I really should call it warwalking. I picked up all these wireless spots with Android’s Wardrive application when I was out shopping earlier. I didn’t walk around all of the city centre as you can see, only some streets where I needed to go. Green are open spots, yellow are WEP, and red are WPA protected.
View Wifi spots in Derry in a larger map
Get ready for a great rock’n'roll/blues extravaganza at the end of this month! Beatnik Soul are organising the Savage Kick Fest which will be held (mainly) in Sandinos‘ back bar. Dan and Conal managed to get together an excellent line up with both local and international artists.
It actually starts on Wednesday 23rd September with a free party in Sandinos featuring Casa De Chihuahua from New York.
The official opening on the Thursday night will be in St Columb’s Hall. Kicking off celebrations are Here Comes the Landed Gentry (Derry), The Jim Jones Revue (London), Joe Gideon & the Shark (London), and a DJ set by Andy McGibbon (The Bonnevilles/Motor Sounds Records).
Friday night we’re in Sandinos’ back bar with Bob Log III (Tucson, AZ), Hillstomp (Portland, OR), Teknopeasant (Donegal), and the Beatnik Soul DJs.
On Saturday we’ll see Balkan Alien Sound (Derry), Paul-Ronney Angel (The Urban Voodoo Machine) (London), and The Mighty Stef (Dublin).
And finishing off on Sunday night we get to see the brilliant T-Model Ford (Forest, MS), The Bonnevilles (Lurgan), Jonny Black’s new bluegrass outfit Skip Moses (Belfast), and more rocking tunes spun by the Beatnik Soul DJs.
Check below the fold for some videos.
The Flat Mountain Girls are playing in Ireland over the next 7 days, and next Thursday they’ll be in Masons Bar here in Derry.
These four girls from Portland, Oregon are a high-energy string band who play traditional old-time music from the Appalachian mountains area. If you enjoyed the Carolina Chocolate Drops last year then you’re sure as hell going to love these guys!
Support will be provided by Ireland’s favourite blues/punk/rockabilly/country rockers Here Comes the Landed Gentry (damn, these boys are busy lately) and singer/songwriter Tina McLaughlin.
Here’s all the Irish dates:
May 22 2009 – The Cobblestone inDublin
May 23 2009 – Baltimore, Co Cork
May 24 2009 – McCarthy’s Bar in Dingle, Co Kerry
May 27 2009 – The Crane Bar in Galway
May 28 2009 – Masons Bar in Derry
Listen to the Flat Mountain Girls recorded live at Mississippi Studios on May 11, 2007 on archive.org (click link for downloads and playlist)
Update: looks like the Derry gig has been cancelled, not sure why.
If you missed D-66 when he played Sandinos last year then make damn sure that you get down to the Cellar Bar in Draperstown on 14th March!
The man is an animal on stage. Playing guitar, kicking a bass drum, snare, tambourine around his ankle whilst stomping on a baking tray makes a big fucking noise. It’s a high-energy mix of blues, punk, soul, and psychobilly that will get you up and dance.
Beatnik Soul are organising a bus from Derry. But hurry, there will only be about 16 or so seats available and I’ve already booked two.
Check out the video of Dag’s closing number in the Dirty Water Club last year. He played the same one in Sandinos. Can’t wait to see him again.
Another brilliant Friday night in Masons. It started off with Teknopeasant’s organic elderflower wine-fuelled banjo music and poems. The guy knows how to entertain, and the wine is mighty fine too.
Then The Bonnevilles took to the stage, they easily are one of the best Irish acts around. If Andy and Chris’ huge sound of distorted punk, blues, and garage rock leaves you cold then there’s something seriously wrong with you! Whenever I see them live or listen to the album my foot starts taking on a life of its own. Then my head, generally followed by the rest of my body. And Friday night was no exception.
Scott H. Biram. What can I say? The ‘dirty old one-man band’ from Austin, Texas fucking rocks. How could it possibly go wrong with a mix of honky tonk, blues, and punk? Throw in some metal and gospel, and you strike southern roots rock gold!
Check out my photo set on Flickr and the video below. I’ll have to remember to use only landscape mode next time! 
(best viewed full-screen and on full volume)
You can still catch Scott tonight in the Pine Lodge in Myrtleville, Co Cork, and tomorrow night in the Crane Lane Theatre in Cork City. Not to be missed!
From today’s Derry News:
A Derry pub landlord has placed a bounty on the head of a mysterious graffiti artist who daubed the inside of his bar.
Les Doherty of the Bound for Boston says he will pay £100 to anyone who provides him with information to unmask the secret scribe who calls himself ‘Da Moda’.
Da Moda’s signature eyes motif has been appearing on walls and shutters across the city for around a year.
However, Mr Doherty said he was incensed when Da Moda took a marker to a wall in the men’s toilets of the Bound for Boston.
“He crossed a line when he crossed the line onto my premises,” he said.
“That’s why I’ve decided to put a bounty on his head. I don’t want to see him prosecuted, but I would like to see him cautioned by the police. Maybe they would encourage him to clean up some of his so called art.”
Mr Doherty has already begun to build a profile of the publicity shy painter.
“Since the graffiti is in the Bound for Boston’s male toilet this excludes females from the suspect list straight away.
“As he drinks in the Bound for Boston he is most likely aged 18 to 26, and from the standard of his work he may be a failed art student.”
If Mr Doherty’s plea for information falls onto deaf ears he is prepared to trawl the Bound for Boston’s CCTV footage to unmask the reclusive vandal.
“Da Moda has also vandalised my window, but maybe he should be renamed Da Eejit, after all only an airhead would air brush under CCTV cameras.”
If you have information that could lead to the capture of ‘Da Moda’ contact Les Doherty at the Bound for Boston on 02871 271315.
A lot of people would be glad to see him clean up his art. As you can see from the picture above it really looks shit. And it’s everywhere around town. Considering the guy’s been doing the same scribble for about a year you’d think he would at least improve a bit.
Free Derry Corner has had another makeover to show solidarity with the people of Gaza.
And it’s forty years this January that the original slogan was first painted on the world-famous gable wall by John Casey. From the Free Derry entry on Wikipedia:
Free Derry (Irish: Saor Doire) was a self-declared autonomous nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland, between 1969 and 1972. Its name was taken from a sign painted on a gable wall in the Bogside in January 1969 which read, “You are now entering Free Derry”. The area, which included the Bogside and Creggan neighbourhoods, was secured by community activists for the first time on 5 January 1969 following an incursion into the Bogside by members of the police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Residents built barricades and carried clubs and similar arms to prevent the RUC from entering. After six days the residents took down the barricades and police patrols resumed, but tensions remained high over the following months.
Make sure you keep Friday the 6th February free, folks.
Motor Sounds Records and The Beatnik Soul Club got together to bring you Scott H. Biram! He’ll be playing in Masons Bar in Derry, doors open 10pm and admission is £8. Support is by Northern Ireland’s own kings of punk blues The Bonnevilles.
They also play Belfast’s The Menagerie on the 5th, I haven’t seen any other dates for Ireland.
For the uninitiated, here’s Scott playing at last year’s Deep Blues Festival:
And The Bonnevilles at Belfast’s Open House Festival 08:
I found a great program to stitch digital photos together into panoramas – Hugin. It’s really easy to use, pretty much self explanatory. Just load some pictures into Hugin, create control points where the pictures are overlapping to match them up, optimise and stitch them together. Well, that’s the basics. Hugin has got a lot of settings to play around with to adjust the final result. Check out the Hugin home page for tutorials. If you’re a Ubuntu user then you can just install from the repos.
Here’s some I made earlier after walking around Derry’s walls. I pretty much only used the defaults settings and then loaded the panoramas into the GIMP to crop. Click the pictures to view the full sizes on Flickr.
Overlooking the Bogside
St Columb’s Cathedral
Overlooking Fahan Street
Up/Down Magazine Street
Guildhall
Verbal Arts Centre
Overlooking the Bogside. Again.
Oh yeah, Hugin is also available for Mac and Windows.
