Celebrating its 21st anniversary this summer, 1998's Galway Arts Festival promises to be the best ever. Hot Press' honorary Tribes-man, COLM O'HARE, previews the main attractions and offers a comprehensive guide
to the best places to eat, drink and make merry.
From 15-28 July 2002 Galway city hosts one of the most comprehensive of this year's arts festivals with esoteric offerings from the genres of visual art, music, theatre, comedy and lots, lots more
By now one of the most esteemed events on the Irish cultural calendar, the Galway Arts Festival 2003 will once again bring you the best in contemporary theatre, literature, comedy and music
Donal Dineen launches his latest exhibition at the Galway Arts Festival this month. as we've come to expect from the DJ, TV presenter, filmmaker and photographer, music plays a big part in the new work
This is the time of year when two major national events, the Galway Arts Festival and the Galway Races, make Galway the destination of choice for many Irish and international funsters. But the City of the Tribes has a lot more to offer – including some of the best live music and clubbing in Ireland.
What has transformed 47-year-old boy Adonis TOM MATHEWS into a realistic simulacrum of that red-nosed little feeb in the Bamforth Comic postcards? Yes, readers, a punishing fortnight at the Galway Arts Festival. Now read on
Blown away by Low in Christchurch Cathedral? Check out this year's Galway Arts Festival, where Sigur Ros (among several very exciting but unconfirmed others) will be playing St Nicholas' Church. Read on for details
Neil Hannon plays the Galway Arts Festival - and retains The Divine Comedy name in order to stay in touch with his inner secondary school debating society
The sheer quality, not to mention quantity, of the GALWAY ARTS FESTIVAL once more triumphed over inadequate facilities.
OLAF TYARANSEN reflects on a cultural banquet.
Glacial slo-core guitar-bowers Sigur Ros cancel Galway Arts Festival appearance... in order to finish new album (!) in time for autumn release. Fair enough so
Cornershop, Sigur Ros, The Dirty Three, David Kitt, The Frames, Lambchop? Yep, the dreamy bill above, and much more besides, is in store at this year's Galway Arts Festival
Such is the close proximity of most of the well-known pubs to each other and to other central locations that Galway could quite conceivably have been designed with the pub crawler in mind. The sheer abundance and variety of pubs that Galway has to offer the thirsty reveller is one of the big attractions of the City of The Tribes. Galway pubs are renowned for their unique and friendly atmosphere, mighty craic and impromptu traditional music sessions.
This year there is one striking feature of the Dublin Theatre Festival which would suggest that the Capital’s two key theatres are not making too much of an effort for the event.
IN HIS interview elsewhere in this issue Michael D. Higgins points out that there is little to be gained from indulging in discussions about a Dublin/the rest of Ireland divide. However it would be fatuous to deny that while Dublin slept coiled inside smug self assurance in terms of its pivotal role in relation to the arts, regional areas such as Galway gradually became more vibrant centres of cultural life, in many ways.
The Dublin Theatre Festival celebrates its 45th birthday in 2002 with a quality combination of classic and more recent works in musical theatre, comedy and drama
The Dublin Theatre Festival celebrates its 45th birthday in 2002 with a quality combination of classic and more recent works in musical theatre, comedy and drama
GERRY MALLON is the brains behind The Murphy's Comedy Club which has been running weekly in Galway's GPO for the last three years, despite one Englishman's determined attempt to incinerate the joint. Interview: BARRY GLENDENNING.
Since opening its doors five years ago, Galway's Róisín dubh has established itself as a superb live music venue that's a firm favourite with performers and punters alike. colm o'hare reports.
Being a strange, terrible, wondrous and uplifting saga of pints, goats, monsters, Malcolm McLaren, jokes, art and, er, lettuce. Or, to put it another way, the inimitable tom mathews reports from The Galway ARts Festival.
As frontman of Galway’s Toasted Heretic Julian Gough was an enfant terrible of Irish rock. Then he jacked in music to become a best-selling writer. With his old band preparing to reform, Gough reveals his loathing of television and explains why his home town is the cosmopolitan capital of Ireland.
It’s been a long, hot, muggy day, but Galway’s weather still won’t piss or get off the pot. A short, sharp shower would actually be extremely welcome, but the heavily pregnant clouds just tease with the prospect of rain. On the plus side, the evening skies over the Fisheries Field are appropriately shaded for the musical night ahead (sorry, but it’s an unbreakable rule of music journalism that every David Gray live review must contain at least one pun on his surname).
He’s been many things: a roadie with De Danann, a carpenter with Druid, a founder of the world-famous Macnas theatre group and, not least, a six-foot four-inch Connemara man in a skirt and self-styled “cranky fuck”. But now Paraic Breathnach spends a lot of his time crying tears of rage. Olaf Tyaransen finds him down but definitely not out. Portrait Aengus McMahon
During the heady days of Italia ’90, The Stunning provided the unofficial soundtrack to the nation’s summer-long party, playing a series of uproarious shows around the country and treating the top-ten like their local. thirteen years later, having just re-released their classic album, Paradise In The Picturehouse, the group reflect on what a long, strange trip it’s been and why they’re not ready to hang up their guitars just yet.
LA, Joshua Tree, Alabama, New Orleans . . . Kristin Hersh verbally back-packs her way around the most significant places in her life and career thus far.
Interview: Nick Kelly.
Don't tread on us, said Buffalo Bill Clinton, and the Cruise missiles shot off at Baghdad. Hitting this and missing that, amassing what the Americans presumably see as acceptable "collateral damage", including six civilians.
Music | Interview
35% | 27 Jul 2005
Colm O Hare
She’s been a rock icon, a tabloid sensation and a muse to Mick Jagger. But you won’t find Marianne Faithfull mooning over past glories.
In the second part of a major interview concerning his brief as Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht - and his vision for the future of the Arts in Ireland - MICHAEL D. HIGGINS talks about the enormous potential for job creation in the related areas of film, music and heritage, the changes he would like to see in the tax-free status afforded to artists and answers his critics in relation to Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act. Interview: JOE JACKSON
THE UNDERTONES have played a series of triumphant gigs since reforming. GEORGE BYRNE met the Derry punk legends, now augmented by Today FM producer Paul McLoone on vocals
After an initial reluctance to tell the outside world about his predicament, author and poet PAT TIERNEY this year went public about his HIV-positive status, and encountered a far more compassionate response than he had anticipated. Interview: LORRAINE FREENEY
Taking the DIY ethic a step further than many, Alan Roe, aka Roesy, devised a rather creatively impressive way to raise money to record his album Only Love Is Real.
The old fashioned virtues of talent and charisma, combined with the latest innovations in media technology, look set to make JACK L Ireland's first superstar of the new millennium. JOHN WALSHE has the inside story on a man who is about to get to The Point.
The old fashioned virtues of talent and charisma, combined with the latest innovations in media technology, look set to make JACK L Ireland s first superstar of the new millennium. JOHN WALSHE has the inside story on a man who is about to get to The Point.
Despite the controversies in which she has recently bee involved, when SINIAD O'CONNOR starts talking music it becomes evident why she ran away to join the rock'n'roll circus in the first place. Citing Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Van Morrison as her ultimate trinity, she discusses the spiritual forces that drive and inspire. Interview: BILL GRAHAM
Its action all areas as a musically beefed- up David Gray leaps back into the fray. Inviting Hot Press to an exclusive tour of his London studio, he talks about early success in Ireland, his break with loyal drummer Clune and a recent get-together with uber-diva Annie Lennox
There’s no drink or drugs for Tommy Tiernan these days, but you couldn’t say his life is uneventful. In conversation with Olaf Tyaransen, the comedian reflects on tabloid interest in his private life, the night he had to get away from Jordan, the future for post-Catholic Ireland and the genius of Flann O’Brien and James Joyce. All this plus the unveiling of the secret tattoo. Photography by Mick Quinn.
WITH THIS album, recorded live in one night at the Bottom Line Club in New York, the irrepressible LW3 celebrates a quarter of a century of, as he puts it, "earning a damn good living on the periphery of the music business".
Opinions are somewhat divided on the future of trad – some feel the music should retain its explicit links with the past, while others contend that the only way for the genre to survive and flourish is through stylistic diversification. Plus the usual round-up of news from around the country.
The haunting under-belly of a small-town Ireland in transition is probed in Patrick McCabe’s new play, The Revenant. The result is both a chilling piece of theatre and a barbed social commentary, says its director Joe O’Byrne.
Last week, I was surprised – and rather tickled, if the truth be known – to get a call from Larry Bass, CEO of Screentime ShinAwiL, the production company behind You’re A Star – the third series of which is set to take the headline slot on RTÉ every Sunday night for 17 weeks commencing in November.
