SOUNDTRACK: GASHCAT-“Morning Sun” (live at SXSW, March 28 2013).
When I first heard that the Grateful Dead had two drummers, I thought, “Wow these guys must rock hard.” Which is not true at all. Gashcat have two drummers and while the band is not heavy, they rock hard. “Morning Sun” is a non-stop frenetic blast of bouncy folk pop.
They lead singer/screamer uses an acoustic guitar, and there are two old- school keyboards (for both backing music and spacey effects). They main drummer drums and the secondary percussionist pounds along with him, using a big drum and an occasional tambourine.
This is the first I’ve heard of them and while the song doesn’t make me want to run out and buy more, they’d be a great opening act to see live. They remind me of the Waterboys on speed.
You can watch the video here.
[READ: March 25, 2013] “Brilliant”
When I started reading Roddy Doyle books again recently, I decided to see what else he had written. And Wikipedia listed several “uncollected” stories (several of which have by now been collected). The final story on the list was this one, “Brilliant” which was written for St. Patrick’s Festival Parade 2011 & Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. I don’t know exactly what that means although I understand that the Cities of Literature “promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both the developed and the developing world.” So clearly Doyle was writing on behalf of a cause.
It starts out very oddly:
Poor oul’ Dublin.
Dublin was a city on the west coast of –
East.
Dublin was a city on the east coast of Ireland.
That interrupting East is never explained, although it does go on through the story, correcting the narrator who can’t tell east from west. The story proves to be more in the vein of Doyle’s children’s stories. There’s no poo but there is a flying dog. In this case the dog is “The Black Dog of Depression,” an expression of Winston Churchill’s that I was unfamiliar with, although I also just read it again in an issue of The Walrus (weird serendipity, that). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 