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KARL SPAIN WANTS TO EAT A WOMAN*

Been getting a bit of flack over my interview with comedian Karl Spain in last Saturday’s Irish Times. “So mean to poor Karl Spain,” says one distraught fan. “He’s a lovely guy.” My friend Mark takes the opposite view. “Jesus, Butler,” he writes. “You could have gotten away with calling Karl Spain fat a few more times… ‘Fat-faced funnyman Karl Spain’… ‘Karl Spain Wants to Eat a Woman’… Something subtle like that…” Read the rest of this entry »

DIVINE (2008)

WALTONS TO HANSARD: DROP DEAD

“Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice” sang Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in the 2007 film Once. Two years on, that option may just have expired. Read the rest of this entry »

“THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT THE FIRST TIME, SECOND TIME I DID IT ON MY OWN…”

A line from Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life album has been garnering some comment recently. “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver, and I’m reading James Joyce” he sings on I Feel a Change Coming On. “Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”

Now 69, Billy Joe Shaver is one of the last surviving country outlaws. I met him in the summer of 2006, when he was a “spiritual advisor” to Kinky Friedman’s campaign for Governor of Texas. (As the man who wrote If You Don’t Love Jesus Go To Hell, Shaver was an odd pick for pastor to the Jewish Friedman. But the pair went way back.)

The following April, Shaver was back in more familiar territory, arrested for shooting a man outside a bar in Lorena, Texas. Read the rest of this entry »

Get well soon, Ollie!

Best wishes to singer-songwriter Ollie Higgins, who was involved in a pretty serious accident earlier this week. Many of you will of course remember Ollie’s old band the Kill City Snowmen, who were big favourites at the Sound Cellar and Baggot Inn back in the day.

Legends of Irish rock, the Snowmen were tipped in Smiley Bolger’s annual ‘ones to to watch’ list a record-breaking five times (1987, ‘88, ‘90, ‘91 and ‘93!) One of the industry’s true gentlemen, Ollie fell fifty feet onto concrete while attempting to rescue a kitten from a tree. Read the rest of this entry »

SONGS OF PRAISE: COMING IN FROM THE COLD (1980)

SO THESE ARE THE FOLKS…

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THIS IS FUNNY

A termite walks into a bar and asks… Read the rest of this entry »

FAITH ALIVE: APOSTASY EDITION

1. Former L.A. Times religious correspondent William Lobdell renounces his faith: “To see the Roman Catholic Church aiding, abetting, and facilitating paedophiles in staying undercover and unnoticed whilst they continued to rape children in their care, is enough to make one detest them.”
2. Meanwhile, here in Ireland: “The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is the map of an Irish hell.”
3. But before anyone gets too carried away: “Fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle.” (Albert Einstein).

AMERICANS (AND THE WAY THEY DO GO ON)

Interviewed James Taylor yesterday. Not overly familiar with his oeuvre, but he was a really cool guy and a very gracious interviewee. His PR people too, were very professional and did an excellent job in making sure I was prepped and ready and that everything went smoothly. So I’m not having a go at them by any means – just thinking aloud about something that didn’t make much sense to me. Read the rest of this entry »