We Want Names Video

Below is a video I made for a band called We Want Names. It stars long standing Irish skateboarding muscle man Al Collins, the song, the bulk of the footage, the video, and the star of the show are all have one common thread... they were all made in Bray!
The bulk of Al's footy was shot on a Sony vx1000 that had no viewfinder, a broken exposure meter, malfunctioning shutter speed..well the works, but Al rips week in week out so I couldn't resist pointing the ol' shite cam at him to capture some of the badness. I'm glad that camera is dead now tho, trouble since day one.

http://www.myspace.com/wewantnames

Indian Scummer

With Bray's autumnal sun baked blaze out I've been waiting until sun down to get computer related stuff done- yesterday was no exception as I jumped in Wayne's mobile which took two Bray cretins (Marn dawg & I) to Athlone's new skatepark for the first time- Marn dawg floats a hardy above. yeee haaawr!
The park was not mch to look at in photees, but way radder to skate in the flesh form- lots of interesting lines, nice transitions and mellow ledges.
I even got on me knees to praise the park when Wayne floated by and I incidentally happened to capture his soul.
Anyway, the park was a welcome change to Greystones steep transitions- really fun day, neato gang!
Thanks to Scott Kells for the photos.

Banned in Bray

If a band is from Bray and the members of said band endorse Beamish over Guinness and even provide said beverage at the launch of their EP, well, I believe that ticks all musical boxes to create a great band. The quartet in question are "We Want Names*" and they were launching their debut EP last night out of a skip around the back of Bray's southern cross industrial estate with afters tea and custard creams in the little flower hall. Above is skin thumper Seany Norgrove rising from the dead to distort my perspective on the world. (*pronounced in old school detective style)
Hipsters don't exist in the Braytrix, they'd just wither and die from the smell from the harbour bar jacks. Instead of hipsters we have spas, 4 prime specimems pictures below..

Just incase you missed it first time around- spa central.
High society. That's my big bro mid asphyxiation on the right- he play dem stringed geetars in the band, Col the bassist is lurking over his shoulder- the rest are a roadies moonlighting as groupies.

I had the privilage of making their first music video- will try post it up tomorrow..

Grape Ape

I've only been to San Francisco once, that one time a lot of people axed me for a dollar on the street, which i'll take to mean that dollars must be a popular commodity around those parts. So if you're one of those people who has a collection of dollars there will be a human pyramids desk at the new APE convention that will be happy to exchange useless pieces of art by myself for your dollar collection.

De-Gibbo'd

I'm gonna attempt to deconstruct the making of "Gibbo" a little so you can get some insight into what went into each scene. I'll start near the end in the little scene where skeleton Gibbo is painting the Alien picture in his big city ground floor apartment. Above is the early stages of the front of the apartment that I made with the help of Luke who professionally vandalised it for me.

I'd to do a lot of work the make the interior more "homely" while also maintaining of motif of "many faces on everything" So this painting was painted with as many faces as possible and hung on the back wall as the centre piece.
After that I'd to make the fish tank from a 3D photo frame thing- had to shoot this one on the ground from above even though it appears as an upright wall in order to animate the fish and its bubbles. Also I had to throw in some extra paintings to make it look like skeleton Gibbo had a nice body of work going. In keeping with the stupid amount of faces theme I gave every interior brick on the walls and floor a face.
As the room would be seen from outside and also outside could be seen from inside the room then I had to keep part of the city's background to make the room appear like it was in the thick of the big smoke.
You can also see a little TV in the scene for a split second, again, like the animated fish tank, this was to bring the room to life a little. It was basically an I-pod wrapped up playing the trailer to No Use. After all that carry on I had to shoot the thing which involved plenty of pain staking stop animation, but I believe it was worth it as the initial idea was achieved in the end.

An post

I happened upon a show in the Rubicon gallery in Dublin that was actually pretty funny, imagine that? Amongst other things it was comprised of post its, man, I probably could fill the tate with the amount of poxy post it doodles I've done throughout the years.
The artist was Laurina Paperina, she should have seen what i produced in the dark days of bank employment, boredom pyschosis.

Seeing as she already did Leonardo I opted for the next best with the b'aul Splinter.

Lan facking dan

I took many of these screen schnapps offa' laptops as it was my gherro way of orientating myself around the bright lights of ratraceville. For the third time in my waking life I had once again found myself amidst the hustle and/or bustle of foggy Landan town.
The tubes are always the first thing to hit me- a full frontal assault on your perceptions- "Shit or geh' off th' pot mayte" is the general impresion I recieve as I attempt to retain my silly home grown politeness amongst the elbow throwing suit fwacks. Smelly corridors, offensive stares, hot temprematures and inasion of personal space all left me somewhat inspired.. really, I just find it bizzare how much people conform to the tube sterotype of being cunts, I mean, some folk just embrace it!
So upon arrival with my better half Christ-teen we did descend amongst most trendy free joints as the British portrait gallery, some baaaad shit there, well good baaad, but also shite baaad as Marty demonstrated, seriously, this took at least 7 minutes to complete.
Micheal Caine, good baaaad.
Micheal Doherty's school suppies of Main st. Bray had some seroius competition in this joint just outsida the gallery- 75% off and no loitering junkies, too good to refuse!
Green room 'brah.
Had the fortune of witnessing the pixies in thier flesh and non compacted disc form in the brixtone accademy. good show-
No, really, good show! 2 encores and a standing ovation in the seated section that ruffled the feathers of the security dudes, oh the rebellion of it all.
Had to hit up an aul vintage camera shop in soho to replace my duty free damaged camera from the last trip- luckily they had a lot to offer and Landan town fulfilled its roll as cash vampire upon my replacement.
Low and be-hold, know who's the illest ever like the greatest story told- or so MF Doom would aptly spit to introduce the fantastic Mr. Jensen to this stage of the trip. I pried to indulge in Nick's current happenings and he was much obliging..Was a good first outing for my new recording device toy- gots to peep some work in progress thats part of a series too
I'll have to consult the audio to remember the motivation behind the series, but I do remember that Nick had to make some very strange sculptures and bring them to southbank and take flicks of them, much to the bemusement of the onlooking masses.

Art... serious stuff, hey-
Ah sure there's an aul smile- muchos gracias.. Nick was very obliging to show me what he worked and was working on, even to the stage where he made lucid word noises into amicrophone device- look for more of that on the HP site some time this century.
Apres digi mic stuff I hit up a verdy strange club built around the archways of Lodon bridge... pretty rad place upon the neglection of the threat of being disembowled at every shady dark archway in the hoose. "Fo' real" - went in the door, proceeded in the direction of the lights, only for them to extinguish/change colour/blind me- all to the soundtrack of distant opera set to cheering- felt like some eyes wide shut shit. Upon finding my hombres they reaffirmed my suspissions "yeah, its mad"
Skip to the next sunrise where I found my remains slouched upon an office chair in Kingpin corps meandering hallways. My presence there coupled with a coffee tasting caffiene induction to remind me that I was there to interview the notorious desk punching cee-gar chomping chief editor Alex Irvine for an upcoming documentary that I'm working on.
Somehow I lucked out on a 2 o'clock power meeting at Stockwell- dayum that park is fun, couldn't have axed for a nicer day too.
again.. serious stuff, no fake, no fake. Some poor fucker got ambulanced with a to-flat-bottom elbow slam. Another guy, upon collision, felt his knee do a very unexpected shimmy to the point of agony, only to get his head popped by an un-manned plank while suffering his first Ian Dury, bummer!
Was honhouerd by the dishonhourable presence of anuvah' Bray human Toe Knee. Good to see a fellow Bray cretin livin the hi low life the amongst the lobotomised masses of the big smoke.
Faaasht forward a whole earth cirulation and you'll run into the fantabulous motor mobile of Ben Raemers. For the good of the film Alex had taken a photo mish' upon himself, and the infectiously chirpy Raemers has obliged with muchos gnarlious suggestions.
Unfortunately rain clouds has planned ome other shit in advance so we dipped to the finest abanodoned warehouse Ipswich had to offer.. man, that town had a level of grimness I'd yet to witness (since leaving Bray to get the plane)
Ben obliged me with some in-depth in-pub eye-wide-shut words on Alex, allthewhile ignoring a sticker that someone had slapped to his brown bread. A couple of years ago Ben Reamers rolled his urethane on haggard Bray concrete as part of a Duffs UK tour. Such was the spectacular level of trickery from his Essex feet I decided to point at the fella with my camera- unfortunately my camera decided to play trickery on me with the viewfinder, exposure meter and white balance all going haywire- so I couldn't see a thing I was filming!- hence the footage looks shit. Fortunately Ben's hardcore rippage coupled with the prime movie location of Bray meant that I had two good reasons to salvage these coolio stunts from the depths of my 'ard-drive. All set to "morning tears" by Bray's very own WSL.



Look at the concentration, here's a kid that really takes interviews as seriously as they should be.

The aforementioned tah'ooos- jayzis, even the aul lad in the background is disgusted and he can't even see it. Ben and his filmer matey Gorm are making some serious playa moves with their own sticker/tattoo company "Visitor" Genuis.
Apres Ale house Alex and I had to catch the soonest off peak locomotive to get us back into the thick of the rat race- Fortunately for us Thomas the tank engine decided not to go anywhere for 2 whole hours, joy to the forking world. Luckily we'd purchased some beverages to pass the time, and I even hit the double bar jackpot in the vending machine- sheeed, I've never come up on such mad loot- watch out diabetes, I'm coming for your ace.
The good people at the national express decided to inform us (after a couple of hours) that there was a bus waiting to take everyone to the next stop. So long Ipswich, it was genuinely emotional. Really, I'm not messin'... 45 mins of an upright bus journey later we found ourselves in rainy Colchester, oh baby, i thought I'd died and gone to purgatory- especially when there was no train waiting for us... 5 hours behind schdule we eventually somehow arrived in a very crowded Liverpool St station. If you are ever considering visiting Ipswich, don't, its just too epic.
I seen this poster in a cafe jax the next day, kinda somes up the trip- a strange feeling of stoke despite the circumstances... can't wait to go back!

Landan

I'm off to London for the week for various activities of radness and badness, until next time here's a picture of Gibbo and his life size imagination as created by Ben.

Feline gob

The HP crowd have got "ins" as they say in Hollywood, as we appeared on the front page of fecal face. Apparently the poo head sounding yolk is kinda a big wheel deal, but I dunno, its no way nearly as racy as the Bray People, maybe it could rank alongside the North Wicklow Times.



Apart from the usual grim zombies, my return home revealed that the gerbil now lives inside a lion, which is fine, in zion. Also, I never thanked funky German fellars at Cleptomanicx for sending me a bunch of shirts and the fanciest pants I've ever laid my eyeballs upon, where are my manners? Down my pants? Their site is worth a peep fo the rad toast graphics alone.