Archive News
Jeremy marches to his own beat with superb Be It Right or Wrong
Date Published: {J}
Drummers are renowned for creating a racket but back in 2008 a new kind of noise began to turn heads. Kilkenny man Jeremy Hickey released his debut album, Organic Sampler under the band name Rarely Seen Above Ground (RSAG) and Irish music fans and critics got very excited.
Organic Sampler fused Talking Heads, Fela Ku
ti and early rock ‘n’ roll to create one of the noughties most impressive debuts. The album was nominated for the 2009 Choice Music Prize but it was the RSAG live gigs that kept the buzz going. Hickey’s one-man show sees him combine live drumming, backing tracks and visuals to mesmerising effect, and his performances at Oxegen and Electric Picnic in particular earned RSAG a reputation for superb live shows.
RSAG comes to the Róisín Dubh this Friday, June 18, as part of a tour that marks the release of his second album, Be It Right Or Wrong. The album was recorded in Thomastown in Kilkenny by Leo Pearson, who has previously worked with U2 and Elvis Costello.
“I had known Leo for years but I didn’t know exactly how good he was,” says Jeremy. “I was looking for a place to do the album. We got on very well – we were talking about different styles I wanted to do and we were very much on the same kind of level.”
Although it contains the same elements that made Organic Sampler so appealing, Be It Right Or Wrong also marks a new chapter in RSAG’s evolution.
“The whole idea, and I hope I continue to do this, is to create a different vibe on each album,” Jeremy explains. “It’s not a band. I don’t believe in doing the same thing twice, really.”
The first song to be released from Jeremy’s latest release was The Roamer, a textured piece that adds another aspect to the RSAG sound.
“It was called The Roamer because I knew it was going to be long, and I knew the idea was to start from somewhere and then end up somewhere else completely,” Jeremy says. “One interpretation could be someone taking a journey which ended up somewhere they didn’t think it was going to take them.”
The Roamer is also different to some of the more raucous, rocking numbers that appear on the album.
“I wanted to, not go against the grain, but I didn’t want to go with one of the more rock ‘n’ roll-y ones,” Jeremy explains. “I just wanted to people hear that other side of it first. It’s probably the one track that’s kind of different; it’s almost the opposite of the first album. And it’s actually quite catchy; so I decided I’d go for that one.”
Although Jeremy is first and foremost a drummer, he is a multi-instrumentalist with an unusual method for composing pieces for the RSAG project.
“When it comes to writing music I would normally write on a three-string acoustic guitar,” he says. “I put it through an amp, so I have this kind of raw thing. I’d written most of the stuff on that, I’d map out the arrangements. From there I would put percussion on it.”
Being able to follow every tangent Jeremy’s inspiration takes him on means each RSAG track has a unique feel to it. And sometimes the song he will end up with is very different to the one he started with.
“You have an idea of the drums and the bass, which is the basis of the song,” he says. “Then when you start experimenting with different sounds and vocals it becomes something different. The whole process evolves; it turns into a finished song.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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