It means one thing, that the lineage of a DIY promotions industry in the city continues unabated, and thank christ too - every city needs a circuit for bands and acts outside of the routine audtioning for the majors that so often is the gigs industry sustained by the main venues in this city and their "haircut" clientale. Here bands can work at their sound in a community based enviroment that seeks to sustain itself with out the make or break attitude of bands restricted to playing to an ever increasingly bored audience of their friends and families.

GZ and Organised Ideas have now merged to host a regular club night in the Lower Deck in Portobello under the Porco Dio banner. These two collectives have crossed over with just about every element of the underground scene in Dublin, from hosting gigs for Herv nearly three years ago in an electronica showcase for a crowd more used to screaming d-beat and where dance meant ska. As well as regularly providing the fundraiser gig infrastructure for a politics of radical engagement such as RTS. The word from those involved is that the gigs are to be a break from the trodden path of the usual underground gig with an attempt to "incorporate visuals, art, political stalls/benefits and any number of other concepts into the usual well-worn formula of an underground music gig." First up on their line up is Los Langeros, Oak, Large Mound and Born A Ghost.

Between two and three years ago, Dublin was a city with a filthily healthy DIY punk scene with gigs happening at least twice a week in venues like the Temple and on a Thursday in the pressure cooker atmosphere of the Music Room where you could see a grown heavy set man in a gimp mask and a wrestling outfit scream through a window on to Abbey St about anal brown sauce over buzzing hardcore guitar. One of the main foci of this scene was Ground Zero, laterly known as the abbreviated GZ, growing out of the Kidz promotions collective which was an offspring of the original Hope Promotions crew.

Now - a sip of my Buckfast for the head that can actually tell me what Porco Dio means?

Labels: Music, Porco Dio, Punk