Hard Working Class Heroes – A Delayed Reaction

It’s been over a week since Hard Working Class Heroes, but staying up in the heart of Dublin for the weekend and being at the centre of the Irish music industry for those few days left me with a lot of sensory and intellectual information that I had to try and process. So it’s only now that I have managed to distill it into writing. But the various thoughts, musings and reactions fall under various topics so I’ve divided them into three different posts to make it easier. For your consideration:

HWCH #1 – The Bands

State and Analogue have already done pretty good write-ups of the various different bands they saw over the weekend so I’m going to try and keep this pretty brief.

HWCH #2 – The Industry/The Scene

The first – and only other time – I was at Hard Working Class Heroes was in 2004. I was only 18 then and was pretty unfamiliar with the Irish music scene at the time. I knew The Frames of course and I knew Fred, but I had never heard of most of the other bands and so my friends and I wandered from venue to venue (back then it was all conveniently based within Temple Bar proper) watching, discovering, enjoying and hating different bands. It was the first time I saw Rulers of the Planet and Bell X1 as well as others that I have long since forgotten.

HWCH #3 – Dublin

I just know I’m going to come off as a wide-eyed culchie from the shticks to all you jaded Dublin-types when I write this piece, but it doesn’t matter.

A Special Request

As some of you may be aware, the lineup for the Hard Working Class Heroes Festival was announced last week. My boys, Sideproject are among the 80 great Irish bands (and yet to announced Scottish bands “invading” the festival) and the lads are fairly excited. I’m pretty excited myself to honest; these lads would be among my best friends and I’m something of a part-time band member – having designed their 2 EP’s and almost all their posters as well as filling in on vocal duties from time to time.

But I have something of favour to ask of you, readers. HWCH have put up one track from each band as a free download. They’re tracking the amount of downloads each band gets and showing them on a download chart on the website. Shortly before the festival (within about a month) the top 20 acts will be put on a ‘Best Of The Festival’ compilation. At the time of writing, Sideproject are at number six on the chart.

I’m asking all my readers to go here and download their great song, ‘Outpatients’. In fact, you don’t even have to download it, you just have to click on the song and it will stream it. It will only take a minute of your time and there’s a really good song in it for you, free of charge. So please, do it for me?

Cheers to Kieran Frost for the use of the photo.

The River of Shadows

After failing to go to Mitchelstown, I decided to go down to Annascaul – a village outside Dingle, home of Tom Crean (the Arctic explorer) – with the girlfriend to see our friends in Sideproject play at the River of Shadows rock “festival.” The fact that ROS and Oxegen can both be called festivals hints that there might be something wrong with the English language. This wasn’t a festival, it was a gig. In a cow shed. Well…it used to be a cow shed, now it’s an “exhibition centre”, but big windows and white paint does not necessarily make an exhibition centre. The place still had the acoustics of a cow shed – sound bouncing off the hard walls, the hard ground and the hard ceiling making an ugly, echo-ey, muddy sound. So, while most of the bands were good, they didn’t always sound like it, unless you sat out on the grass. The only festival-like incident was the catering van getting stuck in the mud.

   The “Exhibition Centre”

   The inside of the cowshed

First band up were some run-of-the-mill teen metal band, with the clichéd chugging riffs and throaty growl of teen angst. Luckily, my compatriots and I were down in the pub, so I didn’t have to listen to them.
Next up – Eskemo Joe (Yes, that’s how it’s spelled!). A cover band, playing the songs exactly how they sound. Pleased the still-small crowd, but I was a bit bored. Good musicians and a very good frontman and their last song – an original – hinted at good possibilities. More writing, less covering is what this doctor orders.

    Eskemo Joe

After that, my friends, Sideproject. No point in denying I’m biased, I though they played their post-rock very well, but were let down by the poor sound and a sudden burst of sunshine which drew the crowd outside.

    Sideproject

    Mike from Sideproject

Following up were Vesta Varro. Mediocre, melodic indie. Not neccesarily bad, but nothing original or all that well written. Super Jiminez, who were up next, were far more enjoyable. Again, nothing massively original, but the tight, catchy and melodic songwriting was really enjoyable.

   Vesta Varro 

   Super Jiminez

Headlining, at the end of the night were Delorentos. Even though their soundcheck took ages, but their set was very tight and had the entire crowd (who were by now, well sauced) moving their feet. I couldn’t stop singing their songs for the rest of the night. (My photos of them came out shit, so here’s one from somewhere else!)

   Delorentos

Over all, it was a good day and the bands were all of a reasonably high-standard, but the organisation of the gig as a whole was a bit shit. They should have either used a different venue, or soundproofed the cowshed in some way – everything sounded better from outside. Also the fact that every band sound-checked in front of the crowd just screamed disorganisation. Of course, organising a sound-check before the start of the gig would have proved difficult seeing as the bigger bands didn’t arrive until later in the day, but these are problems that could have been overcome by some proper organisation. Even entertainment outside to divert the attention of the crowd would have worked. Hopefully, they’ll learn from this for next year.

   A van stuck in mud, does not a festival make.

Afro

José González in Cork – September

 

The Evening Echo has it that José González is to play the Opera House on September 22, headlining The Beamish Experience festival. Granted his cover of the Knife’s Heartbeats (and yes, there are still some people out there who don’t realise it’s a cover) has been rather overplayed, the rest of his massive selling album, Veneer, is actually pretty good, if not hugely diverse. José does have the rather annoying habit of sticking with his own breathy, soft sound, but it’s something he does pretty well and truth be told, Veneer is a remarkably calming album. Fans may be pleased or dismayed to know that the Swedish-born artist’s forthcoming new album, In Our Nature has been described by the man himself as “sonically similar, but more focused on melodies” So don’t go expecting many surprises, but his cover of Massive Attack’s Teardrop will probably be pretty good.

Info from Bill Browne’s article in today’s Evening Echo.

Afro

Mitchelstown Indie-Pendence

The Mitchelstown Indie-Pendence Music Festival takes place this weekend and it’s shaping up to be even better than last year’s inaugural event. Well, having said that, it wasn’t really inaugural. The festival began in the early 90’s and over the years played host to many acts from Boyzone to Mary Black. I myself have fond memories of seeing the Revs there when I was younger. I jumped so much during the gig, I puked afterwards. But lately, with the likes of Kylie’s crappier sister, Dannii and Coolio, the festival had become something of a joke.

Graham Lynch (he of Rest fame) has the full story in this week’s Cork Independent. though. He says:
“… the festival was cast into debt and in 2005 the decision was made to forgo any plans for future events.
Step forward a group of pro-active locals, led by Shane Dunne. Having bought the festival and it’s debts for the sum of one euro, Shane and co. spent the the best part of a year raising funds, paying creditors, chasing sponsors and bloking bands until The Mitchelstown Music & Arts Festival re-emerged as Indie-Pendence…”

Last year, they played host to acts like The Frank & Walters, The Chalets and The Sultans of Ping, among others. This year is bigger than ever though, with Republic of Loose, Sultans, Director and Delorentos as well as street performers and extra stages.

I plan on spending all of Sunday in the town, catching Lerner in the afternoon as well as Hooray for Humans and Fight Like Apes later in the evening (a blogger that likes Fight Like Apes? Quelle surprise!).

If you’re in Cork, check out Graham’s article in Cork Independent (which you should be doing every week anyway – the man’s got the pulse of the scene!) to get the full story from the mouth of organiser Shane Dunne. If you’re not in Cork, well…you’re worse off than you think.

(Image borrowed from the Indie-Pendence MySpace here and quote taken from Graham Lynch’s article in the Cork Independent here.)