A Complete Explanation Of Everything

Was out last night and ran into one person and nearly two others that really, you wouldn't want to meet again in a lifetime of sundays... I guess that's the price one pays for sticking with the old country, the simple fact being, you know alot of fuckers and you can't expect them to be tasteful and to stick to their haunts...

Well, I resisted the urge to chin the other two and Katie wasn't much up for a chat, so it wasn't a massive imposition, still it gives you pause for thought as they say...

I was really looking for something in a Gibbous Moon or indeed, an Esther de Groot or Amy Chilton, if push came to shove but that chap, Allison has landed me with a vintage pre VIT-RX, Erin Winters. Any scarygorounders who are interested, please apply herein... No reasonable offer refused and if you can trade or give me a lead on a postcard of the aforementioned, all the better!

So yeah, 3 days in Berlin and it was very good indeed. The Park Inn, legendary 1000 bedroom behemoth of the former GDR lived up to it's reputation. Interior quirky Berlin design meant the bathroom was in the bedroom but it worked really well despite that.

Everything was cheap, convenient and with 24 hour drinking available, very bloody dangerous. The public transport is obviously legendary and the sites to be seen are amazing, from the wall itself, still in sections at Nordbahnhof, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Tor or just generally strolling Under der Linden and Tiergarten, Berlin is a pretty spectacular place.

Went and had my Low / Lou Reed period on the Saturday night, heading to various pubs'n'clubs before settling on White Noise which was fun, if a little strange with the chicken wire / railings on the bar.

Then you know the usual...

So many a morning was wasted because of being wasted but Berlin is still a pretty motherfuckingly cool cultural place which I've the feeling I could be back to time and again but I need to get up to fighting strength and that will take some time.

For now, it's just a matter of the memories of being Ice Cold Am Alexanderplatz.

Courtesy of TGWAOF, I present to you a record I like for every year of my life... It can't be my favourite 'cos I'm only working off my new itunes library setup. Finally got that done and my new 160 GB Ipod is now duly rocking it and my songs are nice and backed up on the Western Digital 500 GB external drive and my laptop is now half empty! 30 GBs of free space!

Anyway, this listing is far from definitive but it's drawn from a database of 15,335 songs or 60.88 GBs or 42.5 days of music according to itunes, so it's statistically representative I believe...

1979: "Unknown Pleasures" - Joy Division

Joy Division, simple and a good start.

1980: "Boy" - U2

A bad year for my music collection, time to start looking for some more 1980 records.

1981: "Still" - Joy Division

Even better again, once again in '81, the lads from Macclesfield score a posthumous hit with a controversial one... Mind you it was either this or "October"...

1982: "Avalon" - Roxy Music

It's got "More than this" on it aswell, that'll do...

1983: "Kill 'em all" - Metallica

Couldn't leave that out, the birth of metal as we know it...

1984: "The Smiths" - The Smiths

Starting a daffodil craze back in 1984...

1985: "Hounds of Love" - Kate Bush

I'll have to go with this ahead of Talking Heads... Although this was a pretty decent year for music by the looks of it...

1986: "Slippery When Wet" - Bon Jovi

A karaoke classic, I can still be found beltin' out: "Livin' on a Prayer"...

1987: "Appetite for Destruction" / "Introducing the Hardline According to..." - Guns N'Roses / Terence Trent D'Arby

A great year for music and too close to call...

1988: "Isn't Anything" - My Bloody Valentine

Narrowly beating out Public Enemy...

1989: "Bleach" - Nirvana

The grunge years begin with possibly my favourite Nirvana record...

1990: "Violator" - Depeche Mode

We "Enjoyed the Silence" and have been doing so ever since with the boys from Basildon...

1991: "Nevermind" / "Ten" - Nirvana / Pearl Jam

Whilst MBV and Massive Attack are good shouts, this was the year that brought corporate rock crashing down, o'course, it went back there in the end... It gave us The Seattle Sound and two of the finest records ever made though...

1992: "Blind" - The Sundays

If only for the most gorgeous interpretation of "Wild Horses" ever, plus we need to mellow out and chill for a bit after these last few years...

1993: "In Utero" - Nirvana

The last Nirvana entry for obvious reasons! Beating out "Pablohoney" / "Songs of Faith & Devotion" / "Versus" / "Siamese Dream"...

1994: "Troublegum" - Therapy?

Narrowly beating out Soundgarden & "Superunknown", still it's a classic and we haven't heard from Ireland since 1980...

1995: "Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness" - The Smashing Pumpkins

The grunge equivalent of prog-rock signalled the death knell for a wonderful era but it was good while it lasted and a fitting homage to the oeuvre at that time... Honourable mention for Garbage's debut this year with probably my favourite single ever, "Only Happy When It Rains"...

1996: "Down on the Upside" / "New Adventures in Hi-fi" - Soundgarden / REM

Soundgarden's elegy and epitaph but a wonderful cohesive record and the only entry REM would ever make on any list I'll make, I bought this record as a present for a mate but ended up obsessed over it. Still one of my favourite records...

1997: "OK Computer" - Radiohead

Radiohead at their fittest, happiest and most productive...

1998: "Try Whistling This" - Neil Finn

A closefought year but Neil just takes it ahead of Gillian Welch / Lucinda Williams...

1999: "69 Love Songs" - The Magnetic Fields

Ah yes, we were all fully employed and very much in love... Enough tunes here to last the year aswell...

2000: "Hybrid Theory" - Linkin Park

A number of contenders but this says, pick me! For some reason...

2001: "Pneumonia" - Whiskeytown

It was about now that I started to turn a little bit country, Ryan Adam's first band serving up one of the ultimate slices of Americana / Alt Country / Cosmic American Music to quote Gram...

2002: "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" - Wilco

Interpol's "Turn on the Bright Lights" nearly deserves joint status here but Wilco's redefinition of alt-country is so sonically groundbreaking in terms of everything, it just has to go out on it's own...

2003: "Give Up" - The Postal Service

Closely matched by M83 - "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts"...

2004: "Kleptomania" - Mansun

Technically a collection but it was also supposed to be the long awaited fourth album aswell and I couldn't give it to The Arcade Fire on a technicality...

2005: "Plans" - Death Cab for Cutie

This is when Death Cab started to make sense to me...

2006: "Boys & Girls in America" - The Hold Steady

Bruce Springsteen without the bombast or the sax, we learnt something during the grunge years...

2007: "Riot!" - Paramore

Narrowly beating out Tegan & Sara's "The Con", well I couldn't end this listing all credible and shit like...

2008: "Narrow Stairs" - Death Cab for Cutie

Long way to go yet but it's strong enough for me to go and see them in Manchester on Wednesday night and that's the furthest I've gone for a gig in a good while...

What you should talk about at Breakfast...

1. Plans for the day

2. The weather...

3. Sport

4. Breakfast itself...

What you shouldn't talk about...

1. Your theory that centrally planned economies have proven conclusively that socialism / communism has failed

2. Capitalism

3. American Hegemony

Thank you, I will now not have to stab you to death with my spoon at breakfast, have a nice day...

Reading some of the turgid shite that passes for journalism as penned by Brendan O'Connor today, I suppose the populace at large is not only in danger of but it is actively going to engage in a mass self-delusion about the glory years of the Celtic Tiger into the future.

The good old days will come to be known as the year of our lord, Anno Domini Bartholomew Patrick Ahern, up to 2007 B.C. Before Cowen...

Ah, the streets were paved with gold and the fundamentals were sound. The fundamentals however were not sound, they were just mental...

How could you justify wracking up personal debt to the tune of 175% of GDP, lending multiples going out of control, for every €1 earned, €1.20 out borrowed in the economy, the lowest square foot space per head of capita in the EU, 250,000 empty properties (at least) and not to mention building at a rate of 1 unit per 12 head of population when the EU average was closer to 1 unit to 30...

Ah, the fundamentals you say... Net immigration, the boom, household formation...

Froth, pure froth, I tells ya, it was a gamble with only one outcome, a one trick pony eventually runs out of customers and as soon as the other EU states opened up their labour markets we were riding for a fall anyway, indeed the old corporation tax was only going to keep the boat floating in the short term anyway...

Ok, so the credit crunch went toxic early and that started the scramble for the balance sheets, the accountants started looking at the real fundamentals and getting very scared indeed. The developers went back to the trough and were shocked, the desperate FTB went to the Bank and was shocked and nobody came to visit the overpriced seller and the self involved Estate Agent and they were collectively shocked.

I wasn't shocked, I was shocked in 2006 when I came back from 4 mths abroad to see a handy 100k knocked onto asking prices in the locality since I'd left.

Pure froth, I said. I was right and it wasn't because of doom and gloom and George Lee weather that the situation has developed thus.

1997-2007 B.C., was a happy time in Ireland for the older generation, the Marbella and Algarve generation, a time when taxi plates were worth something and the builder and developer ruled the roost. So I'm not going to be surprised when the collective delusion descends but remember this, you stored this situation up for the entire country through your practices throughout the boom years, each and every one of ye.

In that heyday period, we saw degrading healthcare, education and no real developments in infrastructure. We watched over a windfall for the developer, the speculator, the multinational to declare it's profits and the property obsessed the wrong side of 40...

So before you put Brian's head on a stick and it deserves to go there, take a long cold hard look at yourselves and think whether there's room for a stick closer to home... And then beat yourself with it...

Another month, another stone cold fox... This month, we feature another JJ72-er, if only for a little bit. The delectable, Sarah FOX! Wow, this girl had everything going on, including the moniker... Unfortunately, the JJs were treading serious water when her services were engaged to replace la charmante Hilary.

I suppose, it comes as no surprise that Greaney has ditched the ladies in his latest re-incarnation, Concerto for Constantine, who aren't half bad but they really don't have the visuals and o'course, for me, Sarah was actually a step up from Hilary... I'm a sucker for that black hair... She had a few other side projects before the JJs and I must really look her up now but they were her most famous role...

And, we enjoyed Sarah while they lasted...