What are you currently listening to?

[Aidan]

So I won't tell you what I am listening to as some silly  soap is on is on but I'll tell you what I am definitely NOT listening to, Simple Kid.  Why I hear you ask... I did something very silly at the week end.  I had the CD with me at my other abode, and had the disc on my hand to put back into its box (disc was in the car, box was inside house), anyway, then I put the disc down as I was in multi-tasking mode and then I could not find the CD to save my life.  It's not a big house, I know it was downstairs...and we looked everywhere.  I even went into the rubbish bin... If I don't find it during the holidays, I'll have to buy another one....  .

if you don't find it, let me know if you want me to upload a digital copy for you

[Aidan]

I just found myself on N.C. Lawlor's (subject of an earlier thread) MySpace page and was pleasantly surprised to find some new tracks on there. I've been listening to them over and over. Country is not really my bag but his stuff is simply amazing. His songs are as brilliant as his instrumental lap guitar playing. It's really beautiful stuff, check it out.

[Mairtin]

Hey Nats
         Was that the  polo neck post or the drunken one that earned the slapped with a trout award ?
      Today I have been mostly listening to ...   nothing yet as I've only just fixed my pc the dam thing crashed last night while exploring Phil Chevrons 'Radiators from Space' site...My pc is developing a serious allergy to RealMedia for some strange reason.

[MadNats]

Heih hey ??   I never ready anything about a trout award am afraid....

By the way I think it'll just be you at my lunch party I talked to you about...but that's allright, you don't mind ?

[Mairtin]

 Re ..."By the way I think it'll just be you at my lunch party I talked to you about"
      Just me..?!  aren't you coming either ...?

[MadNats]

argh, you silly...so Frank, me and you then.... ... actually a private question will await you in your message box....

By the way, is there no photo of you anywhere ?  I am at a disadvantage as you know what I look like and I don't know what you look like... And I am sure you're not really 40 and 3 foot high ? 

[Mairtin]

Hi Nats,
There's quite a good photo of me on my MySpace profile (taken on holiday in the congo)...   there's also a video of my younger clone 'bassing it up' on the Fantasia forum ...I did route through the loft the other day to find the scary twilight zone one when I looked like Charles in the old fantasia forum photo( - I even had the same kind of shirt on!) I found a few but havnt got round to scanning them yet - and junior keeps buggering off with the mobile so I havnt been able to upload any from that yet either! I'll smuggle something online soon!
          Love to you and Frank!
                           m

[MadNats]

Well what I am listening to is not very  interesting as it is just the radio, before going down to slumberland, but before doing so, I shall write a mini blog of my day which does include some mentions of music...

I am officially on holiday, had a hellish journey down south, it took about 1.5 hours more than normal..I blame it on the italians  ...

We always stack up with cd's and todays choices, were, well I'll only mention the Irish connection ones, Barry Mc and Rollback from "my" Horslips as Barry Mc calls them now.  I'll mention the other ones in small letters Supertramp, Grateful Dead, John Hiatt, U2, Marillion to only name a few.

Somethingn funny peculiar, we listened to no less than 3 songs from 3 different artists with the phrase "where do we go from here" and none of which being Mellow Drops, 3 songs during the same journey, incredible.  These were Supertramp, John Hiatt and Marillion (don't know the song titles off hand).  I thought it was quite interesting and quite observant of me since they are not songs of which I actually knew any of the words.

Arrived at our destination, started doing the cleaning and guess what fell on the floor which was placed on a tower speaker, the same colour as a CD ? My Simple Kid CD, I knew it was not lost....

The Mairtin Bit

There is no photo of you on Myspace, there is your monkey and a lady, your wife I presume ?

Hey Mairtin, d'ya reckon Barny thinks of me every morning when putting on one of his 2 polo shirts ?  By the way I knew it was 2 different shades of blue (or 1 black 1 blue, funny I had even noticed this) oh no, maybe I have altered his toughts for the rest of his life....he must be sooooo cursing me...awwww bless his little cotton socks....

[MadNats]

For those who don't visit Fan-tasia, here is a review of Chequerboard by Eamon Carr (one of my  Horslips for those who don't know).

http://www.herald.ie/entertainment/hq/chequered-years-1430765.html

You're right Mairtin that Ornithopter one is good and does remind me of Cafe Del Mar type stuff but the other stuff is simply too slow/quiet for me....

[Mairtin]

This week I have been mostly eating ...oops, I mean listening to a 27th generation Irish descendant called Amy May (the one who had her birthday debut at the Derby on wednesday on her musical invasion of Los Angeles on the west coast of america .
                http://www.amymaymusic.co.uk
As well as the best bunch of songwriters to have come out of Dublins Liverpool suberb scince the fab four four decades ago...
                http://www.myspace.com/majorityone
as well as Jekyl and a hefty dose of Mr Sinister followed by more Jekyl and this strange and obscure little known supergroup called ...er ..um
              HORSLIPS!!!
For pudding I had some KillCityDefectors, Spillane with a big slice of McCabe (once the Irish special forces had rescued him from a trunk in MadNats mountain retreat).
This was all washed down with a nice jar of Primrose and Deaf Animal Orchestration.
      Mints were supplied by Counting Crows and Brittany Shane.

Anyone been to Oxegen then???

[MadNats]

This Amy website is very oriented to euhh hmm buying buying, sorry don't like this approach....You go on the home page and all you see is the credit card symbols...sorry Mairtin, don't shoot me...  anyway I don't like Horslips anymore... scream scream scream... Some wounded bears never recover...and it's not as if anyone is listening anyway...

What have I got on my CD turntable tonight... I have Simple Kid coming up....I did listen to TMWBA a few nights ago...and TUCOT whilst getting ready the other night....At present it's Buddha Bar 10 years.... cheerio...

[Mairtin]

   I actualy didn't have a problem with it - and did'nt even notice!(typical bloke!) though to be quite honest I've got absolutely no problems with any independant artist reinforcing the idea that music is something you 'buy'..
  As Eamon Carr said recently when discussing the corporate 19 year theft of Horslips music..." what people don't realise is that these albums are often a whole year of your life"...and thats just what they are. Most artists that go down the independant route usualy have to gig relentlessly to be able to eat . Many save and scrape together the money for a slot in a professional studio as well as emptying their own pockets for the production and distrubution costs... so why not?
    I personally think that more musicians should be reinforcing the idea that 'it's their livelyhoods and it's something that people need to buy so that artists can survived.
   File sharing is great in small doses but when a musician has their entire catalogue being bandied about on ares or winmx people just don't realise how damaging it realy is...I personaly know artists who are giving their kids more pocket money than they can now earn from royalties...they can only survive by relentless gigging even well known and internationaly respected artsts are having a hard time in the 'digital age' -and the dip in royalties for  some has been truly enormous...
    More artists should have a home page that actualy says 'Stop stealing the food out of my childrens mouth and buy it you ba******!!' -so by my reckoning Amy's page is very mild . I should also point out here that Mad Nats and her husband Frank are probably the biggest individual sponsors of the music industry (signed and unsigned)in the whole of europe and probably account for about 60% of all album sales worldwide!
   I've seen alot of gifted bands struggle and fold needlessly simply because they weren't pushy and didn't have the heart to ask people to buy their music...shame.
       Mad Nats ....because it was you and you're mad  your forgiven! besides, the shotguns gone in for cleaning after I stumbled over some sloppy scriptwriters this morning...
                   Love
                      m

[MadNats]

Well what I meant to say is, I prefer the way the other bands that I support, go about selling their music, the way they built their web page or MySpace site... What bothered me is the credit card symbols on the homepage, it made it look cheap....

Did you notice how all my other musicians are men though ??  I know I am terrible...don't like women musicians..dunno why...  ..  Am very weird like that... but then again I was never one for a girl's night out.... am more one of the lads me you know... 

By the way am not talking to Horslips anymore...if you want a laugh you should read my mood on Myspace 

[Mairtin]

I wandered what that was about Nats? Was it to do with Sir Devlin at Skerries or my appearance as Mitch the Bitch in the tail end of the Paris video after Chippewa went back in time and fiddled with my families DNA?...Maybe he's fiddled with Barry's too!!
    Today I have been mostly sending moody letters to the moderators of a certain social network after a link Pheonix Williams added to her review on the '22 was blocked with a messege that strongly inferred it was to a maliscious spam phissing virus maker...shotguns are blazing again now!!
If apologies aren't forthcoming there way well be libel charges...I think I'll unwind from my day of defending the integrity of independant artists and their supporters by playing all three versions of Trouble (Horslips 76 and 04 versions along with Skully's 08 version) very very loudly all night before I ride off to the sherrifs office in the morning to form a posse to hunt down the source of the libel and string them up by their tongues.
   I might even listen to a bit of el hombre senior Lawler just to get me in the mood and give my neighbours a breakdown...yeeehah!
     

[MadNats]

I'd rather have you as our neighbours than the holiday neighbours from hell we've just had to suffer.  2 screaming families, parents as loud as the kids, playing in their pool next to our house, from 8am till 5pm, non stop swimming jumping, screaming.... They disturb the whole of our little domain....We are hoping they won't be back for our next holiday due in 5 weeks, end of August.  We especially don't play too loud music outside not to disturb...

Am just back from our first holiday and already thinking about the next one...

Hey have a fun little story which happened during the holiday.  We were invited at neighbours for a BBQ party and on the way home (next house that is) I invited 4 people back for coffee (they didn't want me to open a bottle), and someone picked up my guitar and started playing so we had sing songs, Beatles  etc.... we were singing badly and I think we were heard at 2am, hope the bad neighbours were disturbed..... I had all the disco lights on etc...it's really good my bar....I even managed to sneak it some Horslips LP's, you know those ones I don't talk abou anymore.... 

Mairtin, I think you should come down for a week end....how about my summer party 30Th August ?

So is it "I wondered lonely as a cloud"  then  sorry wanted to take the piss for ages about that one......LOL LOL LOL