"frozen to my balls i was"

Ok so my parents have left me to my own devices, headed out wesht while im stuck here at home..... couple of problems with my home currently - my heating is fully gone - basically the heating oil tank burst a while back, spilling oil into my house so my house also reeks of oil and of course there being no oil in the tank, I have no heating... no matter, I have the fire lighting and am contemplating food in the near future....

any way, to explain the title and the picture, a couple of years back when I was "studying" for my junior cert (pffft!) some one introduced me to Pat Shortt's version of the eminem song stan - I honestly to this day laugh the whole way through it! its quality... but one line in the song he makes the famous quote - "Frozen to my balls I was"



ok so what else is going on in the world of Can? not much being honest... I have been stuck to the couch since I crawled out of bed, I have decided as it has been a very long year I'm gonna take the last few days of the year for myself, aside from the cold every where else in the house and the impending need to fetch some coal, I must say I am a happy man! good tunes coming from my speakers, room is nice and cosey, I am extra cosey in my all new slanket that I got for christmas....

ok so a bit of a topic....
I have been blabing on about events around Cork in the last few posts saying how lucky we are and all that, but I'm starting to realise, if one wants to see some top notch big names, one must travel. 6th of March 2010 (i think, correct me on the date if im wrong), techno legend Dave Clark is gonna be up in the trinity rooms in Limerick spinning the tunes, safe to say I'm gonna try organise a DJ Soc trip to Limerick to co-incide with this event...

but ya about the whole traveling to see big names, I was on boards.ie last night to check out what was going on around the country, some many big names coming up in dublin its unreal! if it wasn't such a hike I'd make the trip but alas I try and spend as much time out of leinster as I can

I did a bit of investigating bringing some big name DJs over to Cork in february but it was in NO way feasable... unless you have a large venue like savoy I don't know how you would make any money on it, one of the venues I had in mind was Cyprus Avenue, I was recently in there for the first time for the Hardy Bucks gig and I must say I am impressed with the set up, MASSIVE turbo sound system, very nice light set up and a nice stage but with such a small capacity its hard to cover the act, let alone make any money, another option would originally have been the Maradyke Entertainment Complex, we have run many events there with the DJ society and for the most part they have been succesful, the advantage you have in the maradyke is the place is fucking HUGE 4 areas, good sound all round and a nice atmosphere in there! the main problems facing small time promoters is things like having to cover the cost of a lisence for these places to stay open until 2am (€500 I believe), though some places like Cyprus Avenue & the Pavillion etc have these but some places struggle to get these lisences!

I was watching a programe recently about clubbing in the UK, it featured Radio 1 DJ Judge Jules, he arrived at a gig at 2 am and did a 3 hour set, at 2 am in Cork every one is booted outed of the drinkerys and sent to the modern day colleseum that is daunt square. its a joke, all the clubs in Cork close too early, thousands of drunk people are then all released at once onto the streets. if we had later opening times in Cork people wouldn't stay in the club until closing time, they would leave at different times and we wouldn't have such anti-social drink problems that we have in our city!

I thought about getting into this promoting malarky alot recently, bringing in some big(ish) names but with the way things are its hard to do so, alot of venues are so scared of loosing money on big events they don't want to take the chance! yes I may be contraticting somewhat of what I said yesterday about all the good club nights in Cork but if one looks at the steady residencys around the city they are our local tallent that are keeping these nights alive, what does that mean? we have some serious tallent in Cork! if you look at all the really good DJs in Cork, it's no wonder there is such a rivival, I wont go naming names as I don't want to leave any one out but I must say the amount of "next big thing" DJs in Cork at the moment is staggering.

leaving aside the normal "chart clubs" if you go to one of the venues where good music is being played, you are garanteed to see a talanted DJ on the decks doing what they love, this of course is not a stab at DJs working in these so called "chart clubs" as many can do amazing things with some attrocious music but the thing I have always felt is most of the time these people don't put as much effort in as they might if they were playing songs they wanted to hear, I heard a horror story before from a friend of mine of how he was working in a club and was basically given a track list of songs to play that night, in order....... I often ask clients for tracklists for mobile gigs as in a mobile situation there might be some quirky ones the client would be looking for but this person said the list was basically the top 40 songs that week, yes in these clubs this is what people want to hear but to put that much of a leash on a DJ, you might as well plug an Ipod into the system....

but ya thats enough shite talking for the moment, time for some dinner methinks!

later playas

BDC