The Qualities Required by Musicians in a Group (in order of importance) Not a bollix A chap I know who used to direct a 14-piece showband in the 60's is now working as a one-man act with backing tracks. I…
Spoiler: Romania got the bronze for team dressage in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Ignorance is bliss. Did you ever wish you knew nothing at all? Do you imagine yourself as one of those Paddy Pint-swampers, just cruising through life, going…
To certain readers: Beware, this might just blow your mind. If you are a music lover you've heard of Robert Johnson, the mysterious voodoo guitar player who sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in return for fabled…
The fact that our modern world celebrates style over substance is nothing new, experts place the arbitrary changeover moment at around 1960–specifically the televised debate during the presidential campaign between Nixon and Kennedy. That's nearly 50 years of relentless advertising,…
I splashed out on a little toy recently, a Garmin GPS navigation device. Pretty nifty. 3-D maps for all of Europe and a nice voice that says 'Turn Left Now' and that kind of thing. It'll come in handy for…
I saw the acoustic guitarist Gordon Giltrap perform in Dolan's at the weekend. Some nice tunes of course, but I was rather taken with the baritone guitar he whipped out for a few numbers. I said to my neighbour 'custom…
Over here in magical mystical Ireland, we are so lucky that we don't have to wake up every day to this nonsense on the news, perhaps even before we get our morning coffee. What on Earth are regular US citizens…
I'm a sucker for computer nostalgia. I remember the days of the ZX81, the Commodore 64, the unusual Jupiter Ace, and the TI994a. Sure it was BASIC programming (or mysteriously FORTH for the Ace) but it carried genes of the…
I just can't believe the price of this book! About ten years ago I bought a copy of Alan Alford's Gods of the New Millennium in O'Mahony's bookshop on O'Connell Street. This was before the proliferation of charity bookshops made…
While I was driving through the town this afternoon I noticed (once again) a peculiar but somehow familiar phenomenon: roads closed everwhere (for a sporting event), yet at intersections where traffic lights had been disabled, the cars were moving smoothly….
