Hope you’re all enjoying the Weather / Wimbledon / World Cup.

Whoa. Wait a sec…

…..?

Sorry, got distracted by Sky News here.

It’s Budget day for our English cousins and some weirdo is telling Gaffe-Time-Bomb, Kay Burley, that the economy is like a chocolate donut but not to worry because soon it’ll be sugared sprinkled jam one.

Think I’ll switch over to the Wimbledon warm up.

I really should pay more attention to the UK budget though, for soon I shall be permanent resident. Got engaged to  my lovely Naomi (aaahh) and I’m upping sticks and bass to London town. Spiritually I’ve pretty much been over there  for over a year, but the end of July will mark the last big stretch in Dublin for a while.

¿Por que?

Coz, we’re (finally!) getting our teeth into the tracking of guitars for the new album, sillies! I’ve gotten the bass boxed off and I’m gonna be Helpy-Helperton while the boys grind their axes.

We’re all very proud of our independent spirit here at RW Towers but it does sometimes mean guerrilla recording tactics! We’re still on course and, by the end of the year, I should be able to publish Recording Reader’s Wives Albums For Dummies.

It is all genuinely very exciting…

Speaking of very exciting, Naomi and I had an absolutely amazing time at the Download Festival the other weekend. Amongst the highlights were seeing Dave Grohl back behind a drum kit, watching Slash essentially being the weekend’s best headliner in spite of the fact he was playing in the middle of the day, and losing my voice for two days after watching Rage Against The Machine. In my defence, I had waited 18 years to see those fucking legends.

In keeping with the spirit of English festivals we’re popping across the water this Thursday to play the 2010 Lockstock Festival located around the infamous Camden Lock Market!

Slightly scaled down in comparison to Download, this free festival will see dozens of bands playing across Dingwalls, Lock 17, the Lockside Lounge and the Yumchaa Tea Shop.

We’re hitting the stage in Dingwalls at 8.30 – so git yo asses ‘n gear, y’all!!

Maybe, if necessary, we can refresh the local spirit after the Slovenia match tomorrow…

Here’s to hoping that won’t be necessary (yes, Irish readers, you read that right, I did just say that. Grow the fuck up. At the very least it’s more interesting when England are still in it and it’s easier to pronounce their names post-match when you’re absolutely hammered and pretending to be Dunphy. And anyway, it’s only a football match).

However I do have one simple request if you’re coming to see us Thursday.

Leave those fucking vuvuzelas at home.

I’ve had more pleasant sounding bone fractures.

Disko.

X

Soundtrack :

Doctor Alibi – Slash & Lemmy Kilmister

Our Victor’s Mother Juliet EP is available now on iTunes!

Click on the image below to download!

Seems like Iceland’s getting it’s own back.

After a narrow escape from national bankruptcy, they decided to ensure that the rest of Europe would have to endure a little deficit in the ol’ airline industry.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of pricks.

I didn’t escape the upset though. I was all ready to take advantage of another European beset with a cash flow problem, but the ash cloud put a stop to that.

It was my mate’s Shavounne’s birthday and a gang of us we’re all set to get bollocks drunk in Athens.

We had to settle for Brighton.

Sounds like a bit of a downgrade, but it was great craic. Weather was awesome and we got festively wasted eventually.

I strongly recommend that if you’re down there you take a trip to the fair on Brighton pier.

Why, you ask?

The scariest ride on the fucking planet.

Imagine being lifted about 60 feet in the air and then let drop at about 50 miles per hour – I am underestimating both height and speed, by the way. I was too busy shitting myself to get a better calculation. Sorry.

It’s fucking deadly too.

Well, that’s my Lonely Planet entry for today.

Laters.

Disko.

X

Soundtrack : Someone’s iPod that was left behind in The Missus’ pub and never claimed. Weird sense of aural voyeurism peeking into someone else’s musical taste. It’s actually pretty cool. Would recommended iPod Swinging to anyone.

Our Victor’s Mother Juliet EP is available now on iTunes!

Click on the image below to download!

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

Whew.

Time to draw breath.

Busy Wives week and now the sun is shining. Well timed and welcome.

Phantom FM’s First Friday was an absolute blast and hope that any of you were there enjoyed it as much as we did.

Big thanks to the other bands – Yes Cadets, The Cast of Cheers and The Riptide Movement – for being really cool people and rocking the hizza.

Also a big thanks to everyone at Phantom and at The Academy for their hospitality as well as amazing organisational skills and making sure the night was a great success. Kudos!

We also had a busy day on Saturday when we played our first in store appearance at HMV on Grafton Street.

Again lovely, professional, welcoming people and thanks to everyone who came down and watched us perform.

Was the best hangover cure I’ve had in a while!

We also must tip our hats to Mick Early of Burma Shade for handling the sonic shaping duties and Ben Johnston for his impromptu role as a roadie..!

We gonna be working hard behind the scenes for a little while now but we can announce that the first of our summer festival appearances has been confirmed!

We’ll be performing at Ireland’s premier independent festival – Castlepalooza – on Saturday 31st of July.

Stay tuned for some more summer fun related madness in the future…

Right, that’s all from me at the mo.

Get out in the sun! Lord knows it may not last!!

Disko.

X

Soundtrack :

Summertime – DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

Our Victor’s Mother Juliet EP is available now on iTunes!

Click on the image below to download!

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

I’m hungover.

Really fucking hungover. I feel viral.

Didn’t seem feel like that full on a night.

We’re playing a DJ set in Shebeen Chic if yiz wanna bop in later.

Easter Eggs would be appreciated.

Disko.

X

First Friday, returns to The Academy on April 9 with live music from Reader’s Wives, Yes Cadets, The Cast of Cheers and The Riptide Movement, followed by the best indie and alternative sounds with Phantom DJs until late.

Doors open at 8pm and admission is free before 10:00pm (admission after 10:00pm is €5).  Early arrival is recommended to guarantee entry.

Right, you’ve got the info now – so no excuses!

See yiz there!

Disko.

X

disko@readerswivesband.com

Soundtrack :

Friday I’m In Love – The Cure

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

Hey hey.

How are you all this morrow?

Firstly, thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes – you’ll be pleased to hear that I got absolutely hammered.

More importantly I’d like to draw your attention to the little matter of our Phantom FM’s First Friday debut!

Here’s the lowdown, courtesy of some lazy cut ‘n’ paste journalism on my part…

First Friday, returns to The Academy on April 9 with live music from Reader’s Wives, Yes Cadets, The Cast of Cheers and The Riptide Movement, followed by the best indie and alternative sounds with Phantom DJs until late.

Doors open at 8pm and admission is free before 10:00pm (admission after 10:00pm is €5).  Early arrival is recommended to guarantee entry.

Right, you’ve got the info now – so no excuses!

See yiz there!

Disko.

X

disko@readerswivesband.com

Soundtrack :

Friday I’m In Love – The Cure

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

Hey guys!

Have you checked out the Victor’s Mother Juliet video over at Muzu yet?

If you haven’t, go have a gander, it’s been getting a great response so far.

You’ll be able to get a digital copy of the eponymous 5 track EP from March 15th, so check out the vid and whet your appetite!

Next on our agenda is a trip to London to play The Luminaire in Kilburn. So if any of you UK based Wives supporters are knocking about next Thursday March 11th,  get down there!

We’re playing as part of Jay Mistry’s latest showcase of Irish talent and we’ll be in great company as two of Ireland’s finest, Kyle John Suckling and A Plastic Rose, will also feature on the bill.

Admission is £8 on the door, but if you get tickets online HERE you can pay just £7.

The next month or so is panning out nicely too. We’re back on Irish TV screens at the end of March with another appearance on the Podge & Rodge show, so expect a rocking tune and some uninhibited slagging by the gruesome twosome!

I’ll let you know the exact air date nearer the time.

The beginning of April kicks off then with our first appearance at Phantom FM’s First Friday event at The Academy in Dublin on April 9th.

We’re really excited about this one and you should be too! Get your asses down there!

Spring is in the air and in our step!

Disko.

disko@readerswivesband.com

X

Soundtrack :

Some Other Spring – Billie Holiday

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

What a Friday night!

No, I’m not talking about the live Eastenders episode or Tiger Woods’ Bill Clinton impression, but rather the Wives triumphant gig at Dublin’s Shebeen Chic.

The buzz was great – a packed house and awesome support duties from Little Green Cars and Mighty Atomics.

Thanks boys (and girl!), the bar was set very high from the off!

The crowd were awesome too, so thanks for making the night so memorable.

Thanks also to the staff at Shebeen for making the night slightly less memorable when I work up the next morning…

I had a particularly fun night as I both debuted my new bass (cheers Tom!) and spun the, um, Hard Drive Of Steel with a very well received DJ set.

It’s nice to know there’s similar (drunken) minded souls, who like to get locked and rock out.

Now, onto the next run of Wives activity…

Check out our channel on Muzu everyday this week as we go behind the scenes at our video shoot for Victor’s Mother Juliet, culminating in the premiere on Saturday!

We’ve got more in the pipeline in the run up to the release on March 15th of the Victor’s Mother Juliet EP but I’ll keep you up to date on that in the coming week…

Have a good week folks!

We’re definitely be approaching it with a spring in our step!

Disko.

disko@readerswivesband.com

X

Soundtrack :

Sabrosa -  Beastie Boys

If you go over to http://www.readerswives.360degreemusic.com/signup.php you can download a FREE 6 track Acoustic Mini Album!

We recorded it in our mad house this summer as a thanks to all our friends &  fans for their support.

Hope you like it!

Did any of you catch us on Newstalk the other night?

We popped up on their show Culture Shock and had a very enjoyable (albeit brief) yabber with presenter Fionn Davenport.

Managed to squezze in a slick acoustic version of Victor’s Mother Juliet between all the in depth news analysis.

You know, topical and pressing issues.

Like the best songs about unrequieted love.

And the shittiest nineties bands.

Our apperance on the airwaves ties in nicely with some cool stuff we’ve got coming up in the next week or so.

On tuesday (the 16th) we’re gonna be DJ-ing at ALT, the Indie night club at Andrew’s Lane Theatre Dublin and then on Friday the 19th we’re playing at Dublin’s Shebeen Chic on George’s Street! Support comes from the awesome Little Green Cars and Mighty Atomics.

This is all towards the release on March 15th of the Victor’s Mother Juliet EP!

It’s gonna be a good month!

Disko.

X

Soundtrack:

Go – Pearl Jam

Played the Ruby Sessions the other night.

We slightly bent the rules on the whole acoustic ethos thing, but the performance was all the better for it.

After dropping the gear off at Crane Lane, I decided to avail of some public transport to get home.

Namely my feet.

Had my earphones in and was nicely cocooned by James Hetfield whipping Mexico City into a frenzy. You can always rely on ‘Tallica to provide some good walking BPMs.

As I went to cross the street at The Olympia, a visibly swaying young gentleman began doing the whole take-your-earphones-off mime act that I so dearly love seeing from absolutely bollocks drunk strangers.

Observing the fact that he was solo and that I had the tactical advantage of sobriety, I decided that the urge to hear whatever revelatory pearls of wisdom he possessed was stronger than the sense of  a potential mugging / being vomited on.

I decided to put on my best non-plussed death stare (which for me involves pretty much zero alteration of my regular face), hit pause and cut Hetfield off mid bark.

“What?” I said.

The walking distillery responded thus :

“Sorry man, I’m not a faggot or anything but I’m going to get stuck into this young one round the corner and need to know if my teeth look ok.”

Before my brain could even process the many subtleties of the sentence, he had thrust his face not an inch from mine and helpfully gurned so that I could begin my expert inspection.

“Uh, they look fine,” I said, drawing on my college dentistry days that never existed.

“No salad in there?” he asked concernedly.

“All clear,” I assured him.

“Thanks man!” he breathlessly thanked, before carrying off on his way again.

As I continued on with my own journey, I had a completely unwarranted sense of pride regarding my dental mastery as well as the thought that a load of some well masticated lettuce was the last thing the “young one” should be worrying about getting in her mouth that night.

Oh, Love’s young dream rejoice for romance is not dead.

Happy Valentine’s Day guys!

Disko.

X

Soundtrack :

Nothing Else Matters – Metallica

More from our Illustrious Leader’s Loose Leafs…

Often I think about both Brave New World and 1984. It’s quite amazing how most of what those two books predicted has come to pass, not explicitly, but implicitly. For example, 1984 shows us a government reinventing history every few hours, but that isn’t necessary: the media is bombarding us with so much information at such a high rate that things fade quickly. Doublethink is unnecessary when thinking is a rare commodity, and History is obsolete. Brave New World presented a future in which most of the people are controlled through drugs, without being forced. This is true today even without considering illegal drugs, such as Heroin or Cocaine. I’m not even talking about alcohol. I’m talking about Television. In 1992, the group Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy released Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury, (possibly the pinnacle of hip-hop as a form of protest). One of the songs in that album was Television, the Drug of the Nation, which I think brilliantly makes my point. These are the lyrics:

Television, the Drug of the nation
One nation
under God
has turned into
one nation under the influence
of one drug

(chorus)
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V. it satellite links
our United States of Unconsciousness
Apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive
The methadone metronome pumping out
150 channels 24 hours a day
you can flip through all of them
and still there’s nothing worth watching
T.V. is the reason why less than 10 per cent of our
Nation reads books daily
Why most people think Central Amerika
means Kansas
Socialism means unamerican
and Apartheid is a new headache remedy
absorbed in it’s world it’s so hard to find us
It shapes our mind the most
maybe the mother of our Nation
should remind us
that we’re sitting too close to…

(Chorus)
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V. is the stomping ground for political candidates
Where bears in the woods
are chased by Grecian Formula’d
bald eagles
T.V. is mechanized politic’s
remote control over the masses
co-sponsored by environmentally safe gases
watch for the PBS special
It’s the perpetuation of the two party system
where image takes precedence over wisdom
Where sound bite politics are served to
the fastfood culture
Where straight teeth in your mouth
are more important than the words
that come out of it
Race baiting is the way to get selected
Willie Horton or
Will he not get elected on…

(Chorus)
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V., is it the reflector or the director ?
Does it imitate us
or do we imitate it
because a child watches 1500 murders before he’s
twelve years old and we wonder why we’ve created
a Jason generation that learns to laugh
rather than to abhor the horror
T.V. is the place where
armchair generals and quarterbacks can
experience first hand
the excitement of warfare
as the theme song is sung in the background
Sugar sweet sitcoms
that leave us with a bad actor taste while
pop stars metamorphosize into soda pop stars
You saw the video
You heard the soundtrack
Well now go buy the soft drink
Well, the onla cola that I support
would be a union C.O.L.A.(Cost Of Living Allowance)
On television

(Chorus)
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

Back again, “New and improved”
We return to our irregularly programmed schedule
hidden cleverly between heavy breasted
beer and car commercials
CNNESPNABCTNT but mostly B.S.
Where oxymoronic language like
“virtually spotless”, “fresh frozen”
“light yet filling” and “military intelligence”
have become standard
T.V. is the place where phrases are redefined
like “recession” to “necessary downturn”
“Crude oil” on a beach to “mousse”
“Civilian death” to “collateral damages”
and being killed by your own Army
is now called “friendly fire”
T.V. is the place where the pursuit
of happiness has become the pursuit of
trivia
Where toothpaste and cars have become
sex objects
Where imagination is sucked out of children
by a cathode ray nipple
T.V. is the only wet nurse
that would create a cripple

(Chorus)
Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

Television, as it exists today, fits both the information overload necessary to replace the history rewriting of 1984, and the trivialization of everything into a form of numbing entertainment, to ‘pass the time’, similar to Soma in Brave New World. As always, reality is stranger than fiction, and some times even hard to believe. Would Brave New World be as good if the drug was Big Brother instead of a chemical?

Niall James Holohan