The Dubliner Magazine

Permanent Record

The apparent demise of Road Records last month heralded an outpouring of sympathy from customers and musicians alike – so much so that it has now been given a stay of execution. But are the days of the dusty old local record shop numbered? Or will the vinyl revolution save them, asks Tanya Sweeney

When an emotional statement was released last month about the closure of Road Records, Dublin’s music community predictably greeted the news with a veritable tsunami of grief and frustration. As a de facto drop-in centre for Irish musicians and fans alike, Road was fully deserving of its stellar reputation. Before the days of Pitchfork or blogging, its owners Dave Kennedy and Julie Collins would liberally dole out music news and band recommendations to their customers. But it appeared as though many factors – economic, social, technological – had conspired against them in recent months. Kennedy and Collins had also just become parents for the first time.

But what happened next was a pleasant surprise. The city’s self-financed musicians banded together in their droves; the result of their concern is a stay of execution for the Fade Street store. A new online venture for Road has been mooted, and a benefit gig was feverishly organised in the wake of the news. The One For The Road gig – featuring Jape, the Jimmy Cake, Si Schroeder and Adrian Crowley among others – is expected to be the first in a series of events designed to ensure the survival of the much-loved emporium.
Says the official statement about the gig: “This is a clarion call for supporters of independent music to show solidarity with one of its great Irish institutions and to collectively ensure that those independent retailers that still remain get the support they badly need to survive and to show that personality, variety and soul so perfectly embodied by Road are not outmoded retail concepts.”

Another Time, Another Place

As Dubliners, we live with U2 all around us. (There’s the spot they filmed the ‘Gloria’ video. There’s Bono buying veg...) They have always reflected the psyche of their home town. But it’s been a long four years since the release of their last album, and Dublin has changed. Do they represent a world of excess that’s long gone? And will we hold that against them, wonders Brendan O’Connor

If i walk out of my house, onto the main road, and look just to the left, I can see a set of traffic lights where, a few years back, I was stuck behind some tosser in a car he couldn’t drive. We missed one whole turn of the green lights because the guy didn’t move, and I was about to get seriously road ragey...when I realised it was Bono. I could be wrong, but I think he was driving a Ford Cortina.

Back out of the house and looking to the right, I can see the spot just before Ringsend where I was driving one day, listening to How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb for only the second or third time. There was a guitar bit playing and I was thinking to myself, that Edge is pretty good when he wants to be... At that second, the Edge drove past. In an old Merc, if I’m not mistaken.

Dubliner's Dublin: Ringsend

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH The tiny hamlet of Ringsend near Coleraine in Northern Ireland or the Cambridgeshire village of Ring’s End. Our Ringsend is an inner suburb of Dublin located just 3km east of the city centre. Ever teetering on the cusp of renewal, the area, and particularly the vast, asbestos-choked Irish Glass Bottle site contained within, has long attracted the attention of developers but has as yet failed to deliver on its apparent promise.

HISTORY Once colloquially known as Raytown, a name that hints at its previous incarnation as a fishing village. Ringsend comes from the Irish Roinn Aun, meaning Sea Point. In the 17th Century, it replaced Dalkey as Dublin’s main port, and it was here that Oliver Cromwell landed with 10,000 soldiers in 1649. Irishtown was founded when the Irish inhabitants of Dublin were expelled from the city by the English authorities in 1454.

PROPERTY A mixed bag. The area has experienced significant rejuvenation under the Dublin Docklands Development Plan with the resulting emergence of apartment complexes including the striking Gasworks. However, the majority of properties in Ringsend are still artisan cottages and red-brick terraces with a small number of more substantial properties on the outskirts.

Channel Serving: RTÉ Two

Jason O’Mahony dissects our national TV stations. This month: RTÉ Two

RTÉ Two has a reputation as the slightly wacky little brother of RTÉ One, which fits in with its declared goal to be “a mixed-genre channel designed to appeal to niche audiences.” It’s the home of RTÉ’s children’s television effort (also known as the Today FM crèche), RTÉ Sports, and the de facto home of that great mythical beast, RTÉ Comedy, where slightly avant garde concepts (that is, avant garde by RTÉ standards – someone saying “fuck” as opposed to, say, three Fijian banana farmers deep-frying a grizzly bear whilst urinating on Vatican II documents) such as The Panel are given a little run out, and more lately the John Ryan-fronted This is Nightlive.  

To call it a poisoned chalice is to do injustice to toxic receptacles. Irish people look at The Office on BBC and say, why can’t RTÉ do something like that? But they forget all the experimental stuff that the BBC tried and failed. Ever think RTÉ Two would risk a homegrown show called Attention Scum? The BBC did, and it flopped, and they moved on. That’s what you can do when you have a stack of money and a reputation for experimentation, a willingness to lose ten duffers to come up with one hit.

SpeakEasy

Speechmaking, like any other craft, requires talent: you can’t put in what God left out. You will improve the more you do it, but the kicker is that most of us don’t get a chance to speak publicly that often. (Thankfully.)

And so, bag o’ nerves, we wing it on the day. On a hope and a prayer and a bit of help from Bacchus. Oh, we’ve prepared all right – hours on YouTube studying Obama, drafting and redrafting, boring the mirror to pieces. But training is no substitute for match time. And it’s not until you stand up there, naked to the world, that you know what the final result will be.

The following are a few pointers that should make the occasion, whatever it is, that bit more successful.

Know Your Audience Obvious but key. This is the rule that keeps you on-side with the in-laws at a wedding. Remember – a speech is a sales pitch. For it to work, you need to know who you’re pitching, and shape the message accordingly.

A Good Speech is Borne Of A Good Idea Even if it’s just remembering the right story to embarrass your sister at her 30th birthday. Think about how you want to convey your message – as in, she’s a bit of a bimbo, but isn’t she endearing...

Trevor White

Reporting from Bombay, our columnist tries – and then refuses – to define what it means to be Irish today

I bumped into an acquaintance the other night. We hadn’t seen each other for about six months, and meeting like this – at neighbouring tables, in a foreign city – felt like a grand coincidence. Bombay is full of restaurants. It was a shame, we agreed, that we couldn’t spend long together.

Otherwise we’d drink the place dry! It didn’t really matter that neither of us are heavy drinkers or that our laughter sounded forced, unnatural. We weren’t trying to explore the delicate contradictions of the Irish character. It was just one of those remarks that people make in such circumstances. Indeed, what could be more Irish than playing to type abroad?