Over the next five days, I’ll be on the road all over Ireland, being the driver/tour manager/jackofallatrades for the Ireland-tour of German and Irish metal bands Killtribe and Gacy’s Threads. I’ll provide the official tour diary here and on the Killtribe-website. As an apetizer, here’s an interview with both bands so you get a feel for what we are up to. More dispatches from the road soon, Wifi-access across the country permitting.
Gacy’s Threads are a Metalcore band from Belfast, and have been recently named as one of the Irish bands to watch in 2011 by Hot Press magazine. They have been constantly touring Ireland (and also did a short tour in Hungary), supporting bands like Fear Factory, Cancer Bats, and August Burns Red. Gacy’s Threads will be on tour all across the country north and south again on the St. Patrick’s weekend, together with German newcomers Killtribe, who are hailing from Aachen in the west of Germany. Not that the band members are freshmen at their first year in metal college: they shared European stages with Slayer, Soulfly, In Flames and Caliban. I spoke with both bands about touring, the metal/core scenes in Northern Ireland and the Republic and why people should attend their shows naked.
Gacy’s Thread’s
How often have you played the Republic before? And is there a difference between the scenes and the audiences in the North and down here?
Aaron Vance (vocals): We’ve played the republic on multiple occasions in our short existence as a band, going as far as Cork, Limerick and Galway as well as Dublin.
Personally, with playing in the Republic on a fairly regular basis, I’ve noticed that there is a larger hardcore/metalcore scene than up in the North and it’s always refreshing to play with bands close to the same style of music we play, bands like Murdock, Red Enemy etc.
That’s not to say I don’t like playing up North, I love it also! Give us a stage and we’ll play!
Blane Doherty (guitar/vocals): We’ve ventured down to the Republic quite often in our 3 or so years in existence. We actually traveled down for maybe our 5th or 6th show. We’re definitely one of those bands that want to make the effort to get all over this crazy wee country!
As for differences in the shows, I think especially regarding Dublin because it’s such a bigger city compared to Belfast you can attract more people from each scene as there is simply more people and fans of each form of music. But we love playing both north and south!
I’ve announced it on multiple online and offline channels before, but I’m super proud that I’m helping out on the upcoming Ireland-tour of the mighty Killtribe from Germany. Killtribe is the, well, “new” band of my friends Malik, Thomas and Max (and Max), who made it to the one level of awesomeness that my bands never achieved: they got themselves a record deal. Which fortunately does not prevent them from doing a small, self-made tour around the Emerald Isle next week. They are touring together with the equally awesome Gacy’s Threads from Belfast, so I’m really looking forward to being on the road again. The last time I did this was in 2008. Horns up.
I’ll help out both bands, driving and buying them fried foods and beer and carrying passed out bass players back to the hostel. Also will this be the first St. Patrick’s day that I’ll not spend in a Dublin pub.
Please partake online if you cannot attend the shows: I’ll publish a tour diary every day here and on the Killtribe-website, and you can follow Killtribe on Twitter as well. Rock’n'Roll.
I’ve had a very productive day at work, even being slightly tired from yesterday’s wedding antics at the (urgh!) Cafe en Seine that involved drinking baby Guinness and eating creamy wedding cake with cream. I just finished typing an interview with Gacy’s Threads and Killtribe (whose tour in March I’ll accompany as driver/jester/scout/beertester) for MEG. I had some rice and veggies for dinner that I washed down with lime-tasting mineral water, which makes up for Bailey’s and cake, I guess. I miss the Analog Girl, but I am seeing her again on Friday when I’m flying to Berlin where I’m going to listen to the War of the Worlds, drink beer in the bar of Mogwai’s Barry Burns and meet the Stylespion. Here’s Seasick Steve with the Banjo Song. Slap lekker.
Post Celtic Tiger-Dublin has become an interesting place. All the independent quirkiness and creative energy that I had missed when I came here for the first time in 2006 has finally started to show, now that the money is gone and the shiny office buildings start to rot. We have Steampunk flea markets, Chinese film festivals, and more music then ever before flowing from every corner of the city. Art in general is more present, in the public mind and the public space. One initiative who puts art even more into the public focus, and, even more important puts it on the streets, are the good guys of the Upstart collective. What they did (and are still doing) is simply putting up pieces of art instead of election posters during the current election campaign.
UpStart is a non-profit arts collective which aims to put creativity at the centre of public consciousness during the Irish General Election Campaign in 2011. We plan to do this by reinterpreting the spaces commonly used for displaying election campaign posters in Dublin City.
And they do with that with great success. I thoroughly enjoy gazing at and reading an Upstart-piece whenever I see one. And not only because they accepted a text of mine – there truly are great submitted pieces among the works they displayed hanging over and next to all those bleak “Vote 1 Enda XXX”-posters all over the city. Way to go, Upstart!
You can also donate to aid their initiative. Please do!
As stated above, they also accepted a humble submission by yours truly. It’s a small text/poem/whatchamacallit that I named “Cities”. I’ve added it below, if you’ve seen it displayed somewhere in town and you liked it, let me know.
Cities
People make cities. People who are crying, puking, laughing, dying, loving, snoring, eating, sleeping, dreaming. Not grey and dull buildings, two hundred years old. Tiny things make cities. Tiny things like words. Words people use to describe their city to others. People should speak. This makes a city.
Walking from O’Connell Street to South Great George’s Street early on a Saturday morning, you only meet a handful of people. In Temple Bar, the street sweepers have been busy already and cleaned all pancake-looking smut from the cobblestones. The only other human beings on the pavement are English and German tourists who don’t want to miss out on their free hotel breakfasts. They stand outside the hotels, pale-faced, clutching coffee cups and Red Bull cans, dragging on their cigarettes as if their sanity depends on it. Maybe it does.
Jaysus, not much posting here recently. Seems I’ve been pretty much occupied with Sonic Iceland and another work-related Berlin trip. And visiting green and brown hills and skeleton ships and islands in Mayo, together with the Analog Girl.
To make up for this, here’s a video of Ukrainian pianist Viktoriya Yermoleva, covering Metallica’s “Battery” on the piano. Enjoy your weekend.
Btw, she’s playing at Sódóma in Reykjavik tomorrow, together with Brian Brian Viglione of Dresden Dolls fame. Just so you know, in case you are in Iceland.
I’m writing this while I’m sitting in my bathrobe in my kitchen, waiting for the antibiotics to start their good work. Thanks to the aforementioned trip to an ice-cold Berlin I caught a mean cold, which meant I spent Christmas sniffing and coughing and feverish. Also, thanks to the snow-afflicted public transport all over Europe, was my flight back from Berlin to Dublin cancelled, and I had to spend Christmas with the few things that I had in my hand luggage. That did not include any presents. Hence, I was quite grumpy over the holidays and did not write anything here (or somewhere else, for that matter). But as stated before, I tried to write a Christmas story, and so here it is. Consider it as a belated present, the same kind that my family will get once I make it to the post office in January. Happy New Year!
I’m not a huge fan of Christmas. Most of the time it is just too cold and miserable, filled with frenzy late-minute-shoppers populating crowded malls and shopping districts. And, at least on my part, ending in some-kind of family-visiting-marathon over the holidays, after which I more than happily look forward to start working again. However, here’s my attempt at a Christmas story. It’s not Auggie Wren’s story, but a Christmas story nonetheless.
I’ve finally wrapped all presents, cleaned the flat so the Analog Girl can visit me without complaints, and am absolutely not in the mood for Christmas. As usual. May be connected to the fact that I’ll have to travel to Berlin three days before Christmas Eve, and due to the current weather in Europe I am a bit concerned that I may not get back to Ireland in time to pick up my bag full of presents, and travel back to Germany to make niece & nephew happy. But what can you do? I will sacrifice some mulled wind for the weather gods tonight. Mead is difficult to get here on the Emerald Isle.
Speaking of a bag full of presents: this little story here perfectly incorporates my attitude towards the birthday of the imagined son of God. It comes from the boss, Neil Gaiman himself, and is called Nicholas was:
Nicholas Was…
older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.
The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.
He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.
Ho.
Ho.
Ho.
From the blog of the boss also comes this brilliant little animation of the story/poem:
In between writing stuff for the upcoming Sonic Iceland relaunch and the accompanying book, visits to Berlin and London and drowning in snow here in Nowosibirsk a.k.a. the capital of Ireland , I still found time to do other things to shorten my way to world domination. First, I gave an interview to Arwa from Orangesplaash, which will appear in their upcoming series of expat interviews. Secondly, I have started working for Irish music magazine and event guide meg.ie, so expect to read some extravagant interviews and gig reviews here in the coming weeks. And thirdly, I am working on my first ever Christmas story. Don’t ask me why, maybe I’m getting mellow with old age. Anyway, back to work.
