Anti-folk, a quirky acoustic alternative rock subgenre centred in New York and around Rough Trade Records. The Upperdeck, a tiny venue above Costelloes Tavern - the place to get a late drink in Limerick. We got there early in case it sold out and sat downstairs listening to the most horrifying selection of music you can imagine. Music is incredibly important to set the mood of a public house and within a couple of minutes the life has drained from our eyes and we are just staring blankly at each other. Brendan arrives just as Jack cracks up and goes home. There aren’t many audience candidates downstairs and the gig is put back from a 8:30 start to a 9pm to a 9:30.

It doesn’t look good when the first act, a member of band called Dufus, takes the stage. There’s only about 40 people here, most of the likely audience are watching Alabama 3 in Dolans. Meanwhile, the Dufus guy is singing a song about diarrhea.

Toby Goodshank, one of two members of the Moldy Peaches scheduled to appear tonight fared much better. He opens with a cute song about a dog; the chorus goes like ruffruffruffruffruffruffruff. Bluegerm is getting pissed off, Toby’s not playing any Peaches. I had kind of expected that from the seperate billing of the artists and wasn’t that disappointed.

Kimya, she the grrl of the Peaches and the best thing on stage tonight. She has a cracked, tennage-sounding voice and some very simple and beautiful lyrics about extremely ordinary things. The audience has filled out to maybe 60 at this stage, most of them sitting cross-legged on the floor. It’s a strange environment for a gig.

Next up is some other guy from Dufus. Not. Very. Good. Really.

The headliner is Jeffrey Lewis, creator of two of the best titled songs of recent times, The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane and The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song (which is the only song played this evening that I knew). He’s got a drummer and bassist! His lyrics are clever and funny, not unlike the Peaches and he beats the shit out of that acoustic guitar. The Peaches join him on stage for a one song encore and its over just as its heating up.

I stumble over to Kimya and ask can I take a photo. She insists it be taken like this.
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Your Kid Committed Suicide Because You Suck

ERIC CLAPTON SUCKS, ERIC CLAPTON SUCKS
ERIC CLAPTON’S GAY, AND HE’S FUCKING GAY
YOUR FATHER IS THE 4TH WORST SONG WRITER
AFTER SPRINGSTEEN, SEGER AND PETTY

YOU WERE SICK OF HEARING “YOU LOOK WONDERFUL TONIGHT”
SO YOU JUMPED OUT A REALLY HIGH UP WINDOW
SOMETIMES I WISH YOU DIDEN’T DIE
BECAUSE I HATE THE SONG “TEARS IN HEAVEN”
I WAS GLAD YOU DIED UNTIL I HEARD THAT SONG
AND KEVIN SHARP IS GAY

From the ever-charming Anal Cunt.

I don’t watch much television these days, apart from news, repeats on the Comedy Channel and the odd documentary on Channel Four. Lately I’ve been downloading the Sopranos and South Park new episodes as they are broadcast in the States. I do this because I really love both shows but also because of a moronic giddy thrill I get out of seeing it before anyone else. Sad, but true.

Irish broadcaster RTE, has scored a major coup with HBO somehow and now shows the new Sopranos a couple of days after they are broadcast in the States. By the time the shitty TV rips of the Sopranos are available to download, RTE are showing it. Watching video on the PC is a lot better than it used to be before the days of DivX, but quality wise it’s no comparision to a television broadcast. The girlfriend gets to watch the shitty rip after she finishes work. Hah.

The American broadcasts of South Park are several weeks if not months ahead of the UK ones so there’s an big benefit in watching it online. Also, because the animation is so basic, you don’t notice the poor quality so much. South Park is funniest thing on televsion these days and Parker and Stone are hitting really close to the bone. In the episode Ladder to Heaven the kids build a stairway to paradise to reach their dead friend Kenny. Aww. Meanwhile, satellite pictures reveal Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction in Heaven. Now that we believe in Heaven, should we bomb it? 51% of Americans say yes.

The character Alan Partridge, the cheesy meeja h00r created by Steve Coogan (the star of 24 hour Party People for you US types), has been developed over ten years of various television and radio series. Partridge started as a gomrless, grinning sports commentator on the Chris Morris hosted The Day Today, with Coogan basing the character on Tony Wilson. You know, the Cunt. Partridge rose through the ranks to land a very expensive weekend television series, Knowing Me, Knowing you. KMKY flopped and Partridge ends up divorced, living in a motel and working on the graveyard shift of an obscure regional channel in I’m Alan Partridge.

It’s been five years since we last saw Partridge, and in this series of IAP hes bounced back with third best slot in Radio Norwich, a girlfriend in her thirties and a new house under construction. It hasn’t changed him much, he still a cunt, albeit with minor success. I laugh at characters such as Partridge because they make me wince. It’s more a ‘oh jesus fucking christ’ than a chuckle at a one liner. With Partridge you are watching a delusional, dysfunctional arsehole stumble through normal society. You know he’s going to fuck it up and the pleasure is the anticipation of the walls coming crashing down. Which they will.

What’s Sir Cliff Richard to do when BBC Radio 1 deem him so unhip they wont even play his latest chart hit? It’s time to for the undisputed king of born again Christian granny pop to get medieval on our asses. That’s what. How about if he was to release a drum n’ bass tune and call himself “Black Night”? Ooh, let’s cower in fear.

Here’s a pic of the idiot deluding himself.

Garth Brooks has a hard time deciding if his mawkish “ropin’ the wind , yeehaw” bilge is A.O.R. or C&W when any fool knows it’s S.H.I.T.E. So why not let your Billy Joel fantasises (ewww) run amok and re-invent yourself as an A.O.R. star called Chris Gaines, eh Garth? ‘Cept no-one bought it so ol’ Garth donned his stetson and swung off ropes like a stupid fat fuckwit. Again.

Remember that song that went “Gimme your heart baby please or else forget about it” and was played all summer long? It was played on the radio EVERY FUCKING HALF HOUR. At every niteklub, middle aged women in ill-fitting lycra would get on the dancefloor and gyrate their bodies so clumsily, it would make you wince. Men would play air guitar and scrunch up their face as if they were getting a blowjob from Jaws. Well, it’s time to relive the magic folks. ‘Cos yes, oh yes, Santana have a new album out. This time featuring Chad Kroeger. You know, the dork from Nickleback that looks like a red setter. Be afraid, be very very afraid.

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Hey I’m rappin’ Lou and I’m here to say/
Don’t no fucking punk ever call me gay

I heard there’s a new sound, a new beat goin’ round/
Well, I used to play with the Velvet Underground

See I started this rap game/
But why the hell do I sound so lame?

Yeah that’s me Lou Reed, the original rapper/
Put your hands in the air ‘cos there is none crappier

Lou Reed tried to get groovy with early eighties yoof by inflicting them with a couple of tracks called “The original rapper” and ahem “My red joystick”. Some monstrosities are better left unheard….

My hi-score in Cenipede beats your year.

The Donnas - Spend the Night

Around 2 or 3 tracks into the new Donnas album “Spend the Night” one hears a cowbell. My ear pricks up; as I’ve recently listened to the hysterical 7 minute song “Seventies Rock Must Die” by Lard that features a cowbell keeping time throughout. But wait… this cowbell isn’t ironic…

And that pretty much sums up The Donnas and this album musically. The Donnas take the pop-punk genre that blossomed so in the nineties and contribute their pouty/pretty W.A.S.P faces and songs about boys and we are supposed to cream. Thanks, but I prefer porn.

Unlike bands that use gender for subversive or interesting ends, like Sleater Kinney and the great late Bikini Kill, the Donnas prefer to use their femininity like Britney Spears does, to sell albums based around the premise of fucking boys, empathizing wanting (or not wanting) to fuck boys, and being objectified by boys. The fact that they often sing songs about boys they don’t like changes this issue how? Oh right, it doesn’t.

The Donnas lyrics remind me of a funny comment a female friend once made to me; “Ever notice when a guy making a film has a scene with female characters speaking with each other without a male pressence (a ‘girl’ talk), the only topics they will speak about will be fucking men or menstruation.” That the Donna’s lyrics aren’t written by a horny geek-male like Spike Lee or Woody Allen gives them even less of an excuse.

The one difference betwen The Donnas and Britany is the fact that they dabble in pop-punk. This just makes them all the more grating and sleazy capitalist-cynical then Senorita Spears.

Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon

Did you like Enigma? Have you continued buying albums by them after their 15 minutes was over? Well then, have you heard Thievery Corporation?

Or maybe you like to tell people and yourself that you like “Worldbeat” but… actually, you don’t. You just like Peter Gabriels’ Passion and you bought 1 Youssou N’Dour album along with “Sources from Passion” both of which you listened to once. It just didn’t sound “good”… Well then, once again, Thievery Corporation is right up your alley.

This is straigt up “Dinner music” for the new millenium generation in their thirties or for those that are growing up too fast in their twenties. As opposed to being interesting, it exists merely as a dinner accompaniment for some poor 9to5 city schmuck trying to impress the chick he’s inviting to his house for dinner. If this is playing at your favorite lounge then your favorite lounge sucks.

Should I bother to review this album as opposed to Thievery Corporations’ last album? Why? I listened to both and they sound exactly the same. It seems like they are putting out one long fucking album and staggering the release.

If you think I’m acting like an asshole or being offensive; then by all means buy the new Thievery Corporation album. Myself, I thank the gods of piracy for p2p which therebye has saved me the $36 I could have blown on these 2 latest pieces of shit.