keeping Irish music venues independent

moray mair | Everything about music | June 30, 2011

Yesterday was a bad day. But last night I revelled in live jazz and the fog lifted, the spirits rose and all was alright again

Live music can do that.

Live music does do that. Nothing beats a long day being lifted by sweet tunes.

I mention all this because Cork finally has a regular and successful jazz night, The Blue Note Sessions at The Roundy music venue. Last night was their one year anniversary. It was a great night with a fabulous quartet of tenor sax, double bass, guitar and drums. Best of all the Blue Note Sessions only costs €5 to get into. However, these days getting people to pay in to a live gig is becoming nigh on impossible unless you’re a star or some latest on the block, cool kid, up and coming, whatever. For the rest, for the multitude of bands and musicians trying to make it there seems to be little value put on their talent, craft, hard work, determination.

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eating Irish culture and digesting delicious food

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 28, 2011

It was scrumptious. One of the most delicious dinners I have ever had in Ireland, one of the most expensive too. But worth it. Oh so worth it. The food, the ingredients were absolutely magnificent. Food as art. Art to be eaten. The best way to consume culture is to eat it, digest it slowly, luxuriate in its taste, touch, the wonderful smell of it, the sound that comes from it and the beauty in its craftsmanship. So where was this place of magical taste and smell and eye watering magnificence? Thorntons in Dublin.

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Caught between carrot flies and a writers festival

CUE | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 27, 2011

This month our skills exchange gardener tries to plant his carrots and hit a literary festival all in the same weekend

The Barricades Are Up! Man The Barricades!

Is the cry that can be heard all along the allotments as carrot flies approach. This is their mid-summer fest, when they paint the town red. Late May, early June to be exact so I hope the worst is over but the thing about Chamaepsila Rosae, so named by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, is that they can devastate the root and the greenery will continue to look good. I say, I hope the worst is over, because I didn’t get my barricades up. My carrots were a bit young as I planted lateish and perhaps per chance will hopefully avoid the first onslaught. But I must be ready by late August-September for the second offensive. It does seem that physical barriers are the best defence.

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food festivals; a delicious recipe for celebration?

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 24, 2011

It’s raining and i’m not disappointed perhaps because i’m a curmudgeon. Perhaps because I’m hoping the TASTEFEST, that’s currently underway in Cork, is going to suffer. I hate saying that but it’s true. There you go. If you’re reading this and are involved in this food festival then, well, hate me for it. To make it clear; I don’t have a personal gripe against the organisers (I don’t know the people involved), nor do I have any particular agenda and I have alot of sympathy for those restaurateurs and producers taking stands at the event. It’s just that I have an issue with the following:

1. It’s incredibly expensive to attend, is a rip off (I thought those days of greed were over), and for my mind is extremely bad value for money:

If you attend this afternoon (4 hours) its €15 each (€20 for two)
If you attend this evening (4 hours) its €25 each (€30 for two)
Saturday day (4 hours) its €25 each (€30 for two)
Saturday evening (4 hours) its €25 each (€30 for two)
Sunday day (5 hours) its €25 each (€30 for two)

And that’s before you pay for dishes that range from €3 to €8. These dishes are paid for in ‘Corkers’ which seems to be some silly marketing ploy to make the whole thing sound alternative but really ends up causing more headaches for traders as they have to hold onto tokens before converting them into cash at the end of the day. There are bars and music at the ‘festival’ but so what? A pint is a pint and the music from all accounts is your usual pub stuff. So all in all there’s not much to hold you there except for the great food (of which I expect there is much judging by the restaurants involved). However, to stay means you’re going to have to spend money; to eat, to drink. So, if I was to go with my wife at 6pm it would cost us €30 to get in and then more for food and drink. If we were to stay there for an hour I reckon we’d spend €70 – €90 easily. Not cheap.

2. The cost charged for pitches for small artisan producers (I don’t know the cost for restaurants but it would be much more) is €1,700 for the entire event. After you’ve paid that out you have to pay for electricity, gas, staff, produce. And there’s more – the organisers are looking for 50% of traders earnings (I got this info from the traders themselves so if anyone knows different let me know). A GUBU moment I think. Unbelievable greed and an absolute disgrace. I can state this because I know most of the small producers in Cork and many of them couldn’t or wouldn’t get involved because the costs were prohibitive. And this is a festival celebrating local produce?

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Politics and the culture of limitless choice

moray mair | Culture and politics | June 23, 2011

I found this fascinating RSA animate by Professor Renata Salecl who asks whether the ability to make limitless choices helps or hinders our lives and our society. It is a damning indictment on capitalism.

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Culturally doing instead of wretchedly thinking

moray mair | Culture and politics | June 22, 2011

While working on the food market at the Shandon Street Festival, in Cork, last weekend I found myself thinking about how little I go to see things such as shows, gigs, exhibitions, films, festivals. Sure, I’m at 2 gigs a week and am involved in a number of festivals and events during the year but they’re all kind of the same and besides, work is work no matter how much you enjoy it.

What I realised, well more like admitted to myself, was that I had created a little event bubble around myself full of seething all – knowingness, self – justification and paltry excuses. I was secure in my little bubble, happy in my ignorance and self – importance. However this way of thinking, of living is only detrimental to my health, my well being for it inhibits my thinking, narrows my focus and diminishes my experience my already limited experience. What occurred me was that my wretched laziness was leading me into a place in which I’d end up losing my ability to make a good counter attack against all the prevailing forces that continue to proliferate and dominant our cultural landscape; the consensus, the status quo, the culturcrats (that is now an official new word which i will expand on at a later date)

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Field Grey: the new Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr

moray mair | Book reviews and writers | June 21, 2011

So to the seventh Bernie Gunther novel, Field Grey, by Scottish author Philip Kerr.

Like many Gunther fans I was chomping at the bit to read it for this series marries my near obsession of all things World War 2 with hardboiled detective fiction. Bernie Gunther is a brilliantly drawn, flawed character whose story is played out in Nazi Germany, The Ukraine during the war, POW camps as well as post war Austria, Argentina, Cuba, France and Germany. Kerr is able to evoke the period so well, so cinematically, and his ability to weave fiction with real life events and characters really makes for a cracker of a yarn.

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growing confidence in his vegetables in the allotment

CUE | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 20, 2011

Our intrepid skills exchange member has a go at growing vegetables in his new allotment in Cork

After the Easter break I visited the allotment and on seeing the weeds I was struck with a pang (albeit in the lumbar region) for more children. Children are great for that sort of job, low to the ground, flexible and with the uncanny ability to find Wally in a sea of red and white striped Wally’s, they would surely be able to distinguish the weeds from the produce. I know, I know, one mans weed and all that – but I have been patient and I did admire the lush crop of dandelions we had this year speckling the hedgerows in all their yellow splendour but when you have a weed posing as a carrot top and you can’t tell the difference that’s going a bit too far. That’s why loads of children would be good. Moaning aside a mere three hours total did mucho weeding and I was finally able to see the onions.

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The Shandon Street Festival shows the community at its best

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 17, 2011

Tomorrow is the beginning of another weekend of food markets, the last weekend of work for almost 2 months. This time around we’ll be hosting our food market at the Shandon Street Festival, a wonderful community event held in Cork City every June.

But about the weekend work…it’s coming to an end and I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand I’m delighted in the knowledge that this time next week I won’t be standing on a street corner glowering, tweeting incessantly on my phone and feeling sick from eating so much market food and drinking gallons of sweetened coffee. On the other; well, I’ll be making no money. I suppose that’s how it is for all those that are self – employed. If you’re not working you’re not earning. But I truly need a break. Breaks are good. Breaks from late nights and early starts, breaks from incessant phone calls from people who need every small production detail spelt out for them whether it be loading in times, electricity requirements, insurance or stage plans, breaks from bureaucrats, breaks from performers, breaks from crowds, breaks from people. Breaks from everything, everyone. I can’t wait. All I want to do is sit and for them to go away. Bah humbug.

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A short story: A World Without End

Mark Kelleher | Short fiction and poetry | June 16, 2011

Isabel has a red-winged raven taking flight from the base of her spine. A surreal beauty attaches itself to it, with its beak ajar and background of towering flame, as it creeps out from under her jumper as she bends to the floor. She does that a lot: bending; mostly to palm the trash from the aisles, as that bright creature peeps out, stark on paled skin. I spied the tattoo before I got to see her eyes, her smile, or even hear her words which spill like jewels from her bulging lips – bee-stung, as the dailies term the surgically-puffed pouts of movie-queens. It blazed in violent ruby and death black, looking more like a crude laceration than a tattoo, and transfixed both Toby and I. Our helpless souls fluttered – in joy, in pain. Emerging from the concealment of a soft-topped Corvette, we stood perhaps too close, as she sprung out from the passenger seat. She whipped her hair and gathered her bag. Clear motions. Toby quickly footed forward, proffering nervous hellos. Barely had he stuttered beyond the third H, when a voice boomed from within the car. It was deep and low. A cartoon Satan.

‘Step the fuck away, champ,’ it politely advised.Toby turned his step forward into a backward retreat in one movement, jerked in horror, and verged left towards the vacant parking-bay, almost breaking into a run.
‘Jesus, Carl,’ an angel’s voice floated back.
‘Fuck that guy,’ he growled, as the car crunched forward and away.

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Bloomsday celebrations in Cork

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 15, 2011

Sixteenth today it is, thinks Leopold Bloom, and the 16th it was, in June 1904

So tomorrow is Bloomsday. Not that I’ve read the great book –Ulysses incase you didn’t know – but mutantspace skills exchange has been involved in running a Bloomsday event in Cork for the past 3 years for those aficionados that can’t get enough of Leopold Bloom and his meanderings through Dublin on June 16th, 1904.

I must admit that I did start reading it at one stage – my one year old daughter gave it to me as a Fathers Day present (she’s very clever for her age) – but I never made any headway. I was too lazy. Couldn’t be bothered quite frankly. Ever since then it has leaned up dispiritedly against my more popular books on the shelf, looking all forlorn, unloved and untouched. I don’t blame it. I’d be pissed off too. I just can’t bring myself to do it, to get involved with it, seems an enormous effort, a mountain to climb. And I have no time.

Having said all that, my co-conspirator tomorrow evening is a Joycean freak. I think it’s all he reads, or just about, either way it’s weird, what would possess someone to marry such a tome of a book? At some point a few years ago I asked him how many times he had read it and he spat out a number, I can’t remember which, but it was probably something like 6 or 7. It’s probably 9 or 10 now. I must ask him, it’s surely something ridiculous. “No no, no, no” he always insists, “See everytime you read it you get something else out of it, it’s so layered, so deep…” yeah whatever.

I’m never going to read the damned book. Well, I might consider it if I was lying on a desert island with no one to talk to, nothing to listen too, couldn’t swim and had no alcohol, drugs or hope of salvation from a passing ship. Yeah, I’m definitely in the “I’ve never read it” category. However I kinda would like to be like in the “I have read it” category… sometimes. They have a strong bond, those people, those Joyceans, it’s like a Masonic lodge except they wear Edwardian clothes, drink wine and eat fried kidneys and Gorgonzola cheese. My kind of thing (the wine and cheese and dressing up – not too fond of kidneys to be honest)

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album review of John Edgar Voe, JP Ryan, New Order and The Prodigy

moray mair | Everything about music | June 14, 2011

Reviews of new albums from John Edgar Voe, JP Ryan, New Order and The Prodigy…

John Edgar Voe: Western Notes EP

Martin Corrigan fronts folk/ alt country outfit: John Edgar Voe. They will be releasing a Four track EP titled Western Notes on June 24th. What you notice first are the fresh, striking lyrics on track Highway Man; “I’ll speak to you in tongues in different regions in a language you might understand. I’ll tweak the screws with the words I use in ways you would not believe” and the electric guitars. Yes, electric, its an Americana/folk acoustic type of thing that is going on here. There is syncopation and asymmetrical rhythms within the music that have that Rat a tat tat vibe to it, that along with perfect melodies captivate the listener and paints a vast portrait that stretch out to American landscape, however Corrigan is from Fermanagh and has been quoted as attempted to create his own form adapting Americana and turning and twisting it into his own: Fermanicana.
This John Edgar Voe EP delves straight into the very soul of a song, tells it as it is and delivers in an uncannily cool and austere manner. Corrigan can be sassy and scruffy, or quiveringly sincere, but he’s never uninteresting. Words and images tumble out – we infer that he’s a fool for love, but a cynical one – and by the end, you’re thoroughly dazzled.
10/10 it is what it is and at its utmost best at that.

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The joys of working festival markets during summertime in Ireland

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 13, 2011

There is joy to be found eeking out a living producing festival markets in Ireland

And I’m knackered. It’s Monday and I feel like I’m at the end of a busy week rather than the beginning of it. Hold on a sec…now that I think about it I’m both. I’ve been working like a dog for the last 14 days and have another 14 to go before myself and my wife get to take off for a small weekend break. That makes me halfway through a 28 day week. No wonder I’m aching and burning out. But hey, I’m not complaining, work pays the bills and these days you need to make hay while the sun shines…

This weekend I spent my waking hours standing on the main street in Cork City, Patrick Street, running a street market that we – my business partner and I – put on every year as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival. In truth it’s nothing really to do with the festival, it just happens that festivals are a great excuse to have a lively market in the heart of the city. Frankly, if the city authorities had any sense they’d have a market on every weekend of the summer. If I was in TEAM (our fantastic non – existent tourism marketing quango that’s meant to be promoting the city and its lively culture but to date has done nothing except quaff expensive food at its own launch ) I’d be banging at our door begging us to do it all the time;

“Please put a market on every weekend on our main street, please give local traders and retailers the opportunity to make extra money, please help increase footfall in our dying city, please give the tourists something to do on Sunday because nearly everything is closed due to some inane union ruling on working hours, please give people a place to hang out and eat delicious things, please help us promote Cork”

Continue reading »

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southern screen professionals is officially launched

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 10, 2011

Last night I was standing outside the gig venue I run, in Cork, having a quick cigarette and killing time while soundchecks were going on, when I bumped into a musician running down the road to a gig he was involved in, a launch for a new independent film collective called The Southern Screen Professionals. I couldn’t resist his offer to head over – it was only down the road and I had plenty of time – besides I liked his band, thought a pint would be in order and the launch sounded like something worth investigating further. Any new arts venture is.

The SSP has been put together by a group of film makers, producers and film festival organisers who have decided to take the initiative away from the authorities, the bureaucrats and start working for themselves. The plan is to:

Create an online location and crew database
Market the Southern region of Ireland as a great location for film shoots
Organise the various film groups and organisations in the region under one umbrella, one voice
Run a full time office space in Cork City for all members of the database
Develop training and network programmes

It’s a great idea and another example of people deciding to fuck the status quo and do it for themselves, to use their own initiative, energy, talent, to create new possibilities, new space, new directions for their work. Naturally all of this is done on a shoestring, takes up an inordinate amount of time and will be a fight to survive – not unlike mutantspace infact. Anyway, I hope it goes from strength to strength. The film community in Cork City are resilient, they work together, they’re proactive, they can and will do it, will succeed.

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Promoting apps for creativity in Cork City

moray mair | Life in a cultural petri dish | June 9, 2011

Funny how thoughts collide. I spent yesterday afternoon writing about how useless I thought Cork City Council are when it comes to actively promoting creativity and supporting those who wish to make the city a vibrant place to live in and a good place for tourists to visit. Later that night I ended up bumping into someone I see rarely and the subject resurrected itself once again. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I think it’s on the tip of all our tongues. We’re all thinking the same thing. All sick of the status quo. All fed up with the inertia and disrespect the city council dishes out – to those of us involved in keeping this city alive – on a daily basis.

I had just finished wrapping up a gig – at the venue I run – and was thinking of heading home early. Anyway this friend was there – he had turned up to check out the jazz band – and afterwards we fell into conversation about this and that and whatever and at some stage the subject of the city council came up. Now this guy is someone I regard as having done much to promote the city, gigs, events, clubs and venues and has always been very generous to me whenever I asked for help with promoting mutantspace or the trash culture revue. Anyway over a pint we had a good rant and a laugh at the utter stupidity we had both encountered, on different occasions, when coming into contact with them over one initiative or another.

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