"poor state of irish music"i think not

[ruairi deleastar]

i was reading the irish independent"letters to the editor and i came across this man saying so much crap about damien,david gray,paddy casey,mundy,the frames..... i burnt the paper right away i have never heard such jelious remarks just because someone dosent like singer son writeers i think he shoul just keep it to himself

[administrator]

yeah, i think people like him and ian o'doherty are just out to try to be controversial and make a name for themselves. it gets really tiresome, but anyway, the article they wrote is here

funny that they can write an article on the poor state of irish music, without acknowledging damien's success

[*Killian*]

yeh i saw that last week, wednesday or thursday it was......a loada ****e

he called gemma hayes over rated

[Closing_Doors]

Originally Posted by emmett

funny that they can write an article on the poor state of irish music, without acknowledging damien's success

I know, I noticed that myself
I try to ignore this sort of stuff, I like what I like and I'm not gonna look for anyone's approval....especially someone who (for all their moaning that Irish music is unoriginal) wants an Irish answer to the god-awful Arcade Fire*, or, like Killian said calls Gemma Hayes overrated



"Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves -- to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today"...Stewart B. Johnson

*NOT a misprint. I know everyone loves them, and whos knows, maybe they'll grow on me, but at the moment, as far as I'm concerned it's horrible pretentious sh*te!!

[liamd]

Why is it that some people cannot distinguish opinion from fact?

[Mort]

every single one of us has own opinion.i hate one band so much that i could tell to you about them only in a terrible way.but well i keep it to myself 'cause i know a lot of people with a lot of another opinions love them

[liamd]

Originally Posted by Mort

every single one of us has own opinion.i hate one band so much that i could tell to you about them only in a terrible way.but well i keep it to myself 'cause i know a lot of people with a lot of another opinions love them

Exactly. Everyone has a band who they dislike, but not many are foolish enough to believe that their dislike means a band has no talent or isn't worthwhile, when any music that makes someone somewhere happy(as long as it's not at the expense of others) must be worthwhile.

[#Ian#]

Originally Posted by Closing_Doors

*NOT a misprint. I know everyone loves them, and whos knows, maybe they'll grow on me, but at the moment, as far as I'm concerned it's horrible pretentious sh*te!!

-- Starts sharpening knife

[Closing_Doors]

Originally Posted by #Ian#

-- Starts sharpening knife

Really don't see the fuss....it's not particularly original, and the singer always looks completely disinterested like he'd rather be at home in bed. But I've been here before with the White Stripes and also the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and so far no fans of the above bands have stabbed me, so I won't lose any sleep over it

[Bumpman]

You're entitled to your own opinion, but to say that Win Butler is disinterested is like saying that the earth is flat. As a band they're one of the most energetic i've ever seen.

[Closing_Doors]

Originally Posted by Bumpman

You're entitled to your own opinion, but to say that Win Butler is disinterested is like saying that the earth is flat. As a band they're one of the most energetic i've ever seen.

It comes across as very contrived. There's a lot of jumping about and shaking heads and closed eyes, it's a nice façade but there's nothing behind it. If you watch Butler's eyes, he's daydreaming half the time. Anyway didn't mean to drag this thread off topic...

[snowbaby]

it irritated me i must say........ the article that is ive never heard of arcade fire

[Bumpman]

Well if you watch the eyes of Kurt Cobain, Paul Banks, Black Francis, Bob Dylan or Lou Reed they have probably spent whole tours looking directly away from the crowd in the most boring way possible. It looks silly on TV but when you get there everything changes for the better. I'd frankly be quite shocked if someone wasn't daydreaming on stage.

[distortionghost]

said it before elsewhere, but music journalism is the literary equivelent of taking a piss. aside from michelle @ eclectichoney.com i never agree with reviews.

secondly, the arcade fire are wonderful! i was skeptical as **** because presumed they were the american version of bloc party but they're the year's greatest find. retune your ears and enjoy funeral, then get sufjan steven's "illinois" and sigur rós' "takk" for a joyous pick me up. seriously though, i've been going to about a hundred gigs a year since i turned 17 and in all that time the arcade fire were the only one to make me cry from sheer delight. and i wasn't alone. it was a near-religious, insane experience watching them play and "rebellion" is outstanding. please give them time :)

thirdly, the irish music scene is a very different place now to how it was three or four years ago when i was dancing round to damo/frames/mundy et al. yes, there were great musicians from the old wave of whelans heads but there were some only ok ships that rose with the tides too and unfortunately, a complacency since. maybe you don't want to see it like that, but that's alright. you do however owe it to yourselves to check out the likes of the immediate, the rags and the rest of ireland's new unsigned crowd/HWCH festival, who don't fit the previous mould of the earnest strummer. and so does that reviewer, who's a ****ing moron.

[#Ian#]

Originally Posted by ruairi deleastar

i was reading the irish independent"letters to the editor and i came across this man saying so much crap about damien,david gray,paddy casey,mundy,the frames..... i burnt the paper right away i have never heard such jelious remarks just because someone dosent like singer son writeers i think he shoul just keep it to himself

For the record I'm pretty sure John Meaghar never said anything about Damien being bad in that article.

[maccas81]

they do stuff like that to be controversial, but there is a whiff of jealousy about them cos they talk about bands they loved back in the day that noone ever heard of and to be honest one suspects that the critics and the bands were a bit up their own a***s and preferred it when they were the only ones who 'got it' as regards the music!

[Closing_Doors]

Originally Posted by distortionghost

secondly, the arcade fire are wonderful! i was skeptical as **** because presumed they were the american version of bloc party but they're the year's greatest find. retune your ears and enjoy funeral, then get sufjan steven's "illinois" and sigur rós' "takk" for a joyous pick me up. seriously though, i've been going to about a hundred gigs a year since i turned 17 and in all that time the arcade fire were the only one to make me cry from sheer delight. and i wasn't alone. it was a near-religious, insane experience watching them play and "rebellion" is outstanding. please give them time

And who are you exactly to tell me to retune my ears? I'm sick of this "OMG I can't believe you don't like Arcade Fire (feel free to insert another band name)" attitude. In fact eyebrowy summed it up fairly well (http://www.eyebrowy.com/html/electricpicnic.htm - go to the 3rd option). I don't like them. Wow. In fact I did say above that they might grow on me. I don't care whether they do or they don't. And I never told anybody to stop listening to them. Good for you, if you like them. Does "going to 100 gigs a year" make you a "better" music fan than the person that goes to 3 a year?

Like I said above, I listen to what I feel like. Today I bought Trouble by Ray Lamontagne and Refoc by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and would have bought Justified by Justin Timberlake but for lack of funds. At the moment I'm listening to Bell x1 b-side and I'm in the mood to stick on some Lenard Cohen after it. Enjoy music for what it is...some of it is deep and meaningful, some of it is shallow and manufactured. I don't think Britney Spears has every claimed to be a "serious artist", whatever that means, (although I was surprised to learn she can play the piano!) and I'd never buy an album, but some of her stuff is catchy. That's what it's supposed to be. I don't approach a song/band/film/play/whatever and try to impose my own "standards" or whatever on it. If you enjoy Arcade Fire...fine. Just don't treat me as inferior cause I don't

[distortionghost]

wow... someone takes me up totally wrong :P

listen me lovely i'm as big a popwhore as they come. i'll unapologetically listen to anything if i like it (britney's piano ballads *are* suprisingly catchy and i saw justin timberlake in the point when justified first came out and he was deadly) and i'm far from the elitist indiekid you seem to have me pegged as. i'm sorry you feel like the arcade fire are being shoved down your throat as a band you *must* like, frankly who gives a **** whether you do or not! i was just saying that - for me personally - i avoid anything with even a sniff of hype for six months until i can listen to it unbiased. i was driven mental at the start of the year with bloc party cause i just didn't "get" them, apparently. normally staying away from such cds for a while is a pretty sensible decision but i wish in this case i'd put aside my usual skepticism and listened to the arcade fire sooner because when i finally did, i was overwhelmed by them. when i wrote that post i was still really excited from the electric picnic and linked them not for you but for the person who said they hadn't heard them so they could check them out. there's a EP recording here for those of you who do like them.

yes i go to a lot of gigs but i do some work as a music photographer and try to support up and coming music as much as i possibly can so that's hardly a shocker! haha whatever link supposedly implied that made me a "better" or "superior" music fan clearly only existed in your head. i was just attempting to express the fact that they were - to me, and many others - phenomenal and that gig really took us by surprise. you mistook genuine excitement for a band with herd-like elitism. in future, please try not to jump to such easy conclusions or go off on a mad rant at one individual just cause you don't like a band kinda undermines your whole "don't impose standards" argument, you judged me far more then i judged you.

[Closing_Doors]

Originally Posted by distortionghost

yes i go to a lot of gigs but i do some work as a music photographer and try to support up and coming music as much as i possibly can so that's hardly a shocker! haha whatever link supposedly implied that made me a "better" or "superior" music fan clearly only existed in your head. i was just attempting to express the fact that they were - to me, and many others - phenomenal and that gig really took us by surprise. you mistook genuine excitement for a band with herd-like elitism. in future, please try not to jump to such easy conclusions or go off on a mad rant at one individual just cause you don't like a band kinda undermines your whole "don't impose standards" argument, you judged me far more then i judged you.

Maybe I did make that mistake but what pissed me off was the phrase "retune your ears". Maybe it was meant innocuously, but it came across as very condescending....very consistent with this "herd-like elitism" you're talking about. And it was you who brought up how many concerts you go to....why bring it up if you didn't feel it made your opinion more valid etc? Again maybe completely innocuous, but hey it's the internet...it's all just words on a screen and it didn't come across like that to me. So I don't think I jumped to an easy conclusion or that I judged you harshly (or at all really)....like I said it's the internet - just words on a screen, my response was based completely on your post (and the reasons detailed above), and I more posed questions of you than made random accusations in my response...the eyebrowy thing was meant to be a complete piss take btw.

So if I did take you up wrong....I prostrate myself humbly before you and beg for forgiveness



"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing,
and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal"....Oscar Wilde

[distortionghost]

it *was* meant innoculously! i'm never at my most coherant after 3 days without sleep. i can see that you could interpret it like that but when i said it really wasn't AT any one person but myself. i refused to listen to any new bands for ages this year cause the combined evils of the music press/internet messageboards and my mates were woo! BEST BAND EVER every ten seconds. exaggeration grows old. anyway in the past *i* had to retune my ears to even give the likes of "hey ya" a proper listen, months after everyone had ceased shakin it like a polaroid picture, i'm that allergic to hype. that definitely was the case with the arcade fire. for the best part of half a year i told everyone to piss off, i wasn't listening to them and i stick by that sentiment with all the other "arcade fire-y" bands i'm NOW supposed to latch onto. clap your hands say yeah, the decemberists etc. i thought maybe other people were sick of being told what to like too but maybe they also were missing out on this band just cause everyone was talking about them and they should at least sit down with the record and give it one listen. but it wasn't directed at you at all cause you'd already said you'd heard them and weren't into it. which is fine. the end.

and of course being a gig junkie doesn't make my opinion more valid, just reinforces i ought to stagger towards a better balanced life or get a job in a&r thus giving in to my enormous latent musical snobbery what i meant was i felt after their set that i didn't need to ever go to a gig again, that was as good as they get. and that's always a really special feeling, especially if you *do* go to ton of gigs as a matter of habit/addiction to music generally and even though you love live music madly, sometimes you kinda lose the fun bit somewhere. it becomes routine. a great routine! but too familiar to really catch you unawares and knock you on your bum or challenge anything.

Originally Posted by Closing_Doors

the eyebrowy thing was meant to be a complete piss take btw.

*g* i should hope so considering they bear more then a passing resemblence to my friend and i, should we be turned into dodgy looking boys and have our accents switched! (mmm cheers bren :P) he swears it's coincidental and i'm not paranoid or humourless enough to think otherwise but still cry laughing with familiarity every time i see that clip. that stupid band has turned us all into a bunch of saps! but it's nice to be overexcited about music again, however fleetingly, and whatever your opinions on TAF, it's been a damn good year for new releases.

Originally Posted by Closing_Doors

So if I did take you up wrong....I prostrate myself humbly before you and beg for forgiveness

no worries. sorry for unwittingly pissing you off! no more flippant comments about ears... except that i found out this week apparently you have little hairs in your ears and they fall down and can't get back up if you listen to music too loud! hearing loss suddenly seems so... tragic. all those years i've been listening to the stooges pissed at ridiculous volumes my ear canal has been the site of tiny carnage have to buy earplugs. /tangent. no more flippant comments full stop cause i only sail through here occasionally and probably won't bother posting again so you can return to the roost and crow ol' oscar all ya like. hi5.