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Bought tickets for this before Christmas. Partholón are never anything less than deadly. I've never seen The Grey live.

@Evaninka Are the lads who own/operate Dali planning on investing any money in the gaff?

Yourself and Michelle are putting on some great shows in there but the place is starting to look (and feel) a bit grim and grotty. 

Picked up a ticket for this newish, small festival. Expanded from one day to two in this, its second year.

https://obsidiandust.be/

Solid (if not setting the world alight) line-up. It'll be a bit of craic. €110 for a two-day ticket.

Flights etc. are all very reasonable for 3 nights too.

Just hoping that the Belgians know how to make a decent beer...

The Spy Who Loved Me

Continuing with the Bond films. This one always gets rated as Moore's best, and among the very best Bond films in general, but I've just never really connected with it. It's...fine. Good Bond girl, Jaws is obviously one of the most memorable villains, one of the best Bond cars, one of the best Bond songs, one of the best intro stunts, and yet the film overall just leaves me feeling a bit meh. I wouldn't quite call it a turd rolled in glitter, but you get the idea.

Yeah it's one that's kinda missing something, tone is all over the place as there was re-writes all through it.

No wonder Moore went on the the piss with Harris & Burton in the Wild Geese (and a massive paycheck from the South African government)the minute he finished the shoot for it.

Just watch this instead;

Spotted this just now;

Dublin -   May 25th & 26th - Academy
Belfast -  May 27th - Limelight
Limerick - May 28th - Dolan's

Are they all falling out already?

Jon's hair plugs?

I see HMV are making a comeback...

New hmv store opening in Cork 'just in time for Christmas' - Cork Beo https://share.google/LErNOYk2euvXpGbyn

I guess this will be business as usual, just more vinyl, less cds and the usual Funko Pop garbage, merch etc.

I imagine that it'll be the same as the Golden Discs up the road... where HMV used to be.

A record shop for people that don't like music.

Aerosmith - for me anyway - are very much a singles band, They have some wicked tracks in the back-catalogue and the "Big Ones" compilation solidifies that.

I really tried with their stuff from the debut up to "Get A Grip" and, in my opinion, I don't think that they have even one wall-to-wall belter of an album.   

Wino - "Create Or Die"

Not great - by the numbers. Struggling with a second listen right now. Especially as Anvil's post above just reminded me that I haven't listened to the new Conjurer record yet.

"Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere" - not terrible but not very good either. Jeremy Allen White's performance holds this thing together. Parts of it are laughable.

Spoiler

The totally imagined storyline involving his new girlfriend.

The way that they shoehorn the Suicide album, specifically the song "Frankie Teardrop" into the narrative.

There's a scene few scenes involving a buddy of his, a mechanic, who drove with Springsteen across the USA. In the film, he's level-headed but in real life he had just broken up with his missus and drove with a teddy bear which would sit on his lap or have conversations with the whole way across the country. That would have made for an interesting story!

[close]

The book is much better than the film.


Went to see Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" again - this time on the biggest screen that I could find. I enjoyed it even more than the first time. It is magical film making.

Why THE FUCK can't Ticketmaster and the rest of these cunts tell you how much a gig ticket is going to cost BEFORE the show goes on sale?

Tradesmen who fail to turn up at the agreed time giving fuck all notification that they can't make it, I've no problem with schedules changing as jobs can drag on longer then expected, but when you're supposed to be there first thing in the morning there's no fucking excuse for not notifying as you would have known from the evening before so you would have had plenty of time to send a text/whatsapp/fucking messenger pigeon/phonecall, I'll tell you what it is, getting jobs too handy as there is limited availability so they can pick and choose and take the piss.

Actually we're talking about basic manners here really!

This is a particular peeve of mine.

You're kept waiting by them to turn up to look at/price the job, then you have to chase them for a quote, when it's all agreed they may or may not appear and finally it's a fucking crap shoot as to whether they'll do it properly. And all the while you have to maintain a jovial attitude -

"How's it going? Yeah, this is Stout again - yeah, you said you'd be on-site today first thing and it's now eh... tea-time... Ah sure look I know how it is... DEFINITELY next Tuesday yeah? OK, I'll call you Monday to remin.... Oh OK, you'll DEFINITELY remember yeah? It's just... hello... hello?"

Here's a horror-show to make you feel better though; My neighbours had an ordeal with the crew who did a big job on their house last year. Priced it at €190k - like I say, it was a big job - retrofit, re-wire, some structural but no expansion of the footprint. They were scheduled in for April to be done by November latest (keys back and house in turnkey condition).

Price went "significantly north" of €200k about 6 weeks before the start date - "materials, labour etc. is more expensive". A fair chunk of money but the neighbours had come that far so said they'd have to take it on. Moved out of their house in March - back in with parents/in-laws.

Builders still hadn't turned up by late May. So my neighbour rang them, the builder snapped on her and said "I have plenty of other work on so you can either wait or shag off and get someone else." I know what my answer would have been but she persisted.

Work started... sort of. The builders were there - a lot of Ukrainian lads, then they weren't or they would turn up at 10pm to start work. I had to go around a few times and tell them to pack it in. Finally had to complain to the neighbours who had a word with the building contractor whose response was "Do you want it done or not?!"

They finally got their keys back Christmas week - a load of stuff undone and, worse, shoddily done. Myself and another neighbour pitched in to give them a hand doing the flooring. I had to draft in the brother to hang their doors for them. He said to me after;

"If my apprentice did the skirting and picture rails like that in there, I'd have booted his hole."

The Band - "Songs From Big Pink"

Love - "Forever Changes"

Dan Sartain - "Join Dan Sartain"

I was on a job up in Dublin last week.

One of the trainees/apprentices was told to pack the gear and follow the checklist - true to form (and this is partly my fault for not checking his homework) - we discovered that we were missing a few tools from the kit when we landed at the job.

Not a big deal - found the nearest toolroom supplier and headed in that direction.

Stood in the queue at the trade-counter I overheard the following;

"Do youse sell torque screwdrivers?" asked a customer.

"Torque wrenches, yeah?" came back the reply from the lad behind the counter.

"No, a torque screwdriver. For small ranges."

"Oh. Yeah we do, yeah."

"Righ' and are they insulated? You know wharra mean, VDE yeah?"

"Yeah, for electrical work."

"That's right, I'm doing work on panels that will be live"

The counter lad comes back with a VDE 1000V torque screwdriver.

"That's the fella" says the customer "How much is tha'?"

"Eh..." looking at the computer on the counter "it's gonna be two hundreh and... two hundreh and forty plus VAT"

"Ah here! No, no way. Do yis have ordinary torque screwdrivers? Cheaper?"

"Yeah. They're abou' a hundreh and forty quid. They won't be insulated from high voltage but!"

"Fuck tha'. Gimme the cheap one. Probably not all the panels are live."

[TRIBUTE]

Why is K-Pop now seemingly the hottest ticket on the Cork (and possibly Irish) music scene?

There are two different K-Pop TRIBUTE acts scheduled to perform in the biggest venues that we have in the city - the Opera House and The Everyman.

The group playing in the Opera House has sold out seven (SEVEN!) shows whilst the other tribute act has sold out two and is on the way to selling out a just-announced third night in The Everyman.

 (I don't know much about K-Pop... or anything else for that matter, it seems.)

Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St.
Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup

Sticky Fingers and Exile are perfect albums. They're swampier sounding and more primal than the 60's material - Richards was hooked on the brown during this time so that must have influenced the direction they took.

Goats Head Soup suffers in comparison but is still a very good album.

In my arrogant opinion, everything that The Rolling Stones did from "Aftermath" to "Exile On Main St." (EXCEPT "Their Santanic Majesties Request" which is shit on ice) is bulletproof.

I have tried with "Goat's Head Soup" but I could never get into it. "Angie" is about the only cut from it that I sort of half like.

The only other two Stones' records that I actively listen to start to finish now, beyond the ones above, are "Some Girls" and the 2016 covers album "Blue And Lonesome".