<Soundtracks For Them>

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Fringefest Pt 3: Rock Candy Carnival

The Fringefest came to an end today, but it concluded good and proper for us last night with the Rockcandy Carnival event in the Speigaltent attempting to draw in some dosh for the Dublin Simon Community. The tent was certainly less crowded than on other nights, with the wooden ballroom style dancefloor never reaching more than half of its capacity. If the night was dominated by anything it was by that backward glance to eighties sequined chic that seems so ubiquitously attached to the non-chalent Dublin hipster scene. So there were synths and lots of them.

Les Bien opened up preceedings, heavily reminiscent of a car crash between Petty Hate Machine Nine era Inch Nails and the gritty bass undertones of Air's 'Sexy Boy', with the tempo of Underworld and the catchy drum kickings of New Order added for a dash of good measure. The next act Produse, left me rather confused; dwarved behind stacks of mean looking synths, drum machines and various hardware contraptions their bastardised blend of four by four dance left me eyeing around convinced they had to be Hystereo. Packing in the crowd pleasers they moved easily between they're own pieces and classics like 'Block Rockin' Beats.' Gawking over their myspace they seem linked into the wider Hystereo/Backlash scene so dominant in Dublin right now. Hystereo, such a highlight at the Electric Picnic and last weekend failed to really live up to the expectation that dragged me down to the Spiegaltent again, the sound seemed to some what falter after Produse, the bass never kicked in the same way and it felt a little empty on a dance floor of drunks barging each other out of the way and bumping into each other with out apologies.

Despite its all good intentions, the night smacked of that lack of critical air that's so dense around fundraisers for the NGO's. Some bloke who said 'groovy' so often as MC, you began to hope he'd choke on it bigged up a raffles for Budda Bags and signed acoustic guitars, and you are wondering 'my god where are my drugs?' Surrounded by over priced ethnic jewelry and knock off Banky designer t-shirts and art prints, the night had that Electric Picnic soul about it without any of the music to boot.

On nights like that you expect a party to arise and bite you with a taste of sanity in the nouveau riche hell that Dublin drowns you in. Then quickly instead you find yourself in the very hell mouth as 'Break on Through' by The Doors blares and the new students roar 'I fucking love this song.' That hell mouth is called Doyles and with the torrential downpour forcing you into cover on a window ledge behind some railings another Fringefest and another year in terms of the student calendar comes to pass. Now that I think of it where the fuck were the Betamax Format at that gig? Weren't they billed?

Labels: Art, Doyles, Dublin, Fringefest, Gig Review, Hystereo, Music, Theatre

# posted by antrophe @ 5:11 AM

(4) comments

Monday, February 07, 2005

Another damn thing about Doyle's

There's another thing about that horrible hole that reminds me of Whelan's at its worst - and that's the tendency of drunken idiots to crash into you on the dancefloor. In every other Dublin club, people take care not to bash into someone else's space for fear of getting their heads kicked in. This healthy fear of violence broke down in the toothless middle-class indie-kid atmosphere of Whelan's, and all manner of twats would take intolerable liberties and simply crash into your path while you were preparing to throw the gob in on some teenage Strokes fan to the accompaniment of "Bohemian Like You". Of course, the advantage of said atmosphere was that you could retaliate without any fear of retribution; persistent tossers could be clothes-lined or elbowed in the face, and they'd never say a word, even if you knocked them to the ground. But it grew to be tiresome, even for a spiteful individual like me. Anyway, this shitehawkery has been revived on the Doyle's dance-floor, so if you venture there, be ready to shoulder-charge the cunts.

Furthermore, something is really going to have to be done about the Monkey Cunt behind the decks. A friend suggested the following solution: bring a sackload of bananas into the club and distribute them around the dance-floor. Then request "Monkey Man" by the Specials, which will be the cue for everyone to pelt the fruit at the DJ box, knocking the little shit out the window and onto the street below, where he'll hopefully be crushed by an oncoming bus.

Until such a joyful liberation transpires, my advice is to stay well away...

Labels: Doyles, Guest Blogger, Music, Out, Rant

# posted by Anonymous @ 5:04 PM

(0) comments

A Fibbers For Our Time

Doyles, sitting there quietly opposite Trinity, it took me about eighteen months of living in Dublin to realise the place existed, the wonder of discovering a house party full of particularly drunk Trinity students. Being drunk, that can be a great thing. Being sober, it can be disconcerting. Being stoned out of your bin, knackered and sleep walking, after six hours of meetings, it can be horrifying, fascinating and somewhat exhilarating but only if being snide is your thing. So some how we keep finding ourselves back there. There have been nights there where intoxicated with the glee of drunken pranksterism we've pilfered drunks galore, ran around pretending to chaw our jaws shouting 'woo....woooo' at timid looking types in an effort to get them dancing, we've swung from the lights (briefly), instigated dance floor sit-downs for 'one more choon (again briefly), found ourselves in such paralytic states of cider intoxication that drinking cans in public there was a sound idea and to be preached to all and sundry. Doyles is fun, but like most places in Dublin, it's intoxication rather than the venue that creates the atmosphere and all in all that means an anti social behavioural sort of night. So the promises have been made again, never to return. It reminds me of how three years ago, a few of us made a pledge after many nights of enduring nu-metal tripe in Fibbers that we would never return.

We returned about twice, pissed out of our heads of course and the victim of an old friends reluctance to go anywhere else. Past the surliest bouncers in the world, into that cavern of a club to be glared at by handfuls of teenagers all competing for a place in the most pissed off teenager in the world championship. It was real, 'fuck you I won't clean up my bedroom tantrums left right and centre on the dance floor, as angry Goths whipped each other with whirling hair and splashed sweat at each other. Fibbers was always for Goths and metal heads that had skipped the small town and were reaching for something different in Dublin. There's been a few occasions I've gone back in the last year, to be refused for lack of ID only to see brief glimpses of kids in Placebo shirts and Craddle of Filth gear running wild at the bottom of the stairs. Doyles is like that, it's the Fibbers of the trendy Bohemian set that feel no guilt about listening to a DJ that looks like a particularly lazy monkey spinning the same set list again, and again and again. Doyles is a smaller Whelan's, people are so impeccably dressed its fucking amazing on the one hand and disheartening on the other, the punters are clones of whatever NME rock band seems best situated popularly at the moment, Franz Ferdinand seem to lead the fashion stakes at the moment, hence loadsa sweep over haircuts, blazers and Converse a-go-go. As in Fibbers here's only one way to cope in there, copious amounts of drink and a hefty head ache in the morning, neither of which are positive. Make sure to watch out for the inevitable flying glasses, as the previously unconscious drunk at the opposite table flings there pint at you in a forgetful frenzy to reach the dance floor as the Strokes blare out. Pompously, I do worry about my generation, but only when sober.

Labels: Doyles, Music, Out, Rant, Society

# posted by antrophe @ 2:16 PM

(0) comments


Sunday, September 24, 2006 Fringefest Pt 3: Rock Candy Carnival The Fringefest came to an end today, but it concluded good and proper for us last night with the Rockcandy Carnival event in the Speigaltent attempting to draw in some dosh for the Dublin Simon Community. The tent was certainly less crowded than on other nights, with the wooden ballroom style dancefloor never reaching more than half of its capacity. If the night was dominated by anything it was by that backward glance to eighties sequined chic that seems so ubiquitously attached to the non-chalent Dublin hipster scene. So there were synths and lots of them. Les Bien opened up preceedings, heavily reminiscent of a car crash between Petty Hate Machine Nine era Inch Nails and the gritty bass undertones of Air's 'Sexy Boy', with the tempo of Underworld and the catchy drum kickings of New Order added for a dash of good measure. The next act Produse, left me rather confused; dwarved behind stacks of mean looking synths, drum machines and various hardware contraptions their bastardised blend of four by four dance left me eyeing around convinced they had to be Hystereo. Packing in the crowd pleasers they moved easily between they're own pieces and classics like 'Block Rockin' Beats.' Gawking over their myspace they seem linked into the wider Hystereo/Backlash scene so dominant in Dublin right now. Hystereo, such a highlight at the Electric Picnic and last weekend failed to really live up to the expectation that dragged me down to the Spiegaltent again, the sound seemed to some what falter after Produse, the bass never kicked in the same way and it felt a little empty on a dance floor of drunks barging each other out of the way and bumping into each other with out apologies. Despite its all good intentions, the night smacked of that lack of critical air that's so dense around fundraisers for the NGO's. Some bloke who said 'groovy' so often as MC, you began to hope he'd choke on it bigged up a raffles for Budda Bags and signed acoustic guitars, and you are wondering 'my god where are my drugs?' Surrounded by over priced ethnic jewelry and knock off Banky designer t-shirts and art prints, the night had that Electric Picnic soul about it without any of the music to boot. On nights like that you expect a party to arise and bite you with a taste of sanity in the nouveau riche hell that Dublin drowns you in. Then quickly instead you find yourself in the very hell mouth as 'Break on Through' by The Doors blares and the new students roar 'I fucking love this song.' That hell mouth is called Doyles and with the torrential downpour forcing you into cover on a window ledge behind some railings another Fringefest and another year in terms of the student calendar comes to pass. Now that I think of it where the fuck were the Betamax Format at that gig? Weren't they billed? Labels: Art, Doyles, Dublin, Fringefest, Gig Review, Hystereo, Music, Theatre # posted by antrophe @ 5:11 AM (4) comments Monday, February 07, 2005 Another damn thing about Doyle's There's another thing about that horrible hole that reminds me of Whelan's at its worst - and that's the tendency of drunken idiots to crash into you on the dancefloor. In every other Dublin club, people take care not to bash into someone else's space for fear of getting their heads kicked in. This healthy fear of violence broke down in the toothless middle-class indie-kid atmosphere of Whelan's, and all manner of twats would take intolerable liberties and simply crash into your path while you were preparing to throw the gob in on some teenage Strokes fan to the accompaniment of "Bohemian Like You". Of course, the advantage of said atmosphere was that you could retaliate without any fear of retribution; persistent tossers could be clothes-lined or elbowed in the face, and they'd never say a word, even if you knocked them to the ground. But it grew to be tiresome, even for a spiteful individual like me. Anyway, this shitehawkery has been revived on the Doyle's dance-floor, so if you venture there, be ready to shoulder-charge the cunts. Furthermore, something is really going to have to be done about the Monkey Cunt behind the decks. A friend suggested the following solution: bring a sackload of bananas into the club and distribute them around the dance-floor. Then request "Monkey Man" by the Specials, which will be the cue for everyone to pelt the fruit at the DJ box, knocking the little shit out the window and onto the street below, where he'll hopefully be crushed by an oncoming bus. Until such a joyful liberation transpires, my advice is to stay well away... Labels: Doyles, Guest Blogger, Music, Out, Rant # posted by Anonymous @ 5:04 PM (0) comments A Fibbers For Our Time Doyles, sitting there quietly opposite Trinity, it took me about eighteen months of living in Dublin to realise the place existed, the wonder of discovering a house party full of particularly drunk Trinity students. Being drunk, that can be a great thing. Being sober, it can be disconcerting. Being stoned out of your bin, knackered and sleep walking, after six hours of meetings, it can be horrifying, fascinating and somewhat exhilarating but only if being snide is your thing. So some how we keep finding ourselves back there. There have been nights there where intoxicated with the glee of drunken pranksterism we've pilfered drunks galore, ran around pretending to chaw our jaws shouting 'woo....woooo' at timid looking types in an effort to get them dancing, we've swung from the lights (briefly), instigated dance floor sit-downs for 'one more choon (again briefly), found ourselves in such paralytic states of cider intoxication that drinking cans in public there was a sound idea and to be preached to all and sundry. Doyles is fun, but like most places in Dublin, it's intoxication rather than the venue that creates the atmosphere and all in all that means an anti social behavioural sort of night. So the promises have been made again, never to return. It reminds me of how three years ago, a few of us made a pledge after many nights of enduring nu-metal tripe in Fibbers that we would never return. We returned about twice, pissed out of our heads of course and the victim of an old friends reluctance to go anywhere else. Past the surliest bouncers in the world, into that cavern of a club to be glared at by handfuls of teenagers all competing for a place in the most pissed off teenager in the world championship. It was real, 'fuck you I won't clean up my bedroom tantrums left right and centre on the dance floor, as angry Goths whipped each other with whirling hair and splashed sweat at each other. Fibbers was always for Goths and metal heads that had skipped the small town and were reaching for something different in Dublin. There's been a few occasions I've gone back in the last year, to be refused for lack of ID only to see brief glimpses of kids in Placebo shirts and Craddle of Filth gear running wild at the bottom of the stairs. Doyles is like that, it's the Fibbers of the trendy Bohemian set that feel no guilt about listening to a DJ that looks like a particularly lazy monkey spinning the same set list again, and again and again. Doyles is a smaller Whelan's, people are so impeccably dressed its fucking amazing on the one hand and disheartening on the other, the punters are clones of whatever NME rock band seems best situated popularly at the moment, Franz Ferdinand seem to lead the fashion stakes at the moment, hence loadsa sweep over haircuts, blazers and Converse a-go-go. As in Fibbers here's only one way to cope in there, copious amounts of drink and a hefty head ache in the morning, neither of which are positive. Make sure to watch out for the inevitable flying glasses, as the previously unconscious drunk at the opposite table flings there pint at you in a forgetful frenzy to reach the dance floor as the Strokes blare out. Pompously, I do worry about my generation, but only when sober. Labels: Doyles, Music, Out, Rant, Society # posted by antrophe @ 2:16 PM (0) comments	About Soundtracksforthem specialises in iconoclastic takes on culture, politics, and more shite from the underbelly of your keyboard. A still-born group blog with a recent surge of different contributers but mainly maintained by James R. Big up all the contributers and posse regardless of churn out rate: Kyle Browne, Reeuq, Cogsy, Chief, X-ie phader/Krossie, Howard Devoto, Dara, Ronan and Mark Furlong. Send your wishes and aspirations to antropheatgmail.com Label Cluster In no certain order... Politics, Guest Bloggers Interviews, Music, Internet, Guest Bloggers, Travel, Blogging, TV, Society, Film, Gig Reviews, Art, Media. 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