6pm
City Park exhibition of Bangalore based artists opens at the Project. We don’t see many contemporary Indian artists in Dublin so worth a look.
7PM DATA (Dublin Art and Technology Association) event 12 at the Stags Head Pub (Upstairs Room). As usual it’s free and all are welcome with many artists and designers talking about their work. 12 will include Paul Murnaghan aka Loftus who is also artistic Director of the soon to be defunct 5th@Storehouse gallery
9PM
The Beach Club play the Village Cafe, Rathmines, Unlike Cat Power they will actually play but unlike her they probably won’t snog half the audience afterwards.

You may have noticed if you live in Dublin (or listen on the web) that the indie pirate-radio station Phantom has been gone this last month. This is the background to their closure but they are fighting back and they need your help.

For some time I have been encouraging everyone to go see Cat Power who ‘played’ last night at Whelans in Dublin. If you took my advice I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. Please accept my most grovelling abject apology for I was so wrong.
What went wrong? Well it started well enough, she came out and told the audience a very long story about hitting her head and going to casuality in London, sang a song and then started into A good Woman from You are and it started. She kept stopping and starting, with endless back and forth with the sound desk. Eventually she finished the song – it has to be said that when she sang she sounded great, but…
That was the last song she sang. For the rest of the time she sat there telling increasingly incoherent stories about her New York friends, whining about touring, flying, people expecting her to sing after paying to see her in concert. At one point she started singing her story, which wasn’t bad. Quite early on she told people they’d one minute to get their money back and then fast counted that minute, in fact she banged on about money most of the evening. Several times she accused people in the audience of ‘saying mean things’ about her and then conducted mini witch-hunts about who said that and what did they say – she’d make a great evil schoolteacher. The audience was so patient, in planty of places around Dublin they’d have smashed the place up faced with that kind of carry on.
Eventually I left after 90 minutes of this, life’s too short to put with that. Maybe she was brilliant after that but I doubt it as she was getting increasingly belligerent and self righteous. She has done this before and I’ve read various attempts to understand why she does it but after seeing it in person in hindsight it’s obvious that she never intended to play, she was the rockstar we were just the schmucks who paid to see her sing. Last night she kept saying ‘I don’t give a shit’ and she really didn’t.
Basically she was an arrogant spoilt brat intent on giving Dublin the finger last night. Whatever you do don’t go see her in concert, you will be dissappointed
If she doesn’t like touring she should stay at home, that would be the honest thing to do but I guess they don’t pay you to do that, do they?
More comments about last night on the Matador messageboard

Wow 300 posts.
Got the new Radiohead Hail to the Thief, guess what it seems that Radiohead think that their fans are thiefs ‘cus they’ve copy protected the CD. When I stuck it in the computer it says – some files will have to be updated to play this CD. Tricky one do I want to let the record industry ‘update some files’ in my computer, yeah right.
So if you want to listen to Radiohead thou shalt not play the CD in your computer or rip it to mp3s for your mp3 player or winamp – but thats how I listen to music mostly so I’m returning the CD. So all that Radiohead talk about supporting file sharing, as Homer J would say, that was just lies.
Some Dublin gigs worth checking out, tonight (and every Thursday) The Beachclub in the Village Cafe Rathmines at 9pm. This Sunday Cat Power at Whelans.

Van Gogh painted Moonrise during the summer of 1889 while staying in Saint-R

Stunned got this email today from the artocrats up at IMMA
Dear stunned.org.
I am writing from the Irish Museum of Modern Art in relation to incorrect information posted on the homepage of your website www.stunned.org which relates to our Museum.
Your homepage states that the Irish Museum of Modern Art is holding a Net Art Open in 2003. The Irish Museum of Modern Art is not holding a Net Art Open in 2003 and therefore this information is incorrect and misleading. Please could you remove this information at your earliest convenience.
Well I guess the Stunned editorial board will have to meet to decide if we take orders from IMMA. It’s a tricky question which touches on so many aspects of our constitution, in fact it’s so involved I think the board will need to meet in person rather then debate via email. This raises more problems as we have a large editorial board which is geographically dispersed so as we have no budget we’ll have to apply for a travel grant. But the Arts Council travel grant budget is exhausted for the year so I guess we can apply next January and… well this is all the problem of the newly elected chair of the Stunned editorial board who is well known artist Arthur X. Doyle, I think I’ll leave it up to him.
Isn’t it nice that someone at IMMA is taking an interest in digital art, maybe they may even exhibit some of it one day.

Saw the Beach Club last night in the Village Cafe in Rathmines, it’s a new trio headed up by Sean Molloy who also writes the songs ( you may know him as the guitar player with french chanteuse Caroline Moreau, who also made a guest appearance). Thet’re playing around Dublin so keep an eye out as they’re well worth checking out.

The Arts Council’s bursaries to visual artists are the main way that money is paid directly to artists to help them continue working. Normally there are two rounds in a year but this year there was only one. Applicants were notified recently and received the following bizarre explanation of the difference between successful and unsuccessful applications;
Many applicants are keen to know why their proposal was not successful and what were the characteristics of both successful and unsuccessful applications. The answer is that successful applications are those that most fully meet the application criteria and represent the applications that are most likely, on the basis of all available information, to result in good quality successful proposals within the terms of this scheme.
Well I’m glad they cleared that one up!
€160,000 was awarded to 28 artists, a whopping 0.36% of the budget.

I’m back from a wonderfully computer-free holiday and very pleased to find out that we need no longer be afraid of Phantom Energy as it may not after all result in the cosmic doomsday of the big rip
via Nature

Psst d’you wanna buy a used Sputnik only $39,000
I don’t know Detroit at all so maybe I’m showing my ignorance but I was surprised to learn that they have a salt mine underneath the city - I’m surprised they haven’t turned it into a prison camp – a couple of years in the salt mine would sort out that Michael Moore fellow or maybe even the next celebrity fitness craze – the salt mine workout.
I recently bought the white stripes’ Elephant from cdwow for €9.39 delivered. It costs €21 in my local record shop – interestingly when it arrived it was postmarked Hong Kong, you’ve got to wonder about the economics of that.
Cat Power plays Whelans on the 22nd, I’ve got my ticket. lets hope she doesn’t freak out.