Flour Power

I’ve been here for almost one month and I only have a couple of posts about pubs… That’s not right! People might think I spend every day and night at home at the computer, and that’s very far from the truth

There are a few pubs around here that have live music almost every day, and last Friday I went to one of them – the Róisín Dubh (pronouced as “russian dove”, such is the weirdness of the Irish language). For starters, I was amazed at the quality of the pub’s website. For such a small place, I was surprised to know that I could book tickets online (and with a small discount for doing it online). So I bought a ticket for €11.50 (the bloodsuckers from the bank took a €1.50 fee) and Friday at 9pm I had a Guinness in my hand and was ready for a dose of alternative rock.

The first band was called The Butterfly Explosion. I had never heard of them, and in fact the small concert area was about halfway to its capacity, which demonstrated the “unknown-ness” of this band. I managed to record one of their songs, and surprisingly the movie turned out decent, even though it was quite dark. Enjoy “Closer”, by The Butterfly Explosion:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laNknaKyouo

All in all, the concert was pretty good, and a nice warm-up for the main attraction.

After a few minute’s break to prepare the stage, in came God is an Astronaut, and now the room was almost completely full. I had heard some of their songs after I saw a comment in some blog (to which I lost the link) saying that their concert was better than watching Radiohead (a HUGE overstatement). Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the concert and will keep an eye on any new music they release. Here are some pictures (also did some movies but they turned out too dark):

Basically, we (2 of my housemates joined me in the meantime) had a great time. Of course, with some more drinks after the concert, and going to bed at 5 or 6 am.

Last Saturday Paulo (a portuguese lad), Pat (his housemate) and I went to the other side of the river, to Salthill, a suburb of Galway city. The destination? O’Connor’s Famous Pub, a typical Irish pub which bills itself as the first singing pub in Ireland. The decoration is exquisite, to say the least, and includes old gaslights, farm implements, crockery, photos, weighing scales and a near life size statue of John Wayne. There was live music (as is customary there) and even a singalong comprising most of the pub took place. One thing I’ve noticed was the wide amplitude of ages inside the pub: there were people from my age (24) up until people in their 60s. That was kind of cool, seeing the oldsters downing pints, but I would have prefered more young people.

Lots of lamps and all possible kinds of crap hanging from the ceiling and walls.

Curious tidbit: the bar is cleaned only once or twice per year, and it takes a couple of days to clean it all (source: Pat).

After O’Connor’s we headed to The Warwick Nightclub, just a few meters down the road, despite signs of disapproval from Paulo. We went anyway both because it was nearby and also because Pat’s friends who were at O’Connor’s (including the band members) would go there as well.

Anyway, the nightclub is not bad per se. Quite the opposite, actually. The space is very pleasant, with a big dance floor, and an area with tables that manages to be both big and cozy, due to the fireplace. The real problem is that it was, to put it simply, almost empty. For a nightclub that size, there had to be at least 10 times more people there to be any fun. Oh well, the not-so-bad thing is that the drinks were not more expensive than in the pub (which seems to be standard here in Galway), so we just hanged around the fireplace drinking Guinness.

There was a funny episode though, just after we arrived. Apparently there was a hen party going on and we were invited to bite some sweets from a girl’s belly. Even though the girl was a bit huge, we didn’t want to be rude and did it anyway.