This fortnight, Olaf Tyaransen bravely overcomes his homesickness and takes a trip to the mainland – only to have two Thai hoodlums break into this hotel room and a tatooed Welshman offer him some opium. Oh dear…
In the late 19th century Dublin’s O’Connell Street was one big red light district. Dandies bought opium over the counter and literary types knocked back laudanum and absinthe.
The people Northern Catholics should be looking to for support are Northern Protestants. And the Protestant working class should ensure in their own interests that the Catholics don’t look to them in vain.
Beautiful images, idiosyncratic phrases and quirky notions pervade this singer-songwriter’s second album, Spoonface.
Meanwhile, Christophers’ choirboy voice soars and drops, sparse, edgy guitar hums and electronic beats insist their way into the music.
A gruesome and stylish take on Jack the Ripper, From Hell sees the Hughes brothers marry mystery and mutilation to produce the world's first arthouse slasher movie
If you’re the sort of person who enjoys reading about Alex Higgins playing ten quid snooker games in the hostel where he currently resides then y ou may well get a kick from watching Mr. Pacino hoo-ha-ing his way through the woeful Two For The Money.
He’s best known as an experimental UK comedian. But Matt Berry is no slouch as a musician either. Now, he’s combining his love of comedy and music in a ‘rock opera’ about the birth of Christ.
The sun shone on our Sunday Chatroom, with talkative adventures aplenty and guests The Flaws, Gemma Hayes, Mark Geary, Hadouken, Foals, The Roots, Michael Franti and more!
Eccentric, sweet, thoroughly off-beat and endlessly entertaining, Woody Allen's latest work is a welcome relief in the worst cinematic summer on record.
There’s nobody else quite like Damien Dempsey. His vocal style is very much an acquired taste. It takes a few listens before you start liking it, but after a while and you wonder where he’s been all your life.
In advance of his latest movie, From Hell, in which he plays a policeman investigating Jack The Ripper, American superstar JOHNNY DEPP is adopting a low-key profile. Here, however, he talks extensively about on-set pranks, the lure of acting, sobriety versus excess and how movies, movie stars and moviegoers might cope with the world after September 11.
Words: JANE GARDNER with additional input by EARL DITTMAN
The only problem with writing about any new Tom Waits record is the man himself describes his own work so accurately that any further attempts at conceptualism are rendered superfluous.
Alice and Blood Money are Siamese twinsets written by Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan for a stage production directed by Texan image alchemist Robert Wilson
Okay, enough is enough. The bastards have gone too far this time. Thus far and no further shall they encroach upon my personal liberties. It is time to take a stand. And if that doesn’t work, Sam Snort will take up arms and blast the whole bloody lot of them off the face of the earth. Then they’ll really find out just how bad smoking can be for your health.
With the Dutch having just taken over from Ireland as EU President, paul o mahony looks at their liberal domestic drugs policy and visits Amsterdam s unique hash and marijuana museum.
The relationship between drugs and creativity has always been a hotly debated subject. But narcotic indulgence has proven to be the downfall of many a gifted artist.
If the Irish authorities cannot acknowledge or understand the difference between cannabis, heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, they stand little chance of getting to grips with the bewildering variety of SMART PRODUCTS currently available in Amsterdam. PAUL O MAHONY reports.
Notorious in her native China for her sexually graphic novel Shanghai Baby, Wei Hui looks sure to upset the authorities even more with her next literary outing. Fiona reid meets the controversial young author.
photography: cathal dawson
Of course Cathal O Searcaigh should be whipped off the Leaving Cert. And every other degenerate writer from the past and the present, along with him...
The angry young(ish) man of Irish preacher-punk is back, bleeding righteous indignation from every pore. Jinx Lennon tells us why it's time for a revolution.
MORE PEOPLE SMOKE IT IN THE UK THAN GO TO CHURCH, THE AMERICAN LAW JUDGES ADMIT THAT IT'S THE SAFEST THERAPEUTICALLY ACTIVE SUBSTANCE KNOWN TO MAN BUT STILL THE WAR AGAINST CANNABIS RAGES ON. OLAF TYARANSEN EXAMINES THE VESTED INTERESTS WHICH STAND IN THE WAY OF ITS LEGALISATION.
Tabloids, those small, square, screeching newspapers in which England in particular specialises, have never really caught on in Ireland, certainly not in the same way that they have across the water. It’s certainly not because we don’t have the shock! horror! scandals needed to feed their hungry maw. In fact, some of the stuff that goes on in this country is actually too sensational for the sensational press.
Below, Liam Fay looks at some of the secrets in the lives of four famous Irish figures from the past hundred and fifty years or so and attempts to reinterpret them as a modern day tabloid would.
All of the ‘scandals’ alluded to are factual. Joyce was a coprophiliac, Yeats did have sheep glands inserted into his body, James Clarence Mangan was a phenomenal dipso and Michael Collins was, well, inordinately fond of wrestling.
This fortnight's Hot Press is our Electric Picnic special to celebrate we've teamed with O2 to put together a collection of the best Irish talent to grace the festival in a 16 track free CD. There’s something here for everyone; in fact, it’s the perfect picnic spread! Not only that, but we've got some of the bands in question to preview the festival for you (and us!!)
With Cameron Crowe s Almost Famous putting rock hackery on the silver screen, no less, Peter Murphy wonders if Seventies rock journalism is the new rock n roll. Helping him with his enquiries: PAUL MORLEY and GREIL MARCUS
A Tinsel Town director of the old school, Michael Mann goes back to his ‘80s roots in his new movie, Miami Vice. In a forthright interview he talks about working with Colin Farrell, why he insisted on shooting in Paraguay and explains he’s not as tough as Hollywood gossip would have you believe.
To give him his full title, he's the Minister of State at the Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation with responsibility for local development and the National Drugs Strategy. But it's for the latter responsibility that EOIN RYAN TD has earned the unofficial title of "Ireland's Drug Czar". As a new seven-year strategy is unveiled, STUART CLARK enquires about leisure, legalisation, decriminalisation, health, creativity, crime and punishment – and whether or not cannabis really is "a gateway drug". Photographs: PHILLIP TOTTENHAM.
With Thin Lizzy now officially a thing of the past, Philip Lynott is preparing to start anew with Grand Slam. At this transitional point in his public career Tony Clayton-Lea sought out the private Lynott to ask him his views on a wide range of issues including music, politics, religion, sex, drugs, Ireland, parenthood and rock'n'roll stardom. The result is probably the frankest and most revealing interview Philip Lynott has ever given.
Ireland’s biggest transatlantic TV star, Graham Norton has come a long way from his humble beginnings in Bandon. In his new tell-all autobiography, So Me, Norton writes about his tumultuous rise to the top, living in the media spotlight, keeping A-list company and coping with emotional upheaval. “It’s an uncertain time in my life,” he tells Olaf Tyaransen.
In the wake of the IRA’s complete cessation of violence, the Unionist community must engage in a process of re-defintion – because while they have been clinging to the last vestiges of the British Empire, the world around them has been transformed. By Bill Graham.
In the first of a new series about life at the rock n roll coalface, musician and writer Peter Murphy recalls the night the devil wrecked all his best tunes. Confessions Of A
Rock n Roll
Survivor
The outlaw loved by the in-law, Willie Nelson can draw 4,000 people outside Dublin virtually by word of mouth. But it ain't all middle of the road: as befits a veteran of the honky-tonks who had done battle with the IRS and the law, the country music legend can still get in touch with the dark side of Hank
