Bad! Invincible! Dangerous! off the Wall!

When I was 11 years old I won two tickets for Michael Jackson’s Dangerous tour in Dublin. My dad couldn’t get off work to take me down to the concert so I sold the tickets and bought Sonic the hedgehog for the Sega Master System instead.
Looking back it was kind of a like-for-like swap – [...]

NI hatred addicts anonymous

There’s been a lot of sanctimonious guff spoken this week about the racist attacks in Belfast.

The most sensible commentary I’ve read so far has come from the Alliance Party’s Ian Parsley, on his blog.
Here are his concluding comments, which I spotted on slugger:
The fact is that too many communities in Northern [...]

Weekend in Glasgow

Many previous trips to Glasgow have been work-related, involving visits to housing developments and community projects across the city, so it was a pleasure to spend a few days as a tourist. Lisa wanted to visit some friends and family so I was happy to tag along for the ride.
We stayed with the Lenny Henry-owned Premier [...]

The best album I’ve heard this year

The new album from Bob Dylan is also very, very good but I think this is better. Full of witty, warm, soul-searching lyrics, and catchy clangy folk-rock melodies – this is a class debut record. Delta Spirit played Auntie Annie’s one Saturday night in March, but I was too immediately concerned with getting out of [...]

Lock up your parents!

I flick across the Christian channels on Sky regularly and the past weekend God TV has been broadcasting live coverage of a Christian music festival in Ballymena called Fuel. I didn’t know any of the bands or speakers, but was amazed at how, in such a short space of time, events like this with exclusively [...]