A Start To The Week

These kinds of days are always Mondays. Wet, cold Mondays. I was in town, spending my birthday money on new albums, a FLApes ticket (October 12, Cyprus Avenue. Woot!) and a big thick hardback book of “post-underground” comics… whatever that’s supposed to mean. I should have been set for the day. But, instead, I was set upon by an uncomfortable feeling with no discernible root – tasting broadly of apprehension and anxiety with subtle hints of fear and sadness; a bouqet of melancholy followed by an aftertaste of gloom. It sat heavy on my chest for the rest of the day.

Oh Helium, is there nothing you can’t do?

So I turned 23 on Saturday. This is the last year I can say I’m in my early twenties. This time next year, I’ll be in my mid-twenties, which traditionally then leads into the late twenties. And that is a most a horrifying thought. But I had a good birthday, spent with friends in a pub and a club, before we retired to a house. We had helium balloons and we had a guitar. And it was almost 3am. This video is the result.

I’m on the left, Cian is on the right. We’re singing 57 by Biffy Clyro…with helium. You can hear Aoife in the background singing harmonies.

Actually, I find it very odd to watch how I move. I look like an idiot.

Tapdancing About Architecture

When I mention this blog to people, I’m sometimes asked what kind of blog it is. And I hesitantly reply that it’s a “music blog… sort of.” But it never feels like a music blog, just more like the blog of a person who loves music. I don’t really review albums or gigs much. I don’t unearth great new talents – I’m actually pretty bad at finding new music. I think I tend to write mostly about my personal reaction to music. But most of the blogs I do read would be music blogs, a lot of the magazines I read are music magazines and when pushed about what I want to be when I grow up, I usually toss out some variation on the music/arts journalist theme. Or a Booker prize winning author, if it’s going. Either will do.

But I think part of the reason that this blog isn’t even more music-centric, part of the reason it’s not the next Nialler9 or Egoeccentric is because every once in a while I just get pissed off with the whole idea of writing about music. I have to stop reading the blogs and magazines now and again because something grates on me, gets under my skin. I think the root cause may be that I find myself thinking, deep down, that writing about music is futile. Irrelevant and perhaps even irreverent. I think someone may have once compared it to tap-dancing about architecture. They may, in fact, have been talking about something else entirely but the metaphor does fit.