A holiday post from the wild Irish northwest

I am now on holidays in Donegal, in the wild north-west of Ireland, and the next post or two will be a ramble through some of the listening, watching, reading and other stuff you can catch up with on a holiday!

Music

Holiday listening breaks many rules of normal music-listening habits, as perhaps it should, as hitherto less significant influences such as the presence of children much of the time come to bear, combined with a general feeling that slightly more upbeat material is appropriate for mood modification purposes, and an overall sense of experimentalism and the need to break from all routine, including usual musical tastes. 

So, despite my innate urge to rave about the new National live EP (is 8 tracks an EP?) special on iTunes (will save that for next post), I will perservere with some musical selections more suitable to the occasion and location.  Donegal is the north-western corner of Ireland, and is wild, beautiful, undertouristed (in all the best ways) and where I always believe can be found the purest essence of the Ireland people come from abroad to see but fail to find in the more commercial and developed cities and regions further south; this is where you will find pubs in which people play Irish traditional music not because the tourists expect it but because that is how they wish to pass their evenings, and miles of beautiful Atlantic beaches deserted in July.  Donegal is a secret, which deserves to be tactfully shared, but not to the the extent that it could ever become less so.  Unfortunately, it has rained much of the last week, but there has to be some karmic counterbalance for all that beauty and stillness.

People in Donegal believe they are largely ignored by the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, and this may explain a lack of musical references to the area, but I did find two, the first by Irish senior singer-songwriter Paul Brady (although from a much earlier poem) which is most notable and worth sharing for the accompanying images of the area, including in the first shot the very town in which I am staying:



The second of these themed clips is in a somewhat similar (and equally uncharacteristic) vein, and is by the even more senior denizen of the Irish music scene, Christy Moore, and, while it may be called, somewhat unexpectedly in a geographic sense, 'The city of Chicago', features a line much in my head these days which claims that in said American metropolis, 'as the evening shadows fall, there are people dreaming of the hills of Donegal' (a lovely lovely line):

On perhaps slightly more familiar ground, almost all family holidays for the last many years have been uniformly soundtracked by the Waterboys' 'Room to roam'.  On, and since, its release in 1990, this has been almost universally panned as the unbearably twee pinnacle of Mike Scott's infatuation with all things Celtic and traditional, falling chronologically in between his epic windswept early stuff (of which the twin peaks, for me, were 'The whole of the moon' and 'Red army blues') and his more spaced and far less memorable later noodlings ('Glastonbury song' etc).  However, for me, 'Room to roam' is undoubtedly faily lighweight (and what the hell are they doing in fairground waltzers on the cover?) but is beautifully instrumented and has a gorgeous lightness of touch and overall prettiness which is a perfect soundtrack for any meander around the Irish countryside.  It is perhaps not surprisingly under-represented on Youtube; there is no sign of our favourite 'Spring comes to Spiddal' in which the line 'The lights are on in Stanton's' was somewhat spoiled in recent years by the discovery that said establishment is a craft shop and not a noteworthy pub.  However, I did find 'A man is in love' (one of the two great love songs on RTR, the other being 'How long will I love you'), which is just both lyrically and musically sweet (that word again - blame the holidays):

The final two Waterboys clips do not come from RTR, but from its predecessor 'Fisherman's blues' but undoubtedly belonging there in spirit, are the title track (first) and secondly 'The stolen child' (lyrics by WB Yeats!):





Although I will probably still be on holidays for the next post, I will resume normal musical coverage, and even get around to that blatantly 'National'ist rant.

Books

I finished 'The passage' and overall verdict is very positive, even if it ends on a very blatant and slightly too open note to allow what are apparently the next two books in a planned trilogy.  It is also written with a very clear eye to the obvious movie adaptation, which the Internet Movie Database confirms is in production, but yields no secrets on to those mere mortals who do not pay for an IMDB Pro subscription.  Interestingly, there are a whole pile of films with the same name already!

I have also started the book shown on the left, a new history of the battle of the Little Big Horn at which General Custer took on far more Indians than expected and came off the worse for wear.  As a young lad, I had quite an unhealthy interest in gory military history and have found it quite interesting to read proper histories of such battles as I heard of then (this one, Waterloo, Rorkes Drift and others) and learn the actual story.  This book is highly accessible and well written and avoids heavy military detail (as turned me off John Keegan's recent history of the American Civil War), and so I am enjoying it a lot.  However, it is a very tough battle (pun only slightly intended) against my parallel reading of Bill Bryson's 'At home', which I am absolutely loving, and will talk more about in the next post or two. 

Movies

Spent quite a bit of time immersed in B-movie science fiction heaven, starting with 'Predators', which I saw in the cinema and did enjoy quite a bit; yes it is very reminiscent of the original, but I found the characters interesting (if as deep as a Donegal puddle, and are they the predeators too?) and the action enough to keep me awake.  It did not quite do what 'Aliens' did for 'Alien', proving that just adding an 's' will not a superior sequel make (note, they did not do 'Godfathers', and 'Avatars' is not in development, at least according to IMDB); isn't it lucky there was not a movie called 'Sheep' which needed a sequel, as the creators would surely have been stumpted (and perhaps fleeced)?   I remember reading in The Irish Times last year that there was plans for a movie called 'Pride and predators', and the IMDB (again) suggests it is in development (here) - now that will be the next sequel to anticipate eagerly.  Also, on TV, saw 'Galaxy quest' again (very funny and well done) and found 'Lesbian vampire killers' about as much fun as the title would suggest and far more fun than the title would lead you to expect. 

On a slightly higher plane (no, not an in-flight movie, a DVD), I really really liked '(500 days of) Summer'.  Even if Joseph Gordon Leavitt does come across like a spare Heath Ledger grown in a lab to replace that tragically and prematurely large hole in movies.  It also gives him a sister who serves pretty much an identical function to the main character's sister in the wonderful wonderful 'Gregory's girl', but I liked many thinga about it which perhaps on a different day (i.e., not on holidays) might have annoyed me. I liked the time jumps, the titling, and even the split screen, brilliantly used in the scene where expectation of a particular event is contrasted with reality; I even coped with the song and dance routine, the blatant use of music like the Smiths to lend 'cool' (as in the clip below) and roared laughing at the scene where she tells him her nickname in College.  He seemed identifiably confused and real to me, but really, after it was all over, wasn't she just a bitch?



In a busy movie week or so I also saw 'Young Victoria' which impressed far more than I expected, although a week later I can remember very little bar a general positivity, which can't be a good sign.  I also watched 'The damned united' which made me initially think I could become interested in 1970's English football, against a lifetime of evidence, but then I fell asleep after a while so.....

Finally, I also got to see Toy Story 3 at second attempt (sold out on a howlingly wet day first time around) but will review that next post as this one is getting overlong as it is!

Other stuff

While in Donegal, I went along to something called the MacGill summer school, where various Irish politicians, academics, journalists and intellectuals of various levels of credential assemble for a week in a hall in a small town called Glenties to give and listen to a series of talks about various aspects of the state of trhe country (i.e., moan about, analyse and perhaps suggest how to escape our current wretched state).  I attended talks by historian Joe Lee and Peter Sutherland (whose career it is not possible to capture in a single descriptor) on education, and felt very aware that I was 20 years younger, significantly scruffier, and far less wealthy than the rest of the audience.  However, I still think there is something pretty cool about the fact that anyone can pay a fiver and wander off the street to have access to speakers including many of the current cabinet and ask them questions openly, which is somehow a good sign for a democracy, even one as bust as ours.

Finally, the iPad has been released and I am pretty sure I have talked myself into purchasing one when I get back to Cork; hard to find a clip to fit the moment, but Elvis Costello's wonderful 'Pads, paws and claws' keeps popping into my head when I think about it, so will stick that in instead:



Oh, and I thought this photo millimicronanoseconds from a crash at a Canadian airshow made my jaw drop alarming and rather dangerously (and more can be seen here):

That is more than enough for now, but needless to say lots carrying forward for the next post, including perhaps the final Irish release of the iPhone 4.0 (so many Apple products, so little time)!