The Sigla Blog

I’ve only just heard that John McGahern, one of my favourite writers, has passed away. According to RTE, he died suddenly at noon in the Mater Hospital.
Very sad news.

Apologies for the absence of any substantial posting around here, this week I’ve been forced to ditch the pajamas and leave the house in order to work. Between that and wading through the chaos of building a recording studio, I’m being kept off the streets and away from the PC. Normality should hopefully resume in […]

Morrissey has released a statement via True To You stating that he will not include Canada on his current tour due to a seal-culling policy in place there. He also urges people to boycott Canadian goods. The statement in full reads:

“We will not include any Canadian dates on our world tour to promote our new […]

Via Salon’s occasionally salacious The Fix, is a story about Randy Quaid’s intention to sue the producers of Brokeback Mountain for $10 million. Quaid was told by Ang Lee at a 2004 audition for his part in the film: “We can’t pay anything. We have very little money. Everyone is making a sacrifice to […]

This morning I saw The Squid and The Whale and thought it was fantastic. I’d heartily recommend it and will post a review over the next week. Jeff Daniels gives a career-best performance as a narcissistic, funny English lecturer whose marriage to Laura Linney breaks down. Both Linney and Daniels are excellent in the parental […]

Ok, Damien has this, but I saw this same line-up floating around on various forums for the last week. It could be the real or possibly a red herring, so I’ll hold update this list later on after the launch if needs be. Hopefully it’ll be more inspiring than this. And what about those Daft […]

Apologies for the sparse and light blogging, work is outweighing everything at the moment. Just wanted to point you in the direction of what might be a first in Irish blogging.
Could Poetic Licence be Ireland’s first dedicated poetry blog? The writer behind it is Lorraine McArdle who contributed some very fine poetry, epigrams and […]

Tomorrow night, Habitat Ireland and Candy Magazine are launching their ‘50 x 50′ project. The idea is that 50 creative folk have produced an original piece of work in a limited run of 50 prints and each will be sold for 50 euro.
If you fancy buying a piece of contemporary art for 50 […]

Just got an invite to the launch of The Electric Picnic line-up later this week, which will finally be announced on Thursday. I’m very keen to see if there these rumours turn out to be true.

I’ve been really enjoying Morrissey’s new album (review to follow) and can’t wait for his Olympia gig next month (front row balcony seats - oh yes). So I’m understandably disappointed to here via this BBC story that The Smiths won’t be reforming - despite being offered $5 million dollars to do so. Organisers of […]

Today, many of you may be gearing up to indulge in some alcohol-related activity for St. Patrick’s Day. I’d like to take the opportunity to say well done to Markham Nolan, who gave up drinking one year ago today as an experiment. He documented his experience of sobriety with wit, honesty and an always readable […]

Graham Coxon
Love Travels at Illegal Speeds ***
Escaping the shadow of a band you’ve departed isn’t easy. Damon Albarn now delivers hip hop via the medium of spectral cartoons and Alex James has thrown himself into a pop career with Betty Boo in WigWam. The latter has also given up booze and embraced fatherhood, something that […]