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The Indie Hour, where we’ve made fools, pure fools, of ourselves in the past, is no more. Darn shame. It seems the inexorable slide into mediocrity gathers momentum. Man the boats, people, this country is dying.
Egoeccentric sez it better than me, i just get bitter.
Awful news, Road records to shut down! Yet another nail in the coffin of expression in this city.
We wanna do our bit to help out, so if you buy any Jimmy Cake rekkids in Road before they close down, all the dosh will go to the proprietors. Do it. Go on, DO IT. get off soulseek for five minutes. Yeah, i’m one to talk.
here’s a list of artists who are donating any proceeds to Road.
Being, as I am, in a permanent state of tumescence regarding all things MUSIC it could not escape my notice that the short list for this years Choice Music Prize was announced yesterday (seeing as people were passing on commiserations, like someone had died), and sh-hock, horrah! Spectre and Crown didn’t make it. Not that this surprised me, dovetailing as it does with the general humdrumity of our “end of year poll” showing, where, frankly, we didn’t. But it does concern me. Why, after some initial, very positive notices, has the record slipped beyond the ken of the collective consciousness. Did it become boring? I fear I’m like I’m over protective parent. No, my child/album IS terrific, it’s you people who are wrong, but that’s facility. It comes down to bad parenting, a naivety that you would not expect from long timers such as ourselves. Basically, our album, heralded as “a single and necessary vision,” at the time, I know you’ll recall, has been badly let down by me.
We, I mean me, failed to push our vision, failed to back it up, failed to tour it, believing, like neophytes, that the music, the vision itself, would create it’s own momentum, thinking that, at the time of release, with promo versions having been around for a few weeks previously, the festival gig offers would come thick and fast, as would the venues around our country, much like the last time. But we were wrong. So when it comes down to it, here, at the end of a year and the beginning of another, we’ve slipped from the minds ear of the masses, and it’s our fault.
Not that not being nominated has precipitated all this soul searching. The search had been started long ago. the soul is well tread at this stage, and is, to be blunt, a mess. Cupboard doors flap open, cushions strew across the soul’s floor, nasty looking stains here and there. Often I’ve felt that last year was just against us, so many things having gone spectacularly wrong. Even things that went right went wrong. I won’t go into details, lest I seem to be making excuses, or inventing enemies who shall support the burden of blame for all that is wrong, because there aren’t any. Well, there are some, but even so, the responsibility is ours. I mean mine. Perhaps being out of the loop for so long blunted our (mine) instincts in these matters, perhaps we thought the world had become a better place. Perhaps we really believed too much in the music, and less in the machinations of industry. Perhaps we set ourselves and ideal we couldn’t possible match. Perhaps we, I mean me, am/are a fuckwit/s. Well, fuckwit no more. The net result of the ransacking of my own soul in search of answers to questions that aren’t poseable, or interesting, and of dalliance with throwing the towel, sodden with my own worn cynicism, on to the canvas, is that no, I shant. I shall not go gently. fuck that. And with that in mind, I, I mean we, are forging forward. The vicar street show was, if not a full stop, a parentheses of some description, punctuating that era of our lives, as individuals, a musicians. Frankly I’ve no idea where we’re going to head next, in many ways it feels like starting again, but then, it felt that way last year too. And it’s exciting.
Anyway, I haven’t lost faith in the record. it’s still my favourite of 2008. Though having said that, I hope Jape wins, insofar as you can win, cos I was, everso tantilisingly briefly, in Jape. It was a good night, as the sun set over little Dublin, spread out beneath my like a paupers picnic as I gazed from the window of the Gravity bar in the storehouse. How many years ago was that? Eons hence. That was Wonky, a singular, necessary, visionary festival celebrating the nascent scene back in the day. Twas a good scene, wonder what happened to it.
to summarise: I’m not giving in. not yet.
**them’s my thoughts, I don’t seek to speak for the rest of the band, who are articulate and intelligent enough to speak for themselves, but lack the introspective self-absorption I thrive on. **
