I’m trying to save a bit of cash for my trip to New York next month, so I’ve been (trying) to choose my nights out carefully. Although you wouldn’t know it from Thursday night, when I succumbed to Jack and his friend’s wishes and went to a freshers night in Molly’s after a couple of quiet pints in the Central Bar. After an hour and a half adrift in a sea of 18 year-olds screaming the lyrics to the Proclaimers 500 miles, you’d think I would have seen sense and gone home. Not so, we decided to go to the club around the corner, The Market on Denmark Street, I still had a twenty in my pocket, and I said fuck it. Of course dickhead on the till spots I was drunk and shortchanges me a tenner. Come back at close and we’ll see if we’re up on the door. Aye Right. Jack gets pissed off by this and flings his money across the counter. He gets chucked out and moves on to the next club. I go home.

So the next night Bluegerm is back from Kerry and we’re debating whether to go out at all. There was a Twisted Nerve Showcase in Dolan’s that we were thinking about going to. Twisted Nerve is Badly Drawn Boy’s label and I do like him, but everybody here is just generally sick of singer/songwriter crap (some guy in a cardigan and acoustic guitar singing love songs and heartbreak songs) and we feared this might be something similar. We tried a track apiece from Misty Dixon and Aidan Smith (we couldn’t find anything by the Jukes) and it sounded pretty good.

We decided we’d make trip up to Dolan’s to check it out but when we got there only 2 dozen people had turned up.The students have only returned I guess and the natives didn’t want to risk a tenner on untested material. Which is a bit of a shame really, because we had a great night out.

Misty Dixon opened up, 2 people in back and up front 3 gals shifting between the mic and two keyboards singing some blissed out synth-pop-rock in the vein of St Etienne and the Delgados . Kinda. Lots of slow brooding numbers highlighted by some cute harmonies. Stand out tunes from this lot included Are you Lost? and You’re so cruel to my heart. Check them out.

Aidan Smith has the same type of stop start shambolic attitude to playing gigs that I used to read about from Badly Drawn Boy. He plays a short collection of ballads with charming, off-kilter lyrics - if you want to get all cocksuckery muso journo about it, he’s like a limey Jeffery Lewis. Bluegerm was really into him, I thought Misty Dixon were better. Then again, he’s into gay things like lyrics and songs with meaning.

I’d write a paragraph about the Jukes, the headliners, save for the fact that when they came on, Dr Z’s girlfriend drank one of my pints off the head and behind my back and I was compelled to return the favour. This escalated and went on for some time. I’d get a pint, she’d try to drink it, so I’d grab her cider and run around the dancefloor drinking it. Eventually, I started holding Dr Z’s hostage and she left me alone. Ain’t love sweet?

The Twisted Nerve guys came around and gave each of us a pack with stickers, a badge, a few singles and a compilation. I got talking to one of the guys and started apologising for the crappy turnout, telling him something similar had happened with the Rough Trade Anti-folk tour last year and that we are all inbred fucking morons in Limerick. He came back to me later with the Misty Dixon album and 2 albums from Aidan Smith. Not a bad night out for a tenner.

Dr Jonathan Land,

Dr Hamza.

The percentage of my net gain in a project is directly proportional to the percentage of my full attention I give to it. Now that you’ve upped the ante to 31%, you’ve just bought yourself a new and improved Jonathan Land then the 25% version you were previously dealing with. I will be exactly 6% more serious then before! As a token of my goodwill I will ensure that this correspondence will contain 6% less jokes.

P.S. That’s my Swiss back account info… is that ok, or do you need an American bank?

Dr. Jonathan Land,

Send the information and let’s begin.
Dr. Hamza.

OK, I just sent you the info.

Dr. Jonathan Land

From the spam letters, via GYBO.

Go Home Productions will be playing a live set at the Paradiso Club in Amsterdam on Sat Oct 11th. It’s an all day event hosted by XS4ALL with seminars on ’sampling’ and ‘copyright’. The evenings entertainment starts at 8.30 with a keynote speech from Public Enemy’s Chuck D kicking things off.

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Johnny Cash is dead. Great singer, great songs, God rest his soul.