Here’s another tune IRMA can’t touch. Permission received from artist to share on May 15th 2007. Thanks Cormac.
79Cortinaz’s tune “Feather Eggshells”. They can be found online, on their new improved site, at http://www.79cortinaz.com.
Back in May 2004, when I first recommended this, I said this: “Unsigned and Irish - why is that combination always so good? There’s simply so much great music coming out of Ireland right now, it’s hard to keep up with it. Listen to the voice on this track from the fledgling 79Cortinaz.
Link is here: http://www.markwrafter.com/hands-off-irma/79cortinaz_-_feather_eggshells.mp3 - Mp3 Format - 5.81mb
Here’s a tune IRMA can’t touch. Permission received from artist to share on May 14th 2007. Thanks Dave.
Zeppo’s tune “Act V“. They won’t be found online, cos they broke up, alas. Some of that former talent however now goes under the name “The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra”.
Back in August 2002, when I first recommended this, I said this: “Unsigned. Unloved. Unknown. Almost exclusively on markwrafter.com listen to the lilting Act V from Zeppo, a Dublin-based, Limerick-spawned five-piece.”
Link is here: http://www.markwrafter.com/hands-off-irma/zeppo_-_actv.mp3 - Mp3 Format - 3.96mb
I have decided to try and put back together what I can from my former mp3 collection, in such a way that not even IRMA can complain.
When my site was taken-off-air by IRMA in May 2007 I had amassed a collection of 170 recommended tunes, over 34 separate months, spanning November 2001 and June 2006.
I will certainly never make it to 170 IRMA-safe tunes again, but I will try to make a dent in it. And so it begins.
I have great admiration for Barcelona City Council - they do great work, and really seem to care about the city and its people.
But they’ve made a huge bollix
out of something this morning.
Cines Paris, in the cities main shopping thoroughfare of Porta de l’Angel has been ripped down.
For what purpose? ANOTHER ZARA - as if the city, the country, and Europe didn’t have enough of this sprawling chain.
Zara’s parent Inditex already owns most of the street with Often, Massimo Dutti (twice), Zara (twice already), Pull and Bear, Bershka and Oysho. Now they want a third Zara within 100 metres of each other. (They have 1,627 shops of various flavours in Spain today.)
And to make this third Zara, what did they do? They pulled down an attractive old cinema. See photos for a before and after.
I can live with there being another Zara, but I can’t condone their pulling down of the facade, could they have not been inventive, keep the facade, and build their shop into the existing structure. It may even have been an opportunity to do something very cool, keeping the existing screen intact, for example, and play old movies onto it in the middle of the retail space - what a lost opportunity!
In my after-shot taken within the last hour, note the number of people standing 
around looking at the construction site. This isn’t normal. People weren’t happy this morning, particularly the elderly, I spoke to one woman in her sixties who lamented that this is where she went when she was a young woman on her first night’s out in the city. Where are Barcelona’s plethora of hippies, objectors and okupa/squatters when you need them? Certainly not here, certainly not in the midst of this bloody mess, where they might have gained some popular support for their movements.
Shame. And shame on Zara.
Poor old Barca, the locals are really giving them a tough time.
White rags, papers and tissues were being waved through the stadium at the end of 90 minutes in the Camp Nou to show the fans had had enough, and were surrendering.
Betis - who really shouldn’t be troubling a team which boasts Ronaldinho, Deco, Eto’o, Edmilson, Messi - took a last-minute goal to even things up 1-1.
This aside, (thanks to a pair of VIP tickets from Grup Norte), with cava flowing pre and post game (no alcohol can be consumed during the game itself, a Barcelona rule), and beef albondigas and tuna empanadas served-up at a speedy rate, this was an altogether enjoyable affair!
(IRMA, is there anything you can do here, it might be a better use of your time?)
Albania’s tastes must be as bad as our own, they were the only country to vote for Ireland (five points) on Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Ireland first participated in 1965, and of the 40 appearances between then and now, our previous worst outing was in 2005, when we came a lowly 14th. Last night we managed 24th and last position.
The once proud music tradition of Ireland’s Eurovision entries, seven-times-winners, lies in tatters. Damn-it, we won it three-times-in-a-row between 1992 and 1994!
With the Balkan-bloc, the Baltic-bloc and the Russian-bloc, it’s hard to imagine another western-European winning this competition again. Serbia won this year: they were awarded the competition’s maximum score by five of its eight neighbours. Political back-scratching was thinly disguised.
Dervish, who I admire (in a non-Eurovision setting), were one of the few acts on the night to brandish more than one music instrument on stage. Perhaps it’s time for a rethink on a number of issues:
1. Should we let the Irish public vote for our Eurovision representative each year, a democratic vote is evidently a poor selector.
2. The voting procedure: it needs to change. Croatia giving Serbia, who gave Croatia in return, 12 points. Come on! Do you not remember the war!?
3. Do we really need to endure such insult at all? Only because Albania’s tastes are so… dated… compared to the rest of Europe did we get any points at all.
Bah-humbug.
In the changing room there are another set of rules.
And I don’t just mean the don’t-look-below-the-waistline-rule.
I’m a white-assed, freckle-endowed, non-muscular, burn-easy Irishman in Barcelona.
Today, having been at the pool, I found myself in the midst of a very busy male changing room, Catalan being spoken all around me, with a race of people who a) actually have summers where you can go to the >outdoor< pool; b) who have white-asses, sure, but who are already tanning deeply though it’s only early May; c) and who have grown up in swimming pool changing rooms, unlike me.
There’s an unhurried cool in Barcelona swimming pool changing rooms; and this contrasts wildly with my hurried-to-get-my-underwear-on style, one still-wet foot in the air, other foot balanced precariously atop a flipflop.
I realise I’m getting it all-wrong. I’m letting my shorts drip on an otherwise dry floor; my swimming attire was cool in 2005; I haven’t brought a hairbrush, nor skin moisturiser for that matter, nor a separate towel for my face. I’m an Irishman for God’s sake, we don’t DO that kind of thing.
It’s a cultural thing, tell me it is, it’s about the only comfort I can take. I wonder if another year, or ten, of post-pool Saturday-morning experiences will ever give me that natural changing room cool? Personally, I doubt it.
… and my silver lining today is that I’ve scored VIP tickets to the Barca FC Vs Betis game this weekend. Nice!
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On May 1st 2007 I put this blog live, wrote something, published it, then took the blog down. Nah, I said, who needs another frigging blog that no ones reads?
So I took the blog down, and put my site back up, just another site, a site like it had been since November 2001.
Then May 11th 2007 came, and with it an e-mail from IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association) demanding that 29 mp3s I was hosting should be removed. “Should this matter not be resolved to our satisfaction, further steps will be taken.”
I wrote simple stuff, nothing earthshattering, but carefully selected tunes nonetheless, like Nina Simone’s “Four Women” - I wrote “An obscure path led me to this track, the story of four women, each told in a single verse - takes a little getting used to, perhaps - but a beautiful haunting track nonetheless.”
This Nina Simone track was one of the 29 mp3s in question that “have not been authorised by the copyright owner for reproduction, distribution or any other use.”
I wonder IRMA, if you even know who Manu Chao, Kent, Vincent Gallo, Echobrain and Joy Zipper are? No, I suppose not. You’re just doing you’re job, right?
You do seem to know Aslan, Bellefire, Westlife and Samantha Mumba though - it says so on your site: http://irma.ie/irishm.htm
I wonder also do you know how many people have read my muso-ramblings since 2001 and bought and supported artists as a result of my sharing? No, I suppose not. You’re just doing you’re job, right?
For one, there’s Trisch, who had never heard of Beth Gibbons on March 21st 2003 when she mailed me, but bizarrely enough, has since started working for the PR company that promotes Beth Gibbons, and Trisch now runs that account.
Then there was Bart Postma from Holland who on July 21st 2004 mailed me to say: “thanks a lot for introducing me to all the great music! All i listen to now is 79Cortinaz, Whipping Boy and Simple Kid.”
Where else would a band like 79Cortinaz get exposure but on a site like mine, they’re from CARLOW for God’s sake! (And they’re very good!)
Then there Grace Davis from California who on September 29th 2004 wrote to say: “I have thoroughly enjoyed Christopher O’Reilly and Max Richter. As a result I’ve been inspired to return to the piano after nearly 40 years.”
And on October 13th 2004, John Beale from somewhere in England who said: “I very much appreciate your mp3 pages - it’s been a great way to find out about bands that i’d never have looked at previously. Thanks and keep up the great work.”
And the scores more of, now-that-I-reflect, pretty inspirational emails received.
I’ve now decided this blog should live, in dedication to IRMA, and to the death of my site that recommended tunes because I love music. Irish Recorded Music Association indeed.
Thank you IRMA.
There are days I feel like changing the world. There are days I so badly wanna leave my mark on the world that I feel like I might explode, or implode. My contribution, today, is to start this blog. What a pathetic attempt at immortality. I’m sure, on hitting “Publish” in the next few minutes, my sense of needing-to-achieve will not have been satisfied.