.

Other albums I liked a lot this year were the Arctic Monkeys and Raconteurs. Esp the A.Monkeys – whatever their 2nd album is like this debut is gonna stand the test of time. Great lyrics, melodies, singing etc. You can’t go wrong with this one..
Albums I heard bits of and quite liked include – Joanna Newsome, Zutons, Sufjan Stevens and many others I’ve forgotten..
Concerts

Dylan – 2nd night Boston
Springsteen – 3rd night Point (Autumn leg)
Ray Davies – Shepherds Bush
Jeff Tweedy – Vicar St
Waterboys – Olympia
Rolling Stones – Twickenham
Camille O’Sullivan – Olympia
Metallica – RDS
Mahlers 2nd Symphony – Nat Concert Hall

Those particular Dylan and Springsteen concerts have seriously got to be in my top 10 gigs ever. I only saw 2 of the recent Dylan tour – and the first of these was somewhat mediocre – but the 2nd was extraordinary. Most people there agreed – with many saying the performance of Nettie Moore the best thing they’d ever seen. By anyone! Ever!
Springsteen’s 2nd Euro leg of the year was incredibly, even better than the 1st. If you think the album swings, wait til you see it live. And he’s even managed to mix up the setlists and add in all sorts of gems from his own catelogue – no small achievement with a band this size (18 musicians!).
It was great to see Ray Davies at last – he can apparently be a bit cantankerous but I thought it was a generous gracious performance – lots of classic Kinks, not just the obvious famous singles, but also stuff from the great studio albums, plus some tracks from his fairly decent new album.
Tweedy was fantastic – the performances seemed even better than on his recent dvd.
The Waterboys were a revelation – never seen ‘em before. Very passionate stuff.
And I suppose the most hyped gig I saw was the Stones at Twickenham. Hugely entertaining, although I’d have my quibbles over a few things – Charlies drum sound, Jagger a bit low in the mix, occasionally looked like going through the motions.
Camille – one or two new songs, but basically the same show she’s had for a couple of years now. Very good stuff – but be nice to see here tackle some different songs – maybe deeper into the Tom Waits category and some more European language songs would be good?
Metallica was unbelievably nostalgic for me – they were really very good, so tight, incredibly well mixed sound – got a few bruises in the mosh pit and was left feeling my age but what the hell..

Films

The Departed
Volver
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
The Prestige
Casino Royale

The Departed was one of the most entertaining and gripping films I can remember. It seemed each cast member was better than the rest. Surely Oscar time for Marty now..
Volver was quirky and funny and sad all at once
The Wind that Shakes the Barley was very good. Who’d have thought an English director would make a film like this.. Ken Loach? And didn’t he make the Queen this year as well? That was pretty good too..
The Bond movie was the best one in a while. Decent plot anyway, as it’s based on the best Fleming book, and cast, action and settings all lived up to the hype.

Plays

Betrayal – Gate
Lady Windemere’s Fan – Gate
The Faith Healer - Gate
A Month in the Country – Abbey
Krapp’s Last Tape – Gate

Betrayal was my highlight of the year. First time I’ve seen a Pinter play and it was a really good production. The Faith Healer was good, if slightly over rated. The old fella who played Teddy was better than Ralph Fiennes I thought. A Month in the Country was good, but for me, paled slightly by being on around the same time as Lady Windemere’s Fan which was hilarious, and the best ‘looking’ play I saw all year. Krapps Last Tape was alright – John Hurt very good admittedly.
I’m going to Anna Karenina and School for Scandal in the next few weeks anyway, so maybe I’ll change my mind about this part of the list..

Books

Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let me Go
Jimmy McDonagh – Shakey (Neil biography)
John McGahern – Memoir
Stephen King – Cell
Bob Rotella – The Golfers Mind

Another bad year for reading – just too busy. Just like the cinema – to which think I only went about 5 times.
Mostly I was reading old stuff anyway. Or music stuff. Or newspapers.
Anyway, in terms of new novels – I liked Never Let me Go. Not sure if this one was 05 or 06 but I really enjoyed it. A strange little book.
I only put the Stephen King book in there because it was such a good idea for a book. And the 1st half was amazing. Pity then, that it turned out to have such a bad 2nd half. Disappointing really.
The Neil biog is pretty good – and I haven’t read it cover to cover admittedly.
I re-read Dylan’s Chronicles – and it really holds up. As do John McGahern’s memorirs.
Bob Rotella golf psychology seems to work for me (up to a point). This book is pretty clear..

Sport

Ryder Cup

Obvious really. It was great to be there. But it would have been nice to see Harrington or Monty finish the job at the US Open. Although to be fair, winning the European order of Merit was a good achievement for Harrington.

Irelands Triple Crown and Munster’s Heineken Cup in rugby were enjoyable too..

TV

Bleak House
Housewife, 49
Jane Eyre
The Sopranos

Haven’t caught much TV comedy, not mad about much of it these days, but Peep Show is fairly good. Catherine Tate is alright, but her new series is just more of the same..

Re music on TV, there’ve been a few decent one-offs and documentaries, but Jools Holland’s show is still the best ongoing music show.

Channel 4 seems to be leading the way in history documentaries these days, but there was nothing startling this year that I saw.. 2005 was better.

Bleak House may have been 05 also (?) but either way, nothing came close. Best thing the BBC have done in years. Best period drama ever?, best Dickens adaptation ever? Who knows..
Housewife 49, was a quiet little gem too though (a true story set in WW2) – just about beating Jane Eyre back into 3nd place for me..
The Sopranos was back with a short(ish) series. Good stuff as ever – much more low key than previous series’. I think there’s only 6 episodes to go – it’ll be interesting to see how they wrap things up. I’ve also been watching Lost (why did I ever start!) and ER. Neither is getting better.

Art

Missed most of the major London exhibitions this year unfortunately. Saw one in the Tate which I can’t remember (!) and just missed the Constable one by a day or two.. Saw the ‘2 centuries of Irish Social Life’ at our Nat. Gallery tho which was alright. Also the newly re-opened Hugh Lane gallery is very impressive.
Simon Schama’s Power of Art TV programme was very good and the highlight of my art year (such as it was!) was probably seeing the amazing Boston Museum of Fine Arts – which coincidentally houses Turner’s Slave Ship as featured in the Schama programme. Well worth a visit if you’re in Boston, and I’d scarcely heard of it – it has a lot of old masters, Impressionists and loads of interesting American art I’d never heard of!

Radio

Obviously Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour – this has gone from strength to strength and is one of my all time highlights of the year! 35 or so shows in, it’s great that it’s now gonna be on the BBC. Obviously his presentation is a bit eccentric, but it turns out the big message he wants to impart these days is the enormous treasure trove of amazing music that he loves – most of it American and pre 1960s, and much of it obscure. Very funny show too.
Also, I’ve enjoyed John Kelly’s new show on Lyric FM and good to see Phantom FM go legal.
I’ve been trying to listen to more radio on the internet – BBC 3 (that Composer of the Week slot is very good) and 4 etc, but hope to catch a wider variety next year..

WELL – that’s it, no doubt I’ll change my mind about all this stuff in about 20 minutes! Feel free to disagree/rant/argue/ do your own damm list, or whatever..

Ken.

1st Blog

2008-12-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

This is my first Blog. Technically, my IT skills veer below average, so it will probably be a disaster and nobody will see it..

Anyway, Happy Christmas and 2009, review of 2008 to follow..

Ken