28/07/06 Roisin Dubh, Galway
I've said this many times over the years here, but the Roisin Dubh is easily the finest venue in the country. With it's wee nooks and crannies, it's Gugai, and it's amazing atmosphere it's a place we've always had a joyous time playing and hanging out at.
So, we were a little worried when we arrived at the venue for load in to see the drastic changes that had been implemented since the last time we were down. Initial impressions weren't good, it seemed big and cold and where was my table in the corner for sneaky late night pints??
Fears instantly dismissed once the night got underway, the redesign proved itself an outstanding winner. Amazing sound, you can see the bands from anywhere in the room, and the atmosphere was intense. We've played in some fine rooms around the world now, as well as billions of awful ones, and the Roisin is definitely up there with the best.
The occassion for the gig is that it was actually Gugai, the promoters, birthday, and he'd asked us to come down and headline for his birthday, despite the fact it's only been a few months since we were last down.
As the night wore on and the japes escalated things ran behind schedule, it became obvious we were gonna go on way late, and had visions of playing to an empty room cos everyone had gone home to bed. Thankfully, despite it being 1.40am or something when we went on, the room was absolutely rammed and people seemed to have a great time. Always lovely to see people dancing.
We broke, or rather I broke, plenty of stuff on stage, including my distortion pedal, so we lost a couple of tunes that needed it, and figured we needed to bring the chaos about some other way. This ended up involving me running into the crowd, giving Gugai a boot up the backside towards the stage where he engaged in some fine cowbell playing for 7 or 8 seconds. Rhythmical.
As per usual, the night got bigger and bigger and I think it was 8.30am before we rolled out of the place, talking in tongues. Chances are that this will be the last proper Corpo show for a long, long time, til late next year, so this was the perfect way to cap of the busyness of the last couple of years. See yer all soon.

23/06/06 The Boom Boom Room, Dublin
Yikes, it's July 30th, and Joss just told me I forgot to write an entry up for this one.
Hmm, a month has passed, and I'm old now, I'm not going to be able to remember much. Highlights were seeing The French Letter A and Oppenheimer again, such great music, and we had a larf playing, though my first attempt at using a sampler pedal on one of our new songs was disaaaaaastrous. It was suggested to me that if I was nervous about using the pedal for the first time, I should just record the guitar loop before the gig, and then use it when we were playing. Great idea! Except the gig pace of the song was several times faster than the loop pattern, and the tune crumbled to a heap whilst I was battered with dirty looks from the boys. Lesson possibly learnt. Most likely not.
We had nice Chinese food beforehand too, that was good. Mail us if you remember anything more!

22/06/06 The Empire, Belfast
This was so much fun. Typical Corpo palaver of racing up to Belfast after work, but for once we actually made it in plenty of time. The Empire is an amazing venue, massive, ornate and austere, I think, so playing it is both exhilirating and a little intimidating. Particularly if there's no-one there.
Thankfully, as it was Oppenheimers album launch, the place was rammed to the rafters and everyone was in great form, particularly Tim Wheeler from Ash, though he was only there in cardboard cut out form. With a remote control head.
We maybe didn't go over as well as we might have, hard to tell in a room like that, but alls I know is that we had a great time playing, always so much fun playing Belfast.Too many photographers though! Argh!
Missed the opening bands, but Oppenheimer were great, so pop! Plus a delicious chinese from the Wok, so yum.

17/06/06 Cyprus Avenue, Cork
First time in Cork in a couple of years, and it was as equally drunken as the last one.
Playing gigs during the World Cup is always a hairy thing to do but this was ok. So damned hot though. Support was from the Lamps and The French Letter A. The latter is the new outing for Ross, the wunderkind behind Joan of Arse, and I was totally blown away by his set. Not what I had expected at all, really beautiful guitar playing and his voice has transformed itself. Utterly gorgeous, want him to make some records like this.
In practice we had played the new album in sequence for larks, but unbeknownst to me the lads had decided this was how we were going to do the gig. Lash out the whole album, songs that no-one knows, and then play a few of the old (s)hits. I thought it'd bomb, but it turned out to be fun, and bizarrely went down well. I hope. Cork is VG

08/06/06The Hub, Dublin Arthur Lee Benefit night
Left it a while to write this one up so I dinnae remember it that well, coupled with the fact that during our set I managed to give my head three nasty thwacks of an overhanging PA speaker. Must stop leaping around, I'm too old now for it to look dignified and it's dangerous. Nasty lumps and bruises for days after. What I do remember is that our performance was fairly ropey. We're an unpracticed bunch of late, for the entirely fair reason of folks being pre-occupied with weddings and that. In fact Mark wasn't even a week married when we played this. We scraped through most of it ok, apart from our Love cover, which was suitably shocking, considering we'd had our first band rehearsal about 2 hours before the gig. A rehearsal involving Mark getting us to shut while he listened to the song on his ipod so he could learn it. Raised a bunch of money for Arthur Lee though, and hopefully it'll help towards what I can only imagine are fairly full on medical costs.

13/04/06 Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick
I feel terribly flash, and in the wankiest of ways. As I type I'm sitting, tragically not in first class, on board an Air France jumbo jet on my to Chicago. I dropped off for a while after Harry Potter (you can choose your own films on this plane, wooo) and now that I'm awake again the computer monitor with all the flight data is refusing to do anything other than give me a graphic of our flight location. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic you'll be pleased to note. Perhaps it might be gracious enough to start working again before I finish with this and I can tell you the dreadfully exciting speeds I'm typing at. I'm all awonder, I really am. I hope awonder is a word, Agog? Anyway how do I come to be on this flight? Sit tight, readers, for a none too exciting tale!

Basically, last Monday Kris Poulin emailed from Chicago saying that while the mixing was going well, he was realising that time was too tight for him to get it finished on his own before disappearing on tour with Pinback for the summer. Basically by virtue of mixing it on his own he is having to spend a hell of a lot longer on each song than he should need to, getting to know the tunes and figuring out different approaches. Best option he had was for us to pick the songs we really wanted for him to do, then pick a studio in Dublin and do the rest ourselves. Thing is, by the time I checked prices for hiring a decent enough studio and engineer in Dublin, it dawned on me that it would absolutely be cheaper to fly to Chicago and sit in with Kris, and give him the help he needs to get things done. Besides which, we chose Kris for a reason, he's an immensely gifted engineer and we didn't really want someone else to get their hands on the material.

So, I booked the flight. All grand. Except to discover there had been a slight cock up with the booking, my names were reversed on the ticket. Thought it might be nothing major, but maybe best to give the airline a call just to check. Naturally no-one in the Air France Dublin office was answering the phone, I mean, why would they? That would have been ridiculous.

Eventually they did answer and the lady with the lovely french accent said "Oooh, yes, zat iz a big problemme". Thankfully she said she would get it sorted so hoorah for her.
All the while this is going on we actually had to start making our way down to Limerick for a gig there. On the bus to meet the others, I noticed a missed call on my mobile. I checked it and it was the nice lady with the lovely french accent.
"Excuze me, Monsieur Dudley, but zere iz steel a problemme wiz you are flight. Ze Paris office iz not anzwering ze phone, zey have all gone home."
Of course they had, I mean it only made sense.
"You should be OK, mais we cannot give your reservaccion 100 purrcent."
Nah, why would they...

So anyway, get to Limerick very late, cos of Easter weekend traffic, bomb up to Alberts to very quietly eat the lovely dinner he's made so as not to disturb his flatmates, watching the season premiere of the Sorpranos. I have to eat with my back to everyone so as not to spoil it for myself. I'll be looking forward to that.

Gig was great fun, Dolans is a big room though, wee bit intimidating. Still, it were grand, some of the new songs are very improved live now that we are getting mixes back from Kris and have fuller visions of the tunes.

I was offered 10 euro to kill someone too. Dublin style.....

So, pretty much within seconds of the show finishing we raced back to Dublin, got to bed about 3am, up at 6, on flight to Chicago via Paris by 9am. Have 11 hours in the air to look forward to, and on touchdown it's straight to the studio to get to work with Kris and we work til we're done some time tomorrow. I think I could be dead soon. Also, for the second time today I discovered my iPod has been playing in my pocket whilst I have been unawares. I think I have 20 minutes power left and another 5 hours or so in the air. Argh!

Anyways, apologies for the length of this, and sadly my promise of revealing my velocity isn't going to come to fruition, although I can tell you the plane is flying near to a peak called Godthab. That can only be a good thing, no?

*Updated*
Met Kris outside the studio at 5pm, and got straight to work. Spent some time fixing previous mixes he'd done. The desk in the studio isn't automated, so to reload a mix Kris had to recreate every single setting and rack unit etc. He actually had taken pictures of each mix on the desk so he could refer to exact levels etc. The pics look sorta cool, we should use them for art. At 2am we go out for Burritos, to this place right nearby. The menu consisted of Burritos, Super Burritos and the Ultimate Burrito. I went for the Super Buritto, figuring that as the regular one was only $2 it wouldn't be much of a meal. The Super Burrito was the size of an Elephants leg, terrifingly huge. What the hell must the Ultimate Burrito be like, and it cost $10.....

I won't go into details of the individual mixes, but time started to run out on us, we had to be done by 8. By 7am we still had two songs to do. Plumbed for what I hope is the better song and raced on. We left the studio at about 9am, and Kris said the only thing to do was buy a 6 pack ro celebrate, drink it as fast as possible back at his place and then get to bed. Perfect plan.
By the time I got to bed at 10.30am I had been up for 34 1/2 hours, just 30 minutes shy of Kris's own record, though I reckon my 2 hours of bad sleep in Dublin before I left could be discounted!

That night went for dinner and drinking with various pals. Met up with Kris and the Love Story in Blood Red guys at this awesome bar called Bob Inn, with Lizzy and the Zombies on the Jukebox.

Before going to bed at 3am made plans with Kris that we could get up at 11am to do some last edits, before heading to the amazing Ricobenes for a Sunday sandwich before I had to head to the airport.

Woke up and my watch said it was 1.30 pm. I thought, oh well never mind the edits, had a shower, got packed and tidied up, and went down to wake up Kris, he comes out all bleary eyed and asks whats wrong?
I say, I think we slept in a bit and should get a move on.
"But.....it's 6.40 am....."
My phone had gone back to Irish time or something, doh, and my brain had finally given up and not figured out the truth.
Thankfully, he just doubled over in laughter. Then I flew home.
Bizarrely, I think the insane hours I've kept might mean no jetlag. I feel fine now. Either that or my Jetlag is so bad I'm a full day behind.....
Whether the record sounds any good or not is another matter entirely....

?/03/04 The Stables, Mullingar
I actually forget the date this happened, it was a while back. If ever there was a 'Meh' gig this was it...

16/03/06 Roisin Dubh, Galway
Right. Quite how we didn't have the worlds most intense hangovers after this I don't know. Bill was us, Waiting Room and The Ghostwood Project, all rocking out in the comforting surroundings of the Roisin Dubh with probably the best promoter on the planet, Gugai.
Things didn't get off to the most promising of starts though. We were unloading gear when we noticed a missing guitar amp, doh. Following that word came through that the train that Mark was travelling to Galway on was stuck on a bridge, following a truck crashing into it. Something bizarre like that anyway. Waiting Room had a little worse luck when they innocently put petrol into their diesel engine van. Ouch. An expensive van hire later and they turned up in plenty of time, only for the guitar amp they needed to use to also break down. The omens really weren't great!
However, I think it's probably impossible to have a bad gig in the Roisin. Place was rammed, drink was flowing and the rocking was only mighty. Never seen the 5 piece Waiting Room before, mightily impressive. We were a wee bit rough around the edges towards the end perhaps, but there was too much good spirit for anyone to notice. Was deadly to see Gugai bouncing around the room with such a big grin on his face, even greater to see that by 7am the next morning, as we left, that grin had stretched to watermelon proportions. Personal highlight of the night was seeing everyone in the room singing along at the top of their lungs to 'Killer Queen' during the nightclubbing. After 2 hours sleep we were dragged back into town for vital food purposes whilst managing to avoid the St Patricks Day parade. So, Galway + Gugai + best Irish venue + all night drinking and other things + avoiding parade + allmighty rocking = best Paddy's day ever.

04/02/06 Crawdaddy, Dublin
23/02/06 Spirit Store, Dundalk
24/02/06 Boom Boom Room, Dublin
I've been more than a little lazy with kicking off the gig diary for this year, so apologies for that. I could try and write about the last three shows seperately, but really, as the years advance I find that even things from 10 minutes ago are a little hazy, so it's only fair to lump then in together. Send letters to Joss if yer unhappy 8)
Besides which the last few weeks have been utterly insane as we wind up the final sessions for the new album (one session of which lasted 25 hours, aieeee).
So anyways.
Crawdaddy thing was sort of a low key deal for us, a fundraising gig for Darfur, which raised tons of money which is a good thing, and we were glad to help.
The Spirit Store was great fun. We were playing with the always amazing Large Mound and some pals of ours from Chicago, Love Story in Blood Red. Love Story feature amongst their members a certain Mr Kris Poulin, a longtime Corpo pal that we know from touring with Pinback, and he will be mixing our new record over the next couple of weeks.
They were really great, put on a totally rocking show, that I got pretty envious of, some really neat and natural seguewaying (sp) between songs, that rather than confuse the crowd, got them even more going. Plus some awesome backing singing. In Dundalk we were grand.

Last night, then, was our first show in Dublin in a hell of a long time, something like 18 months or more, and we were worried about it....
The last time we played, in autumn 2004, was a really dismal affair, and put us off the idea of ever playing here again.
Thankfully, last night was totally brilliant. Venue was packed, atmosphere was electric and people were deathly silent in the quiet bits. We played our hearts out, as best we could considering our sharp lack of match fitness, and I shredded my left hand. People loved it, the whole experience was totally heartening. To the extent that we even rolled out plenty of new songs, something we're usually terrified of! We're going to attempt one more Dublin gig this summer, before we take our sabbatical, and fingers crossed it's even half as good as last night!
Right, back to Protools I go!