Out to Lunch

Ja' pub

Hi there… I hope everybody got save and sound trough New Year’s Eve . I know I did... but, as I discovered to my surprise, most links on my weblog didn’t. For some obscure reason all the Divshare links are gone. I still have to figure this out. I hope that more than 3GB of data are not lost for ever. uploading is down also, so for the moment no lalala - Everything's fixed now.

Anyway, no time for worries now, I just arrived back from Dublin for a short city trip on NYE. A awful lot of people, mostly foreigners with false expectations attracted by an ace publicity trick called 'The Irish Pub', visit Dublin every year for NYE which is pretty strange ‘cause there’s absolutely nothing special going on in Dublin on NYE! No fireworks, no public gatherings… just pubs and drunks, and lots of them.
Apparently the Irish themselves haven’t got a f***in’ clue either why all those people want to spend NYE in Dublin, apart from shopping off course because sales were on.
I guess Halloween and Saint Patrick’s Day are far better occasions to visit Ireland and Dublin if you really want to party. Hardly any concerts, events, activities,...

Was it than such a drag? No, Dublin is nice and small, nice people, nice food, nice weather (13 degrees Celsius!) and sure there’s atmosphere but it’s always the same on those islands… when everything starts to get loose in the early morning they close the pub or the club sometime around 1 or 2’o clock. There are some late night clubs but they are scarce and rather mainstream hithouse/eurotrash.

We’re not used to that in Belgium. Here, all the fine clubs just go on, all night long. Again a reminder how spoild we are in terms of nightlife. I mean, even some restaurants don't close at 1'o clock and all mayor cities like Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent are within a 50km range. If you don't like what's going on in one, you can just drive to the next one.

One problem we had in Dublin was that we hadn’t booked a hotel for that night, so we had some time to kill to catch our plane back at 7’o clock. We managed but without the intended traditional fish and chippers because they were all closed as well at that time in the morning, even though there were still a lot of people on the streets of Dublin.

So what did Dublin brought me this year? Some wonderful music! I learned about the new Irish hope in these cold winter days called Jape. He’s an multitalented artist with varied tastes. Maybe a bit like Beck, if it’s of any help to you. He played a concert that night in Whelan’s but it was sold out.

If you visit Dublin and want some alternative for the tourist trap called Temple Bar, I found out that you can go to the likes of Wexford Street and Camden (where Whelans is), one of the main roads going south to Portebello (another location for nightlife) and Rathmines from Temple Bar.

Apparently it was his birthday aswell. He released an EP in 2007 called Jape is Grape (so people can pronounce his name right) and which just now turned into one of my favourites for 2007.
The main track is called Floating which also has a nice videoclip. It’s about various floating vegetables and fruits, sounds light-headed and pretty, but there’s a dark undercurrent in the music which get’s appropriately reflected by the reason why they are floating and where to. Christopher and Anthony is a current free download on his myspace.

Jape – Floating
Jape – Christopher and Anthony


by Daddy and M&E