I wandered towards Bombay Mick’s this evening and bumped into Mr Darwin, a frequent contributor to this organ.
Mr Darwin engages, among other things, inter alia, and so forth, in playing the jazz guitar, and he’s involved in the Limerick Acoustic Guitar Festival, taking place for the next while or so. Check it out if [...]

Hakk!! Hawwwkkkhh!!! Hak!! Khhakkhh!! Fuck! My fuckin head!! Hak! Kahokk!! Hok-thooee!! Ukkhh. Urk. Nnnggmnngghh. Mmnnnnhh. N.
I stir in the bed but I do not move, for I have experienced this before, many years ago in the Aran Islands. Sane men don’t move until this ritual has passed, for it is the waking-up rite of the [...]

Anyway. Where were we? Oh right, sorry, we finished with Wrinkly Joe saying it wasn’t even three o’clock yet.
Well, that was the run-in to the only really cheesy moment of the Midlands Music Festival. The only truly questionable moment when you begin to doubt your commitment to liberal western values but [...]

I eased into position behind the battlements of the old castle. A mile away, the target strutted across a stage, wheeling and swaggering as only such a swine is capable of.
Damn you, I muttered, you’ll soon be no more than a memory. And after you, there’s Christy Moore and Glenn Campbell.
Slowly, carefully, [...]

Well you know how it is with these festivals.  Excess.  More excess and then another bit of excess.
Excessive amounts of excess.
When I ‘m a bit better, I’ll tell you all about the festival, and the lunatics we met and the Blind Boys of Alabama, and how we almost accidentally killed a major country star with [...]

Yes. It’s that time of year when Wrinkly Joe and myself take our lives in our hands and venture into pink-buckskin territory once more. That’s right: the Midlands Music Festival is upon us again and tomorrow we enter the fray.
Now, you might recall our adventures from last year, when we worshipped at the [...]

I must show you something, said Wrinkly Paddy and leapt up from his chair.
Look at this! he exclaimed, pulling something out of a bag. I got it last week.
I reached out and took it. It’s a guitar, I told him. A very small electric guitar. A child’s electric guitar, in fact.
With [...]

We don’t go home after all, though it’s a close call. We drive back to the venue, collect Joe’s car and pull up beside the tents, wet, miserable, hung over and pissed off. And then the sun comes out again. I look at Joe. Joe looks back at me. “Ah fuck it, let’s stay.”
The truth [...]