Here’s a nice little midweek track from the Bandwidth vaults – a demo Foy Vance was working on while we were recording the short film “Guiding Light” last Paddy’s Day 2011in Belfast.
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!
An All Time Lowe
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.
The Wonder Villains (Street Piano Session)
Time to wind the clocks back a bit – back in 2010, we released a series of exclusive sessions with Patricks Kane’s sadly defunct blog Secret Fireworks. It was a series of young upcoming upstart bands playing Belfast city’s Street Pianos.
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!
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.
This Is Not A TV Show
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.
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IN STORES NOW#61: In Elegance
This was the first In Stores Now shoot of 2012 – and its a goodun. A young talented and potentially lethal Belfast band called In Elegance – we tried a few set ups, threw out a few ideas and threw in a surprising acoustic version of a Pixies track and – well as you can see – the result was spectacular.
The band are playing dates in Cork, Dublin and Limerick in February and March – so look out for them if you’re there.
Silences 
The Lost Brothers 
Ash 
Delorentos 
I’ve Been Taken 
This Ain’t A Hold Up 
The Dark Knight Rises, But Then So Does Hot Air. 
I Don’t Know 
