Four Concerts. Four Days. Day Four.

I realise now that I forgot to post day four of my amazing Four Concerts in Four Days adventure. Here it is.

Hugh Lane Gallery: Celebrating Bartok
The Mercantile: Alan McGee v. The Jimmy Cake

Too make up the numbers, I had to go to two concerts on the Sunday. First up was a trip to the Hugh Lane for a midday concert billed as Celebrating Bartok. This gave us three pieces for piano and violin – Bela Bartok's Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 enveloped by two pieces composed by Irish jazzer Ronan Guilfoyle. It was all great*.

That evening I was off to concert featuring popular local band The Jimmy Cake followed by DJing from former Creation records supremo Alan McGee, the man who gave the world Oasis (thanks Alan). This was on in a venue I was not familiar with, so I made contact with the young gentleman friend of a a Jimmy Cake member, learning from him that they would be coming onstage at around 9.30 pm.

When we arrived down at the venue at something like 9.10 there was tumbleweed blowing through it, and only the presence of Alan McGee himself at a table convinced me that we were not in the wrong place. The Jimmy Cake's appeal is becoming more selective, I thought. However, it turned out that scheduling had gone awry and everything was going to be happening a bit later than expected.

So it was that almost at 9.30 pm the first act came on – an English singer songwriter whose name we did not initially catch… could it be that we were in the presence of Creation sensation Mischka? Actually, no, it was some geezer called Craig Walker, and was not playing cod reggae tunes. I am a bit suspicious of singer songwriters, but Mr Walker seemed a bit more appealing than most, for all that members of the second support act and their entourage kept talking loudly through his short set.

The second support were in fact some fellows called The Vagabonds. They seem to have been from somewhere in Ireland other than Dublin. In appearance they looked a bit like they were a late 80s Creation band who somehow found themselves propelled forward to 2011. In musical terms, they were punky and maybe a bit shambolic. I thought possibly they showed potential, but they should do something about the shouty tuneless vocals. I was also fascinated by how one song ended with a shouted refrain of "The Workers! United! Will Never Be Defeated!" It was the 1st of May, so maybe this was their tribute to the Working Man.

And then The Jimmy Cake. I have not seen these guys in an age, so I was struck by how much they have changed. For one thing, they seem to have shed some more members, and are now a miniscule seven piece. They also seem to have changed their musical orientation, possibly based on which people have dropped from the band. While they still retain clarinet and trumpet for some tracks, they seem a lot more keyboardy and percussive now, albeit in a way that combines with guitars and suchlike. Their broader sound seems a lot more motorik, calling to mind Steve Reich or Neu! (or the Knack's 'My Sharona') far more than would previously have been the case with the band.

So I liked the Cake's new direction and would encourage people to check them out. I reckon that their old fans would be sufficiently forward thinking not to be put off by the new sound, while people who have hitherto proved resistant to the band's charms might find the new full-on Jimmy Cake more to their taste.

After the bands some geezer did a bit of DJing, and then Alan McGee took over. His playing was a bit hit and miss – great to hear The Hives and some of the other tunes, but there really is no call to be playing music by Oasis in public. Furthermore, while I love the Beatles as much as the next man, McGee's playing them something like five or six times in the hour and a half we saw of him was a bit wearing.

That ends my four gigs in four days.

*Displaying the incisive commentary that has me on the guest list for every musical event that requires subtle and descriptive analysis.

image source

An inuit panda production

CONCERT: The Jimmy Cake (Whelan's)

Blah de blah, you've heard me talk about these fellows before, if I have not already communicated what they sound like to you, then I am not going to succeed now. Nevertheless, this was an unusual gig – not merely have the Cake acquired a load of new members, they have shed the man I always thought of Mr J. Cake esq.. I was struck by how there might now be more ex-Jimmycakers than current members of the band. Maybe someone could set up The Jimmy Cake II.

You can say what you like about the Cake, but they are definitely attracting a better sort of punter. I ran into one of my pals from Spy School there. He is running for the Dáil in the next election, so he could shortly be running the country, though as he is from a political party where talk of people being spies is officially Not Funny, forget I mentioned it.

Together at last - Damo Suzuki & The Jimmy Cake

Some time ago I separately discussed Damo Suzuki & The Jimmy Cake. Now I get to discuss them... together! As you know, Damo Suzuki used to sing with Can, but now he wanders the world playing improvised music with random musicians. His preferred modus operandi is apparently to play with random nutters who are meeting him and each other for the first time on stage, but he does occasionally play with actual bands. He did that last time he was in Dublin, playing with E+S=B. And tonight he was playing with The Jimmycake. This was in the Spiegeltent, a tent with mirrors which they had down in Dublin's docks as part of the theatre festival.

This was another of those gigs where you do find yourself thinking "come on man, how improvised is this?". I heard that the Jimmycake had rehearsed some general principles before the show but were still kind of playing it by ear during the concert, and had not discussed musical direction with Mr Damo (or Mr Suzuki) in advance of the concert. Things still sounded fairly under control to me, if not actually producing the kind of music your mother would like. The Jimmycake played a stormer tonight, and DS trimmed his sails accordingly, producing a gestalt evening of pure music. Of particular enjoyment to me was the J-Cake's new duelling keyboards direction, with Jurgen and Paul Smith (sp?) beginning the set with a twin keyboard onslaught that kept tripping in and out of phase with each other, before DS and the rest of the band joined in. And you may recall my commenting on how I reckoned losing so many of the brass instruments would leave the Cake a bit exposed in the wind department. Paradoxically the net effect this time was that I found myself paying far more attention to the slabs of clarinet noise.

It's a funny old rock and roll world. I feel that my inability to talk about music coupled with my poor note-taking has left me unable to do justice to this concert here. It was great to see musicians raising their game for each other, and it is hard not to look back on this as one of the musical highlights of the year.

Alcohol and Music – friend or foe?

I have a mixed record with Jimmy Cake gigs – I often seem to be a bit *tired* and so find them hard to get into. This concert (in the Button Factory, formerly Temble Bar Music Centre) did not in some ways gel for me; arriving late having already had a few after work sherries might not have helped. That said, I was impressed by the music I heard, much of which seemed to come from their new album. The Cake seem to be pursuing a more piano-keyboard driven approach these days than previously, which could make their new album rather different to the ear than the earlier ones. I generally fear change, though this time round – I like it.

Thirsty Pandas

A Farewell To Brains

Popular Dublin band The Jimmycake played a couple of free gigs as a way of live rehearsing some new tunes of theirs, in preparation for recording them on a new album. I went to the one in The Village, because it is round the corner from me. It seems like ages since I last saw the J-cake, and they seem really different now. For one thing, they have been shedding members... there are hardly any of them left now, a mere eight people onstage tonight, one of whom was playing his farewell gig.

The band seem to be losing mostly the people playing the funny instruments, so they are by default moving in a more rock direction. In the long run this is probably a bad thing, but it did mean that they went big time for the wall of sound stuff tonight. I was happy, as this is the kind of thing I like best from them in a live context. They might be a bit too rock next time I see them, however, as they've already lost their saxophonist and this was the trumpeter's last gig, leaving the clarinette as their only wind instrument. What does the future hold for Dublin's leading band?

but of course, since then I saw The Jimmycake's sensational performance with Damo Suzuki. Bet you can't wait to read about that?

oh wait, they're actually called The Jimmy Cake.

RTÉ Living Music Festival 2006: episode one

This is the first Living Music festival that I (or indeed most people) have ever been to, as its concerts were located in the city centre and they had a superstar guest as the focus for the event’s proceedings. Yes, reader, this music festival was centred on the music of Steve Reich, a man the programme described as an icon of American music. Because I am a very busy man, I could not go to all the concerts, but I made it to many of the ones taking place on the Saturday in the theatre of my old school, where numerous pieces by Steve Reich and others were being performed, some with the assistance of contemporary outfit the Crash Ensemble. I was particularly interested in seeing some of their stuff as I had met one of them over the summer at a wedding and wanted to see if the whole outfit was as kewl as she was.

The great rumour I heard about the festival, incidentally, was that Reich agreed to show up on condition that nothing by Philip Glass appeared on the programme. Whether the proximity of several lapdancing clubs (including String-Fell-Ow’s) to the venue influenced his decision is unknown. There were unconfirmed rumours of a baseball-capped man appearing in several of these places during the day, asking if the dancers could perform to some music he’d brought with him.

Anyway, the music. I couldn’t make it to Part One, so my first was Part Two: some pieces by Reich preceded by other musics from when he kicked off and a new piece by a local composer. All of these were performed by the Crash Ensemble. The first piece was called ‘Workers Union’, and written by Louis Andriessen in 1975. It was very rhythmic – in fact there was almost nothing to it but rhythm, with every musician playing the same staccato notes on their instruments simultanaeously, producing a very odd effect. It did seem to feature a lot of false climaxes, but I wonder was that more in the way of being like an ocean’s series of breaking waves than the teasing annoyance that false endings typically present. I also found myself thinking that what the piece really needed was a guy in a tracksuit doing interpretative dance at the front of the stage.

Next up was James Tenney’s 1971 piece. ‘Never Having Written A Note For Percussion’. There was an element of When Gamelan Attacks to this piece, with the trio of musicians on stage playing instruments reminiscent of that crazy music. However, the piece’s style was rather different and most unusual. Whereas the previous piece featured separate, discrete punches of noise, this featured a continuous wall of music with no punctuation whatsoever. All that happened was the music went from being very quiet to very loud and then back to very quiet, with the sound being so seamless that it was like something you would get from a tone generator. This has to be one of the most extreme pieces of music I’ve ever heard, lacking almost everything one would associate with the form (no melody, no rhythm, almost no variation). The symphony of coughs emanating from the audience suggested that maybe the majority opinion was indeed that this was not music, but noise.

Simon O’Connor of The Jimmy Cake wrote the next piece, ‘The Paradise – Part III’, being premiered on this occasion. It was a plinky plinky piece for one pianist, far more obviously musical than anything that had gone before. It was definitely easy on the ear, but lacking the extreme features of what had gone before it is hard for a talentless bozo like me to write about. Also, it is the third part of a series. I hate sequels, especially when I have missed previous episodes.

And then two pieces by Steve Reich. ‘Vermont Counterpoint’ (1983) saw a flautist play over samples of herself playing. It was nice enough, which sounds like damning with faint praise. Maybe I am saying that that whole people sampling themselves endlessly has been done to death now, or that Fursaxa does it better. But of course, back in 1983 this would all have seemed relatively exciting. And then there was ‘Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ’ (1973), whose title largely describes it, unless like me you found yourself imagining something like that Monty Python sketch where the deranged musician batters trained mice with a mallet. It was not like that, but rather like Western music reverse engineering Gamelan. So you know, lots of people hitting xylophones and drums and stuff (with mallets) in a manner that both looked and sounded great. There might have been some electronic stuff in among all this. Top buzz, whatever it was.

An Amazing Discovery

I have just discovered that popular band The Jimmycake are actually called The Jimmy Cake. And amazingly, if you do a web search for "Jimmycake", the first thing you find is a thread I started on ILX.

CD: THE GREATEST IRISH MUSIC TUNES EVER RELEASED

This is actually a compilation of tunes by Irish artists which is meant to give a cross-section of the local music I have listened to over the last number of years. The tracklisting represents a couple of different things - artists I like or have liked, artists I deem representative of a certain current of Irish music, artists I reckon people might find interesting (but not necessarily like). Not all the selections do all of these things simultanaeously.

There are no tracks by U2 here, because everyone knows what they sound like already. And no tracks by undeniably rubbish acts of the 1980s (Cactus World News, Cry Before Dawn, Aslan, etc.), as they have no redeeming features and I have nothing by them. I have also left out any older Irish tunes by good bands like Horslips as they do not fit the model.

So anyway, enough of my yakkin'. Here are the tunes, the order being roughly chronological:

Toasted Heretic 'Sodom Tonight' (from Songs For Swinging Celibates)
Toasted Heretic were a very important act in my circle. I remember hearing this song for the first time in the radio and being awestruck by it. This was back around 1987 or so, when the idea of there being such a thing as an Irish band making this kind of music was dangerously novel. In rapid succession the discovery was made that i) they had other songs ii) they had an entire cassette of songs, and iii) they played concerts. I saw them live and became acquainted with the band (though not as well as others), but gradually Toasted Heretic's career trajectory became apparent - a failure to capitalise on early promise, and a failure to break out of the ghetto of Irish music despite more than no support in certain quarters of the UK music press. Such is the way of life.

Wormhole 'Unknown To Us' (from Chicks Dig Scars)
One of the many somewhat experimental guitar rock outfits found in Dublin during the early 1990s. These fellows may later have mutated or evolved into E+S=B, who played with yer man Damo Suzuki. I like the whiny vocals on this track.

Whipping Boy 'Valentine 69' (from Submarine)
The Whipping Boy originally were a kind of early post-My Bloody Valentine band - shoegazing before the genre had acquired the name, but maybe a bit more muscular. For whatever reason, success eluded them. Then they reformed in the mid-1990s, riding a wave of music industry hype, and success eluded them again.

Harvest Ministers 'Six O'Clock Is Rosary' (from the e.p. 'If It Kills Me And It Will')
The Harvest Ministers released a couple of singles and maybe an album on Sarah, and appear on the final Sarah compilation, which means that more than no people outside Ireland have heard their music.

Revelino 'Happiness Is Mine' (from the untitled first Revelino album)
These fellow mutated out of The Coltranes. I'm not saying they are necessarily that good in an objective sense, but when I saw them live in the early/mid 1990s I was struck by their star quality - they seemed like the kind of act who should be playing to legions of adoring fans rather than to the usual suspects who go to all gigs in Dublin. They may have thought so too, so it was amusing when their second, post non-success album, was called something like To The End, and had a wonderful cover featuring a photo of some Kamikaze pilots bowing before heading off on a mission.

Sultans of Ping fc 'Where's Me Jumper?' (from Casual Sex In The Cineplex)
I have met people who have never heard this song, so I included it on the CD. Some have suggested making this Ireland's national anthem.

Katell Keineg 'Smile' (from Jet)
Katell Keineg is not actually Irish but she lives here and is part of the local scene, so she might as well be. This is from what I think is her first album. I would have preferred to include 'The Gulf of Araby', but that is from a record I do not have. This is life.

Female Hercules 'Gwendolyn' (from the e.p. 'Gwendolyn')
Female Hercules are a hardy perennial on the Dublin live scene, three guys who live to rock 24-7 and play music with an obvious psychobilly influence. Mr Female Hercules is a recognisable Dublin character, and a personal hero of mine.

WARLORDS OF PEZ 'Padre Pio' (from the v/a compilation Kicking Against…)
WARLORDS OF PEZ are best experienced live, where they play in masks and include bizarre audio-visual features to their performances. Plus they have a naked man onstage hiding behind a flipboard giving the titles of the songs (and their lyrics, usually the same thing).

David Kitt 'You Know What I Want To Know' (from the v/a compilation Kicking Against...)
I'm not entirely convinced that David "Kittser" Kitt is necessarily that good, but he ran Dublin for a bit during the late 1990s or early 2000s. The mainstream media here got a bit over excited by his combining of programmed beats with singer-songwritery guitar and vocal stuff, while true scenesters actively hated him. Listening to this track again I am struck by how pleasantly understated his delivery is, and I remember enjoying any live performance of his I caught (when he was supporting someone I had paid money to see).

Nina Hynes 'Swallow' (from a v/a compilation given with Homage (or should that be Homg;e, given the magazine's lack of interest in spell-checking?))
Dublin suffers from a surfeit of lady singer-songwriters, and I am throwing Ms Hynes in here as a random sample.

Neosupervital 'Rachael' (from a v/a compilation given with Homage magazine)
Mr Neosupervital is this suave guy who plays a weird guitar synth thing while wearing a suit. There is a slightly support act air to him, but it's the kind of quality support that makes you wish you showed up early to more gigs. This song is rocking my world at the moment, making me wonder if I should check out more of his stuff.

The Jimmy Cake 'The Opposite of Addiction' (from Dublin Gone, Everybody Dead)
Popular local band whose members have colonised most other Dublin bands..

Estel 'My Raymond Is Contagious' (from A Guide In Time Of Great Danger)
Unpopular local band, at least with people I know. This is pre-split Estel, and is unrepresentative of their sound, in so far as it has a guest vocalist. Classic Estel were better live than on record. Post-split, one Estel faction kept the name (Continuity Estel), while Estel-General Command became Pas Cas Cap.

The Chalets 'David Boring' (from the 'Night Rocker' e.p.)
The title track of this e.p. is a complete corker, but I reckoned the comics fans among you might appreciate this track.

Jape 'Floating' (from a v/a compilation given with Small Hours magazine)
When I saw Mr Jape live I realised how much I liked this song. It's funny how one of my friends described Jape as indie-shmindie bullshit when (live, anyway) this song is like some kind of monster rave anthem.

Fred 'Four Chords And The Truth' (from Making Music So You Don't Have To)
The Cork sensations. Sadly, on record you do not get to see their crazed dancer.

WARLORDS OF PEZ 'Monster Voice' (from an album sampler given away at a recent concert)
WARLORDS OF PEZ songs are short, so there is always room for one more.

That's your lot. At some stage in the future you can expect a CD of World Pop - mainly psych tunes from East Germany and Cambodia, bet you can't wait.