Today, Funeral Suits launched their debut album, Lily of the Valley with an instore gig at Tower Records in Wicklow Street, Dublin. After a few sound issues at the start and a falling mic (not their fault) the guys settled in and gave their hometown a cracking set. Lily of the Valley is out on Model Citizen Records.
Here’s a little vid of All Those Friendly People, ‘specially for you.
I’ve been looking forward to seeing Spector for a while. I enjoy their pop indie sound, their energy and their attitude, plus Fred McPherson is a pop/rock star we’ve been waiting a while for and he proved he had the showmanship to take this onto the stage.
Clever witty banter, musically sound, the band shone. Something weird happened during the gig though and it’s harder for me to write about this as I know one of the people involved. A local radio station in Dublin changed the lyrics for ‘Chevy Thunder’ to Hairy Panda and someone I know made a video for it and put it on Youtube. When I interviewed Chris from Spector, he hadn’t heard about it and googled it as we were chatting. (sound bloke by the way).
During the night pieces of paper with the words ‘Hairy Panda’ were handed out and the two people ended up on stage, which was weird. Unfortunately, only some of the audience knew what ‘Hairy Panda’ was about and changing the lyrics for their biggest song was a bit of a ‘fail’ for Spector.
To be honest, this left an unsavoury taste in my mouth and it was a tad embarrassing. Both Chris and Jed from the band weren’t particularly happy about it afterwards and Fred apologized for the incident on Twitter.
I really enjoyed the band’s performance though and I look forward to seeing them without a stage invasion.
On Sunday night (May 27th), I had the pleasure of going to see Newton Faulkner in a very sticky Whelan’s and being jammed it also meant you got to know your neighbours a little bit better than you intended to. Newton played some tracks from his forthcoming album, ‘Write it on your Skin’, alongside some more familiar tunes. Highlight of the night for me was ‘Clouds’ and the fantastic sing along that happened. Read all about it on Goldenplec.
Here’s the studio version of Clouds:
It’s not every day you get to see a living legend perform, then again, there aren’t that many around that are actually deserving of the title. Dionne Warwick is one who is. Five Grammy awards, fifty something singles in the charts and now celebrating her fiftieth year in showbusiness. On May 24th, Ms Warwick took to the stage, looking a little different than we are used to seeing her, with her hair cropped short showing it’s natural grey. It took a while for her voice to warm up but when it did, well there’s no one like her.
Read all about it on Goldenplec.