Must We Fling This Filth At Our Irish Indie Pop Kids?
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 02:46AM I am in Tipperary, for reasons mysterious. And yes, that means I am typing on a computer older than time. I strike a key; the computer begins to think about perhaps carrying out an action; I go off and make coffee, play a game of chess, solve a major global problem, write my memoirs in longhand, and return to the computer; it carries out the action; I realise I had pressed the wrong key; and so the long day passes.
So no complicated blogging.
But, seeing as we were talking about Toasted Heretic (about a week ago)... I was interested to see that an act of wanton vandalism by, er, me, has been chosen as one of the Top Twenty Moments in The History of Irish Indie Music by Hot Press magazine.
Hmmm... I may have photos from back then... It would take me about six hours to put up a photo here, but I might when I get back to Berlin...
Meanwhile, all you pop kids (well, the Irish ones) - Hot Press are asking what would you nominate as your top Irish Indie Moment. Throw in your fivepence worth in the comments section here. And paste a copy down below, I'd be interested. My top Irish indie moment (leaving aside Toasted Heretic) was probably Cathal Coughlan-related. Personally - seeing him play an astounding lunchtime set with Fatima Mansions in a slightly dodgy club New York, and then getting trapped there for half an hour afterwards, as the cops fought a gunbattle with some drug dealers a little further down the street. (And this was lunchtime, imagine what that street was like at 3am...) Must have been 1990.
A more objective top Irish indie moment (ie one I didn't see myself), has to be Cathal Coughlan buggering himself onstage with a plastic Virgin Mary holy water dispenser in front of 50,000 very angry Italians, when he supported U2 in Milan.
I could write a small essay about the significance of that moment, but I am very tired.
Reader Comments (8)
I quite like the kind of computers you're forced to work on. The kind that really has a small lag between typing the name of some Italian designer into Google and seeing B-R-U-N-O-M-U-N-A-R-I appear in the search field. Despite the impracticalities, I can quite enjoy this for a few minutes. It feels like using one of those 80s movies' hacker computers that never really existed or worked that way. I haven't yet managed to accidentally hack into the pentagon and fire nukes around the world, though.
Ah! Pat "Pat Neary" Neary! He might have the master tape...I 'll email him...
Yes, if you do find a Heretic session tape, I'd love to hear it... Best of luck with your site, which is an excellent idea.
And other readers, if you want to hear some classic Fanning Sessions, here's the address: http://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/
PS I hope you don't mind my latest post..
And the indescribable rush of pleasure, hearing the songs that we'd recoded in Neil's living room played on the radio.
Thanks for the .flac offer, but the cassette hasn't all the frequencies. I'lll hold out for a DAT of the master, we must have it in someone's attic...