Damien Mulley

I think I might have two Springsteen albums, I’ve never been to any of his shows before and I’ve seen most of my favourite artists live before but Bruce Springsteen is by far the best live performer I’ve ever seen.

Bruce Springsteen acts for all intents and purposes like the 16 year old kid that’s been plucked from the audience to sing and play onstage with his favourite band. Time and time again on Sunday night Springsteen was giddy with excitement looking all around him like he was living his dream. And so he was. He gave every second of every song his all as if any minute now they’d ask him to finish up and go back into the mob of fans and enjoy the rest of the show as a ticket holder and observe the band on stage.

Funniest moment was when he was on his back, legs and crotch into the audience singing away and some woman saw herself on the big screen and started fanning his crotch with her straw cowboy hat. Brilliant. The sound I thought was crap but we were far away as the pic shows. I’d go again for sure.

Jim and Shane have more on it too.

Back Monday evening.

Off you go if you want some.

Muxtapes. They’re online Mixtapes. Upload your favourite mp3s, arrange them in an order of your choose and share them with the world on Muxtape where the songs will play on a single webpage with pretty where the songs play one after the other.

Some nice Muxtapes I like are Redstamp, State Magazine‘s one and the official one from Asthmatic Kitty.

It also works on the iPhone. And you can save em on your dock on MacOS. And you can make coverflow versions too.

Do you use Muxtape, have you favourites?

Also see Cassette from my Ex, another interesting project.

Photo owned by veganstraightedge (cc)

Spotted the gig via Nialler9.

Cyprus Avenue tonight.

Joanna Newsom – Peach Plum Pear

Owen Pallet aka Final Fantasy covering the song in Whelan’s last Christmas:

Aindriú Conroy aka Ain is a young lad from Kildare with a nice folky sound to his music. Sounds much older than he is. He plays Whelan’s on the 7th, 13th and 22nd of May as part of their residency series.

You can listen to his tunes on his mySpace. Check out Sunday. Great tune.

Photo owned by Chance Gardener (cc)

R.E.M. are an oddity to me. The only album of theirs I ever bought was Monster. Yeah, sssh. I liked Automatic for the People though my favourite track was Drive not Man on the Moon. When they decided to play 5 nights in Dublin last July a friend let me know about the offer after he got a fansite email. I bought tickets moreso for the chance of selling them on to real fans or to attend to annoy people that were gagging to g. So I went with my friend Stephen on July 4th at the Olympia and it was such an intimate gig that I felt a weak little bond form with R.E.M. I liked them after and wanted the band to do well. The fact that they played really old songs that they hadn’t played in years and Michael Stipe gave the background to them added to the intimacy. Them also trying out new songs with Stipe getting them to go back and start a song midway again was also a lot of fun. You were seeing the creative process happen right there in the Olympia. These days I feel I have to stop and listen to songs from their new album when they come on. I’m not gone on them but I’ll stilll give the band time now. They’re the lads.

Below is their new track called Hollow man and once again in a music video in 2008, typography is featuring heavily. 2008 is the year where the iPod hipsters really start loving typography thanks to Helvetica and Macbooks and the typography nerds realising they can evangelise without getting beat up. The year of typography? The YouTube vid doesn’t do it justice so have a looksee at the Quicktime version of Hollow Man if you want.

Via hisRickness