ComEnts

photo by Andrew Spiers
It's been a busy ten days, sorry for the lack of updates. Last monday before rehearsal we had a photo shoot with Andrew Spiers. It was a lot of fun, I'd spent the evening before making some "Who is Joey Ultra?" signs. (I also did some, What would Joey Ultra do? ones but we didn't use them.) We went for our usual pre-rehearsal drink in Up the Junction a bit earlier and then ended up in the Graveyard at the Junction trying to get pictures of us with sky in the background. Good stuff.

Rehearsal afterwards was a bit shambolic, I think everyone was really still thinking about the photos. This week we had no normal rehearsal at Impact due to me and the drummer/girlfriend being in Dublin. Instead we got together for an informal songwriting jam, which turned out to be mainly PaulC teaching me riduculous chords for some new songs he'd written. They have a lot of potential. We also did spontaneously write some music for Kings and Queens of England. The lyrics had come from an old song that we worked up but discarded, the new song is an instant 2 chord classic I reckon. I love it when stuff comes easily like that!

This weekend was spent in Dublin, had a really good time. We drank way too much Guinness the first two days/evenings and on the third day I stuck to wine and Gin and Tonic. I can recommend the following:
McDaids pub, really old Irish pub with fantastic Guinness (and shows premiership football on a cunningly placed TV). Although, for daytime visits only, apparently it's very locally in the evenings.
The Guinness Storehouse (pictured), but book in advance on the internet and save yourself 20 minutes of queuing.
The open top bus tour of the city. There are a few different ones. The company with both Red and Yellow busses is good. Red busses have driver commentary which tends to be a bit funnier than the proper tour guide commentary on the Yellow bus. Once you've bought a ticket for these you can get on and off them as many times as you want for 24 hours. Really handy for sightseeing, and they drop off at the Guinness Storehouse.
The Mezze bit of the Cedar Tree restaurant. I think it's 2 associated restaurants, we went to the Mezze Bar bit, which is at street level. The Really excellent Lebanese food, great service, and it looks really cool inside with a load of stone mosaics on the wall. The Mezzes are basically like set menus of tapas followed by a main course. You need to book a table if you're going in the evening though.

What else... oh yeah, last night some of the band were interviewed for Blah Blah magazine, we talked a lot of crap, god knows what'll get printed!