I love choons! Right at this second... but tomorrow morning I'll wake up and have a crisis and say, "why the hey, I mean, I could be going out and drinking at all kinds of places but instead I go out and drink AND play tunes, which kind of muddle my head, and take up most of my mental energy..." Is this the fate of us all? Anyone else love/hate choons? Anyone got a surefire justification for playing the fiddly things? Dang those choons....
Every now and then I just O.D. on trad - I stop and think to myself, if I ever hear another feckin' jig or reel again I'll go nuts! That's it! Enough's enough, I'm gonna be NORMAL!
And then I'll remove all the Lunasa, Moher, Altan, Chieftains, Bothy Band, Danu, Flook, Mery Bergin, Dunne Family, etc from my iPod, and replace it with Angelique Kidjo, Nelly Furtado, Kaiser Chiefs, Chopin, Beatles, Herbie Hancock, Pantera, Ella Fitzgerald, Global Underground, Shpongle, Alien Safari and Rachmaninov, lock the flute away and deliberately skip sessions and avoid the yellow board like the hague, and, as if I'd just been paid a visit by the Blue Fairy, start to feel as if I were a real boy.
And then, a couple of days of perfectly normal, correctly socialised behaviour, I'll crack.
Out comes the flute, the trad playlists; back onto the board, off to the sessions... and it's as if I'm discovering it all for the first time again.
The fact that I can get sick/bored of or fed up with something, and then fall in love with it all over again and again and again is something which, frankly, I never thought I'd find, being the easily distracted, 21st-century concentration spanned, ADDisordered ephemeralist that I am.
Q,
I crack even more quickly than you. After an occasional one or two CDs of other types of music, I am back in the fold. And if I don't play at least one or two trad tunes on some instrument each day, I tend to get an odd empty feeling.
Hey Q, you're so right - it's the strangely grounding nature of the flighty tune lifestyle that makes it work so well. Whenever I leave my tuneness for a while and try to be a part of greater society, it only takes a few short hours for me to realise that I can't wear low-rise hipsters without looking like Kath & Kim, even though I'm not thirty yet; I can only listen to funk, jazz, pop, stuff, whatever, for a track or two without automatically separating out the threads of influence that have led each style to their present evolution; once I feel like I've identified these threads I know that there's no way I could actually play that stuff properly without sounding like Barry Crocker trying to sing the Neville Brothers; and it's only one or two sleeps before I realise that the music I truly understand, or at least WANT to understand, is CHOONS!!!!!!! It's a life sentence that tastes like SWEET.
Katie, just give in to it and let it wash over you. Accept who you are and you will be happier. You are not cheating on the tunes by listening to other music, just gaining a better appreciation for them.
"The greater world" is over-rated anyway, isn't it?
katiebee, l gave a listen at your website - please don't ever stop playing those choons! And get yourself and your mates over to the SF Bay Area sometime to play them...
Keith, I know one of the fellas in the kitchen trouble band, (I met him in Ennis) and they're planning a stop here sometime next year on their way to Canada. I'm going to help get them some gigs, and when that happens I will make it well known.
Definately agree on the variety action. Spice of life and all the rest of it.
Big hello to all the Durrty's crew. Hope the european adventure was good Beno. By the way Katie, trouble in the kitchen now has some new fans in Ballycastle .
Not a problem for me since I have long since accepted my general geekdom, and having Celtic music coming into my ears more or less continuously is just another manifestation of this condition.
I just love em most of the time. Although the past couple of days have been filled with Shooglenifty not really trad but aside from the whole Celtic Punk thing every thing else I listen to is trad. I would hate to be normal.
Wa hey! San Francisco would be great! Our plan is to head out to New Zealand, then Japan, US & Canada, bits of Europe and the UK and Ireland - so if anyone's up for a tune.... anywhere...
See you at the Harp, greenwiggle! And dammit, it's time there were more joke tunes around the place - Hey Jude on the pipes needs some company, I reckon.
Well, there's a bit of a chance we might make it to Fairbridge - but the funding's a bit difficult and I know that their theme this year is "family bands" - which we don't quite qualify for. But we really want to come over! I'm getting excited because I'm doing a couple of gigs with Dougal and Ormond next weekend at the Maldon festival - so maybe I'll just stow away with them and escape to Freo to eat chilli mussels and live in the Little Creatures factory. That'd be nice.
Yeah, but then Benno and Joe would have to get married... and honestly, imagine that, they'd always be arguing about music software... well, at least Joe would get a British passport. And so would I. Then we could all defect to the UK to get away from these warmongering politicians - oh, wait...
Ado and I have been working in hospitality recently and he gave one of his fellow cooks a Trouble in the Kitchen CD... he seriously is working in A Kitchen. I think they thought it was a joke until they saw how much effort had gone into the sleeve design etc.
I want the band to do a gig at a mill in Cumbria so we can market it as "Trouble at Mill"
You know what, Conan, there have been entire months that I've questioned my connection with Bridie. Whole years, really, where I've been convinced that we were part of the same litter. But where I can't share a bloodline, we do share the Burke legacy - we've both made total Burkes of ourselves together so many times that really, in all the ways that matter, we are sisters.
No, we're not related! I wish we were. I know a few McDonnells though...
Hang on, how do you know my last name? I thought the whole katiebee thing was a pseudonym! I gave myself away! Waaaaaa
Well Katie, we all gotta go through musical phases, and the occasional moments of self reflection brought on during nights of strong drink, but ultimately, if they took fiddling, choons and drinking out, there'd be nothing left except the constant, unending pursuit of a shag.
I love choons!
I love choons!
I love choons! Right at this second... but tomorrow morning I'll wake up and have a crisis and say, "why the hey, I mean, I could be going out and drinking at all kinds of places but instead I go out and drink AND play tunes, which kind of muddle my head, and take up most of my mental energy..." Is this the fate of us all? Anyone else love/hate choons? Anyone got a surefire justification for playing the fiddly things? Dang those choons....
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
I think I know what you mean, katiebee.
Every now and then I just O.D. on trad - I stop and think to myself, if I ever hear another feckin' jig or reel again I'll go nuts! That's it! Enough's enough, I'm gonna be NORMAL!
And then I'll remove all the Lunasa, Moher, Altan, Chieftains, Bothy Band, Danu, Flook, Mery Bergin, Dunne Family, etc from my iPod, and replace it with Angelique Kidjo, Nelly Furtado, Kaiser Chiefs, Chopin, Beatles, Herbie Hancock, Pantera, Ella Fitzgerald, Global Underground, Shpongle, Alien Safari and Rachmaninov, lock the flute away and deliberately skip sessions and avoid the yellow board like the hague, and, as if I'd just been paid a visit by the Blue Fairy, start to feel as if I were a real boy.
And then, a couple of days of perfectly normal, correctly socialised behaviour, I'll crack.
Out comes the flute, the trad playlists; back onto the board, off to the sessions... and it's as if I'm discovering it all for the first time again.
The fact that I can get sick/bored of or fed up with something, and then fall in love with it all over again and again and again is something which, frankly, I never thought I'd find, being the easily distracted, 21st-century concentration spanned, ADDisordered ephemeralist that I am.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Q
Re: I love choons!
Aye, they make you breath more easily!
Well, someone was bound to say it! - weren't they...............................
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: I love choons!
Q,
I crack even more quickly than you. After an occasional one or two CDs of other types of music, I am back in the fold. And if I don't play at least one or two trad tunes on some instrument each day, I tend to get an odd empty feeling.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: I love choons!
Hey Q, you're so right - it's the strangely grounding nature of the flighty tune lifestyle that makes it work so well. Whenever I leave my tuneness for a while and try to be a part of greater society, it only takes a few short hours for me to realise that I can't wear low-rise hipsters without looking like Kath & Kim, even though I'm not thirty yet; I can only listen to funk, jazz, pop, stuff, whatever, for a track or two without automatically separating out the threads of influence that have led each style to their present evolution; once I feel like I've identified these threads I know that there's no way I could actually play that stuff properly without sounding like Barry Crocker trying to sing the Neville Brothers; and it's only one or two sleeps before I realise that the music I truly understand, or at least WANT to understand, is CHOONS!!!!!!! It's a life sentence that tastes like SWEET.
Back to el pubbo again.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Katie, just give in to it and let it wash over you. Accept who you are and you will be happier. You are not cheating on the tunes by listening to other music, just gaining a better appreciation for them.
"The greater world" is over-rated anyway, isn't it?
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Jode
Re: I love choons!
The greater world is awesome but it ain't got the same kind of craic. Cheers, Jode.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Amen sister, craic on I say!
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Jode
Re: I love choons!
katiebee, l gave a listen at your website - please don't ever stop playing those choons! And get yourself and your mates over to the SF Bay Area sometime to play them...
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Keith Dubinsky
Re: I love choons!
Keith, I know one of the fellas in the kitchen trouble band, (I met him in Ennis) and they're planning a stop here sometime next year on their way to Canada. I'm going to help get them some gigs, and when that happens I will make it well known.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: I love choons!
Definately agree on the variety action. Spice of life and all the rest of it.
.
Big hello to all the Durrty's crew. Hope the european adventure was good Beno. By the way Katie, trouble in the kitchen now has some new fans in Ballycastle
Cheers,
Ben McAtamney.
Ballycastle Co. Antrim
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by late in the evening
Re: I love choons!
Thanks Jack! Will they be coming to the Plough?
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Keith Dubinsky
Re: I love choons!
That's my idea. I might see about helping them get some in the general area as well. Of course I'll be hoping they'll be around for a "choon" too.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: I love choons!
http://www.stephensykes.com/choon/choon.html
what a weird world ...
mm
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by MM
Re: I love choons!
Not a problem for me since I have long since accepted my general geekdom, and having Celtic music coming into my ears more or less continuously is just another manifestation of this condition.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by cathrynb
Re: I love choons!
I just love em most of the time. Although the past couple of days have been filled with Shooglenifty not really trad but aside from the whole Celtic Punk thing every thing else I listen to is trad. I would hate to be normal.
# Posted on October 20th 2005 by Why Bother?
Re: I love choons!
KB...
Just relax, don't fight it...
I would blame that Scooby Doo gang of pesky meddling kids you play with!
Hope to see you at the Harp in December.
PS
Tell Ado, Benno and Joe that the theme from Scooby Doo works well as a slide.
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Greenwiggle
Re: I love choons!
Wa hey! San Francisco would be great! Our plan is to head out to New Zealand, then Japan, US & Canada, bits of Europe and the UK and Ireland - so if anyone's up for a tune.... anywhere...
See you at the Harp, greenwiggle! And dammit, it's time there were more joke tunes around the place - Hey Jude on the pipes needs some company, I reckon.
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
KB do you think you might pay us a visit in Perth on your way through there (wrong direction) or back.
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Donough
Re: I love choons!
Well, there's a bit of a chance we might make it to Fairbridge - but the funding's a bit difficult and I know that their theme this year is "family bands" - which we don't quite qualify for. But we really want to come over! I'm getting excited because I'm doing a couple of gigs with Dougal and Ormond next weekend at the Maldon festival - so maybe I'll just stow away with them and escape to Freo to eat chilli mussels and live in the Little Creatures factory. That'd be nice.
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Couldn't you all just get married to qualify as a family band for Fairbridge.
Good luck with the gigs at Maldon.
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Donough
Re: I love choons!
After all - 'Trouble in the kitchen' pretty much sums up most families!!
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Donough
Re: I love choons!
Yeah, but then Benno and Joe would have to get married... and honestly, imagine that, they'd always be arguing about music software... well, at least Joe would get a British passport. And so would I. Then we could all defect to the UK to get away from these warmongering politicians - oh, wait...
Ado and I have been working in hospitality recently and he gave one of his fellow cooks a Trouble in the Kitchen CD... he seriously is working in A Kitchen. I think they thought it was a joke until they saw how much effort had gone into the sleeve design etc.
I want the band to do a gig at a mill in Cumbria so we can market it as "Trouble at Mill"
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Katiebee, are you related to Bridie Burke? I mean, how many people called Burke can there possibly be in Australia?
:¬)
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Conán McDonnell
Re: I love choons!
You know what, Conan, there have been entire months that I've questioned my connection with Bridie. Whole years, really, where I've been convinced that we were part of the same litter. But where I can't share a bloodline, we do share the Burke legacy - we've both made total Burkes of ourselves together so many times that really, in all the ways that matter, we are sisters.
No, we're not related! I wish we were. I know a few McDonnells though...
Hang on, how do you know my last name? I thought the whole katiebee thing was a pseudonym! I gave myself away! Waaaaaa
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Afraid the biographies on your websites were dead giveaways, Kate.
Trouble at Mill? Oh no... what kind of trouble - Mr Wentworth been round again?
# Posted on October 21st 2005 by Q
Re: I love choons!
Oh yeah, the website thing.
# Posted on October 22nd 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
Well Katie, we all gotta go through musical phases, and the occasional moments of self reflection brought on during nights of strong drink, but ultimately, if they took fiddling, choons and drinking out, there'd be nothing left except the constant, unending pursuit of a shag.
# Posted on October 22nd 2005 by downtowndalebrown
Re: I love choons!
Wow - if you took that out and left the fiddling, choons and drinking in, what would sessions be like?
No more hornpipes...
# Posted on October 23rd 2005 by katiebee
Re: I love choons!
downtowndalebrown - now I'm curious. Is that the Common, or the European Shag you pursue - unendingly?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_shag
# Posted on October 23rd 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: I love choons!
Or is it shag tobacco that downtowndalebrown's talking about?
# Posted on October 23rd 2005 by lazyhound
Re: I love choons!
"shag tobacco" - Don't listen to them Trevor, you sh*g what you like. Whatever turns you on - at 'the end of the day', they can't touch you for it!
# Posted on October 23rd 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: I love choons!
well, it takes a lot to single a shag out, so I'll never turn up my nose at a common one.
# Posted on October 27th 2005 by downtowndalebrown
Re: I love choons!
West Australians will be familiar with the Lucky Shag
http://www.imapwa.com.au/premium/ls.html
# Posted on October 27th 2005 by Bren