He first contacted me through the Bandwidth site when I was on holiday in the US, and I remember listening to ‘All These Crimes’ staring out over Tompkins Square park in New York’s Alphabet city for about 2 hours, feeling haunted, inspired and most of all homesick.

Words can’t describe what Conchúr’s music does to your soul. I guess that’s why he calls his musical project ‘Silences’.

Follow Conchúr on Twitter here.

Mark McCausland is from County Navan and Oisin Leech from Omagh – together they make a great duo which they call The Lost Brothers. Weirdly they’re better known in the UK and USA than they are in their own country, which is always the way.

Hopefully that’s crime that can be rectified – especially with their latest album ‘The Passing Of The Night’, produced by another Bandwidth veteran Brendan Benson – here is the incredibly good track ‘Now That the Night Has Come’ from that same album.

I’m very lucky to have worked with Tim a few times before, and it’s always a pleasure to work with him again – and this, ‘Girl From Mars’ is one of my favourite of his tunes too.

Thanks to the incredible James Goulden for his camerawork and all round loveliness on this shoot.

First up, here is the incredible and all round lovely Delorentos from Dublin playing the track ‘Bullet In A Gun’, acappella, as you do, on the historic, crowded, wonderful East 6th Street in the heart of Austin.

In a five minute break between soundcheck and doors for his gig at the Empire Music Hall in Belfast, Peter grabbed his harmonium from the front of the stage and suggested running outside to the street. “I’m going to do an Ivor Cutler song if you don’t mind..”

Why would I? What follows is the perfect example of why Duke Special is, I think, one of the greatest working creatives in the wee country at the moment – his infectious enthusiasm, endless spontaneity, an encyclopaedic knowledge of art music and culture – oh yes he can sing too. Here’s the video:

Duke Special is currently touring the UK, and will be back in Belfast on 24th April – check out the dates and get your tickets here.

They were both in Belfast over the Christmas holidays, and contacted me through the site – I loved the look, the sound, the everything, and rushed up to meet them and record at Amy’s house. Here are two original tracks and a very special cover of ‘Johnny Remember Me’ by John Leyton for good measure.

If you’re in Liverpool this week you can catch them at Leaf for their EP launch, and if you can’t make it, I urge you to buy the EP anyway, you won’t regret it.

Here David plays two tracks in the beautifully desolate Belfast docklands, on a day of drapery related activity which provides quite the surreal backdrop to it all.

For the first proper Bandwidth session of 2013, I wanted to start off big. For me this is one of the most powerful performances I have yet to capture on camera from, in my opinion, the greatest new artist from Northern Ireland.

Katharine Philippa first appeared on my radar screen thanks to the Oh Yeah Music Centre’s Contenders Programme, which mentors new talent from this part of the world. Ever since then, Katharine has been going from strength to strength, appearing with the Ulster Orchestra last year at the Ulster Hall courtesy of the BBC.

For this session, the setting is no less austere – the simply awe inspiring setting of the St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast city centre. Such a backdrop could be overwhelming to some, but to an artist such as Katharine, she makes it her own. The track that she performs, ‘Broken To Be Rebuilt’ is personal to her, the space becomes personal, she makes the space respond to the music. This is what these Bandwidth Sessions are all about.

This session was filmed as part of the ni2012 sessions, which you can see here.

So this series was made, in collaboration with my friend Sean Duncan of Red Cap Productions. The band have been releasing the tracks over the past few weeks leading up to last Christmas but now, for the first time you can see them all together here. Standout tracks for me are the aforementioned ‘The One’ but also ‘Dover; which has been re-imagined as an Amidships track from whence it once was a track by JP’s old band Push Borders, and which sounds all the lovelier in this new acoustic setting.

Oh and here’s Seven Summits playing ‘Christmas Wrapping’ by The Waitresses

Mark’s subtle and mature songwriting really comes through in these acoustic versions, and what’s more we found a big reverby gallery to play in for the opening of the epic sounding ‘Stubborn Hearts’. Also, check out Lauren Scott‘s wonderfully creepy animal creations throughout ‘If We Can Last The Summer’.

What a talented wee place we live in.

If We Can Last The Summer

Stubborn Hearts

Our History

I Wish I Knew You Better

This session was filmed as part of the ni2012 sessions, which you can see here.

The third Bandwidth night will take place this week at Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), in Queens University Belfast. The night will be headed up by Eatenbybears, with visuals and an exclusive screening of ‘Obrigado’, a film of Eatenbybears & Kaspar Rosa‘s Summer 2012 Portugal tour, made by John Quinn & Clark Phillips.

Come by this Tuesday 20th November, directions to SARC are here if you need them.

Tickets are free, but by strict guestlist only – to apply simply email sarc20thnovember@gmail.com with your name and how many tickets you would like.

SOAK is still only young, but sings with the weight of years behind her. Fans here have compared her to Cat Power or Nico – and I think, in our hyberbolic times, that’s actually about right.

Sea Creatures

Explosion

Trains

SOAK plays McHughs in Belfast on Wednesday 7th November at 8pm, with Rachel Austin and Conor White.

This session was filmed as part of the ni2012 sessions, which you can see here.

[Editor's Note: Please stop saying that.]

Whilst taking this course, though, I am abstaining from my usual quest for love. Actually, after lesson one I have learned that the quest is actually for ‘ass’, not love. So my quest for ass is temporarily on hold, until I have completely re-aligned my perceptions with regards to the fairer sex. I mean, bitches. So once again I am going to shit all over the most recent travesty I watched, Taken 2, and pretend like anyone gives a shit about what I have to say.

The first Taken was one of the most badass action movies I have seen in the past ten years. Liam Neeson played a retired special forces operative whose daughter is kidnapped in Europe. After placing the most awesome fucking phone call in cinema history…

…he goes on a one man murder rampage that makes Jason Bourne look like the Karate Kid. Among his myriad acts of murderous vengeance, he tortures a dude by tying him to a steel chair and then hooking it up to a plug socket. After getting the information he needs, though, he just leaves the fucking electricity on and lets the guy cook like that poor bastard in The Green Mile who Percy fucked over with a dry sponge. He also very calmly caps a dude’s wife in the shoulder, just to let the dude know that he means business. Let me just repeat that. The GOOD GUY shoots an INNOCENT WOMAN in the shoulder JUST TO HURRY ALONG A CONVERSATION. Now fast forward to 2012…

Before even seeing the film I noted that Liam’s exploits in this film have become more family friendly, earning a paltry 12A rating. Toning down violence to get a 12A rating is like a girl (I mean, bitch) getting a boob job to attract more guys. She probably will turn more heads, but anyone who actually gets to the point of motor-boating them will be sorely disappointed. Anyway, mark that red flag number one.

The first 20 minutes is exactly the same as the first 20 minutes of the first film.

[Editor's Note: Too many firsts dude.]

Which is in turns hilariously redundant and infuriatingly contrived. Hilarious redundancy: an almost exact replica of the scene in Taken where Liam has his ex-special forces buddies round for a barbeque and beers, wherein they discuss his latent feelings for his ex-wife (ex-bitch? I’ll have to ask the pimp-master about that one) Famke Janssen. The best part of this scene is the very end, when Liam says something like ‘Can’t we talk about basketball?’ and his mates all crack up. I mean one of these dudes just starts pissing himself, like he just saw the video of the iguana farting on Youtube. Redundant. Hilarious. And therefore forgiveable. Completely unforgivable though, is the part where Liam finds out his daughter has a boyfriend. I’m not even going to ask how an over-protective secret agent father could possibly miss the fact that his daughter has been dating a dude for three months, because I have bigger fish to fry. After tracking her down at her boyfriend’s house they have the obligatory ‘Dad, I’m a grown up, you have to let me have my independence,’ talk, which adds depth to the characters and their rela… BITCH, THE LAST TIME YOU CONVINCED THIS DUDE TO LET YOU BE INDEPENDENT YOU GOT KIDNAPPED AND SOLD INTO THE SEX TRADE. God fucking damn it.

Anyway, expert in espionage and counter terrorism that he is, Liam is unable to foresee a revenge attack by the friends and family of the numerous Albanian gangsters he murdered, so he invites his family to visit him in Turkey, of all places. When the revenge does come, it is not in the form of a simple assassination, but a kidnapping. Naturally, because if a dude did not ‘want him alive’, well, he just wouldn’t be a generic movie villain with a cool accent, would he? So Liam and Famke get snatched, but their daughter manages to evade capture. That’s lucky. Liam even has the good sense to carry a concealed phone. Even luckier. So he calls his daughter and tells her to go to the US Embassy where she will be safe, and will be able to send help for her parents, perhaps even in the form of Liam’s barbeque loving buddies. ‘But dad, I want to help. I’m independent, remember. I can’t do this.’ BITCH, YOU GOT KIDNAPPED AND SOLD INTO THE SEX TRADE! And how does Liam manage to make this phone call unnoticed? Because the fucking geniuses who kidnapped him, knowing exactly how well trained and dangerous he is, leave him in a basement, unattended, with only a sleepy guard outside the door. God fucking damn it.

What follows us an increasingly monotonous series of so called action sequences which have all the implausibility and none of the viciousness of the original movie. In every ‘fight’ they try to pass off a couple of dudes ineffectually slapping at each other’s hands by shooting them with 16 cameras and cutting rapidly between them. Most disappointing of all, at no point does Liam do something so sudden and brutally cold that it made me spit out my beer in gleeful astonishment. Like, for example, shoot a bitch in the shoulder because he was getting mildly impatient.

Jesus fucking Christ, now I’m angry. People think I’m just a whiny bitch because I don’t fall under the spell of hype and marketing every time Hollywood churns out another ball-less sequel like this one. My anger is well founded, though, because this laziness should not be tolerated. You should not have to settle for weak ass sequels or watered down 12A bullshit. Nor, luckily, do you have to, as Sylvester Stallone is still standing strong as the last line of defence against the pussification of the American action film. And just to prove how immune I am to the effects of hype and marketing, here is the trailer for Bullet To The Head, which I have already decided will be the best American action movie of the year. Of course its only real competition is Stallone’s other masterpiece of badassery, The Expendables 2. In case you were thinking about skipping the trailer, here is a list of the acts of manliness it contains, in no particular order:

Stallone, assassinating people.
Stallone, swearing vengeance.
Stallone, axe-fighting that big dude from Game Of Thrones.
Stallone, drinking whiskey.
Stallone, fighting in his boxers.
The return of Christian Slater.

All with a fucking Motorhead soundtrack. Fuck yeah.

It was almost eleven and it was a week night so the bar would be closing soon. Christ, what would Will say? The thought ran through my mind but it didn’t fully sink in until a few moments later. Shit. Will and I were not on speaking terms. Things had come to a head after my brutal deconstruction of The Dark Knight Rises…

Will had been in L.A. shooting a film that parodied organised religion. There were already stirrings of controversy, but all hell broke loose after an unfortunate interview clip found its way onto Youtube. Will was caught coming out of a club, shitfaced, by TMZ. During the ensuing street interview he was asked about his involvement in the film and he claimed it was a work of passion.

‘So you don’t care if the film is a box office success?’

‘No!’ shouted Will. ‘This is too important. Fuck the profit!’

Taken out of context, a number of Libyans found this soundbyte incredibly offensive and decided to start burning shit down. When the riots spread and Will started to receive death threats, he moved back to the beautiful, peaceful land of Northern Ireland. It was then he found his website desecrated by anti-Batman writing. He fired me for slander and went back to his day job shooting candid photos of the Royal Family on holiday. I have no idea how that has been working out for him, because I decided to look at my dismissal as an opportunity to move on with my life. Bukowski took ten years off from writing to get drunk and get involved with crazy women, and it worked for him. I decided to do the same.

I shacked up with the first one I met. I never had any trouble falling for women, and this one I took for a rich girl because she had a fancy phone. I have since learned that most mobile phones have cameras these days. But she was wearing a polka dot dress and black tights and she was perched on a barstool, one of her high heeled shoes bouncing on the end of her foot. I didn’t stand a chance. That night I found out they weren’t tights at all, but stockings, complete with garter belt. The next day I put some underwear in a suitcase, filled it the rest of the way with four different kinds of whiskey, grabbed my desk lamp and my notebook, and moved into her place.

Now I was sitting at the bar on a week night with my suitcase at my feet. It was lighter now – the whiskey was long gone, even after my repeated demands that she not mix the good stuff with Coke – and I had let her keep the desk lamp. I had my new phone sitting out on the bar in front of me. I had spent the last of my money on it so she could send me dirty pictures. I hadn’t even taken it out of the box when she kicked me out. I took a drink and typed out a text.

‘Hey baby, how about a sexy photo to remember you by?’

‘Sure how about one of my new mans cock’

I noted her lack of punctuation and decided maybe I was better off without her. Before I could protest, though, another text appeared. It said, ‘Cannot display picture. File too large’. Jesus, life was vicious. I finished my drink, took my ringer of dirty undies and headed for Will’s house. I left the phone on the bar.

I knocked on the door. Will took his time about answering and when he did, he was wearing a kimono.

‘You got a cold beer?’ I asked, and I was surprised when he let me in.

I explained my situation and asked about his, regarding the religious fanatics.

‘Man, the violence just keeps escalating,’; he said. ‘Whole cities turned over to wanton violence. All over a fucking film!’

‘I felt the same way when I saw the Total Recall remake,’ I said, and sucked at my beer.

He laughed. ‘That’s exactly what Bandwidth is missing. Your old take-no-prisoners attitude. What happened man?’

‘I don’t know. I started to second guess myself.’

‘Well start third guessing man. Start giving it hell again.’

‘Giving it hell… that was the name of one of my old articles. You remembered.’

‘Of course.’

‘Wait a minute, are you saying you want me back on board?’

‘Only if you do it with some balls,’ he said.

‘All right, it’s a deal. But what should I write about? I’ve been drunk for two months and haven’t been to any gigs. I’ve hardly been outdoors.’

‘Just write whatever is in your heart dude. Now I gotta get back. I’ve got a new woman in there,’ he said, motioning towards the bedroom. ‘She’s filthy.’ His voice took on an excited, hushed tone, like a kid on his way down the stairs on Christmas morning. ‘She’s been taking photos of my cock on her phone…’

When he left, the depression tried to take me, but this time something stopped it. I got up, went to the kitchen and poured a tall glass of whiskey. I had a hit and sat down at the coffee table. I opened the suitcase and looked for my notebook. It wasn’t there. I must have left it at the broad’s house. I was sure I had written my most brilliant material in it and now it was lost forever. Then I heard a giggle from the bedroom and realised it might find its way into Will’s hands after all. I took another drink and noticed something in the case. Something pink and frilly amongst my unwashed drawers. It was a pair of her knickers. I took out a pen and turned them over to write on the ass. It was a thong. Never mind. Brevity has always been my forte. On the crotch I wrote:

‘Watching Lawless is like getting smashed in the mouth with a knuckle-duster after drinking too much whiskey and trying to look up Jessica Chastain’s skirt. Fuck the pretenders. Appreciate good cinema.’

I didn’t know quite what it meant, but that is what was in my heart. I spent the rest of the night sitting on the sofa drinking Will’s liquor. Just before dawn I stuffed the panties into the empty glass and walked out into the grey light. There was no traffic and the air smelled good, even in the city. Everything was closed. Everyone was asleep. The hangover wouldn’t arrive for a while yet. I was back.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

Check out other sessions from Silhouette, Robyn G Shiels and Ash.

See all the ni2012 sessions here – and check back for more as they are announced in the coming weeks.

Check out other sessions from Silhouette and Robyn G Shiels

See all the ni2012 sessions here – and check back for more as they are announced in the coming weeks.

Disclaimer: Hold up there you huge sopping vagina. I know you liked The Dark Knight Rises. I know you are so precious about the sanctity of Batman-via-Nolan that the very idea of discourse on the subject is anathema to you, because we should all be too busy sucking the cocks of everyone involved in making the film. Well, too fucking bad.

Also, this thing contains spoilers.

I don’t really want to rag on The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a pretty damn cool movie in fact, and will most likely make it onto my top five for 2012. I do occasionally like to slaughter a sacred cow though, and I was bored by the hype surrounding this film months before I saw it. Marketing campaigns are perfectly natural, of course, but when the anticipation for a film is deliberately milked for all its worth, I just see a film maker shoot himself in the foot. Nothing could even hope to live up to the that level of hype, much less surpass it. It would be like the eight year old me falling in love with Sharon Stone in Total Recall (which I really did), only to years later actually have the good fortune to sleep with her. Ignoring for a second the ravages of time, if I were somehow able to bang the in-her-prime Sharon Stone, the reality could never live up to the fantasy that my eight-year-old brain was able to concoct. As my personal Deadbeat Hero Doug Stanhope points out with his patented incisiveness, it always ends the same way: BLORT!

You should watch the whole video, but if you want to skip to the relevant part it’s 4 minutes 10 seconds in.

That’s exactly how I felt at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. Months and months of people just creaming themselves over the trailers, just to get… another fucking comic book movie. That’s all it is. A good comic book movie. Most of them suck, but this one happens to be pretty good. And it is good. It is visually stunning. Tom Hardy absolutely steals the show as the big, buff, badass Bane. Anne Hathaway is a close second as Selina Kyle, somehow making her more than just a sexy cat-suit, and of the three films I’d say Christian Bale gives his best performance. Add to that a supporting cast that reads like a fucking Oscar nominee card, and it’s hard to go wrong. But for all its strengths it is far from perfect, and it’s not so much that the film has its flaws, but that so many people refuse to acknowledge them.

First of all, at two hours forty five minutes long, it is distended out of all proportion. I like the fact that there is some time taken to cover back story of the numerous characters, but the exact same story could have been told with much more economy. This is a symptom of nearly every “epic” ever made. A sort of deliberate subjectivity that stems from a hyper-fondness for the source material, which is ultimately why die-hard Batman fans don’t mind at all. They would gladly sit through four hours of this shit because hell, it’s Batman; the more the better. Somewhat ironically, for a guy who seemed reticent to cut out scenes that so obviously slow the film down, Nolan seemed only too happy to cut the violence down to a 12A (or PG-13) level, which results in lots of shooting and fighting and dead bodies, with none of the actual killing in between, some of which is just looks fucking ridiculous.

And then comes the ending, just about. The legend ends, promised the trailer. “The legend ends… kinda” would have been more accurate. After about two hours of borderline-sombre drama, peppered with a few kick ass action sequences, comes the utterly conventional superhero ending. It is bad enough that the film is treated with such solemn regard (dude, ‘why so serious?’) only to end with series of increasingly convenient character decisions and just-in-time saves. Give me a fucking break. Hey, Bane, you know how you smashed Batman’s back and locked him away in an inescapable prison in the desert, but he still got out and came back to save the day, and we have him right here and could finish him off once and for all? Don’t do that. Keep him alive. I want him to see this. I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T REALISE THIS WAS A FUCKING JAMES BOND MOVIE. And this right after, in the middle of a riot, the just-revealed true villain of the film takes the time to explain to Batman, and therefore the audience, some exposition that somehow there wasn’t time for in the first two hours of the fucking film. But even that wasn’t enough to ruin an otherwise cool movie. I realised it’s just a film about a guy in a black mask and a cape fighting crime, even if Christopher Nolan didn’t, so I made an allowance for some silliness. And then comes the biggest cop out of a film ending I have seen this year. I can hear the arguments already: ‘He deliberately left it open to interpretation!’. No, folks, he just fucking copped out.

When Ironman survived at the end of The Avengers I was disappointed, but not too much, since I knew The Avengers was just a piece of fun, commercial fluff. But for some reason I expected more from The Dark Knight Rises. Shit, maybe I was even a victim of the hype I was so suspicious of. Just wrap the fucking thing up already. Don’t give me a your typically Hollywood everything-is-okay-after-all montage and an apparently contradictory account of Bruce Wayne’s fate. Did he fix the bat symbol and then use the repaired autopilot to eject before the explosion and finally move away to live happily ever after with Selina, just like Alfred always hoped he would? Or is that just hopeful thinking on behalf of Alfred, Lucius, Blake, and we the audience? You know what? I couldn’t give a shit. Blort.

Conor Brown and 20 Second Century amazed, and Katharine Philippa was, again, a sensation. To top it all off, Bandwidth favourite Rachel Austin premiered some stunning new material – here’s a personal highlight from the night, a devilishly simple and enchanting new track called ‘Control’

‘I might become the president,
and tell the world I’m heaven sent.
Take up drinking cold iced tea,
quit watching women and TV.’
Hank Williams III

I think perhaps I have given you all the wrong impression of me. I think because of some of the things I write you all take me for an ungentlemanly chauvinist pig. It is true, I put a lot of effort into being a chauvinist pig, but I wouldn’t want people to think that because of this I am not a gentleman. The fact is I am a perfect gentleman. Take for example my offer of a free drink for anyone who bumped into me at the Hank Williams III gig on Saturday. Okay, so the likelihood that anyone who reads this was going was quite small, and no one really knows what I look like, but the offer was sincere. I really would have bought you a pint. And if you had asked for a whiskey I would have been so impressed (and drunk on whiskey myself) that I would have made it a double. If this is not proof enough that I am a man of honour take the fact that at the gig I immediately gave up my seat when two blonde ladies took the last available table and found there was only one chair at it. I stood for the rest of the gig and if I occasionally glanced at their crossed legs, well, that’s my business because it is the same testosterone-laden blood pumping through my veins that causes me to put a lady’s – even a lady I don’t know – comfort before my own that also swivels my head like a fucking wind-vane when I notice a skirt creep above a knee in my periphery. I neither celebrate it nor apologise for it. It is just the way I am, and my duality of character encompasses just about every aspect of my life. Which is exactly the reason I was expecting this Hank III gig to be perfect for me.

When I showed up at Katy’s on Saturday, sans date – since the whole point of country music is lonesomeness – I was soaked and my already Brylcreem slicked hair was plastered to my head like Clark Gable, but without the moustache or manly facial character. Feeling like Kris Kristofferson, I got a whiskey and a beer to warm the frozen feeling that was eating at my soul. Unlike Kris I had to hold my head at a funny angle so my hair wouldn’t drip water into my whiskey and dilute it, like some sort of goddamn fruity cocktail. I sat and pondered my drinking strategy for the night. It was a Saturday so it was imperative I didn’t get drunk and stay out late with the hoopleheads. This sounds easy enough to avoid, until you remember I am a pathetic drunkard at the best of times, and country music makes me drink approximately 1.5 times faster than usual. The effect is only surpassed by watching Mad Men, which fully doubles my rate of consumption, until my I-am-Roger-Sterling fantasy is shattered when I try to order an anatomically correct Real Doll replica of Christina Hendricks and the website tells me the measurements just aren’t realistic. Intelligent Design one, evolutionary biology, nil.

Skip ahead a bit and I’m in the queue talking to a dude with long hair, a Superjoint Ritual t-shirt and a look in his eyes that says the roll up he is smoking isn’t entirely legal. We discuss our differing preferences – mine for Hank’s country stuff, his for the metal songs Hank also plays – until an elderly couple behind us join the conversation. They are very fond of Hank Sr. but readily admit that they have never heard any of his grandson’s music. As I am wondering just how disappointed they will be, I look down the queue and notice many more elderly couples, obviously in the same boat. I decide this is going to be one of more interesting gigs I have been to.

Skip ahead again, since I already bragged about my valiant chair sacrifice. And hell, I’ll go back to past tense, just to further confuse things…

Hank came on promptly, accompanied by drums, steel guitar, fiddle, and a double bass. He even had a bunch of guys with him to play these instruments, which is the sort of high-end professionalism I appreciate. It was just about the most bitchin’ band I had ever seen. They launched into a raucous set of mostly material from the Straight To Hell album, and I sang along to all the songs I knew, pausing only to sip my Jack, which was disappearing at near Mad Men speed. That probably accounts for my comfort being the weird guy standing in the corner belting out songs like a boss. That continued for about an hour and a half, but seemed like much less, which is unusual and is a sign that I was particularly enjoying myself. Then all the band members except Hank and the drummer left the stage. Hank swapped his acoustic for an electric and tuned it down to somewhere between Barry White and Meshuggah, took off his cowboy hat and took out his plaited ponytail. He looked like a goddamn metalhead. Which was appropriate, because he then blasted into some seriously dark sludge metal. I listened patiently for about half an hour and when there was no whiskey left in my glass I turned to go to the bar, but stopped when I saw all the old couples sitting at the back. I don’t know what they made of Hank’s brand of country music – for me it was as fucking awesome as I expected – but their expressions betrayed their confusion as to how the performance had devolved to… this. Then I realised I sympathised with them. The country set had been energetic, with an authentic country sound and a furious punk attitude. And I had gone there thinking that with my love for Slayer and Pantera and Black Label I’d be sure to dig Hank’s metal stuff as well. But I didn’t. The music sounded dull and repetitive and, though I hesitate to use the word, self-indulgent. It seemed that even though I could be a gentleman chauvinist, I couldn’t be a cowboy metalhead. Hank III can, but he is part of country music’s greatest dynasty, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. So I left early, spurred on by my loathing for Belfast on Saturday nights. I went back to my regular for one last round.

As I drank my last beer of the night I realised I had turned over a new leaf in life. Before I never would have walked out of a show early. I would have felt compelled to see it through to the end. But on Saturday I just decided I didn’t have time to sit through something I didn’t care for. As I reflected on it I didn’t feel at all cheated. I knew Hank was going to play some country and some metal, and it turned out some of it wasn’t for me. That’s fine. And it bears emphasising that as far as country music goes, this was the best live set I have ever seen. As I was thinking, though, it gave me pause to realise that all of the old couples had still been there when I left. Did they stay out of politeness, or because for all of their outward fuddy-duddiness, they were closet badass metalheads? Did I just out-old fart a bunch of old farts? I was going to mount some sort of defence, but as I was writing this I just leaned back, looked down at myself and realised that over 80% of what I am wearing is beige. A new leaf indeed. God fucking damn it.

Here is one of our favourite artists, performing in an amazing location Silhouette, in the Ulster Hall in Belfast:

See all the ni2012 sessions here – and check back for more as they are announced in the coming weeks:

To kick off proceedings, here is the inimitable Robyn G Shiels:

See all the ni2012 sessions here – and check back for more as they are announced in the coming weeks:

As promised and much delayed, here is a video highlight from the night – the band’s latest single ‘Voices’. The sound recording failed on us halfway through sadly, but the atmosphere was so good and the pictures so pretty we thought it would be a shame not to put it out – find 3 more tracks on the Bandwidth youtube page.

[Download Video]

Filmed by Jenny Atcheson, Michael MacBroom & Will McConnell for Bandwidth

The second Bandwidth Night took place a few weeks ago as part of the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival with Katie & The Carnival – check back here for videos from that very very special event very soon – and stay tuned for news of Bandwidth Night#3!

Bob Log III and some killer boobs

I was in the off license.

‘Excuse me I’m looking for the stuff the bums drink,’ I said to the woman at the till. She regarded me with disdain. ‘You know, the big blue bottles?’

‘Down the back,’ she said, and led the way to the walk-in fridge. She appeared to be lame and by the time we got there I was getting impatient.

‘Which one would you recommend?’ I asked.

‘Well the Frosty Jack comes in three litre bottles…’

‘Of course, value for money,’ I agreed. ‘And Jack is a good name for booze. I’ll take three.’  I watched as she hoisted the three gigantic bottles into the crook of her arm and followed her back to the till. On the way, something caught my eye.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘is that Coteaux du Languedoc really only £10?’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘That really seems too reasonable to pass up,’ I said.

I only had a tenner on me.

‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘You can put those back.’ She grunted and shuffled back to the fridge.

Two hours later the wine – which was good, but by no means revelatory – was gone and I had a slight buzz. I had given up my pipe dream of being a writer and decided to be an alcoholic, but I had failed at that too. I was pathetic. I sulked back round to the offies.

‘I think I’ll take that shitty cider after all, I said.

The woman just glared at me and took her goddamn time limping off to the fridge. While I was waiting, my phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Ian, it’s Will. What are doing on Saturday?’

‘Well, I’m kind of in the middle of a new project, and I always watch The Voice on Saturday night.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Well they got into a ratings war with Britain’s Got Talent and in a bid to win viewers back, Holly Willoughby’s neckline plummeted.’

‘Wow, that’s quite a revelation.’

‘Oh I can’t take any credit for it. Alan Carr pointed it out.’

‘Well ogling Holly Willoughby doesn’t count as plans.’

‘Really? You try maintaining an erection when her perfect cleavage is immediately followed by a shot of Tom Jones’s fake-tanned bake. Planning doesn’t cover it. It’s practically an art.’

‘Whatever Ian. Cancel your precious plans. I’ve got a date lined up for you.’

‘Really? With a girl?’

‘I’ll email you the details.’ And with that he hung up. The old lady was hobbling back with the cider, but all of a sudden I didn’t feel like being a wino any more. I’d go back to my roots and be a classy drunkard.

‘I’ve changed my mind, you can put those back,’ I said.

‘Are you fucking kidding?’ she said.

‘I’ll just take my usual.’

She put the cider on the counter and got me a bottle of Jack, sans frost.  I’m back baby.

I went home, poured a tall glass of whiskey and sat down at the computer.

From: Will
To: Ian
Subject: Gig/Date

Bob Log III at The Empire, Saturday 8pm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPMpHepElIc

http://ramirezdahmerbundy.tumblr.com/

[Editor's Note: Links NSFW.]

Jesus titty fucking Christ. A spaceman playing a blues song called ‘Boob Scotch’. A tattooed babe who listens to AC/DC, reads Nabokov and has a morbid fascination with serial killers. It was too much for me. I had to lie down. So after listening to ‘Boob Scotch’ and looking through Emily’s photos six or seven times, I did.

There I was in The Empire with Emily next to me. Bob Log was rocking on the stage, but for some reason the song was Daydream Believer. After the gig we were skipping arm in arm through Botanic Gardens, laughing and cavorting in the sun. Then we were back at my place and I was about to pour a scotch when she took the bottle off me and looked at me seductively. She took a swig, then took off her shirt and upended the bottle, pouring the golden liquor all over her milky white…

When I woke up it was dark and my crotch was soaked. I realised I had fallen asleep with my glass of whiskey in my hand, and it had all been a beautiful dream. Damn it, I hope that is what I think it is, I thought, standing up to inspect the damage. Sure enough my glass was empty and my trousers were drenched with whiskey. And semen. I had to get a grip on myself. This was true love. I couldn’t afford to fuck it up the way I always do. I stripped naked, poured myself another drink and stood at my window in contemplation, like Gerard Butler in 300. Except where the abs should be there was just a crumbly love mess. I took a long drink.

‘Excuse me mate, is this seat taken?’

‘Yes it is goddamnit!’ I yelled. It was the sixth time I had been asked and I was getting edgy. The support act, The Hard Chargers, were halfway through their set and there was no sign of Emily. Worse, I had bought her a drink but I was so nervous I kept finishing my own and then drinking hers. I had replaced her drink four times, and the blues was starting to speak to me. Some people will tell you white people can’t play the blues. In fact one of these people was George Carlin, whom I have the utmost respect for. In this case, however, I have to politely disagree with him. The thing about the blues is either it sounds real or it doesn’t: there is no in between. Well, The Hard Chargers play real blues music. And I’m not just saying that because the drummer played a washboard, even though that is fucking badass.

‘Excuse me, is this seat taken?’ It was some blonde chick. She was with a much older dude who had a thick gold cross necklace nestled in his grey chest hair. I took it as a sign from the heavens: rich old wankers get hot chicks, you don’t.

‘No, go ahead,’ I told her, and necked Emily’s drink just as Bob Log came on stage.

It was the wrong kind of blues, and that made it just what I needed. Sure, I would have liked some lonesome delta blues sounds, but there is simply no way to wallow in self pity when a one man band in a tight-fitting sparkly jump suit and a crash helmet starts playing a strange blend of punk blues with songs titles like ‘My Shit’s Perfect’ and ‘Clap Your Tits’. The sound is pure fucking chaos and his act really needs to be seen to be fully appreciated, because it is the sheer energy of the man that makes him such a great performer. That is not to take away from his obvious musical ability, it’s just kinda hard to describe the sound of a man playing blues on a distorted guitar and singing into a telephone strapped to the front of his crash helmet. So all I can do is recommend you look him up. The image I’ll leave you with, and the one that most resonated with me, was the one of Bob, with a girl perched on each knee while he played ‘I Want Your Shit On My Leg’, bouncing the dames up and down as he played drums with his feet. The fact that I couldn’t even get a date, but the guy with the guitar could get a woman for each leg, certainly demonstrated something. You can do anything, if you do it with enough awesome. And Bob Log III is nothing if not awesome.

At some point during the gig I looked to my left and saw the blonde chick and her sugar daddy dancing. I say dancing, but I mean she was thrashing her head around in a most frenetic fashion, while he slammed his crotch against her thigh. It was horrifying. A little bit of sick crept up into my throat and I washed it back with whiskey. If I had a girl I wouldn’t publicly hump her leg, I thought. But then I am an old fashioned romantic type. I went home to watch Holly’s boobs on the iPlayer…

Epilogue

It turns out that Will – not familiar with the etiquette of the Tumblr community – sent Emily an anonymous message asking her about the gig. Anons are like Youtube commenters – no one really gives a shit what they have to say – so Emily ignored the invitation. And ignoring an invitation isn’t technically the same as rejecting someone, which is an important distinction, when you’re as lonely as I am…

Official Bob Log III site
The Hard Chargers Reverb Nation page

Here are 3 tracks filmed from Imprint’s night at the Menagerie in Belfast in April 2012.
Here more from the set in Imprint’s 30th edition of its podcast right here.

We also heartily recommend you
Subscribe to the IMPRINT PODCAST on iTunes.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

This week marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. With my 25^th birthday fast approaching, you might think I’m talking about some fruity goddamn quarter life crisis, but I’m not. This is fucking serious. Here is how it went down.

After unsuccessfully trying my hand at actual journalism with my last piece, Will demanded I make a return to the regular TINAR format. The real problem was that I had him tweet @rickygervais on my behalf, in the hope that Ricky would like the article enough to retweet the link, and I might get some more readers. Well, he didn’t. He did tweet links to every other fucking blog post he found about Derek, but obviously mine wasn’t up to scratch. I, much more used to personal rejection, just got drunk and muttered ‘fuck Ricky Gervais then’ a few hundred times and forgot all about it. Will is much more accustomed to glowing feedback though, and took the lack of retweeting as a personal affront. He told me I was getting too big for my boots and I need to stick to what I’m good at. So he hooked me up. A movie date with a ‘real classy lady’.

For some reason he decided this lady of culture and I should go see The Cabin In The Woods and he arranged for me to meet her at the cinema. I took it easy on the booze the night before and made sure to scrub up well. On my way out the door I checked myself in the mirror one last time. Hair looked fine… no shit stuck in my teeth… wait, what the fuck is THAT? A rogue nose hair, curling out of my nostril like a spider had crawled up there during the night and was having trouble staying tucked away. Surely not. Surely I had not become a man with excess nose hair. Surely that was something I shouldn’t be worrying about for at least another 25 years. I panicked, ran for my shaving kit, got my tweezers, took hold, and yanked. Then I started crying. Tears free fell from my eyes and snot flowed uncontrollably from my nose, which was now roaring red. The pain was immense. I imagined myself like Jake Gittes from Chinatown, walking around for the next two weeks with a ridiculous bandage across my nose. How could one little hair sting so much? I wiped my eyes and checked the mirror. It was gone. But the closer I looked the more of them I noticed. Shit, there were hundreds of them up there – out of sight for now – but just ready to pop into view at the worst possible time. I couldn’t go on a date like this. And I sure as shit couldn’t tweeze any more of them out. Besides how much time it would take, I just couldn’t stand the pain. Something had to be done.

So it was there, in Boots, looking at their range of hair trimmers, that I realised my life had entered a new chapter. This was not grooming in the metrosexual sense of the word. This was the necessity for motorised tools just to combat… grossness. I wasn’t ready for it, and it fucked up my zen. I grabbed a sturdy looking fucker, paid, and headed for the cinema, hoping I could still make it in time. Along the way I ripped off the packaging and stuffed the trimmer into my back pocket.

I knew who she was right away. A beautiful, statuesque (read: too fucking tall) lady of about forty, wearing a classy dress and clutching her purse in a pose that said she was sassy, as well as classy. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t give her a chance to display her sass. My nerves were shot, and I could practically feel the nose hairs descending, tickling my upper lip.

  ‘Marianne!’ I said, much too loudly. ‘You look magnificent but I’m in a mad rush. You get the tickets and I’ll be right back.’ I thrust a twenty into her hands and ran for the toilets.

I ducked into a stall and got the trimmer out of my pocket. I flipped the switch and had it halfway up my left nostril before I realised it wasn’t doing anything. I looked at it and tried the switch a couple more times. Then I checked for batteries. There weren’t any, of course. I felt like crying, but I just put the trimmer back in my pocket, went for my other back pocket and came up with the flask. I slumped down on the can and had a long hit.

Well, fuck it, I thought. It’s not like I was ever much of a winner anyway. I skulked back to the lobby and bought a gigantic bag of peanut M&Ms to cheer myself up. I forced a smile for Marianne, who did seem nice, and was really quite foxy once I took the time to notice.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I must have seemed very rude. You look very foxy tonight.’

And we went in.

The Cabin In The Woods is the tits. It might even be the best film of 2012, but I won’t make any big claims in case I am just suffering from post-awesome giddiness. I could go into great detail about how cleverly post-modern it is, but I won’t, because this is not a review, damn it! You should see it though. Everyone should see it. It is the best movie of 2012. Shit I said I wouldn’t say that… it’s just on a different level of fucking ripshit awesome. How’s that?

  ‘Want a peanut M&M?’ I asked Marianne.

  ‘Oh, no thank you. I’m allergic to peanuts.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘There must be so much stuff you can’t eat…’

  ‘Mmm hmm,’ she agreed.

  ‘Salted peanuts.’

  …

  ‘Roasted peanuts.’

  …

  ‘Snickers.’

  …

  ‘Mostly just snacks, really.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  …

  ‘Satay. I think satay is peanuts. Is satay peanuts?’

  ‘The film is starting,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, right… Certain cereals too, maybe…’

She seemed bored by the movie, and when it finished she was in a funny mood.

  ‘Look Ian, let me be honest. I’m too old for the dating bullshit. I really had no interest in seeing a movie. I just want to get laid, okay? That’s why I agreed to do this.’

  ‘I understand Marianne. You were expecting something better.’

  ‘No Ian, you don’t understand. I’m saying I’m just in this for the sex.’

  ‘Jesus Marianne, I get it! Next time call an escort. Or a babysitter, they’re usually cheaper…’

  ‘Ian! I’m saying I want to fuck. Now are you coming home with me or not? I can’t make it any clearer.’

  I paused and had a hit of whiskey. ‘So just to clarify…’

There I was back at Marianne’s house, swigging from a bottle of champagne she very kindly uncorked just for me before going to the bathroom to freshen up. She came out in a silk robe and wagged a finger at me.

  ‘This way,’ she said.

  ‘Just a second dollface,’ I said. ‘This bubbly is going right through me.’

I went to the bathroom, took a leak, and started washing my hands. Then I noticed myself in the mirror. Holy Jesus, the nose hair! How had I forgotten? I fumbled the trimmer out of my pocket and started going through her drawers, looking for something battery operated. Why has she got an aubergine in her bathroom? I thought, and picked it up before it dawned on me that it was actually a big black, well, you know. I threw it back in the drawer, disgusted. Then I had an idea. I gingerly picked it up again and – don’t ask me how I intuitively knew how to operate it – I twisted the end. It burst into life and started wobbling around in my hand. Hey, this does actually feel kinda… I thought. Never mind that. The batteries, you fool! I hoked them out, put them in my trimmer, and went to work on my nose.

  ‘What are you doing in there?’ she yelled from the bedroom.

  ‘Just getting ready to do some sex!’ I said, and finished up.

When I came out of the bathroom she was already under the covers, looking impatient.

  ‘Get over here,’ she said, pulling me down into a long kiss. ‘Now get to work,’ she said, pushing my head under the duvet. Talk about fucking rude. I ducked my head down and climbed in and SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY! Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock could have done an hour long special with that thing. It was monstrous and overgrown and it frightened me. I tried to get away, but she had her thighs clamped around my ears and she was writhing around in pleasure. I didn’t even know where to start. Then I remembered the trimmer in my back pocket. I fumbled it out and went to work clearing a path. Meanwhile she just kept moaning and convulsing like a woman possessed. But by the time I had weed-whacked my way through to a point I thought might be manageable, she had stopped writhing. Stopped moving altogether, in fact. And she wasn’t making any noise. I poked my head up out of the covers and had a look. There was foam at the corners of her mouth and her eyes had rolled up into her head like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. But she hadn’t been snorting heroin… Jesus, the peanuts! I had eaten a whole goddamn family size bag and then kissed her. Now she was dead and her pubes had been hacked away in a completely amateur fashion. The cops would think there was some sort of twisted serial killer on the loose, murdering women and trimming their parts as a calling card. I was fucked.

I took out my phone and called the only man who could help me.

  ‘Will, I’m gonna need the cleaner.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes, again,’ I said. ‘How many innocent women have to die before you figure out this whole thing is a bad idea?’

  ‘Give me the address,’ was all he said.

The cold-hearted sonofabitch.

Bruce first came to our attention with his rather impressive homemade session videos, and it wasn’t long before we got working together. And we’re glad we did. His latest album “Look Out” is a knockout – here he plays two tracks from it, filmed in the stunning Wallace House in Lisburn.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

The only news source I ever pay any attention to is The Guardian Online. Admittedly I only ever give it a cursory glance over my morning coffee, because world news tends to depress me, but occasionally a story catches my eye and I postpone my morning dump long enough to read the whole thing. On Tuesday I shat with an alarming velocity, which could be attributed to Monday night’s indulgence on Guinness and mixed pickles, or to my bowel’s venomous response to this article by Tanya Gold, about Ricky Gervais’s new comedy-drama Derek, which aired last night on Channel 4. It seems every time Ricky blows his nose The Guardian has some fucking hack freelancer on the case, spouting off an opinion piece which never amounts to anything more than a load of bitching about what a horrible person he is, this time under the guise of intelligent discourse on the treatment of disability in modern television. Well I, too, am a hack freelancer, and I won’t stand idly around having my chosen profession besmirched by these goddamn humourless dickheads.

Jesus, maybe I should slow down on the whiskey until I finish this thing…

I remember hearing a story about Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett in the show Till Death Do Us Part. It would help my point considerably if I could reference this thing, but fuck it, this is the internet. The story goes that Warren was approached by some pig-faced racist sonofabitch who told him how much he loved watching him make fun of [choose your own minority]. Warren responded by telling him he wasn’t making fun of [chosen minority], he was making fun of racist people like him, who really think like that, and walked away.

Of course we can always rely on the ignorant to not only blindly hate anyone whose skin is not the same colour as their own, but to be so enveloped in that hatred that basic tenets of irony are lost on them. What we should not do, though, is try to sanitise the media for fear of those it might infect.

Ricky Gervais is not a bigot. I have had the displeasure of seeing actually bigotry and prejudice in action. I’m sure almost everyone has. It takes the form of everything from hushed comments and sniggering behind covered mouths to outright verbal and physical abuse. Whatever the form, it is fucking horrible. It is the sort of incomprehensible bile that provokes an almost physical revulsion. It is a level of hatred and wickedness so deeply ingrained that it dehumanises entire groups of people, based on race, sexuality, disability, or any number of other arbitrary things. And that is exactly how I know Ricky is not one of them. In creating the character Derek he does the very opposite of what real bigots do: he humanises him. He gives Derek feelings, desires, and a personality that is in direct contrast to the ridiculous haircut and overbite Ricky affects in his appearance. The people who think the mong-face (yeah, I said it) is the source of the comedy are either missing the point, or the sort of bigoted fucks who think that sort of thing is funny anyway. Either way, Ricky is not generating prejudice.

Is his handling of controversial material sometimes insensitive? Probably. But only because so many people are too sensitive about this sort of thing. People believe the issue is just so serious, there is no comedy to be found in it. Well, George Carlin maintained that anything can be funny. Anything. Even rape – check it out. What Ricky Gervais has the balls to do is portray disabled people as having – get this – actual lives outside of their disabilities. Well god fucking forbid these people do anything but cry in their beer about what a shitty hand they have been dealt in life. God forbid they find themselves in the same awkward social situations as the rest of us. God forbid they ever fuck anything up or act like a tit. Because they’re disabled. It’s just insensitive. If you think like that then fuck you. And fuck Tanya Gold for missing the point of not only Derek, but also the fantastic Channel 4 show The Undateables.

    ‘Is this what passes for disability rights campaigning today? In a culture currently watching the reality show on Channel 4 in which disabled people go on dates, promoted by a sign screaming “Undateable”, perhaps it is.’

Does a show called The Undateables seem, on the surface, like a big manipulative gimmick? Yes, frankly, I think it does. But that is nothing more than the heavy-handedness of television producers. Actually watching the show proves that it is much more. Ignoring for a second the ubiquitous drama-creating narration, which does everything but have Davina McCall say, ‘after the break…’ the program shows a number of people with disabilities experiencing actual human emotions. Loneliness, sexual attraction, insecurity, shyness, love. Other than a cursory summary of the person’s condition, very little is made of their disability. It is an incredibly touching show precisely because it is not full of the overwrought heart-strings imagery we have come to associate with TV shows about disability. And the film makers do not shy away from the obviously hilarious scenes out of a misdirected attempt at sensitivity. It is funny. Not because ‘haha, look at this goofy bastard’, but because I can fucking relate. Disabled people are not some other type of creature, whose entire existences are dominated by their physical or psychological conditions. They are human, and are as susceptible to the human condition as anyone else. And though his characters are fictional, that is what Ricky Gervais does so well.

The same criticisms were levelled at him when he released Life’s Too Short. I have to admit, I didn’t much care for Life’s Too Short. It felt like re-hashing too much of the material already covered in The Office. A mockumentary about an arrogant, self-deluding man who ultimately inspires empathy in spite of his shortcomings (shit, that’s the first time I really made a pun that wasn’t intended… I didn’t know that actually happened) because the writing and the performance is full of humanity. It is not a caricature. Sure, there are too many dwarf-falling-over jokes in Life’s Too Short, but the point Tanya Gold misses (among many) is that Warwick Davis does not climb a bookshelf or fall out of his car because he is a dwarf. He does those things because he is an arrogant prick – too prideful to ask for help and so given to overcompensating that he chooses the most impractical car possible. Warwick’s failing is NOT that he is a dwarf, and Derek’s failing is NOT whatever mental disability he is supposed to have, since that is never even made explicit. If Derek has a failing, it is in stark contrast to any of Gervais’s previous characters, as pride and conceit simply are not factors in his life. He is open and honest about all of his feelings, from his ‘love’ for care worker Hannah to his jealousy at her attraction to another man. Ultimately he is so committed to the concept that kindness is the most important thing of all that he is indiscriminately kind – even to those who don’t probably deserve it – and so in spite of his selflessness he is perceived as a nuisance, or a ‘mental’. Crucially, though, at no point does Gervais ever point a finger and say, ‘haha, look at this silly wanker!’ The comedy is derived from situations we can all relate to on some level, and the same goes for the dramatic scenes, which I actually felt were stronger than the funny ones. How anyone could watch Derek’s openly emotional response to the news that an elderly friend had died and suggest that this character is nothing more than a tasteless disability joke is beyond me. The problem is that too many people can’t get past the disability, just like they can’t get past swear words, or sex scenes or violence. They don’t care what is actually being said because something has offended their delicate sensibilities and they would rather stick their fingers in their ears and say ‘la la la la la…’, than actually engage with the material.

It is frustrating for me that I felt compelled to write this article. The idea that we haven’t, as a society, gotten past this bullshit is ridiculous to me. The people we need to worry about are not the people writing fictional comedy-dramas in which the protagonist is a man with a mental disability. The ones we need to worry about are those who don’t get it. The problem is, it seems that there are an awful lot more of those than I first realised, apparently on both sides of the argument. Prejudice against disabled people is a serious issue, but nothing is so serious that it becomes untouchable by literature or film or even that most underrated or art forms, comedy. These overly liberal, politically correct social commentators probably don’t realise the harm they are doing in pointing their fingers at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t call them on their bullshit. If you are offended, it’s your fucking problem. Being offended does not afford you any special rights. And your knee-jerk outrage at anything with an edgy or controversial subject is such a gross oversight that I suggest you re-evaluate some of your sensibilities. It’s lovely that you are against prejudice, but in directing your criticism at any film maker who dares to tackle the subject, you are not only missing the point, but diluting the real argument we should be having. Why is it that disability is something that must be swept under a rug, or placed on a pedestal? Why is there no room for it somewhere in between?

Watch Derek on 4oD

Then, because of the way the music scene is here, he ended up crashing on my sofa. All in all, it was along night of music drinking and smoking – and the next morning much chat was had about the state of music today, vintage guitar amps and politics. After which, we also found time to record a session in my garage, with my cat busting some cool dance moves.

Iain is currently on a mini tour of the island – he played Kilkenny and hits Dingle tomorrow night. Catch him if you can at one of these fine venues.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

The exciting news is that they’ll be back in Belfast a third time, on 23rd April – the day after the release of the new EP ‘The Motherlode’. In the meantime, here are 2 magical session tracks.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

They’ll be back in Belfast on 24th April where they’ll play McHughs, then on 25th April they’ll be in Dublin, then Cork the 26th. That’s three chances to see them – do not – repeat, do not – miss them. After that, they’re off to support Bon Iver on his North American tour, and off into stardom forever.

I haven’t been around the Bandwidth offices recently. I hear Will was mistakenly informed that I had been killed in a boating incident and had a small fountain erected in the lobby, depicting me scrabbling for life in the wreckage of a boat, an arch of water gushing from my anguished mouth. The truth is I could only hope for such a noble demise. Though I am still technically alive, I am not sure my existence could accurately be described as ‘life’. For the past few weeks I have been locked in my room listening to George Jones records, drinking port wine and ritually flogging myself with my belt, like Agent Van Alden from Boardwalk Empire. I should have chosen my activities more wisely because I only have one George Jones CD and port wine gets old really fucking fast, but I was in such a funk I wasn’t thinking clearly, and then so tortured I was by self-loathing I decided I didn’t even deserve to upgrade to whiskey and Hank Williams. Finally I was jolted out of my stupor by a goddamn wasp which managed to invade my room despite my having the place sealed so tightly shut I had been breathing mostly fart and dead skin cells for about four days. After trying to attack the bugger with an empty port bottle I decided to just open the window and let him go the easy way. And then folks, I saw the light. Beautiful gleaming sunlight. And anyone who knows me knows I can’t resist a sunny day at Botanic Gardens with a hip flask of whiskey and my perv-friendly shades. There is nothing in this world that will restore one’s faith in the overall goodness of the world than watching two girls play frisbee barefoot on the grass, laughing and cavorting and pausing between throws to hike up their jeans, which keep falling down around their asses. So when I came back home I decided it was time to tell my story, purge my demons, and get on with my life. What happened was…

I was in the pub on a Friday night, standing at the end of the bar working my way through my Guinness appetiser a little too quickly, in anticipation of the whiskey to come. I had promised to drop into a friend’s house later that night, and knew I didn’t have time to drink leisurely. Then, standing next to me and ordering a pint, was a blonde girl. She was standing a little too close, though, and seemed to be looking at me. Curiosity got the better of me and I made eye contact.

‘What are you so deep in thought about?’ she asked.

‘Oh, uh…’ FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST MAN DON’T SAY ANYTHING STUPID. SHE’S BEAUTIFUL. DON’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. DRINK MORE. WHERE’S THE WHISKEY? ‘…nothing,’ I said. After that she tried her damnedest to draw a conversation out of me, but her beauty had ambushed me and turned my brain to shit, so it really didn’t go too well.

The following is an open letter to the blonde who works in Pepe Jeans in Victoria Square, because that is all I found out about her during our brief conversation…

Dear Madam,

I must begin by apologising for my apparent rudeness. I am sure my taciturn response to your friendly approach was not only frustrating but confounding for you, as your experience of men in bars must have prepared you for a more convivial reaction. This is because I am a dick.

I spent around half of my waking hours watching Mad Men and Steve McQueen movies, and the other half writing about how awesome Mad Men and Steve McQueen are. I even kid myself sometimes – depending on how late at night it is and how many drinks I’ve had – that all my hours spent learning from the best have not been in vain, and that a little of the Mad-gic must have rubbed off on me. The sad truth, though, is that Steve McQueen movies have no more rubbed off on my personality than the imprint of my right hand has rubbed off on my penis, while rubbing off. This wouldn’t be such an issue if I had any social skills to fall back on, but I don’t.

To fill the void where my basic human instinct for social interaction ought to be, I consume large quantities of whiskey, which makes me act foolishly and therefore masks my inner shyness. Fortunately for the both of us you caught me on my first drink of the night, long before I had the opportunity to gas up on liquor, and you were treated to the boring reticence of my Dr. Jeckyll, rather than the silly jabberings of my My. Hyde. Had we met seven drinks later the conversation would have gone more like this:

Girl: Hi.

Ian: (stares at breasts)

As it went, I couldn’t even pick your boobs out of a police line-up, so taken I was by your face. Your prettiness was overwhelming, and the whole time we talked my brain was playing catch up. In the movies this shyness would be portrayed by a deceptively hunky guy who bumbles over his words in a rather cute fashion. In real life it tends to manifest itself more in what appears to be dickishness. I can only hope that you did not take this perceived dickishness as an insult.

You really are very lovely,

Ian

Now I can only hope that she ends up reading this via the magic of social networking platforms that I do not understand. Failing that I will have to go to Pepe Jeans under the pretence of requiring the sort of fashionable garb that I never wear, and that would be horrible because trendy clothes shops make me self conscious. I don’t even know if they sell men’s jeans…

It’s open to the public and the entire event will be covered by our dutiful Bandwidth cameras. Best of all.. it’s absolutely FREE.

It’s an early show, with doors at 5.30 – Go Wolf take to the stage at 6.30, and there’ll be bar facilities so you can stay on and drink or go out afterwards.

So come along on FRIDAY 23RD MARCH, 5.30pm.
RSVP here on Facebook.

This will be the first of a few Bandwidth early shows we have planned over the summer – so keep checking the site, and our facebook and twitter for more.

In the lates mid 1970′s, when the world saw Belfast through the heavily mediated telescopic lens of news organisations and war reporters looking out of their hotel windows, John T Davis captured life from the beating heart of what Joe Strummer called the ‘real’ punk rock city. Quite simply, Shellshock Rock is a masterpiece that, whatever your musical, political or artistic tastes, must be seen to be believed.

For You

[Download Video]

Day One

[Download Video]

He just wrote it on the plane the night before in fact. Anyway, now it’s made it into his live set, and I believe it’s called “Belfast Is Born Again”. Enjoy!

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
was looked on as something shocking,
now heaven knows,
anything goes.

- Frank Sinatra, Anything Goes

There was a girl I used to work with who had a profound effect on me. Her uniform never quite fit her properly, and the buttons on her blouse would randomly pop open, often unbeknownst to her. All of my colleagues felt a compunction to tell her when this happened, but I suffered no such crisis of conscience. I revelled in those voyeuristic glimpses as only the loneliest of men can – with a delight blanketed by Kaw Liga-esque stoicism. One summer day though, she dropped in to pick up a payslip, and of course she wasn’t in uniform. Instead she was wearing a bright yellow tanktop. And finally, as if up until that point my 3D glasses had been broken, the secret was revealed to me. She had fucking massive tits. How could I have been so oblivious? The grotesque geometry of a female work uniform, designed specifically to hide any hint of femininity, that’s how. Whoever designed these garments is a joyless Communist and should be shot by a phalanx of Hooters waitresses for being un-American. As delightful a surprise as it was to see her breasts free from imprisonment though, the spell was broken. I no longer prayed for a popped button when I worked with her, because what was underneath no longer held any mystery for me. In the same way that a page three model has all the eroticism of a fat man wearing his socks to bed, her rack no longer stirred my loins the way it used to. I reason I told this story is, well, I was thinking about her boobs and thought I could get three hundred words of it. Them. Whatever. And I almost did.

As I am now a celebrity I have become self-conscious about appearing in public alone. The problem is, no matter how much I talk about my status and exaggerate my wealth, I cannot seem to attract a suitable woman. As a temporary fix I have been using a new online directory of babysitters. I found that actual escorts are incredibly pricey, and babysitting rates are much more reasonable. As a bonus, babysitters do not have to abide by any horseshit ‘must be 18 years old’ bureaucracy. As I am over eighteen, though, I had to register myself as mentally disabled. I went for mental because the physical is much harder fake. Thanks to political correctness gone mad, just about anyone can get themselves diagnosed as mental these days. Up yours Daily Mail readers. So on the morning of the gig I called the agency, gave my name as Elvis ‘The Prince’ Presley Jr. and requested a seventeen year old with ‘surprise tits, if at all possible.’

‘Of course sir,’ said the operator. The mentally ill truly can get away with anything.

When she finally showed up at the bar I had notched up three whiskies, four winks at the barmaid, and I was five minutes away from calling the agency to complain about her tardiness. Another benefit of being mentally disabled is the ability to use the word ‘tardy’, and no one can laugh. She tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around. Her navel was exposed. I craned my neck up. And the only surprise about her tits was that she forgot to bring them.

‘You’re tardy,’ I said, and she snorted a laugh. What a bitch. Ever the gentleman, I offered her a drink. She turned me down and pulled a little vial of cocaine out of her handbag. She tapped it and asked if I wanted some.

‘No thanks,’ I said.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she said, and headed for the toilets.

‘You know if your nose rots off you will literally have nothing sticking out of the front of your body!’ I called after her, but she didn’t hear. Kids these days. No respect for their own profiles. And a professional babysitter too. Fucking degenerate addict. ‘Make this one a double,’ I said to the barmaid, and I think maybe she smiled at me. I say think because my eyes had just accepted full time employment, looking at her chest. Hell, she had enough tit to make a packed lunch for the following day. And I’ll be goddamned if one of her buttons hadn’t popped open. I was immediately transported back to the good old days. Where had it all gone wrong for me? It used to be a sneaky glimpse of a boob was enough for me – now here I was chasing a thrill with a seventeen year old coked up babysitter who made Kate Moss look like a Dolly Parton tribute act. As I stared, I realised I had lost my way. I had to get back to my roots. My titty-loving roots. I necked my whiskey and decided to lose the dame, hoping I might get away without paying her. I turned to go, but something stopped me. I had to turn over a new leaf, and I knew the best way to do that would be to make amends some way. I turned back to the bar and caught the barmaid’s eye. Using my own shirt, I made a buttoning up motion. She looked down and quickly fumbled the rogue button closed. I winked at her, and I think she blushed. I say think, because I was having one last look. As I turned to walk away I heard some old man say, ‘Fuck you kid,’ but I was in full Clint Eastwood mode. Then the babysitter came back in and I had to duck under a table to hide. When she had her back turned, I made a dash for it.

The gig was Nick Lowe, and when I arrived the support – Geraint Watkins – was already under way. I am glad I made it in time for him, because he was a true revelation. A genuine troubadour, he has become a cult legend on the circuit and I instantly understood why. Just about the most at-home-on-stage guy I have ever seen. Funny and chilled out and exceptionally talented, he was such a joy to watch I was slightly disappointed when he finished up and it was time for the main act. I shouldn’t have worried though – Nick Lowe was as awesome as you would expect from a guy whose married Johnny Cash’s stepdaughter. And Geraint came back out to play piano as part of the Nick Lowe band. Also a kind of unsung hero of country and rock n roll music, Nick is a true old-school gent and played a fantastic set, complete with two encores, of such genuinely heartfelt music that it restored my faith in not only music, but in humanity as well. As shitty as things get, it’s good to know there are still guys out there who play music because that’s what they love to do, and that no matter what Viva or 4Music would have you believe, there is still an audience out there for people who, as Bill Hicks put it, ‘play it from their fucking hearts.’

Good authors too
who once knew better words,
now only use four letter words,
writing prose,
anything goes.

I suppose I am as bad as the rest of them. As crass as I am though, for me Marilyn standing over a vent will always beat Kate Upton bouncing in a bikini, and a quiet bar with a man and a piano and a sad song will always trump the Superbowl half time act. But that’s just me…

http://nicklowe.com/
http://www.myspace.com/geraintwatkins

Since then, it’s been great to see the rise and rise of one of those upstarts, Derry’s wonderful The Wonder Villains. You can hear their latest single ‘Ferrari’ on the BBC 6 music playlist these days, and in celebration, here’s a new look at an old rendtion. Oh how they’re all growed up now!

[Download Video]

Excellent news for Belfastians, the legendary John Cale is playing this year’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.

The festival is under threat again because of government cuts, so what better way to show your support than to get down there 3 May.

To celebrate our 1,000th Facebook fan, we’ve prepared something very special exclusively for Bandwidth’s facebook fans: Bandwidth’s first ever DVD collection.

To access it, and learn more about what’s on it, click here or on the image above to go to Bandwidth’s facebook page.

If you’re not a Bandwidth facebook fan, you can like us here.

I had been living in Will’s wardrobe for three days before I heard anything. It only occurred to me then that I had concealed myself on a Friday afternoon and had been staking out Will’s office over the weekend, when no one was there. Luckily it is a walk-in wardrobe, necessary to house Will’s collection of t-shirts with witty slogans on them, which he never wears any more because of ‘the fucking hipsters’, but refuses to throw away. I was able to get up and stretch my legs, but all I had to eat was a wheel of cheese that was so cheap I couldn’t pass it up. I soon realised that it had been reduced because it was out of date and by this point it was so caked in mould and t-shirt fluff that I could have crumbled it over a bed of baby-gem lettuce and cherry tomatoes and charged twenty-two quid for it in Deane’s Deli.

Anyway it was on Monday afternoon that I heard Will talking to Maggie, the former runner we rescued from the BBC a couple of weeks previous (an adventure you can read about here). I only caught a few words from their conversation: adapt… TV… BBC… Wednesday, but I knew it was something I would have to investigate further. After that it sounded like they were just moving furniture or something because for the next half an hour all I heard was a lot of thumping, punctuated by the occasional grunt of ‘of fuck’ by Maggie. She must have been lifting something really heavy because I have NEVER heard a woman make a noise like that before. While they were distracted I wrapped up my cheese, kicked some t-shirts over the corner I had been using for my ‘business’, and crept out, a plan already formulating in my head.

Unfortunately my plan was for naught. On Wednesday morning I walked to the barber’s to get a haircut and found the place closed. Naturally this ruined my day so I went home in a huff, put my jammies on and climbed into bed with a bottle of wine. I even dug out a Smiths album and put it on for the full effect, but I had to switch it off after one song because I was worried I might start lactating. I put Motorhead on instead and drank myself into a restless sleep, no doubt attributed to the cheese I had continued to eat throughout the week.

When I woke up it was dark, I was disoriented and Lemmy’s bass was making it sound like there was a war going on around me. Still furious about having so much hair and, frankly, still drunk, I remembered the BBC meeting Will was sending Maggie to and decided I ought to be there for it. I splashed on some aftershave, scrubbed my teeth back from wine-stained black to their regular coffee-stained yellow, and watched Meet Don Draper six times in a row to psyche myself up. Then I headed for Wetherspoons, where the meeting was to be held. It was called a networking event and was part of the 360 Degree Screen Writing Festival at the BBC, I had discovered, and the whole thing had made me very suspicious.

The place was fucking packed, so I got myself a double and sat on a sofa in my best Don Draper pose, in the hope that people would mistake me for someone important and leave me alone. After my second double and a dirty look from a dame whose ass I had been checking out, I decided to look for Maggie.

I clocked her standing near the stairs, talking to some broad who had a lanyard hanging around her neck, which I took to be a sign of elitism and immediately put me on the offensive. I sidled up behind Maggie and eavesdropped on enough of their conversation to find out that Will’s plan was to sell This Is Not A Review to the BBC so they could adapt it for television.

‘I think it would be perfect for TV,’ said Maggie. The nerve.

‘I don’t,’ I said, making my presence known, and accidentally sloshing some whiskey onto my shirt.

‘Oh, this is Ian,’ said Maggie, glaring at me. ‘The guy who writes This Is Not A Review.’

‘Oh, okay, and why don’t you think it’s right for us?’ asked the producer.

‘It’s better than the BBC,’ I said, and it took a second for my statement to sink in. When it did she scowled at me as if I had just said something incredibly arrogant and rude. She quickly made up an excuse and walked off to hear some other horseshit pitch from some other shitbird.

‘Well done Ian,’ said Maggie, ‘she could have been a big help.’

‘Look!’ I said, ‘If I wanted the comedic geniuses behind The Folks On The Hill to work on my material I would filter it through a sieve of mediocrity.’

I looked around and realised I had been talking a lot louder than I realised, and had attracted the attention of some people nearby, all of whom were suitable appalled. I drained my glass dramatically.

‘That doesn’t even make sense,’ said Maggie.

‘Your face doesn’t make sense,’ I said.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘Actually I’m working,’ I said. ‘This is my art!’

‘This is NOT art,’ she said.

‘Oh HA, HA,’ I mocked, secretly stung by the quality of her joke.

The crowd soon dispersed and I managed to get some more information out of Maggie. She had spoken with another producer, who had shown some real interest in the idea, and they had agreed to meet at some point in the near future.

‘I have to be honest, I don’t think the public is ready for a documentary about me,’ I said.

‘It’s not a documentary Ian,’ she said. ‘Have you been listening to anything I said? The idea is to adapt your writing into a comedy show. An actor would play you.’

‘I see. Well naturally there is only one actor who could possibly do it,’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘Liam Neeson.’

‘Liam Neeson!?’

‘Well who else could do my accent?’

Stay tuned for further developments in the This Is Not A Review television project.

The band are playing dates in Cork, Dublin and Limerick in February and March – so look out for them if you’re there.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

We’ve always brought you the best new music from Ireland north & south, and on our 50th episode we brought you something rather special by bringing you an artist we considered to be a pretty big deal.

But now the series is officially 60 episodes old, and to celebrate, we’ve gone up a notch. From Downpatrick, here is the amazing Tim Wheeler (from a band called Ash) and, from London, the amazing Emma-Lee Moss (also called Emmy The Great), performing a Sleater-Kinney cover in Tim’s mum’s kitchen. Now you don’t see that everyday (unless you’re a bandwidth subscriber of course).

[Download Video]

Definitely my favourite month.

You may have been wondering what happened to Will and me. Or you may not, how the fuck would I know? The point is I’m going to tell you.

After a well deserved Christmas break I returned to the Bandwidth building bright and early on the January 1st with a spring in my step. I had been meaning to see a doctor about it, but what with being drunk for an entire month I just hadn’t gotten round to it. It appears to have been a psychosomatic issue, because what I found at HQ (that’s right, we use professional-sounding lingo) destroyed my mood worse than a badly timed shot of Ron Jeremy’s O-face in a cheap porno, and my tottering short person walk returned almost immediately. The place was a shit tip. Smashed windows covered with cardboard, the unmistakeable stench of a backed up toilet, rats building little houses out of discarded syringes, and by far the worst of all, Michael Barrymore appeared to be squatting there.

‘We warned you about this Barrymore!’ I yelled.

‘No, Will said it was cool this time,’ he replied.

‘What? When? Where is Will?’

‘I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago he said he was moving on. Greener pastures, he said.’

‘Fuck,’ I said, pulling up an office chair and taking out my hip flask. ‘Will was my hero.’ I had a swig and noticed Barrymore eyeing it. I passed it to him. ‘Going though another rough patch huh?’

‘Yeah, just need some time to get my shit together,’ he said, guzzling my whiskey. I snatched the flask back.

‘Could be worse,’ I said. ‘Michael Madsen’s in the Big Brother house.’

After that nothing more needed to be said, and we finished the whiskey in solemn silence.

Before I left I went to take a leak, and that is where I got my lead. The toilet was filthy, and of course there was no toilet paper left. Barrymore had been using old office documents, which he had carefully torn up into wipe-sized squares. I recognised most of them as old This Is Not A Review articles and it struck me that there really would be no reason to print those things out, except with the intention of wiping one’s ass on them, but I didn’t have time to be offended. There, nestled amongst the words that spilled out of me like whiskey from a glass when I fall asleep in front of the TV, was the remnants of an official looking letter written on BBC stationery. The BBC. Of course.

I marched all the way to the BBC building, stopping only briefly for three pints of Guinness. At the reception I slammed my fists on the desk and demanded to see Will. The receptionist told me I wasn’t allowed in without a visitor’s pass.

‘How do I get one of those?’ I asked.

‘Just fill in this form.’

‘Fuck that!’ I screamed. ‘This is an emergency.’

‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave sir,’ she said.

‘I’ll be back,’ I said.

CUT TO:

Me, crashing a car through the front of the BBC building.

I reached over the desk and snatched a visitor’s pass, then I descended into the depths of televisual hell. I had prepared myself for some resistance, but the only obstacle I encountered was a girl I went to university with.

‘Hey [name deleted for reasons of libel], good to see you again. Now where’s McConnell?’

After pretending not to recognise me, she gave me the long version of how successful she has been in the ‘industry’. Finally she told me how to find Will and went back to mopping, insisting that I not walk over her lovely clean floor, and find another way around.

The door was marked ‘Sound/Dubbing/Cleaner’s Store’. I booted it in, and immediately regretted my decision. Will had his feet up on a mixing board and was leisurely masturbating to a behind-the-scenes video loop showing [name deleted for reasons of libel] repeatedly bending over, exposing perhaps an inch of cleavage at most.

‘Ian!’ he exclaimed.

‘Jesus!’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Please stop masturbating!’ I said.

‘Oh, right,’ he said, tucking himself away. ‘What’s up?’

‘Dude, what’s happened to you?’

‘I’m moving up in the world Ian. Steady work. A credit on a real TV show. Even my own office,’ he said, motioning around the cramped mixing studio we were in. ‘The ladies toilets are next door. You can hear them when they’re in there.’

‘Jesus fuck Will, you’ve turned into a sex pest. And worse, a dubbing mixer.’

‘Oh yeah, coming from the guy who works in a chocolate shop.’

‘I still have my dreams Will. And when I jerk off at work I have the decency to go to the toilet.’

‘But I’m happy here. It’s easy,’ he said.

I grabbed him by the collar, spun his chair around and slapped him in the face. I tried to ignore the fact that the movement had exposed his genitals again. ‘Listen to me William,’ I said. ‘Did I ever tell you about my uncle?’

‘Your uncle was not John Wayne, Ian’

‘No, my other uncle. Tony. He had this obsession with people letting their dogs shit in the street. He used to go on and on about how the council should do more about it until one day he finally snapped and started his own private business cleaning up dog turds in upper class areas. At first everyone thought he was crazy, but it really caught on. He was even in the paper. ‘Pooper Trooper is Super, Says Council’. But you know where he is now? He’s a dog shit warden in a park. The council liked his idea so much they hijacked it and now he works for them. Just another cog in the machine. He never has to get his hands dirty, but you know what? He’s a broken man. Says he can’t even remember what a bucket of dog shit smells like any more.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Will.

‘Don’t you see? You used to be in charge of shit. Even if it was just small time, it was all yours. Now you’re just doing someone else’s shit for them.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, standing up, his junk lolling into plain view. ‘Let’s go make some fucking music videos.’

‘Okay, but put your bits away first dude. And zip up this time.’

As we tracked mucky footprints across a beautifully clean floor we bumped into the runner, heading in the other direction with a tray loaded with cups of tea. Seeing the mess we had made she dropped the tray, scattering broken crockery and tea, and broke into tears.

‘I can’t do this any more,’ she cried. ‘Please, take me with you.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good…’ I started.

‘What show do you work on?’ Will interrupted.

‘Out Of The Blue,’ she sobbed.

‘Oh you poor thing,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘Of course you can come with us.’

I mouthed ‘what the fuck?’ at him and he responded by cupping his hands in front of his chest and biting his lip in a furious manner. Luckily I know sign language, and understood that he was indicating her massive breasts. He had a point.

‘Okay then,’ I said, ‘let’s go.’

We headed straight back to HQ, stopping only very briefly so I could have three pints of Guinness.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

Check out The Jepettos on bandcamp.

Piss up in brewery you say? Sure ok. Here’s the highlights:

Playlist:
1- Sons Of Caliber
2- Runaway Go
3- Paul Shevlin
4- Lee Hedley Band
5- Junior Johnson
6- The Inishowen Gospel Choir
7- Farriers
8- Clown Parlour
9- Aaron Shanley

Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Or, all I really want for Christmas.

[Editor's Note: This was supposed to be a review of the last week's Electric Six gig. The following is what Ian turned in. When questioned about it his only response was, 'Fuck that noise,' in what we think was supposed to be a Kenny Powers impression.]

I was on the can when the inspiration for this article hit me. There was a condom machine just outside the stall I was using, and with no reading materials to hand, I had begun pondering it. The machine advertised three condoms for three pounds. What struck me as unusual about it was that it dispensed a pack of three different kinds. A regular old rubber Johnny, an ultra-fine, and a ribbed-for-her-pleasure. Surely for most people this is just plain inconvenient. Surely anyone who needs a condom has a preference, which means two out of those three aren’t going to be exactly what they wanted. I, for example, would have no use for anything other than the regular one. I am a meat and potatoes kinda guy, you see. And when you’re fucking a plate of meat and potatoes the ultra-fine ones have a tendency to rip, and the ribbed ones just become clogged with food, which defeats the whole purpose. I jest, of course. I have never been able to persuade a plate of food to sleep with me, even after adding liberal amounts of wine during cooking. I came close once, but the bitch tricked me by asking for oral first. By the time I realised my error I had scoffed the lot, leaving nothing but a gravy slicked plate. What was I talking about again? I was going somewhere with this…

Oh yes, condoms as a metaphor for life. I know what you are thinking. You all know enough about my sex life – ie the complete lack of it – to know that I have no use for contraceptives. So how do I know so much about them? Well I’ll tell you. There is a girl who works in the pharmacy next door to the shop I work in. She is so pretty she makes my heart hurt. No, seriously, one day I had to ask her for a bottle of Gaviscon. The convenience of her profession was not lost on me. As it turns out that day the heartburn was actually caused by a case of Bulgarian beer I found in my mate’s shed. I had to drink the lot, to prove my assertion that ‘beer doesn’t go out of date.’ Even after six years. Back to the rubbers…

Six months ago I hatched a plan to woo this pretty pharmacist. I say plan. I started buying condoms off her. Every week. The biggest box they had. No conversation. No silly come ons. Just an expression that said yeah, I do a lot of sex. My thinking was that she would at first be intrigued, then impressed, then downright jealous of my sheer… output. I was banking on it, in fact, because after shower cap I couldn’t think of a use for the goddamn things and they were starting to pile up. After a few weeks I decided to up my game and go for the wow factor by buying a pack of Magnums. I only did that once though. After slipping one over my head for my morning shower I was fucking horrified to find it quite roomy. Who buys those fucking things? Seriously, I have trouser legs with a lesser circumference. Every cloud, though. That was the first morning for about a month I washed my hair, so I immediately stopped looking so… Persian. My next tactic was to give off the bad boy vibe. You know, living on the edge. I started buying the ultra-fine ones. Because for a badass like me, the very slight improvement in pleasure was worth the increased risk of unwanted pregnancy, or even chlamydia. (I just fucking spelled chlamydia right first time!) This didn’t seem to impress her the way I had hoped, so I changed tactics again. I started buying the ribbed ones, in a bid to look like a considerate lover. I had put off buying this particular kind on general principle, as I believe the female orgasm is a myth, like Elvis’s death, or the whole black guy thing. I will concede that white men can’t jump, but only because we don’t need to, as demonstrated by Guinness world record holder for ‘greatest number of badass acts of violence in one TV show’, Vic Mackey:

Fences? Fuck fences. Where was I? Oh yes, ribbed for her pleasure…

These did not appear to have the desired effect either, and the ever growing pile of condoms in the corner of my room was like a monument to jerking off. Then I caught a cold and decided life sucks and I shouldn’t ever bother trying to do anything. I stopped at the pharmacy on my way to work and, seeing me approach, the girl grabbed a box of twelve ribbed condoms.

‘Oh, no thanks,’ I said. ‘I just need some decongestant.’

‘Oh,’ she said, putting the condoms back and picking up a bottle of Sudafed.

‘I was only buying those to impress you anyway,’ I said.

‘It didn’t work… at all.’

‘That’s okay, don’t suppose you want to get a cup of coffee some time?’

‘I have a boyfriend,’ she said.

‘That figures,’ I said with a wistful smile. ‘Just out of curiosity, what is your preference with those things?’

‘Oh… umm… my boyfriend has to use special ones actually.’

‘Ah, latex allergy.’

‘No, those ones,’ she said, pointing to the Magnums. And suddenly her odd gait made sense. I tried to suppress a grimace. ‘Is that everything then?’ she asked.

~ Pause for comedic effect ~

‘Actually I’m gonna need some Vaseline too.’

Where was I going with this thing again? Oh yeah, the life lesson. I forget what it is, actually. The only advice I can impart is, don’t turn the ribbed condoms inside out for enhanced sensation. Apparently ‘ribbed for her pleasure’ actually means ‘chafes like a motherfucker’. If you do ever make that mistake, though, don’t bother your GP with it. You local pharmacist should be able to help.

[Download Video]

Have a look at the playlist below watch all 10 videos, including performances from The Lowly Knights, Katie & The Carnival, Southern, Captain Cameron, Ben Glover & Anthony Toner and Rams’ Pocket Radio

[Download all 10 videos for ipod] – zip, m4v files, 672MB

Naoimh is in the process of mastering a new EP – and will tour Europe in 2012 – I urge you to see her live at some point.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

For those who can’t wait for the 2012 tour of course – Naoimh happened to be playing The Black Box in Belfast the day of shooting – here’s a bonus track, a rather startling version of an Adele song (a Bandwidth first I think).

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed Belfast, November 2011.

The mountainous northern Alabama.

‘Here is something you can’t understand,
How I could just kill a man.’

- Cypress Hill

I covertly sniffed my armpit. It definitely wasn’t me. I tried to scan the immediate vicinity but my vision was consumed by two huge anorak-covered backs. One belonged to a beer swilling giant of a man, the other to his almost-just-as-giant beer swilling wife, whom I suspected was the one farting in my general direction. I stared into my empty plastic cup, wondering where Scarlett had gotten to, and then put the cup around my nose so I could huff some whiskey fumes. How the fuck could there be so many Steve Earle fans in Belfast? Then Scarlett was poking me in the back and she was empty handed.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t get near the bar.’

‘But your lightly freckled cleavage ought to be bartender Kryptonite!’ I said.

‘The bar is full of assholes,’ she shrugged.

‘Same deal in here,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I can do this sober. I’m going to snap the next time someone shoves me.’ And someone shoved me. I spun on my heels, ready to paste the motherfucker and discovered it was a heavily tattooed guy with long curly ginger hair. Considering the possibility that he was some sort of heavy metal Celtic warrior, I squashed myself against the wall and let him pass. ‘Next time I really will,’ I reassured Scarlett, and she gave me that smile.

It had been pure dumb luck that I stumbled upon Scarlett’s video on Youtube.

[Editor's Note: Ian's web history shows that he had "stumbled upon" Scarlett's video by way of a search for 'Irish girls gone wild.']

She was a girl from Galway, drunkenly singing Galway Girl by Steve Earle, although the only part she seemed to know was the ‘eigh-aye-eigh-aye-eigh’ bit. With the Steve Earle gig only a couple of weeks away I decided it was a sign from the gods and had Will track her down. Long story short she didn’t want to pass up a free Steve Earle show and she arrived in Belfast a couple of days before the gig. We hit it off the second she finished her pint of Guinness before me, and we spent every waking hour together. Every sleeping hour too, if you get what I mean…

[Editor's Note: You're a liar?]

The night before the show I watched True Romance and had an epiphany. It is very unlikely that Patricia Arquette will be ever fuck me. So I decided to settle for Scarlett. The day of the gig I bought a ring, thinking I would be romantic and propose during Galway Girl. Now a brief pause to allow the female readers to finish saying ‘awwwwwww’…

[Editor's Note: What female readers?]

But there I was smooshed between a bunch of fatties and Steve Earle was coming on and any sense of romance in the air was blanketed by the smell of beer-sweat and cheese and onion flavoured farts. It’ll be okay once he starts playing, I thought, then they’ll settle down. But they didn’t. In fact most of the people there didn’t even believe that Steve Earle’s presence on stage warranted a pause in their conversations. They didn’t just talk during songs, they talked, nay, shouted over Steve while he was trying to talk to the audience between songs. This prompted a number of ‘shushes’ and even a few ‘shut the fuck up’s, but to no avail. Even when Steve himself suggested that ‘the people at the bar shut the fuck up’, they ignored him and continued yammering loudly at each other. The fact that I was squashed in at the back was tolerable – I am always squashed in at the back in Mandela Hall – but being squashed in at the back with nothing to drink, surrounded by obnoxious assholes who think their own inane fucking conversation is more interesting than hearing Steve Earle live was too much for me. If you were at the gig and you talked during it, I hope you get cancer of the prostate/vulva (delete as appropriate), you sack of shit. It does go to show how good Steve was, however, that even the shit crowd couldn’t ruin the gig for me. He did a long set with a bunch of the classics peppered through more recent songs and although it was hard to hear him over the sea of dickheads surrounding me, he took the time to tell a few cool stories and interact with the crowd, which I always appreciate. He did play Galway Girl, but I decided it wouldn’t be wise to take a knee in the bustling crowd, so I slipped the ring over my finger for safe keeping and decided to propose after the show. Alas, my plan was doomed.

I was lost in a furious trance, glaring at some twat who was taking a video of the show on his phone. Just a piece of advice: if you pay thirty two quid to see a living legend in your own home town and you decide to watch it through a three-inch screen on your shitty fucking camera phone, you’re an asshole. There is no exception to this rule. Then someone dumped half a pint of Harp down the back of my neck and I finally lost it. I turned around to see some silly fat bitch trying to manoeuvre (read: push) her way through the crowd CARRYING FOUR PINTS OF HARP. Who tries to carry four pints in plastic cups through a sold out crowd? I never even try to carry three pints in case I drop one and look like a twat.

[Editor's Note: Well, you do have little dainty hands.]

Not now Ed, I’m on a roll…

And here was this ignorant twat pushing past me and rolling her eyes like it was my fault she spilled some.

‘YOU FAT FUCKING CU…’ I started to scream, and then I was shoved again. I turned around to see the Celtic warrior, once more on the warpath and taking no prisoners. I shoved him back and when he turned on me I chinned him a good one. He stumbled back, his eyes going wide, and then he collapsed. I looked at my fist, awed by my own manly prowess, and realised it hadn’t been my Tyson Fury-like right that put him down. The diamond from the ring on my finger had evidently come loose and flew into his throat when I hit him. As I watched him choke to death I realised it wouldn’t be long before someone called the cops, and they would probably blame me, so I fled into the night.

Scarlett hasn’t spoken to me since. Apparently seeing me commit manslaughter wasn’t a turn on for her, so I suppose she wasn’t right for me after all. Well, there’s always Alabama…

This is not an accurate depiction of Ian's life.

For some reason it never occurred to me that a screening of Game Of Thrones would be full of fantasy nerds. In my mind it was just another example of the sort of quality television I have come to expect of HBO, but fantasy fans are a peculiar breed of die-hard and they were out in force for this particular event. There were even a few in costume, though at this point I had never seen the show so I didn’t know who they were supposed to be. One of the dressed-up dames had caught my eye. She was standing off to one corner, wearing a long shabby dress and looking rather timid. And her tits were fucking huge. The sheer fabric of her costume was stretched taut enough to give every unkempt prick in the lobby a half-mast hope that at any point it might just give and rip in just the right spot. She fit the description Will had given me – which was in actual fact just a groping hand motion in front of his chest – but intimidation had me rooted to the spot. I hadn’t had time to stop in the pub before the show, and my Draper-juice was tucked away in a flask inside my jacket. The flash of chrome would have been a dead give-away and I feared being thrown out before I even got drunk enough to cause a proper scene. Finally I managed to channel some Mickey out of sheer desperation. There was a creepy looking motherfucker with a pony-tail hovering dangerously close to her and I didn’t want to relive the pain I suffered at a recent gig when some groupie-wannabe was stolen from me by a pony-tailed pig, whose only tactic seemed to be grinding up against her and spilling his beer on her shoes. Just the flagrant waste of good beer was enough to piss me off, but the dame appeared to be into it and that just about ruined my whole night. I shuffled over to her and gave her a weak smile.

‘Is there any chance you’re April?’

Looking slightly relieved she confirmed that she was indeed April. ‘I thought you must be Ian when I saw you but I wasn’t sure.’

‘How did Will describe me?’

‘Oh, uh, I wouldn’t want to say…’

‘No, it’s okay. You won’t hurt my feelings,’ I said with a smile, demonstrating my manly thick skin.

‘Well, he said “pre-Hollywood-weight-loss Ricky Gervais”.’

My feelings were pretty badly hurt, but I knew I couldn’t show weakness. I tried to laugh it off. ‘I’m surprised he didn’t mention my thinning hair.’

‘Oh, he did,’ she said. ‘I forgot that part.’

‘Well, you look good,’ I said, staring at her tits.

‘Thanks. I’m just a wench. I thought you would like a wench.’ And immediately, I forgave Will.

That night they showed the first five episodes of Season 1. At first I was all like ‘eh’ but it wasn’t long before I decided it was the best thing of all time. It could have been a terrifically boring night considering how long it lasted, but by the time the credits rolled on episode five I was so hooked I probably would have sat through the following five as well. Alas, they were to be saved for the following night. My hip flask now empty, I had just enough manly confidence to say goodnight to April without jabbering like a fool and I went home feeling strangely light-hearted, safe in the knowledge that I would see her again before long. When I caught my reflection in the taxi mirror I noticed that my face was contorted – my mouth sort of drawn up at the sides – and I realised I was experiencing something incredibly rare. Sober joy. My God, I thought, imagine how good this would be drunk. I decided to make a few adjustments for the following night, and it wouldn’t be Don Draper or even Mickey Rourke who would be my inspiration. It would be Tyrion Lanister, the coolest wine-swilling, wench-fucking dwarf I had ever seen. When I got home I grabbed a bottle and my mum’s sewing kit and set to work.

When I woke up the next day I couldn’t move my arm and I was stricken by blind panic, until, through the haze of the hangover I realised I had just stitched the cuff of my shirt to my jeans. The needlework was surprisingly good, if I do say so myself, but the garment I was working on was destroyed in the struggle to free my arm. Fuck it, I thought, I’ll just wear a cape, and went back to sleep.

That night I made sure to get a good buzz going before I arrived at the Movie House, and of course I had my flask with me again. I ducked into the toilets and put my cape on, and when I looked at myself in the mirror my face was smiling with the anticipation of seeing my busty wench again. When I swished back out into the lobby, though, the smile quickly fell away. April was there, but my wench was not. She was just dressed like a regular modern day dame. A buxom dame, sure, but she had lost the specialness that her filthy harlot costume had created.

‘I thought you thought the costume was kinda goofy,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I just wasn’t myself last night. Didn’t have enough whiskey. I even wore a cape tonight.’

‘I see that.’ she said.

‘Like Tyrion…’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Because he seems to be a hit with the ladies.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘Tyrion has to pay for it. Now Khal Drogo, he just takes it. I like that.’

My feelings were pretty badly hurt, but I knew I couldn’t show weakness. I tried to laugh it off. ‘And he has a pony tail,’ I joked.

‘Oh I LOVE pony tails,’ she said.

Fuming, I went inside, found a seat and took a hit from the flask.

If anything there were even more beheadings and titties in the second half of the series than the first, which I found impressive. Her comment had all but ruined every scene involving Khal Drogo for me, but at the same time I couldn’t quite hate the guy. He is played by Jason Momoa – a man so large and good looking that even the intense jealousy he inspires isn’t enough to mask the truth of the situation, which is that if I was a dame he would make me moist too. I have a certain deference for men like that. If I’m going to be a loser I’m going to try to be a good one. I won’t give anything away about the show, I would just urge you to check it out. It is not the best TV show ever made but that is due to the quality of the other shows, not a lack thereof in this one. What it does do better than just about any other show is turn the badass level to eleven. What man doesn’t like bloody violence and titties? And what woman doesn’t like the idea of Khal Drogo taking you as his princess and banging you in his tent every night after a hard day cutting fucking heads off? What else can I say? It has something for everyone.

After studying Tyrion Lanister’s every conniving move for over four hours and having my world rocked by the season finale, I was convinced that I could bed April, wench-outfit or not. A small contingent headed for the nearest bar and we followed. Inside I draped myself into one of the booths and told her to bring me some wine. She brought me over a glass and then excused herself, so I took the opportunity to sup my wine and survey the bar, feeling like a royal fucking badass. When I caught sight of her again she was being chatted up by the creep with the pony tail. He was hunched over her in such a sweaty frenzy he spilled some of his pint, which just made her giggle. As my look dissolved from drunk and aloof to drunk and maudlin, a group of zombies walked into the bar, celebrating Halloween early. They stopped at my table.

‘Are you Willow?’ asked one of the lady-zombies.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Who are you then?’

‘Tyrion Lanister.’

‘Who?’

‘Never mind,’ I said. I drank the glass of wine down in one and got up to leave. As I did, my foot got caught in my cape and I fell down.

‘Go easy on the wine there Frodo,’ said one of the others, and all the zombies laughed at me.

PS – if any of you are lucky enough to work on Game Of Thrones, I have a film degree, I am desperate and I make really fucking good tea. I’m just putting that out there.

TPT is the musical project of one Ben Behzadafshar – Bandwidth regulars may recognise David Armstrong in the band, of Polar Beyond infamy. Though the project was short lived, I’m sure we haven’t heard the last from him as a recording artist.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed at Giant’s Ring, Co. Antrim, June 2011.

This Is Not A Review will return next week. I will be spending the entire weekend finishing my Halloween costume, which is Tyrion Lanister from Game Of Thrones, a.k.a. ‘The coolest motherfucker of all time.’

Being short just got awesome. Prophecise, bitches.

I couldn’t resist working with him again, being as he is, one of my favourite emerging artists from these parts. Full stop. Luckily for me and you, Chris is recording his debut EP. This is a little bit of what he can do:

[Download Video]

Filmed in Belfast September 2011

I had only ducked into the bar for a pint and some peace and quiet. Not only was there a pub quiz on, screwing my plans for peace, but as my Guinness settled I spied a new bottle on a shelf behind the bar. I clocked it as Four Roses bourbon, which I have never tried before.

‘Barkeep!’ I yelled. ‘Four fingers of Four Roses, please.’

‘We use measures here Ian, you know that,’ he said.

‘How many fingers in a measure?’

‘I don’t know. About one and half.’

‘Of course, depends on the fatness of one’s fingers, I suppose. So one and half fingers per measure… four divided by one and half… the fractions always get me… the number you’re diving by, turn upside down and multiply… hmmm… eleven? Jesus that can’t be right.’

‘How about you start with one and if you like it you can make the next one a double,’ said the barman, eyeing the queue that was forming behind me.

‘Good thinking,’ I said, and he poured me one. It was delicious, if you were wondering. Not the best bourbon I have ever had, but then I am a connoisseur. Or ‘fuckin wanker’, as they say in Belfast.

‘It’s about time,’ said one of the punters behind me. ‘I just missed the Strictly Come Dancing question.’

‘My apologies sir,’ I said, supping my whiskey. ‘Have them repeat it and I will give you the answer.’

‘You don’t look like a Strictly fan,’ he said.

‘But why wouldn’t I be. Strictly features a veritable feast of the most exotic women on television. They have names like Katya, Flavia and Aliona, and they are all leg. Not only that but you get the best of both worlds – all sweaty in tank tops and shorts while they’re practising, and all dolled up in nothing but two well-placed straps and a pair of satin knickers when they perform. It’s a work of fucking genius.’ The queue of thirsty people just stared at me, apparently awed by my cinematic speech.

‘Fuckin wanker,’ someone muttered.

‘Connoisseur!’ I corrected, but my attention was immediately diverted by the sight of the barmaid, pulling a pint. ‘Exotic as they are though,’ I said, leaning on the bar and giving her my best Roger Sterling smile, ‘they can’t quite match the staff in here.’ My line fell on the wrong side of sleazy though, and she just looked away. I drained my glass.

Many drinks later I motioned for the barman. The barmaid had successfully ignored my every attempt at eye-contact, thereby avoiding serving me.

‘I need more whiskey,’ I said.

‘How much this time?’

‘Hell, a whole bouquet!’

‘How much is that?’ he asked.

‘Hmm, how many fours in a bouquet? Jesus I must be drunk.’ Rather than wait for me to work it out he just gave me a single and took my money. The barmaid was at the tap right in front of me.

‘Listen!’ I yelled so loud she couldn’t hope to ignore me. ‘Your aloofness is understandable, and it compliments your beauty perfectly, but you are breaking my goddamn heart!’ My words – always my strongest asset – broke through the wall my drunken debauchery had built between us, and I swear it, we had a fucking moment. ‘When do you finish?’ I asked.

‘Ten minutes,’ she said. Which was lucky because I had drank all my money, and I am not sure how much longer I could have stretched this part of the story.

After her shift she met me outside. She had changed out of her sweaty tank top, let her hair down, and she was now fully made up, wearing a beautiful dress, which I felt was impractical but lovely nonetheless. I told her as much, and she smiled.

‘Let me show you something,’ I said.

CUT TO:

The Bandwidth building.

We crept in through the front door and sprinted across the lobby to the elevator, the fat Mexican security guard giving chase as best he could. The damn lift was out of order so, giggling with the naughtiness of it all, we headed for the stairs and ran up a full five flights, well ahead of the guard. At the fifth floor I guided her to Will’s office, where we hid until we were sure the guard had given up looking.

‘Why are we here?’ she asked.

‘You’ll see,’ I said, and went to the floor-to-ceiling window. I pulled open the blinds, revealing the most spectacular view in all of Belfast. I know this because next to the window is a brass plaque which reads ‘The most spectacular view in all of Belfast.’ The city was beautifully illuminated and the cloudless sky impossibly full of stars. She came over to stand next to me and took my hand as we gazed out the window at the city. We had another moment. At around 2am, when the streets started to fill with boking students, we decided to call it a night. We went back to the stairs, but couldn’t open the door. The security guard had had a heart attack from the exertion and fallen down behind the door, sealing us in. The lift, of course, was still out of order.

‘It looks like we will have to stay the night,’ I said, and we went back to Will’s office.

‘I’m cold,’ she said, wrapping her arms around herself. I reminded her that I had warned her about the impracticality of her attire, but re-assured her that I would take care of it.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen like four episodes of Bear Grylls.’ I started kicking at the legs of Will’s desk until I splintered a couple of them off. I built them up into a little pile and tried to set fire to them, wondering why they wouldn’t catch. Then I remembered that Will’s desk is not made of wood, but of the bones of several notorious South American dictators. He claims their spirits live on, enriching him with what he calls his ‘death stare’, or ‘olhar mortal’.

‘I’m sorry, this isn’t going to work,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to find some other way to keep warm.’

‘Like what?’ she said.

‘Well if there was a camel carcass here I could hollow it out, but there isn’t…’

‘What else can we do?’ she asked.

CUT TO:

The following morning.

The cleaners found the dead security guard on the stairs, then me, sleeping naked on Will’s smashed-up desk, clutching one of his sofa cushions to my chest. The carpet was charred and littered with shards of bone, and next to me on the floor was an empty Four Roses bottle, and Will’s coffee cup, half-filled with urine.

The damage to the office has subsequently been blamed on the security guard, since he was Mexican, and he was dead anyway.

Gratuitous photo of Kirsten Dunst in a wet tank top.  Or, the only redeeming feature of the Spiderman movies.

Drive

When I try to be all professional and shit…

Drive is about stunt driver Ryan Gosling, whose past-times include chewing toothpicks, brooding, and driving getaway cars for professional burglars. He is the perfect professional – a lone wolf who lives to drive and drives to live. Until, that is, he meets Carrie Mulligan, who is prettier than any woman really has a right to be. The Goz gets involved with her and her son and everything is going well, until her husband gets out of prison and comes home. The husband owes money to some nasty people, who want him to pull a job as payment. The Goz agrees to help him, because he is a bloody decent guy. But, of course, things don’t go to plan.

Films with this much style don’t often come with substance to match, so this is quite a rare species. The Goz, aside from being the handsomest devil on the planet, is a damn fine actor and turns in a pitch perfect performance as the getaway driver with such huge balls he has to wear specially tailored jeans. All of the actors are good too, but this is very much a one man movie. A man who doesn’t blink and has a scorpion on his jacket.

It just wouldn’t be right to neglect to mention the cinematography and the score, though – both of which are stunning. The attention to detail in every aspect of the film creates an experience that goes beyond simple storytelling. There is a cohesion between the story that is being told, and how it is being told, which is something most lazy film-makers just don’t bother with. The artistic merits offset the gloriously graphic violence, which rather than seeming gratuitous, is brutal and shocking and absolutely right for the tone of the film, turning a simple shotgun blast to the head into a beautiful ballet of brains and blood.  That’s right, alliteration bitch.

A truly exceptional piece of uber-cool cinema.

When I just say what I really thought…

Ron Perlman is like a fucking alligator. He has too many teeth and his number one interest is murder. And he’s not even the best thing about this goddamn movie…

Melancholia

When I try to be all professional and shit…

Melancholia is a film in two halves. The first one is about a doomed wedding reception for newly-weds Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard). Not only can their family members not get along, Justine is suffering from a sort of melancholia that is only made worse by everyone’s insistence that she be happy. The second chapter, as Von Trier does enjoy his films in chapters, is about Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who is convinced that a planet called Melancholia, which is due to pass by close to Earth, is actually going to collide with and destroy the entire planet. As if that isn’t enough to worry about, she is also trying to look after Justine, whose melancholia has developed into a fully fledged depression.

Each chapter works well independently. The wedding reception at first appears to be nothing more than a beautifully shot melodrama, but is in actual fact quite a nuanced and subtle study of depression and modern-day malaise. Dunst’s performance was a true revelation to me, as I personally haven’t seen her given free roam in a challenging role before. The second chapter is a simpler, more tightly contained story. Charlotte Gainsbourg’s performance is on par with Kirsten Dunst’s, as she slowly unravels in the face of potential world destruction. Like Justine in the first chapter, Claire’s mental state is only antagonised by those around her – scientifically-minded husband (Kiefer Sutherland) and walking zombie depressive sister – who fail, or refuse, to understand her fear. Though each half is accomplished in itself, the film taken as a whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

The prosaic pacing had me wondering, at points, if it was all really necessary, or if the director had simply given himself over to self-indulgence. Lars Von Trier is not one to shy away from controversy or unconventionality, and is not afraid to explore some plot threads which are ultimately left dangling – a terribly faux pas in Hollywood film but strangely intriguing when done correctly, as it is here. The whole thing probably could have been more concise but I have to admit that after the screening, and for the days since, I have been thinking about the film, which isn’t something I can often say. I feel like I haven’t fully processed it yet, and as such am slightly ill-equipped to say anything definite about it. It is a ponderous, beautiful film, which won’t be to everyone’s tastes. There are some true flashes of brilliance, though, in the performances and in the epic, intense imagery, which is more aesthetically than emotionally pleasing, but incredible to behold all the same. It is beautiful and thoughtful and I liked it. I just haven’t decided how much yet.

When I just say what I really thought…

Damn, Kirsten Dunst has some nice boobs.

But nothing lasts forever. Stevie Scullion, one half of Cat Malojian, continued as a recordign artist, and what’s more, he took the name ‘Malojian’ with him. The Cat is dea, long live ‘Malojian‘.

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast, August 2011.

I awoke in a dusky haze to feel something vibrating against my thigh.

‘Not again Donna! My ass looks like a goddamn yawning child!’ The vibrating persisted.

‘Damn it Donna don’t make me take the belt to you,’ I yelled, leaping to my feet. I found the room empty. Of life, that is. The room was actually quite full – of whiskey bottles mostly, and empty Jaffa Cake boxes. I reached into my pocket and took out my phone, which was still buzzing.

‘Yeah?’

‘Ian it’s Will. What have you got for Friday?’

‘Fuck all my man, fuck all.’

‘That’s what I suspected. Which is why I have scored you entry to a press screening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy today.’

‘Say again?’

‘I got your name on the list to see the movie for free, so you can write about it on Friday.’

‘I see. Are you sending the limo?’

‘Why would I send a limo?’

‘Typical. I might as well work for the fucking Telegraph,’ I said, and hung up on him. ‘Donna!’ I yelled. Donna is a broad I shacked up with a few weeks ago. She’s a bit older than I would normally go for but she drinks like Prohibition is coming back and she is downright filthy between the sheets. She appeared in the doorway wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, which was quite the coincidence because that’s exactly how I was dressed. She took a long drag on her smoke.

‘What is it honey?’

‘Go dig out your finest threads babe, I’m gonna show you off around town.’

‘Where we going?’

‘I’m taking you to a movie première.

‘Really?’

‘Goddamn right. I told you I was a celebrity.’ Nestled among many other lies the night we met, I had in fact told her I was a celebrity.

‘What about Jaxon?’ she asked.

‘Who’s Jaxon?’

‘My son!’

‘Oh yeah, the kid. Leave him with your mother.’

‘My mother died two months ago! How many times?’

‘All right, we’ll leave him with my mother.’

‘You’re going to let me meet your mum?’ she said, a look of almost painful hope on her face.

‘Hell no, she’d flip out. I’ll tell her I found the kid in the street and I’ve gone to report it to social services.’

‘Oh… okay,’ she said, and turned to go.

‘Hey babe.’

‘Yeah?’ she turned back, hopeful again.

‘I’ll have eggs for breakfast.’

‘Okay Mickey,’ she said. And I suppose that would be the cue for some back story.

Two weeks ago on a routine night out drinking in the bar, two of my friends joined me. I have grown rather accustomed to drinking alone and having company usually has one of two effects: either I curl up inside my shell and wait for them to leave, or I kick the shell off my back and start dancing like Mick Jagger. What happened to me two weeks ago, because of my prolonged state of solitude, is a rare medical condition known as going ‘Full Mickey’. This is inspired by Mickey Rourke’s triumphant return from the darkness to the spotlight, which was punctuated by recurring displays of awesome. When I was first taken by the spirit of Mickey I ordered another double Jack and requested that they play ‘Here I Go Again’ by Whitesnake, which I then sang along to. My display attracted the attention of Donna, who was sitting nearby, and complimented me on my chest hair. The rest of the night involved me stuffing a faux-fur scarf down my shirt (to give me the Chuck Norris look, since chest hair was working for me), demonstrating how bitchin’ Rab McCullough’s version of Voodoo Child was on my air guitar, and walking through town shaking hands with everyone I met. When I came to the next day I was in Donna’s place, and though my head was pounding rather than buzzing, the spirit of Mickey hadn’t left me. I decided to roll with it, so I had a beer for breakfast and rolled back into bed with my newly acquired cougar. And that about brings us up to date.

Donna staggered into the room on six inch heels and a dress of shimmering emerald green sequins that hugged in all the right places. I had opted for my lilac tuxedo and shades (of course).

‘Goddamn baby, you look sexy. Like a high class hooker.’

‘Aw, thanks babe,’ she said. ‘I left Jaxon with the lady next door, so we don’t have to bother your mum.’

‘Who’s Jaxon?’

‘Jesus Mick, how much have you had already?’ I waved the whiskey bottle in the air so she could see, then had another swig.

‘That stuff’s not good for your stomach,’ she said, stuffing a bottle of Smirnoff into her bag.

‘I’m taking Minxie,’ I said, lifting the dog into the crook of my arm. I had kitted her out in a little red coat.

‘Aw,’ said Donna. ‘You remind me of someone standing there like that.’

‘Mickey Rourke?’

‘No, not him. I can’t think of who it is though…’

‘Never mind babe, we have to go. I want to get there early to catch the paparazzi. Will the whiskey fit in your bag?’

‘I don’t think so…’

‘Goddamnit Donna you always carry a bunch of useless shit around.’ I took the bag and threw out all unnecessary items – make up bag, feminine products, insulin kit – and stuffed my bottle in.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about it babe,’ I said, then gave her a kiss and a smack on the ass and we headed out the door.

When we got to Queen’s Film Theatre there was no one outside.

‘We must have missed the red carpet,’ I said, and Minxie gave a little yap in agreement. We went on in.

I swaggered up to the front desk.

‘I’m from Bandwidth, I’m here for the movie,’ I said to the woman. She looked at me, then at Minxie, then Donna, and then back to me.

‘Um, dogs aren’t allowed in the cinema sir,’ she said.

‘Come, she’s not that ugly,’ I said, looking at Donna, who responded by punching me in the side of the head.

‘This is my guide dog,’ I said. ‘I’m blind.’ The dame didn’t look convinced, despite the fact that I was wearing sunglasses indoors. Seriously, some people.

‘Minxie, where’s the bar?’ I said. Minxie barked.

‘See?’ I said, and walked over to the bar. Donna followed, trying to stay upright on her ridiculous heels.

‘What are you having babe?’ I asked.

‘Just get me a Coke and I’ll put some vodka in it,’ she said, looking around the reception area at all the other press folks.

‘You take it easy on the sugar, sugar,’ I said, and we both had a good laugh at my joke. We got our drinks and took a seat.

‘I don’t like these people,’ she said. ‘They all look like they’re holding in a shit.’

‘They’re critics baby, they aren’t known for holding in shit. They prefer to type it out.’

‘So how come you got invited?’ she asked.

‘I write shit too baby. It just doesn’t smell as bad.’ Minxie yapped her approval and I set my glass of beer down on the floor next to her, in case she got thirsty. By the time they called us into the screening room, she had lapped up a good half pint.

Donna didn’t seem to care much for the movie, and neither did Minxie for that matter. Donna kept nipping out to get more Coke for her vodka, which annoyed everyone else a lot more than it annoyed me. She kept smuggling in beer for Minxie too, and before long they were both drunk. Minxie just fell asleep but Donna, as usual, got a bit rowdy. I was too engrossed in the film to be bothered with drinking, so I had no time for her shit.

‘You want me to give you a blowjob in the toilet?’ she asked, loud enough for everyone to hear. A monstrously fat woman in the next row turned around and shushed her. ‘Shush yourself, you fat bitch,’ said Donna. Then to me, ‘Come on baby, how about it?’

‘Look I’m trying to watch this,’ I said.

‘Well fuck you too!’ she shouted, and stormed out. The fat woman turned around again to show her disapproval.

‘What you lookin’ at lady?’ I asked.

‘Your dog is snoring,’ she said.

‘She’s got sleep apnoea! You of all people should be sympathetic.’ She just tutted and turned back to the movie. I petted Minxie on the head, but she was out like a light.

The film is a perfect example of something that is all too uncommon in modern cinema: the good old fashioned British stiff upper lip. It is Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape. John Mills in Ice Cold In Alex. And now Colin Firth is at the forefront of its resurgence, with his roles in this movie, A Single Man and of course The King’s Speech. It is something the Americans just never did very well, and this film is chock full of it. And it’s about damn time, since Britain’s recent cinematic exports have come in the forms or Ricky Gervais’s cheeky chappy persona and Russell Brands own brand of dandy foppishness. Every performance in this film is a true class act, which should come as no surprise given the cast list. There are three or four plot strands that could be feature films in themselves and it is slightly disappointing when some of the stories aren’t explored in much depth, but as far as that goes the multiple plots are expertly spun together. It makes for undoubtedly dense viewing, but the story never becomes lost or confused, which is quite the achievement. It is also slow film, working at a pace most directors wouldn’t have the balls to use, but the thoughtful, measured pacing only adds to the overall style of the film, of which it has an abundance. And if that is not compliment enough, take my refusal of ‘a blowjob in the toilets’ as reassurance. It’s a bloody flipping good show.

There was some mild commotion in the lobby after the movie. Some silly dame had collapsed. Then I recognised the tits, only barely concealed by the sparkly green dress.

‘Donna!’ I yelled, and ran over to see her.

‘Oh, Mickey,’ she said as I stroked her hair. ‘I know who it is you remind me of in that tux.’

‘I know baby, Mickey Rourke…’

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I love that movie.’

‘Yeah, I love it too…’ she said, and then her head fell over to one side and her eyes closed over. Just then a couple of paramedics came rushing in. One of them bent down next to her and checked the pulse in her neck. He looked at me and shook his head.

‘She’s gone,’ he said.

I went to the toilets to splash water on my face and have an intense moment of introspection as I stared at myself in the mirror. She was right. I hadn’t gone full Mickey. I was just plain dumb. Maybe even dumber. I let out an agonised scream and punched the mirror, but it didn’t crack or anything because I can’t punch very hard.

As they pushed the stretcher into the ambulance the paramedic turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing we could have done. It was just too late.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘she died of a broken heart.’

‘Actually she died of diabetic shock. Why didn’t she have her medicine with her?’ he asked, but I wasn’t paying attention. I walked off into the evening, still cradling Minxie, who had slept through it all.

A couple of days later I took Minxie to the vet, because she still hadn’t woken up and she was very cold.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the vet, ‘she’s dead. Looks like she has been for some time now.’

‘Damn it, she must have died of a broken heart,’ I said.

‘Actually it looks like alcohol poisoning,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea how she could have consumed alcohol?’ But I wasn’t paying attention. I was walking off into the sunset, putting on a black cowboy hat and affecting a laboured swagger. I had gone full John Wayne.

I went to see Cowboys And Aliens at the weekend. It threw up some serious philosophical questions about life that I am still grappling with. Questions like, ‘How did Sam Rockwell come to be so fucking awesome?’ and, ‘Why isn’t it illegal for Olivia Wilde to wear clothes?’. I wasn’t able to answer those questions, but the question that really got me thinking was one that applies to my own life. There is a kid in the movie. In one of the scenes, Olivia Wilde’s character gives him a hug, to comfort him, because something tragic has just happened. Now I do not want to suggest that the film was not enthralling enough to keep me mesmerised for the entire duration, but this scene struck a chord with me and sent my brain off on a wild tangent about life. I mean here I am, a man of 24, and my only memory of female contact during my teenage years is the time during a school dance when I somehow worked up the courage to press my boy-boner into the thigh of the girl I liked while we shuffled from foot to foot for one whole slow song. And here he is. This kid. This fucking kid. And already he has had a hug from Olivia Wilde, the closest thing to human physical perfection ever captured on goddamn film. Not only that, but he got paid to do it. And shit, this is a pretty big movie, who knows what he will go on to do in the movie business. He could have a whole fucking lifetime of hugs from beautiful women ahead of him. And he’s just some kid. And it made me think, some people have all the fun, and the rest of us are shit out of luck. Why bother trying, when we are doomed to fulfil our mundane destinies without even a whiff of beauty or magic or art, never mind the nostril-flaring scent of a woman, made famous by Pacino in the film of the same name, and the one undoubtedly enjoyed by this fucking kid when, whilst being paid, he had his face mashed against Olivia Wilde’s bosom! Damn it I need a fucking beer to calm my jangled nerves…

Okay… Okay… So it got me thinking. And then I started to connect some dots in my head and eventually my mind was eased by a fifty year old man with big muscles and tattoos. A man called Henry Rollins. I went to see his spoken word gig a couple of weeks ago and it was the memory of the overwhelming energy I felt after the show that made me question my previous assertion, that we are all doomed to accept our fates. And that is because Henry Rollins is a walking testament to the philosophy that genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

Henry Rollins is a fucking badass. This is not a matter of opinion. This is one of those facts of life I touched on in my last article which, while they may appear subjective, are simply inalienable truths. If you don’t think Henry Rollins is a fucking badass, you are wrong. ANYWAY. I went to this gig alone because… well because I am a pig and it is becoming increasingly difficult to con women into going out with me. But also because I didn’t want some goddamn dame fucking up my Zen while I dug Henry’s musings. This was not just some night out for me. This was special. And if you need any proof of that, take the fact that I was sober. I had three whiskies the whole night, not because I was broke, but because I wanted to be fucking lucid during this thing. When this guy talks I drink it up like Daniel Day Lewis drinks a fucking milkshake. ANYWAY. So there I was at this gig and I was sober and my chair was really fucking uncomfortable and I didn’t even give a shit because I was going to see Henry Rollins in the flesh. And then he came out on stage like a walking espresso and did a two hour set of stories that were insightful and inspiring and hilarious, and all around me men and women alike were gazing in glassy-eyed wonderment at the physical manifestation of awesome standing centre stage, regaling us with stories of his absurd and badass adventures. And when I left I was buzzing in a completely different way to how I usually leave a gig, because Henry’s energy is infectious. And when I got home I didn’t mind so much that we live in a world of unfairness and inequality. A world in which millions of people starve every day while some others eat themselves so fat they can’t get out of bed. A world in which poor people die in wars created by rich men. A world in which some fucking kid gets to hug Olivia… Sorry. Point is, all of it seemed manageable, safe in the knowledge that there are dudes like Henry around. Now, to be fair, there really aren’t that many dudes like Henry. He’s one of a kind. He’s the kind of dude who, if your girlfriend left you for him, no matter how bummed out you were you’d just have to nod and tell her you understand, because deep down you know, you were thinking about leaving her for Henry Rollins too. But it’s okay, because there are lots of people listening to Henry and as guys like Henry are still drawing the sort of crowd that filled The Empire Music Hall a couple of weeks ago, there is still some hope in the world.

So where am I going with all of this? What does it all mean? To be honest I don’t know. I was hoping that if I started writing it would all just come together at the end. I suppose what I am saying is, don’t get too down when it seems like the odds are stacked against you. Sure, sometimes it seems like some people have all the luck, but even if you’re not born rich or good looking or you don’t find yourself hugging Olivia Wilde on screen as a teenager, don’t give up. Keep up the good fight. And when you need motivation to get back to the grindstone, check out some of Henry’s stuff. He is about as prolific as they come and there is no shortage of his material out there. Just don’t let your girlfriend in on it – Henry is a sexy man – the rest of us just can’t hope to compete. Fortunately, Henry is hard to please…

Henry Rollins official site.

So after my last post we have had almost two thousand requests via Facebook that This Is Not A Review be scrapped in favour of a Blake Lively Appreciation Blog (or BLAB, which isn’t a bad title…). As if this wasn’t disheartening enough for me, four days ago I woke up to find sixteen voicemails from Will on my phone. They were recorded between the hours of 11pm and 3am, in increasing states of drunkenness. All of them, however, were on the theme of how shit I am. The most cutting of all was the penultimate one, in which Will demanded to know why I can’t be more like Ned Hepburn, followed by a detailed explanation of all the ways Ned is better than me. The last, and most disturbing voicemail was an incredibly emotional rendition of Elvis Presley’s ‘She’s Not You’, which I can only infer was a veiled admittance that Blake Lively can’t quite replace me. Encouraged by the idea that Will isn’t quite ready to let me go, but determined to up my game and win back his affections, I bought a six-pack of Guinness and pored over Ned’s blog, hoping to find something I could rip off. Then I had a nap, because Guinness makes me sleepy, which was wrought by tortured metaphorical dreams in which I was in a crowded bar, trying desperately to order a pint of Hepburn, but the bartender heard me wrong and gave me a gin and coke, which made no sense and was fucking disgusting. The dream haunted my thoughts for days, leaving me ponderous and morose, until I had a revelation.

My revelation came about from a bowl of soup my friend cooked for me. Okay so I didn’t really have a revelation, but I didn’t have a good angle for this article and, obtuse as it is, the soup one works. My friend asked me what I thought of her soup and I told her it was delicious, but then she pressed me for any criticisms I had about it. I told her, ‘Well, this is not a review but…’ (huh? Huh?), ‘it was slightly under-seasoned.’ Another friend, who is not in soup club but whose opinion is valid nonetheless, said that seasoning is a matter of preference and as such it isn’t fair to base a judgement on it. This was the spark that ignited in me a fiery internal dialogue which lasted for two full days and during which I came to question the very essence of what makes me, me. I am conflicted, you see. On the one hand I understand that everyone is different and they like different things, so how much salt goes into food could be subjective. On the other hand I believe that just because a bunch of people think one way doesn’t make it fucking so, and when you got to a Michelin-starred restaurant, there isn’t a salt shaker on your table because any chef worth his salt (huh? Huh?) knows how to properly season food and isn’t going to let you dick around with it. So it’s not so much that I don’t have an opinion. I just find it too easy to see two sides to an argument, which makes leaning one way or the other very difficult. And that makes this whole blogging terrain a hard one for me to negotiate, because unless one takes the well-travelled ‘pictures of cats and food and sex gifs’ road, opinion pieces are a blogger’s bread and butter. Ned Hepburn does some wicked opinion pieces, but also throws in some good music, winning anecdotes about his experiences with beautiful women, and pictures of Daisy Lowe. In other words, he has this blogging thing down pat. I just can’t hope to compete.

Even my most firmly entrenched beliefs can’t inspire enough confidence in me to publicly proclaim my opinion one way or the other. Part of it is undoubtedly a self-esteem issue – I don’t feel I have the right to an opinion – and I should probably see a professional about it. But the other part of it is I just can’t help thinking, ‘Who gives a shit?’ For example, I truly believe that the entire Twilight franchise is a steaming pile of horseshit. I do not agree that it is a matter of opinion, I believe this to be an absolute. This is not the same as me not liking Harry Potter. I do not believe Harry Potter is intrinsically bad. In fact, for what it is, I believe it is really rather good. It’s just not for me. Twilight, on the other hand, is trash. Plain and simple. The same way that Celebrity Big Brother is trash. It has no artistic merit whatsoever, and the fact that it has millions of fans is no more proof of its worth than Michelle Bachmann’s fans are proof that she is not batshit crazy. But. BUT. As sure as I am of these things, I do not reject the possibility that really these things are subjective, and I am grossly mistaken. That is a scary prospect to me because people who assign a great deal of importance to their own opinions either end up on Newsnight Review or in the comments section on Youtube, depending on their level of education. Either way, they’re still full of shit. The truth is, I would like to be one of these people with opinions, but without the nagging self doubt that makes me wonder if I’m just being an arrogant prick.

A lot of the people I look up to are guys who have strong personalities and aren’t afraid to voice their opinions publicly. Bill Hicks (whom I wrote about before) wanted to make a TV show called Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus. Stewart Lee destroyed Top Gear – Richard Hammond in particular – with an almost unparalleled articulate venom. And George Carlin said simply, ‘Fuck Lance Armstrong.’ None of these men were, or are, fence-sitters. They said these things on stage, and didn’t seem to suffer from the feelings of self doubt that plague me. By God, I want their level of confidence. I want to stand up like Bill and say, ‘Jesus, Iggy, what are you doing hawking insurance?’ Even Lemmy, my number one rock n roll idol, did an ad for Kronenberg beer. But that’s the world we live in. A world in which the Prince Of Darkness Ozzy Osbourne had a fucking reality TV show. The problem is, I can hear the arguments before anyone even brings them up. Who the fuck am I to question the rock n roll integrity of Iggy, Lemmy or Ozzy. Even their fucking names are all similarly rock n roll! Could doing some commercial shit really compromise the credentials of heavyweights like these guys? I don’t know. I know there’s nothing rock n roll about selling insurance, but I also know rock n roll is about doing whatever the fuck you want, so doing an ad and saying fuck you to anyone who doesn’t like it might be the most rock n roll thing of all! Jesus, what a fucking quandary.

But then, I suppose that’s why This Is Not A Review. I’m not here to tell you what I think about shit. Not really. Even if I do sometimes, it’s not the point of this thing. And it’s the reason I’m not as cool, or as prolific as dudes like Ned. A lot of the time I just haven’t got anything to say. Not anything I think is worth saying anyway. So if I haven’t been to a gig and I haven’t got something I think might make you laugh, I just end up posting a leggy picture of Blake Lively. Even if all it inspires in you is a stirring in your jockeys, that’s enough for me. I’ll leave the rest to guys like Will and Ned. Now excuse me, I have to go leave a Youtube comment on the new Twilight trailer.

Will was shooting pheasants when I told him the news, and did not seem at all disappointed. When I asked what I should post in place of Ian’s article he said, ‘I dunno, a photo of Blake Lively or something.’

Good call Will.

Image links to source.

]]> http://www.bandwidthsessions.com/a-note-from-the-editor/feed/ 0 http://www.bandwidthsessions.com/open-house-festival-2011/ http://www.bandwidthsessions.com/open-house-festival-2011/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:36:32 +0000 Will McConnell http://www.bandwidthsessions.com/?p=3686

Regular Bandwidthers will know I’ve been documenting elements of Belfast’s amazing Open House Festival this year – starting with some delightful acts for a unique cover sessions series – and even our intrepid Ian Shearer was blogging from the event.

And so, as fans of the festival facebook page will have seen last week – I now have a full document (of sorts) in 6 parts to enjoy, featuring highlights of the festival and live performance footage from, amongst others, Fleet Foxes, Laura Marling & Villagers. Thrown into that heady mix was also the annual Chillifest and Chilli eating contest, a healthy programme of Irish Trad music, a unique caravan jam series in open house square, and an amazing ‘Breakthrough’ line up of new undiscovered music.

Here it is then, enjoy. It was so much fun to do this and be a part of such an amazing institution for a fortnight, so hopefully some of that comes through.

Fleet Foxes

[Download Video]

Villagers

[Download Video]

Laura Marling

[Download Video]

Smoke Faeries

[Download Video]

Marcus Foster / The Staves

[Download Video]

Lost Brothers / Caitlin Rose

[Download Video] →

Regular Bandwidthers will know I’ve been documenting elements of Belfast’s amazing Open House Festival this year – starting with some delightful acts for a unique cover sessions series – and even our intrepid Ian Shearer was blogging from the event.

And so, as fans of the festival facebook page will have seen last week – I now have a full document (of sorts) in 6 parts to enjoy, featuring highlights of the festival and live performance footage from, amongst others, Fleet Foxes, Laura Marling & Villagers. Thrown into that heady mix was also the annual Chillifest and Chilli eating contest, a healthy programme of Irish Trad music, a unique caravan jam series in open house square, and an amazing ‘Breakthrough’ line up of new undiscovered music.

Here it is then, enjoy. It was so much fun to do this and be a part of such an amazing institution for a fortnight, so hopefully some of that comes through.

Fleet Foxes

[Download Video]

Villagers

[Download Video]

Laura Marling

[Download Video]

Smoke Faeries

[Download Video]

Marcus Foster / The Staves

[Download Video]

Lost Brothers / Caitlin Rose

[Download Video]

]]>

There were many highlights from this year’s festival; set within the walls of a plush victorian walled garden, and featuring arts, crafts and performance arts from across the country as well as the hottest new musical acts – this year saw in an amazing new venue, the Crafty Tea Rooms, propped up by the campsite, beside Delamont Park’s impressive monolith. It hosted Tim Wheeler and Emmy The Great the first night of the festival, and the monolith itself was the impressive setting for a dusk-drenched midsummer serenade form the Inishowen Gospel Choir.

The next day, The Minutes rocked, The Vals sparkled, Pat Dam Smyth dazzled, Robyn G Shiels emoted, Shlomo amazed and Not Squares partied into the night. Here are just some of the highlights from another amazing year:

Beat N’ Drum & The Inishowen Gospel Choir

[Download Video]

Tim Wheeler & Emmy The Great

[Download Video]

Robyn G Shiels

[Download Video]

The Vals

[Download Video]

Pat Dam Smyth

[Download Video]

The Minutes

[Download Video]

Shlomo

[Download Video]

Not Squares

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Killyleagh, Co. Down July 2011.

I get a shit-ton of fan-email. (E-fan-Mail?) For some reason most of it comes from China and I can’t understand a goddamn word of it, but I just take it as evidence of my worldwide appeal, and that’s enough for me. I did, however, get a very nice email from an African princess who told me she wanted to marry me. Despite her incredible wealth and the endless opportunities this would have afforded me to make jokes referencing the film The African Queen whilst in the sack I had to decline, as my heart still lies with Caitlin Rose. Interestingly, though, I also get a lot of questions regarding Will. Initially I was shocked by the sexual frankness of the language being used, but I am now used to it, and the continuous requests for locks of his hair, most of which I oblige, usually by digging in the plug hole of the shower in his office en suite. Most commonly though, I just get questions from adoring fans about what he is really like. It seems he is a true enigma among Bandwidth fans, his air of mystery no doubt adding to his incredible success in the industry. Anyway, I finally decided to shed some light on the mysterious sexual figure that is Will McConnell. I approached him with the idea that I shadow him for a few days, in a bid to put together an accurate portrait of him for the fans.

‘Go to hell, ass-face,’ he said.

1. The first interesting fact about Will is that he imposes a watershed on himself, meaning that before 9pm he only ever uses PG-rated swears. This also means he does not make love before 9pm, choosing instead to kiss passionately for ten seconds and then have a cigarette with the duvet pulled up past the nipple line.

Luckily I pre-empted his refusal and I had a backup plan in place. That’s right Will, that guy you caught looking in your window who claimed to be a door-to-door pen salesman? That was me in disguise. And I want my pen back. That Muslim woman in full burka next to you in the bar who had to drink her whiskey by sticking the glass up inside her hood? Me too. And that wino who accosted you outside the kebab shop to ask for money for the train home? That was me, but technically I wasn’t in disguise and I really did need money for the train. Burkas are fucking expensive. I also hired Rebekah Brooks to hack Will’s phone, but I really only did that because she looks so much like an evil villain’s sidekick I couldn’t pass it up. And she was so desperate for a job she didn’t even object to my calling her ‘Frauline’. So here it is folks. The result of six and a half hours of dangerous undercover work to bring you the man, the myth, the legend…

2. Will sleeps on a pillow stuffed with the fine downy hair of a rare Guatemalan pig. It takes around 260 pigs to fill one pillow, as they really don’t have that much hair to begin with, and the pigs are slaughtered in the process as Will finds the idea of shaving a pig repulsive.

3. When the pillow loses its ‘smunchiness’ (Will’s word) he orders a new one and has the used pig hair woven into high quality neck ties which he wears, loosely tied, to all the important functions he attends. He makes a point of explaining the origin of his tie to everyone who will listen, which is how I came about this information.

4. Will was on the drug ‘Charlie Sheen’ before it became popular. He now only ever uses ‘Gary Busey’ and insists it is purely recreational.

5. Osama Bin Laden was actually killed by a team of mercenaries hired by Will, after he heard that Bin Laden had been ripping off the Bandwidth Sessions filming style. He let Obama take the credit as a personal favour, in appreciation of his Kanye comment.

6. Will takes a golden goblet to bars, to save himself the indignity of drinking from the same pint glasses as everyone else. He chooses, however, to drink Harp Ice, to ‘show his affinity for the common man’, though I suspect it is because he has terrible taste in beer.

7. Will used to keep a harem of concubines at home, but says he gave that up when he ‘finally matured’. He now pays to have them housed a few miles away.

8. Much like Steven Spielberg, Will no longer actually takes part in the production of his videos. He lets someone else do all the work and then just slaps his name on it, for the ratings.

9. Will does a fairly decent Tom Jones impression, but only ever does it when he is very drunk, or in the shower. I have never seen Will drunk.

10. Six years ago Will legally changed his name from Will McConnell to Will McConnell, ‘for a laugh’.

And there you have it folks. This is as much as anyone really knows for sure about Will, so you can stop writing to ask me about him. I will also no longer honour those requests for locks of his hair, after what I found in the drain of his shower the last time.

How long could this shit go on? Nights spent hunched over the bar, demanding they play Sinatra. Every following morning spent roaming the streets, looking for a crapper with growing urgency as the previous night’s Guinness completed its cycle of life. Perpetually hungover, slurping black coffee and mango smoothies by the gallon, I hadn’t written a goddamn word in days. Where the fuck was I anyway? Nothing of beauty for miles around. Just some shitty trees and a mucky looking river that didn’t appear to be running anywhere. The distant drone of traffic and a lone magpie screaming, ‘Caw!…’CAW!’ in a mockery of everything that birdsong stands for.

I came upon a small group of people but my hopes of salvation were dashed when I discovered that they were hipsters. I asked if they knew the way to the nearest bar, or even just a peaceful toilet, but they were all wearing oversized headphones and couldn’t hear what I was saying. Sensing that I was trying to communicate, one of them (who I took for a male, but wasn’t certain) took off his headphones. Somehow the music from his iPod started booming out around me, as if emitting from the heavens.

‘Jesus what is this?’ I screamed.

The magpie stopped cawing and said, simply, ‘Dubstep.’ Then it did a little dance. I turned to flee but the hipsters were waving menthol cigarettes in my face, asking for a light. I ran out into the road and only narrowly avoided being run over by performing a perfectly timed forward roll. The car skidded to a stop and my high school P.E. teacher stuck his head out the window.

‘Gymnastics is for queers Shearer! A rugby man would have stood his ground.’ Then he zoomed off, pursued by a beautiful woman on horseback. She was wearing a white tank top and I stood mesmerised by the rolling regularity of her shifting cleavage. As always, the initial thrum I felt was quickly squashed by an overwhelming sadness at the thought of all the cleavages in the world and how I would probably never have time to perv at them all. Like all beautiful dames she was gone as quickly as she arrived. So taken by the visage, though, I didn’t notice the giant fish launch itself out of the river until it was too late.

The beast socked me a good one and it took everything I had to stay on my feet. I kicked it where the bollocks ought to have been but either it was a lady fish or just even less well endowed than me, because as far as I could see, I didn’t hit anything. The big fucker guffawed right in my face and bitch-slapped me into the river, diving in after me. A badass Led Zeppelin riff started to play as I breathed in filthy water and realised I would have to fight the bugger on his own turf. I grappled with him for a while but I couldn’t get any purchase on his slimy scales and he got the upper hand, holding me under and waiting for me to stop thrashing. Just as Jimmy started to kick out some bitchin’ jams over his own goddamn rhythm track, I made my last ditch attempt and reached for his face. With the last of my strength I jammed my thumb in his watery eye and popped it out using the same motion I often use to free a testicle that has gotten caught in my boxers. This panicked him and I scrambled to the surface for air. Partially blind, he gave up the fight and tried to make a swim for it. Oh no you don’t, I thought, and dived right back in after him.

I got a hold of his gigantic tail and dragged him up onto the riverbank, flapping around like…well, a fish out of water. I ripped off my shoe and smashed his face in with it, which took a lot longer than it should have, as I had chosen to wear loafers that day. I haven’t worn the damn things in months, but I suppose that’s always the way. Once he was gone I gnawed off a section of flesh from his side, Bear Grylls style, and stuffed the bloody wad into my back pocket. When I finally made my way home I whipped up a nice beer batter and deep fried my trophy, which I ate with chips and mushy peas and washed down with a nice English ale. Then I lay down in bed with my bottle of Jack and rested my weary legs. Another narrow miss, but I made it through again.

‘The only two things in life
that make it worth living,
are guitars that tune good
and firm feeling women.’

- Waylon Jennings, Luckenbach Texas

From: Lucie Rae
To: Ian Shearer
Subject: Breakthrough Reviews

Hi Ian,

I am working on the Breakthrough mini-festival, which is part of this year’s Open House Festival. Would you be interested in doing a review of the Caitlin Rose gig for us this Wednesday?

Lucie Rae

From: Ian Shearer
To: Lucie Rae
Subject: Re: Breakthrough Reviews

Dear Lucie,

I normally would not agree to go on a date with someone I had never met before but judging purely by your name I am sure you are hot and awesome, so yes I would love to go the Caitlin Rose gig with you.

See you then,

Ian

From: Lucie Rae
To: Ian Shearer
Subject: Re: Breakthrough Reviews

Ian,

I’m afraid you have misunderstood. I was only suggesting you come to the show and write a review for us. I have no intention of going on a date with you.

Lucie Rae

From: Ian Shearer
To: Lucie Rae
Subject: Re: Breakthrough Reviews

Lucie,

I understand the need for discretion and I appreciate your professionalism. I will see you on Wednesday, strictly on ‘business’ terms, of course

Please find attached three poems I wrote with you in mind.

Love,

Ian

I spent all day Wednesday writing in a coffee shop. I had planned to have a nice pub meal before the gig but by the time 6pm rolled around I was terrified by the prospect of going on a date sober, so I chose to forego the food in favour of two pints of Guinness. I had a double Jack as an aperitif and, slightly buzzed from drinking on an empty stomach, I headed round to the Oh Yeah Music Centre, where only two weeks previous I had made a terrific arse of myself. Better try to behave myself tonight, I thought, and decided to drink beer instead of whiskey. I had arrived in time for Jonny Corndawg’s set and I was immediately stabbed by a powerful jealousy of the man’s awesome cowboy hat and badass beard. Not only do I not have either of those things but even if I somehow managed to get my hands on them, I would just look foolish. My jealously was quickly melted away by Jonny’s funny, laconic lyrics and his fantastic picking skills. As soon as he finished his set I bought his album and the poor man had barely set foot off the stage before I was shaking his hand, demanding he sign my CD. He was very gracious for such a talented son of a gun and I can’t think of enough nice things to say about him. A true gen-u-wine original.

Jonny was saved from my wittering by Will, who showed up with his camera and tried to duck past me without making eye contact.

‘Will!’ I yelled. I think I saw him mouth the word, ‘Shit…’ but he came over anyway, forcing the corners of his mouth up in a valiant attempt at a smile. I bothered him until I ran out of beer and when I got back from the bar he had disappeared into the crowd. The Lost Brothers took the stage. Don’t mention Simon and Garfunkel… Don’t mention Simon and Garfunkel… Actually I don’t really like Simon and Garfunkel and I did like The Lost Brothers. When they finished their set I bought their album too. I tried to make a joke about only buying it because I wanted the Caitlin Rose CD and felt obliged to buy theirs too, since they were standing right there. My drunkenness got in the way of my timing, though, and it came across that I was just swearing at them. After buying both CDs I broke my beer only rule, as always, and the next whiskey went down too fast. As always. My wallet was getting light so I decided to go get some cash before Caitlin started. I wandered around town looking like some poor bastard gripped by delirium and finally found a goddamn ATM but on my way back I passed The Northern Whig. Almost. I decided all my walking warranted a drink and ducked inside.

‘J&B Black please,’ I said. The barman looked puzzled, and rightly so, as no such drink exists. ‘Sorry, JD, black,’ I said.

‘Um, we have Single Barrel Jack, if that’s what you mean,’ he said.

‘No, Jesus, don’t mind me I’m just drunk. Johnny Walker. Black Label. That’s the one.’

‘No problem,’ he said.

‘Too many fucking J’s in the whiskey game,’ I muttered, and decided I better keep quiet. I would just be a refined gentleman, sitting alone at the bar sipping my scotch. Dames love men who drink scotch. Dames? Christ I’ve stood Lucie up! I slammed back the whiskey and hoofed it back round to the gig.

‘Is Lucie here?’ I asked the girl at the front desk.

‘Yeah she’s inside.’ I dashed in and stopped at the bar for a pint and some further enquiry.

‘Anyone seen Lucie?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, she just went past here…’

I stood at the back and scanned the crowd. In what was either sixth sense or dumb fucking luck, I got it right first time.

‘Are you Lucie?’ I asked, and I think I saw her mouth the word ‘Shit…’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘I’m Ian,’ I said.

‘Oh… nice to meet you.’

‘Yeah, you too,’ I said, and then I ran out of shit to say. I started swilling my beer like a dog that just ate a packet of peanuts…

[Editor's Note: Where do you get this shit?]

…and tried to pretend it was the fault of the plastic cup that I was dribbling beer down my shirt. Then I spotted Jonny Corndawg and suddenly decided I wanted a quote from him for this article. He made it in to the toilets before I was able to accost him and I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to follow. With hindsight I now see that waiting right outside the door and pouncing on him post-piss really wasn’t much better. He was mildly alarmed.

‘Hey man, is there any chance you could give me a quote about Caitlin? Not some corny bullshit but something cool, from someone who knows her personally,’ I said.

‘Sure man,’ he said, and he did me one better. He sat down with my pen and paper and wrote a short paragraph for me. That’s just how cool he is. And here is what he wrote:

‘Caitlin Rose is a real force to be reckoned with. I’ve known her since she was 15. Her craft wasn’t polished or quite honed in then but she was every bit as dangerous and fiery as she is today. She’s the real deal. I love her dearly and when I grow up I want to be like her.’

- Jonny Corndawg

There wasn’t a damn person in the room who would’ve disagreed with any of that once Caitlin started playing. I think everyone loved her dearly and really, how could they not? She’s a beautiful country singer who writes beautiful country songs and sings them beautifully. It’s enough to break a man’s heart, frankly. I think she’s going to be big, and I feel rather privileged to have seen her play in such an intimate setting.

When she finished playing I noticed she was signing albums and, managing to contain the urge to start screaming hysterically like a sixteen year old girl at an early Beatles concert, I got her to sign my copy. Then I managed to wrangle a VIP pass off Will and followed him round to the hotel where all the bands were staying for an after-gig pint. A pint I really did not need at that point, but it was free and I ain’t never turned down a free beer yet. I was sitting at a table with Will and Lucie when the spirit of Mickey took me.

‘I’m going to buy her a beer,’ I announced. I imagined it playing out like that scene in The Wrestler when Mickey buys Marisa Tomei a beer and they bond while discussing the finer nuances of Eighties heavy metal.

‘You should definitely do that,’ said Will. Looking back I probably should have been able to detect a note of Schadenfreude in his voice but I was too hammered.

‘I goddamn will, Will!’ I said. I bought two pints of Stella – making that a second beer I really did not need – and took them outside to where Caitlin was hanging out with her band. She was on the phone and, even in spite of my drunkenness and the spirit of Mickey, I suddenly got very shy. I explained to her band mates that I had bought her a beer but didn’t want to interrupt her call. They were encouraging, in the way an adult might be encouraging of a child who just did a really shit drawing. Eventually she hung up and I gave her the beer, babbling something about how much I enjoyed the show. She thanked me and had a drink, but they explained they weren’t staying and had to leave for the after-party at the Duke of York, so they passed the beer around and gave it back half full. Or half empty, depending on your outlook. I staggered back into the lobby waving the beers around in celebration.

‘Aren’t you pleased with yourself,’ said Will.

‘Yes actually, I am,’ I said. ‘Because that officially qualifies as the coolest thing I have ever done. Probably the coolest thing I ever will do.’

‘Great. You should write about it in your usual self-congratulating tone,’ he said.

‘I goddamn will, Will!’ I said.

And I did.

Check ‘em out:

Of course Will has already done a fucking Bandwidth Session with Caitlin. You can also check her out on MySpace or her official website.

The Lost Brothers MySpace page.

Jonny Corndawg’s MySpace page. And 2 free songs on Bandcamp!

The Open House Festival website.

You’ve already seen John Deery of John Deery & The Heads and Skip Moses, now Sons Of Caliber covering Fleet Foxes.

The Open House Festival runs to the weekend Sunday and will featured Laura Marling, Villagers & Fleet Foxes amongst others.

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast June 2011.

Last week we brought you John Deery of John Deery & The Heads – today it’s Jonny Black of La Faro and Skip Moses, performing a track by fellow locals, Sons Of Caliber.

The Open House Festival begins on Wednesday and runs through Sunday.

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast June 2011.

I was sliding off my barstool when the drinks began to take hold. Then Betty Draper walked in. At first I saw only the blonde hair and mistook her for one of the promotional models who had been roaming the bar flogging Magners, but when I stole a sly glance at her arse I noticed she wasn’t wearing hotpants and I realised that although she may have been selling something, it wasn’t cider. Not that she wasn’t wearing anything on her bottom half, of course. She was wearing a lovely summer dress and looked as angelic as ever, which was lucky because right then an angel was just what I needed.

‘Thank God you’re here Betty. Is Don around? I really need to borrow some money.’ I had just spent the last of my money buying a drink for a petrified waitress who had just finished her shift, and paid for it almost entirely in 20p coins, which the barman appreciated even less than my sleazy tactics with his co-worker.

‘I’m not Betty,’ she said, sipping her Gimlet. ‘I’m January.’ I had no fucking idea how she got a Gimlet in The Kitchen Bar.

‘This is important,’ I said. ‘I’m in big trouble.’

‘Yes, you are. But I’m here to help.’

And then we were in the Oh Yeah Music Centre.

I was leaning across the bar with a plastic cup of Bushmills, asking the barmaid for one of the tiny beers I had seen a bunch of people drinking.

‘We don’t sell those,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where they got them.’ I grinned, pleased by the fact that I wasn’t the only person who had brought booze to the damn thing. I threw back the whiskey in one.

‘Another one of these then!’ I said.

‘You should slow down on the drinks,’ said Betty.

‘Betty! How rude of me. What are you having?’

‘I’m not Betty,’ she said again. ‘My name is January.’

‘It was a very good year…’ I crooned, doing my best Sinatra.

‘That doesn’t make any sense Ian.’

‘No I suppose not.’

We moved over to stand beside the piano and I necked the whiskey again, realising I had lost track of how many I had drank. Fuck it, I decided, and poured myself a measure of Jack from my hip flask.

‘Why are you drinking so much?’ she asked.

‘What are you talking about? You and Don drink like fish. Fish? Fishes?’

‘There is no me and Don, Ian. You are thinking of a character I played, and if you remember Betty leaves Don and he almost ruins his life with alcohol.

‘I thought that was all just a horrible dream,’ I said.

‘No this is a dream,’ she said. ‘That really happened… on TV anyway.’

‘So none of this is real?’

‘Actually a lot of it did happen.’

‘Did I really hassle that waitress?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Don’t curse Ian.’

‘Sorry Betty.’

‘January,’ she said.

And then there was a band playing.

‘Are you going to write about this on Friday?’ she asked.

‘I have to.’

‘Are they going to get a good write-up?’

‘Yeah, they’re pretty damn good.’

‘What are they called?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘You should find out before you try to write about them,’ she said.

‘I know. That’s Cara Cowan and Katie from Katie And The Carnival singing with them. I know that much.’

‘Lucky guy huh?’

‘Well he’s a rockstar, it’s to be expected. He even looks like Kurt Cobain.’

‘He is quite sexy.’

‘You better hope Don doesn’t hear you talking like that.’

‘Betty isn’t with Don any more. She’s with Henry.’

‘I thought that was all just a horrible dream too.’

‘Concentrate Ian,’ she said. ‘You have to write about this.’

‘It’s okay, I’ll just pull something out of my ass at the last minute and it will be awesome.’

‘That won’t work.’

‘It always works for Don.’

‘You’re not Don, Ian.’ Of course I knew that, but hearing her say it hurt like hell.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, and had a drink straight from the flask.

‘You can’t expect real life to be like Mad Men,’ she said.

‘That’s easy for you to say, you’re just like Betty.’

‘Well I am Betty.’

‘But I thought you said…’

‘Never mind Ian. If you stop drinking now I’ll go home with you tonight and maybe you’ll be able to remember enough to write something for Friday.’

‘Betty I’m shocked!’

‘January.’

‘I could never do that to Don!’

‘Oh, fuck it!’ she said, and then she left. My flask was empty.

The rest of what I know about that night I learned through detective work when I woke up. My phone told me I called a taxi at 10.45pm – which means I had managed to get myself into that state in about three and a half hours – and the carnage in my kitchen told me I made a fish finger sandwich when I got home. The rest of it might as well have happened during the dark ages. And anyone who was in the Oh Yeah Music Centre last Saturday for the Katie And The Carnival single launch, and happened to notice the drunk guy, knows that more of this is true than you would first think.

You can listen to the single here: Went To The Fair. It’s really good.

Bonus tip: Check out Betty…

[Editor's Note: January.]

…in X-Men First Class. It is, well, first class.

First up, John Deery of John Deery & The Heads, covering the Villagers‘ track “That Day”

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast June 2011.

On that note of reflection, we turn to Morning Claws, a group formed from the ashes of a band called Cutaways – and also containing elements of another band called Before Machines.

This is a track called ‘Slack Magic’ – it’s a single and you can buy it from their bandcamp – it’s also the catchiest thing I have heard from anyone in years.

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in Dromore Co. Down, June 2011.

So there I was in my local coffee shop, trying to psyche myself up to ask one of the baristas if she would like to go to the And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead (only thing more annoying than having to type that name is having to say it) gig with me. Problem was, I wasn’t sure if Will had set up a date for me or not. Things haven’t been the same between us since I pawned his DV cam to buy myself a ticket to see Rob Zombie. I have since learned that DV cams are worth quite a bit more than the £33 I got for it and I had to sell my body to medical science – after trying unsuccessfully to sell it on the streets – to get the bloody thing back. I’m glad I did though. Frankly I had grown tired of checking Cara Cowan’s MySpace page every day and finding no updates, so the new In Stores Now featuring The Salt Flats provided some much needed new… material.

[Editor's Note: It is truly amazing what Ian can get away with saying about people he could so easily bump in to, safe in the knowledge that no one reads this shit.]

Anyway I sent Will a text asking if he had arranged a date. ‘Yeah’ was all his reply said. Downhearted, I gave the barista a shy smile and went back to reading Dita Von Teese’s book on fetish photography.

I decided not to get drunk at the gig since I had work the next day. And I have grown weary of the terrible, undefined shame that comes with every hangover. So I only had a couple of warm up whiskies before I headed out. I got lucky with the buses though, and ended up in Belfast way too early, so I went to The Kitchen for a pint. There was a smoking hot dame sitting at the bar by herself, so I did what Don Draper would do and positioned myself a few seats to the left so I could look at her cleavage reflected in the mirror behind the bar. A little while later her friends showed up and one of the silly bints ordered herself the wrong drink – unable to remember whether she liked sweet or dry Martini with her lemonade. The barman, knowing I am a filthy wino, gave me the drink she turned down for free, but I had to drain it in one because it was fucking repugnant. I finished off my pint and headed for Katy’s.

‘Jack Daniel’s, no ice please,’ I said to the purple haired barmaid. And she gave me a Jack Daniels with white lemonade. And ice. This has happened before – the loud bar environment coupled with my tendency to mumble sometimes makes ‘Jack Daniels, no ice’ sound like ‘Jack Daniels and white.’ I pine for a bar where I can order a ‘JD, neat’ but the only bar I have ever been able to do that in is The Northern Whig, and since having a whole fleet of incredibly professional (and natty, I must say) bartenders doesn’t make up for having a clientèle made up exclusively of wankers, I’ll stick to the places that play AC/DC and have barmaids with purple hair. Anyway, that made two weak ass white lemonade mixers in one night, neither of which I wanted, so I decided to stick to beer for the rest of the night to save any more confusion.

I had completely forgotten about the whole date thing until I noticed someone standing close to my table, trying to make eye contact with me. When I looked up I was gripped by a fierce testicular nausea, when I realised I couldn’t figure determine if it was a dame that looked like a ten year old boy or a dude that looked like a lesbian. Play it cool, I thought.
‘Ian?’ it said.
‘Yeah…’
‘Oh thank God,’ it said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘I would have been so embarrassed if you were the wrong person.’
I laughed nervously. The name! The name will give it away!
‘What’s your name?’
‘Oh sorry, I’m Sam.’ Damn it! Think quick…
‘Have a seat. What would you like to drink?’
‘Oh, I’ll have a Corona, thanks.’
Ha! Settled. Definitely a dame. Which was lucky because I was kinda digging the whole short hair look.

At the bar I immediately broke my beer only rule, decided work could go fuck itself and slammed back a whiskey to put some fire in my belly and hopefully take the sting out of the small talk.
‘So what do you do?’ I asked.
‘I’m in my final year of uni.’
‘Oh, what are you studying?’
‘I do Gender Studies.’
‘No shit,’ I said, thinking what an incredibly convenient piece of anecdotal trivia I could use to flesh out my article. And so it went, until it was time to go in to The Limelight.

I was gripped by blind panic for a full thirty seconds when, at the door, I claimed I should be on the list and the girl couldn’t find my name. This is another problem I face in life – more often even than the Jack and white one – caused by my inability to say my own second name. This problem sometimes brings me to add clues, such as ‘Shearer, like the footballer,’ which makes me sound like a wanker, or ‘Shearer, like a sheep shearer,’ which makes me sound like a fucking lunatic. Finally, and without the need for clues, she found my name and let us in. My nervous hunch immediately transformed into a smug swagger, as if I had just been allowed into the VIP suite at a Kid Rock gig accompanied by three strippers. The support act were already on but the place was still relatively empty, so we got a good table in a nice dark corner.
‘This is a good spot!’ I shouted.
‘Yeah, wanna have sex?’
‘WHAT!?’ I screamed.
Yelling in my ear, ‘Do you want a Becks?’
‘Oh…’ I said, incredibly disappointed. ‘Yeah, thanks.’

I have not been able to find out who the support act were, and I really wanted to because they were fucking excellent. I even went to askjeeves.com and tried asking ‘Who were the support at at the And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead gig in Belfast?’ but it won’t let you ask a question that long. Fucking stupid band name. Anyway, in a world full of indie pricks who think ‘jun jun jun jun’ is a riff it was awesome to see a band that still knows how to play a proper goddamn guitar lick. I’d love to tell you who these guys were so you could look out for them, but if you know of a search engine more powerful than Ask Jeeves I’d like to bloody hear it! During the gig some dude came up and asked if he could take a picture of us for some godforsaken magazine.
‘Absolutely not!’ I yelled, and he went away. The confrontation put me on edge though, so I bought four beers and tried giving him the stink eye every time he lit up the room with his gigantic goddamn flash, but I don’t think he noticed.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead play fucking loud. In fact this might be the only time when even my wildly exaggerated account of events can’t quite convey the true magnitude of reality. They were so loud my beer – which was on a table near the back – was rippling like there was a fucking Tyrannosaurus disco next door.

[Editor's Note: Worst simile ever.]

It was so loud I was genuinely concerned about the possibility of shitting myself. In short, it was balls out magnificent. I didn’t know much about them before the show and I admit, I was expecting something quite generic. What I got was one of the most original sounds I have ever heard – a sort of alternative, industrial, metallised-punk played like they were road testing Motorhead’s amp stack. I gave myself over to it and, despite the sensation that the throbbing bass was going to throw my heartbeat out of rhythm, I loved every second. Sam, it seemed, did not.
‘Got something in my shoe,’ she said, getting up.
‘WHAT!?’ I screamed.
‘Going to the loo,’ she yelled back, and I checked out her ass as she left. I toasted the sight with a swig of beer and went back to headbanging.

She was gone a long time, and I noted that even tomboy chicks take fucking ages in the can. When she came back she was talking to some prick. They hugged briefly and he shot me a shit eating grin before pissing off. When Sam sat down her face was all screwed up which, being an expert in female psychology, I knew meant she wasn’t having a good time.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, it’s just the taste of cum is making me feel sick.’
‘WHAT!?’
Yelling in my ear, ‘The bass drum, it’s making me feel sick.’
‘Oh… Yeah, me too. It’s fucking awesome!’ And that’s all we said to each other until the gig was over and we were outside.

I was drunker than I first realised and all I could hear was a high pitched whirring.
‘Listen!’ I screamed, inches from her face, ‘This was far too loud for a first date. How about we just get a coffee some time?’ I couldn’t make out what she said, but she was nodding so I took it an an affirmative. ‘Bring it in,’ I said, holding my arms out for a reassuring hug. And there, with Sam’s considerable package nestling lovingly with my own, I realised I had made a terrible mistake.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead official site and MySpace page.

*Update: My sources tell me that the support band was Desert Hearts. Check ‘em out, they are the balls.

Thank you one and all to members of the GoodWill Facebook group and the citizens of Northern Ireland who so generously threw a fundraiser for Bandwidth last night at Auntie Annies in Belfast, to help me back on my feet after I was robbed a few weeks ago.

It’s such a testament to this amazing country, the amazing city of Belfast and its music community – and it will be an honour to be back working with you all in the cause of creating beauty for the love of music.

Thanks to Rachel Austin, Colly Strings, Prolapse and The Snoodles for playing. Thank you everyone for coming and donating at the door. And thank you everyone, some of whom were also there last night, who gave again via Facebook. For some great photos of the night check out Colm Laverty’s blog, from whence this video sprang.

Thank you.

Take a pinch of Mark Gordon from DJ/Remixers/Label/Live band Skibunny, a splash of Ewan Gordon (not his brother) of Coney Island Sound, stir in Katie Richardson (minus The Carnival) and simmer for 20 minutes with Cara Cowan. Erm, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, where better to place this musical wünderbeest than the natural history section of the Ulster Museum, in amongst the weird stuffed animals and pretty rocks.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed in The Ulster Museum, Belfast May 2011.

I had been sent to The Black Box to cover a blues gig, and I was late because I had made a warm-up stop at my regular. This made absolutely no fucking difference, of course, and I was the first person to show up, as always seems to happen when I go to The Black Box. I am like Peggy Olsen in a room full of Don Drapers…

[Editor's Note: What?]

…mental note: look up Mad Men themed gangbang porn.

‘Ten pounds please,’ said the nice lady at the door.
‘Ten quid? Jesus, who’s playing, the ghost of Robert Johnson?’
‘Um, it’s in aid of Friends Of the Cancer Centre,’ she said. Of course it is. God damn it. I humbly paid the ten, then bought some raffle tickets, to prove I wasn’t a cheap swine. Then, naturally, I hit the bar. With a double in my hand I stood at the back of the room, swarthed in a burka-like shadow, not wanting to take up a whole table to myself. After half an hour only one other person had shown up and I decided I wouldn’t be causing a major inconvenience by sitting down. So I got another drink and took a table. The drink had given me the munchies, so I started idly grazing on the crisps that had been laid out on the tables. As people finally started to trickle in I was eyeing the table next to me, which had crisps AND roasted peanuts. Why didn’t I sit at that table, I thought. Can’t move now, that would be abusing the hospitality. So I just got another drink and finished all the crisps on my table. Finally the place started to fill up. Unfortunately, my stomach didn’t, and my neighbouring snacks were calling out to me. Have to play this cool. I took a pull of beer, steeled myself and, standing up slowly, I sidled over to the next table and as nonchalantly as I could, I swiped the plate of peanuts.

‘Excuse me,’ said a female voice from behind.
Bugger it all, they’re onto me, I thought, turning around. She was the most delicate specimen of female beauty I have ever encountered. Vaguely gothic style, in a short skirt and fishnets, with surprisingly great tits for such a skinny broad.
‘Yes?’ I said, cradling my nuts.
‘Are you Ian?’
‘Yeah…’
‘I’m Starlet. Your, uh, “date”,’ throwing quotation marks around the word date.
‘No fucking way,’ I said, my defences entirely dropped in a moment of shock. I didn’t even realise Will had set me up this time.
‘Way,’ she said.
I just stood gawking for a second. Then, offering the plate, ‘Peanut?’

She declined the nut but took me up on a drink. A gin and tonic, to be precise, which I found slightly arousing, for reasons I still haven’t ascertained.
‘Is your name really Starlet?’ I asked.
‘Yep. Why?’
‘It’s an unusual name, made all the more unlikely by its absolute pertinence.’
‘You’re drunk,’ she said, smiling.
‘No ma’am, merely struck giddy by your beauty,’ I said, waving the beer bottle in her face like a lecherous old fart having a football argument. I caught myself and put the bottle down. ‘Okay, I’m a little bit drunk. You should count yourself lucky though. When I’m sober I’m just as ugly and twice as boring.’
‘Is that an unsubtle way of trying to get me to tell you you’re not ugly?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Bad call.’ Damn, I like this dame. I upended my drink, and she did the same.

I did my best at making idle chit chat, and tried to keep a handle on my drunkenness. Then Jon Bon Jovi went and fucked that up for me. All of a sudden he appeared on a giant screen in the corner of the room and started singing Always – the greatest song of all time – live.
‘This is the greatest song of all time!’ I said, a bit too loud, and started half-assedly playing air guitar.
‘Not really my thing,’ she said, obviously enjoying my sheer arsiness.
‘Oh really? And what sort of music do you like?’
‘Well I’m really into Lamb Of God at the minute.’ Ladies and gentlemen, please hold the fucking show.
‘Are you real or have I fallen down and hit my head and imagined I just met a heavy metal angel?’ She laughed at me, and somehow it was okay. ‘Lamb Of God are fucking awesome!’ I said, ‘But this is still the best song of all time… Allllllwaaaaaayyyyys.’ I knocked back the whiskey in one, very pleased with myself.

Then the song was over, and the band came on. A band called 3-Play, which is a name I just noticed is quite a funny reference to quality toilet paper. They are three older dudes who play bitchin’ blues rock. I can’t remember any of the songs they played, only that after every one I clapped a bit too loud to be appropriate in such a small crowd, and their manly brand of lonesomeness got to me, as the blues often does. Then it hit me, cold and hard, like Vinnie Jones with the flu. Friends Of the Cancer Centre… pale, skinny dame… no interest in bar snacks. My God, she’s a patient! Of course I would go and fall in love with a chick who was on her way out, it’s practically the story of my life.

[Editor's Note: Ian has never been in love with a woman who passed away.]

I waited for the band to take a break before I made my move, then I hit another whiskey. Somewhere, deep in my soul, Always was still playing.
‘Listen, Starlet, let’s just get married.’
‘Um, what?’
‘Look it’s obvious you don’t have long left. Let me make an honest woman out of you. You can live out your final days with someone to cook breakfast for.’
She was laughing, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The cancer. Where is it? God, tell me it’s not the tits,’ I said, getting a little emotional.
‘I don’t have cancer,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘But you’re so… gaunt.’
‘Oh thanks!’
‘No, in a good way,’ I said. ‘Like I’d have be gentle in case I shattered your pelvis during lovemaking.’
‘Oh my God, you’re nuts!’ she said, but luckily she was still laughing. The mention of nuts made me hungry again, but I had long ago eaten them all, so I just had a drink of beer and wallowed in the blues. When the band went back on I was sure I could identify with every word, but I suppose that’s always the way with good music.

After the gig I apologised for being a drunken fool.
‘Don’t worry, I knew what to expect,’ she said.
‘Okay, well, all the best,’ I said, and she started to walk away. I watched her only-just-there ass as it disappeared into the night. ‘Starlet!’ I called after her, and she turned around. ‘A cheeseburger wouldn’t kill you, ya know.’
‘Oh I love cheeseburgers,’ she said.
Me gusta!
And then she was gone. I went home, poured another big drink and started listening to Lamb Of God, but I got emotional during ‘Blacken The Cursed Sun’, and I had to turn it off.

So here is a session with them.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

See more session tracks with them here and here.

Filmed by Will McConnell in Moira, February 2011

This is Fake DIY blogged the results, one track a day, leading up to the album launch last week.

Here it is on Bandwidth in its original unadulterated form. Enjoyez-vous.

Camera: Will McConnell
Recorded in Start Together Studios, Belfast March 2011

Listen up motherfuckers. This is some real shit. I’m about to spit some truth all up in your grill. So much so that there won’t be any room left for burgers or sausages and you will go hungry.

[Editor's Note: Many other lame gangster rap references about the truth herein have been removed. Ian has been watching The Wire and he is very impressionable.]

So here’s the deal. I just finished work and I made a promise to myself that I would spend tonight supping delicious Guinness in The Kitchen Bar by my lonesome self. So I have the time it takes me to drink this coffee to write this thing so I can get home for a feed and a quick John Wayne sink scrub before I head out. For this reason, this article will contain no fabrication or embellishment.* Just this once.

So a few weeks ago I was browsing the Belfast Film Festival website when I came across a screening of Casablanca. In motherfucking Harlem Cafe. Period dress encouraged. My mind was immediately flooded by images of me sauntering around Harlem Cafe in a white dinner jacket, sipping a champagne cocktail and coldly ignoring the inevitable advances of the beautiful waitresses in Forties dress. I ordered a ticket, poured a large whiskey and combed enough Brylcreem into my hair to wallpaper the Titanic Quarter paint house. Realising my limp locks simply don’t have the body to pull off Bogey’s sophisticated swept back style, I settled for the common ‘Adolf’ and sat down to get drunk. I soon fell into a slumber peppered with dreams of romantic drives through Paris with a beautiful woman, with just enough gun play to keep the gents happy. My mum woke me up, asking me what time I was starting work in the morning. I sat bolt upright, my divine dream shattered.
‘Nine!’ I screamed, and lay back down.
‘If you’re going to sleep on the sofa at least close your robe,’ she said before she left. I took a slug of Jack and settled back down, hoping to fall into the same dream. But instead I dreamt that a snake bit me in the face and I had to choke it to death. When I woke up my penis was aching, my feet were freezing, and I had half an hour to get my shit together and get to work.

CUT TO:
Casablanca night. I had told one of my mates about the screening and he had bought a ticket, but just a couple of hours before it started he cancelled via text. I phoned him in tears, asking how he could be so cold, and before he hung up I swore I heard another girl’s voice in the background. I had a couple of serious drinks while I put on my suit, and then I took the bus in to town. Good thing I left early, too – I got the best seat in the house – right next to the bar, with a perfect view of the screen. Never mind that I was alone, pretty soon the place would fill up with women in evening dresses, with their hair all done up, and that would give me something to look at until the movie started. That is, the best goddamn movie of all time.

Casablanca really is my favourite movie. Or it became my favourite after someone told me the video for The Outsider by A Perfect Circle technically doesn’t qualify as a movie. Humphrey Bogart is a true hero of mine, and it causes me a great deal of grief to know that even at my peak of awesomeness**, I wasn’t even half as awesome as Bogey. I still made an effort though. I had nice shoes on, and a black tie, and even though I was drinking for a good hour before the thing even started, I made a conscious effort to take it easy, lest I make a fool of myself. People trickled in, took their seats and ordered dinner, which looked and smelled fabulous. The only reason I didn’t eat was because I ate right before I left the house. And I’m a degenerate fucking alcoholic, who doesn’t like food getting in the way of the liquor sloshing down my throat. Anyway the place was just about full when seemingly out of nowhere, this dame approached me. I quickly stopped picking my nose and pretended I was just scratching it.
‘Hi,’ I said, with what I now know was an embarrassing level of optimism.
‘Excuse me sir, will anyone be joining you tonight.’ In my head I heard Bogey: ‘You tell me dollface. How about it?’
It was unusual that she called me sir, but for some reason I still didn’t peg her for a member of staff. From my mouth I heard, ‘Um, no…’
‘Can I take this seat then?’ she asked, motioning to the empty chair sitting across from me.
‘Uh, yeah, no, I mean no there’s no one sitting there. You can take it.’ And only then did I fully understand what exactly was happening. There was obviously a shortage of chairs, but the staff had to wait a reasonable amount of time before asking for mine, to determine that it wasn’t going to be used. In other words, they thought I was on a date and had been stood up. I knew she thought this, and she knew I knew she thought this, which only made it more awkward. Dressed to the nines and drowning my sorrows in whiskey, I couldn’t look more pathetic if I had brought flowers. I made eye contact with the barman and lifted my empty glass. He understood the gesture…

If there was ever a more perfect movie. So I sat and watched Casablanca and got a bit drunk and listened to William Crawley give a surprisingly good talk on the film, and I actually had a bloody good time. Even despite the nagging feeling that everyone felt a bit sorry for me. I don’t mind hanging out alone – prefer it in fact – but only when it’s clear it’s my choice to be alone. The collective pity of those around me just defeats the whole purpose. I won’t tell you how awesome Casablanca is though. You already know it’s awesome, and if you don’t think so, you’re a silly twat. What I will do is give another shout out to Harlem Cafe for:

A. Hosting the night.
B. Serving awesome food.
C. Staff who are nice to me even when I regularly forego said awesome food for an espresso, or in this case, whiskey.
D. Playing Frank fucking Sinatra, the Humphrey Bogart of music.

And now my coffee is all gone, I’m going to wrap this up and go drink at the bar by myself. Who knows – maybe of all the gin joints in all the world, Sasha Grey will walk into mine… Now that would be a fucking movie. Literally.

* Not a guarantee.

** At a childhood Butlins holiday I booted a football with pre-metrosexual-celebrity-David-Beckam-like accuracy through the ‘top prize’ hole and won one of those giant teddy bears.

This March however, was a very special occasion, with the event moved to 17th, St Patricks Day – and the headliner one Foy Vance. This marked somewhat of a return for Foy who – though he lives and works in London now – comes from Bangor Co. Down’s sunny shores – and here he talks about what it’s like to be back in his birthplace, and he plays a few new tunes too.

[Download Video]

Filmed by Will McConnell in Belfast, March 2011
Thanks to MASH & Graham Brown

Update: Here’s a bonus track – a demo Foy was working on while we were recording, he just wrote it on the plane the night before in fact – which has now made it into his live set, called “Belfast Is Born Again”. Enjoy!