Gigs for 2024

Old Men Deliver. As always.

A magnificent show from OMD in the Olympia.

Øxn fantastic tonight. Brilliant, moody, atmospheric stuff, delivered in a laid back , dead on Irish sort of way. No pretentiousness. Loved it.

Agree, Øxn were excellent last night, Vicar St a great venue for them. Support act - Anna Palindrome? - were decent, would give them a listen if they appear at festivals this year.

Did you catch any of the support act? How stripped back were they? I would've been at this gig but had a family thing to go to instead. Which seems to be common theme for gigs I see you post about.

Yeah, Radie Peat of Lankum shares vocals with Katie Kim. What did you make of it? Took me a while to really get into it but loving it now. Live experience defo elevates it it to a different level.

Radie played 4 different instruments on the night. She's hugely impressive.

Yeah i saw Last Apollo. It was a full band (two guitars, bass, drums and keyboards). Too dramatic and Florence-like in parts for me but if NewDad can create such a buzz i see know reason why Last Apollo couldn't achieve same.

Her voice is grand. Big trend of Irish vocalists braying like something out a farmyard. Lisa o Neill and the blert from Fontaines. Pair o'them would strip paint off a car.

Horses for courses, I guess! I really like Lisa O Neill's voice. Was at ATN last year - lovely!!

I’ll take them please….

Joel Gion of The Brian Jonestown Massacre was entertaining in the Grand Social tonight. A mixture of readings from his new book and questions from Eamonn Sweeney, plus a few from the audience. Didn't pick up the book as i want to wait for the small paperback version. Sounded like it will be a very good read though.

looking forward to the smile later. prefer wall of eyes to the last 3 radiohead albums.

wonder what the crowd will be like, seemed to be a lot of advertising popping up in the last week or so, so probably not selling too well?

You've been saying this has seriously underperformed from the outset. I'm just wondering why - if that was apparent very quickly - they didn't make it fully seated (as the Glasgow show is), like they did with Duran Duran last year, or change it to the small standing configuration.

You remarked early on that not many standing tickets had sold. Was it a Catch-22 of having not sold well, but having sold too many to amend it to the small standing setup?

This would have been brilliant in the Bord Gáis (capacity: 2,111), which is available.

Listened to some of their songs on youtube. I won't be making it number 3001.

I really like Radiohead - they had mainly good albums and some magnificent tunes, with the odd bit of rubbish thrown in as well.

But any of the songs from The Smile that I have listened to are not really songs. No melody to them. Just a bit of noise, and Tom's familiar voice, trying to put some lyrics to the songs.

Going Sunday - make sure you get back with how the gig went. Could do worse then crossing the river to The Grand Social afterwards.

Next up - Greg Putiaco with support Trace Amount ( sound interesting) on Tuesday in Whelans

I really enjoyed The Smile, but my favourites were all the possibly "predictable" choices: You Will Never Work in Television Again, Friend of a Friend and Bending Hectic.

8,000 to 8,500 at the 3 arena tonight. I thought it was brutal. The sound is not great and very bored crowd would be my summary

Thought the smile were very good tonight. Different dynamic to r'head, dunno maybe it's because I have seen them 10 times or so but I enjoyed the change. Felt less event-y than a Radiohead gig, in a good way. Was cool seeing Jonny centre stage for example. Great set list,nice mix of the two albums. Maybe took a few songs to get into gear, but thought the whole second half of the gig was brilliant. One of the new songs they played was just gorgeous. Where we were stood the crowd were well into it.

Nobody appeared to dance, everyone just stood there. Crowd didn't seem to get engaged.

Yeah, funny, much as I love them, I was sort of hitting Pixies saturation but listening to Trompe le Monde and Bossanova again has REALLY got the juices going again. I'd always reach for Doolittle or Surfer Rosa normally. Forgot how great some of the other stuff is. Buzzing for Dig for Fire, Subbacultcha, Alec Eifel, U Mass etc. Up the front with me Sunday night! As the lads have said, if it's a pint and some decent music, Foggy Dew is 2 mins away, Grand Social close too, Whelan's if it's a late one and some hip shaking.

Thought The Smile gig last night was good, without being great. As a few have pointed out the sound just wasn't really up to snuff, particularly at the start - it improved as it went on.

I couldn't really fault the band. The actual performances were good, particularly the fantastic drumming and I didn't mind how the songs were a bit looser and rougher than on the albums. And it is a pleasure to see the likes of Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood strut their stuff.

I thought there was a pretty decent amount at it. Standing had plenty in it and the seating that was open was pretty much full as far as I could see. It didn't feel like a gig with a poor turnout.

I don't think the crowd was madly into it all, but I think that's understandable enough because of the nature of the music. One thing I can and never will understand is people who can just not shut up for one single minute while at a gig.There was numerous people throughout who literally never stopped talking. At least, for your own sake, try to stop and listen to some of the music.

I was in the standing area alright. It would drive you mad. There was one woman close by who just kept going and going and going, full on shouting when the music got louder, about all kinds of inane shyte - when is such and suchs wedding, plans for the weekend: absolute grade A drivel.

And she would not let up, just kept at it, apart from occasionally cheering whenever a song was finished or a new one began. I couldn't get it: she was obviously into it enough to respond from time to time, but never once properly bothered to be present and try to listen: which is all the whole point of being there.

I think gig etiquette has gone down the tubes, particularly at bigger events, since the pandemic.

I suspect part of the issue last night was that it hadn't sold well and there were a lot of freebies/competition prizes around. Guess that's more likely to attract a curious but not committed crowd, especially for the side project of a very well known band

Ha ha, as long as it wasn't all gig 🤣

The 3 lounge (is that the one stage left downstairs?) is very cool. I find it especially good after the gig as it stays open for a while, you can go get a chilled pint while the crowds die down, then head home