The Blindboy Podcast - Sexy rural windmill

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

An asmr podcast from a Park bench in Toronto. I speak about spotify, the psychology of irish soccer fans, and ancient Irish food Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Hello and God bless and welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast episode 98. I've had a stressful couple of hours there trying to record this podcast. My computer is acting the absolute bollocks, which means that I can only record in bursts of like two minutes before it shuts down, so I have an alternative plan this week, but yeah, I think I need to get more RAM in my computer or whatever, but I'll have it sorted by next week, but yeah, I'm going to have to go to a backup plan. But before I do that, because I can record the start in two minute bursts, not a bother, and edit it together. What did I need to tell you?

Yes, last week I announced that the Blind Boy Podcast Australian tour went on sale. It did. Melbourne sold out in a day. Perth, Brisbane, Sydney are about 90% sold out. There's still a few tickets left. So if you want to come to those Australian live podcast gigs in February 2020, now is the time to get the tickets like i said melbourne's gone but part brisbane and sydney there's still a small amount of tickets left and you go go to troubadourmusic.com and go to the blind by podcast section

or go into google and type in blind by podcast australia and i'm sure that will give you relevant um fucking tickets uh yeah i'm pissed off with this computer business now that's annoying this is the nature of a podcast you know it's just me recording it myself so shit goes wrong and when shit goes wrong it's my responsibility to respond to it in the moment in a creative a creative fashion have some backups so i do before i continue with my backup plan there is something I do want to speak about, something important I want to... On the subject of direct provision in Ireland. Now, direct provision is something I do speak about quite a bit on this podcast. I had a guest, Ellie Kiziambe, a few podcasts back.

She's someone who has lived experience of being in direct provision if you don't know what direct provision is it is an inhumane an inhumane set of human rights abuses to be honest that's occurring in Ireland for the past 20 years

where people who try to claim refugee status in Ireland are essentially kind of a type of soft imprisonment. They're given a it's like a a low security prison.

The people who live in direct provision they live in like hotel rooms their food is provided from very low quality food they have very little autonomy they're not allowed to work and they get an allowance of i think it's 19 euros a week it's a form of political economic and social limbo and people are kept in direct provision in ireland up and down ireland for many many years there's kids now who have known nothing other than direct provision not even kids no there's people in college of college age who've grown up in this type of legalized prison system in ireland and they've done nothing wrong other than try to escape

tyranny or escape whatever in their countries of origin you know so here's the crack children who live in direct provision they go to Irish schools you, they're going to be attending school in September. And there's a lot of these children. And the thing is, like I said, their parents don't have money because if you're in direct provision, you get 20 quid a week, that's it, an allowance. So these children are going to be attending school. A lot of them are going to come from quite traumatised backgrounds. Kids who've seen, you know, young children who've seen war in Syria or in parts of Africa who are now in Ireland living in direct provision

and are going to be going to school, they already are going to stand out as being different because they're from a different country or they might look different. So they already have that when they go into school. But the thing is, is the most important thing that you can give these kids is to try and facilitate them to have a degree of dignity. Okay? When they go to school on the 1st of September, we can try and help these children to not stand out any further. Right? children to not stand out any further right so there's a drive to provide these kids with school supplies backpacks clothes all these things so

that they can receive these things go to school and receive their education with with basic human dignity don't what I'm saying is don't allow these kids they're already different don't allow them to be put into a situation where their clothes aren't the same as other people's clothes where their shoes aren't as good as other people's shoes their materials their books you know what i mean this is all a systematic thing that will there'll be little kids feeling less than and feeling more different than the other kids in the class because they can't afford the basic needs of being in school so there is an organization a limerick-based organisation called Every Child is Your Child, or everychildireland.org is their website.

But anyway, there's a drive, a backpack drive, 2019, and what I am asking you to do, if you want to... look direct provision is it's we had the Magdalene laundries in Ireland which was a huge imprisonment of women in this country and the generation before us pretended that it wasn't happening well direct provision is our Magdalene laundries of this generation and we should all be trying to abolish it but in the meantime well it's not been abolished to help the people that are living in it so i'm just going to list out some of the drop-off pints if you're interested in buying some supplies for these children so that they can go to school up and down ireland what's being looked for is new back buy new things as well trying to avoid the look if you have second-hand things and they're in good nick absolutely fine but ideally new things because what you want to be thinking is how can i give this child dignity do you get me new backpacks stationary copy books lunch bags white shirts

for boys and girls of all ages gray and navy trousers and skirts socks white gray and black gift cards for tesco duns one for all gift cards school jumpers navy gray black these type of things i know specifically they have a shortage of decent shoes and runners at the moment okay so if you could and runners at the moment okay so if you could buy any of these things okay and what you do is you bring them to drop-off points friday i think is the deadline okay this friday 25th of august so if you do it before friday the 25th of august here's the drop-off points in limerick doris lim knee 51 o'connell street Also you can go to the Students Union In University of Limerick Campus You can use that as a drop off point

If you're up in Dublin Irish Refugee Council 37 Killarney Street Dublin 1 Chalk Suddus Victoria Place In Galway Cairn 16 Loch Italia Road in Galway

If you're in Clare PPN Clon Road Business Park Ennis if you're in Cork the Flower Studio 104 Douglas Street County Cork okay

like I said also as well you can go to everychildireland.org for more information I also understand that it is possible if you contact one of these centers to send some of this stuff in the post okay so i'm just appealing to you i'm just appealing to you to do that that's oh jesus a wonderful act of kindness that you could do if you have a spare quid a few quid in

your pocket to just copy books backpacks shoes whatever and to know that this is going to go to a child and could change their life what what concerns me is children at an, they're at an age where they're now farming their personalities. They're farming things like self-esteem, their perception of self, okay? Not only are they battling with possibly coming from war zones, they're battling with the trauma of living in direct provision, which means they don't have a normal home life right so that's two let's not like dick school can be their little escape away from direct provision when that child goes into school they will have a kind of a sense of freedom they're mixing with kids who aren't in direct provision and they get a little chunk of normal life okay so by providing them with good equipment and the things that meet

their needs good quality stuff they don't have the shame of being the kid whose stuff isn't as good as the other kids stuff do you get me so please please consider that please consider doing that alright so this weeks podcast like I said that was 10 minutes there I had to edit it twice to go for the full hour would be

absolute hell so what I've done is I was in I did a Canadian tour there about a month ago as you remember and I recorded a little a podcast on the side in a park in Toronto and it's just it's it's like the San Francisco podcast I did a couple of weeks back I use my stereo mic to to capture the environment to get a sense of ASMR I suppose you'd call it a kind of a relaxing environmental ASMR. This one in Toronto. I wasn't sure about it at first.

But I listened back. And it's not too bad. Like. I was going to put it out a few. Weeks ago. While I was in Toronto. And. I think I was a bit.

I was a bit too harsh on it. So I didn't. But. Yeah. I listened back to it. I was just. I was being a bit too critical. I was being a bit too critical i was being a bit too critical about it it's just me talking ranting um with the sound of a toronto park going around me and

judging by the feedback that i got from the san francisco podcast a lot of you really enjoy the change of just listening to this podcast in a different setting you know it's some people told me that it was it was quite relaxing for them so that's the crack that's all i can do really if if my computer is acting the bollocks this week that's all I can do because you know yourselves I'm never going to not put out a podcast I'm always going to put something out so that's the crack and if you don't enjoy it

I don't know go back and revisit one of the earlier podcasts either something you haven't listened to in a year or if you joined late just go back to one of the earlier ones there's plenty of stuff there Podcast 98 lads that is a lot of stuff to go back and listen to if you joined late just go back to one of the earlier ones there's plenty of stuff there podcast 98 lads that is a lot of stuff to go back and listen to if you so choose and i'll be back next week with a normal regular podcast okay without further ado here is me talking on a bench in Toronto, about whatever arrived into my head that day. Hello.

Right, let's get into it. Welcome to this week's Blind Boy Podcast. As you can hear by the sound, I'm outdoors. Hold on, that's a little bit peaky. I'm going to turn down the microphone a little bit. One, two, one, two. Postman. Postman. Where is the postman?

Brian is in the corner with the postman. Brian is in the corner with the postman. That's a little, uh, a mic-checking sentence there that you do. You have to, you have to sound, if you're checking mics you have to sound like a Dublin prick and you need to make very hard hard consonants is what you're looking for so

if I go Brian is in the corner with the postman I know that that's I can test the mic that way I've got the hard B from the Brian and then P S and T from the mic that way. I've got the hard B from the Brian. And then P, S and T from the Postman. Even when I say P there.

P. It can be a bit too extreme on the mic. Brian is in the corner with the Postman. Postman. So there you go. Okay, I'm over... I'm in fucking Toronto. I've been here... No, I've been in Vancouver for four days, I think. I just arrived in Toronto yesterday.

If you've been following the podcast, you know I'm over here doing four gigs. Did a live podcast in Vancouver. Did a Rubber Bandits gig in Vancouver. Did a Rubber Bandits gig in Toronto last night. Doing a podcast in vancouver did a rubber bandits gig in vancouver did a rubber bandits gig in toronto last night doing a podcast in toronto tonight up the walls busy um i'd kind of i'd planned this to be like a holiday to be like a little holiday because i brought over dj willio dj and mr chrome my two compatriots in the Rubber Bandits to do some gigs and we got lovely hotels

but I'm too fucking busy I'm too busy so yesterday I had the pleasure of answering loads of emails and recording voiceover shit for the BBC in a darkened hotel room while Mr. Croman, DJ

Willie or DJ were upstairs on the roof of the hotel in the blasting heat drinking cocktails and having an unbelievable amount of fun in the pool so yeah, that's the crack with me here

so I've squirreled myself away to a little park it's not even nice we got a crack in hotel yeah, that's the crack with me here. So I've squirreled myself away to a little park. It's not even nice. Like, we got a cracking hotel. It's like, it's a really fucking fancy five-star hotel, which the people who brought us here kindly enough got for us. So it's magnificent. But I don't know, it's a little bit too fancy for us.

I haven't... Like, when I was in San Francisco a few weeks back and I was trying to understand San Francisco people. Oh jeez, that's loud. What the fuck is that? It's a motorbike. What a loud bastard. So when I was in San Francisco, you know, I was able to speak to people, get the lay of the land, try and understand the culture and grasp it a bit. I haven't been really able to do that as much in Canada. In Vancouver, like I said, gigging every day practically and working during the day. So not a huge amount of socialising and anything resembling socialising.

in the day so not a huge amount of socialising and anything resembling socialising we were pretty much surrounded by Irish people so I haven't really gotten to speak to that many Canadians I understand that Canadian people are particularly polite that's what I've heard in this fucking 5 star hotel that we're in

see that's not a fair judgement because it's so it's this really kind of trendy 5 star so it's not like old judgment because it's... So it's this really kind of trendy five star. So it's not like old money. It's more new money. I don't know, people who work in finance or tech. Whoever's loaded.

So the bar on the upstairs of it, we went there when we arrived. Just me, Willie and Chrome. And we were off the fucking plane. Do you know? We were wearing shorts and t-shirts like because it's hot and so we go up to this fucking

bougie bar at the top of the roof of this fucking hotel and it's not it's not really full of residents at a hotel it's more for local young rich I don't know yuppies what would you call them they looked

professional so it was a bunch of people in their late 20s early 30s on dates and they were dressing kind of businessy even though it was night time but you could tell the lads were like wearing like armani and Gucci suits. But not because they're at work. It's just like this is how I dress in the evening on a date. And then the women had just fucking, you know, the type of handbags. I know nothing about handbags, but I know if I see like a Chanel handbag, that's the price of a car. So that type of shit.

Now we're minding our business sitting down in the corner having our fucking pints and the thing you notice because when you're Irish and you go to a pub in a different country and especially it's three Irish lads the thing the interesting thing with Irish Irish people have an ability to go to a bar and we can make that bar better because we'll scream and roar and laugh and have fun. But Irish people tend not to, in general, be aggressive to other people. If we go to a bar, yes, we will be loud and drink a lot and have crack. Crack. We will be having crack. that's the word for it it's specific

to irish people it is crack and crack is something which if you were looking at it from a telescope might be viewed as a display of aggression but if you were looking at it up close you'd go no no no this is not aggression at all it's just um a kind of a culture of people who when we express ourselves we do it very loudly with huge amounts of aggressive laughter and jumping up and down and singing and roaring whereas no disrespect to the brits but it's something that's been relayed to me a lot when a certain type of British person, men usually when they go into a bar

in a different country, they bring with them that colonial fucking attitude so when a group of British men arrive into a pub they're there to claim space the Irish are, like I said loud and creative

spectacle but it's all very much you never feel threatened by it it's contextualised in fun even though it might look like boisterousness there's no malice or harm and it's inclusive and everyone's allowed in

and it's all laughter when you get Irish people in the mode of crack it's very difficult for us it's a cultural thing it would be rude for us to turn that into anything resembling conflict or aggression that's the thing with crack if you want to observe it

yeah look so here's the thing with the British men they will go to a pub they're similarly loud all this carry on Yeah, look, so here's the thing. With the British men, they will go to a pub. They're similarly loud, all this carry on, but it comes with a claiming of space. It's an old colonial thing.

A claiming of space and an aggression and a standoffishness, and it can often result in aggro, and that's why when you're Irish, you don't want people thinking that you're British abroad. The best way to view this from a kind of a psychosocial point of view you have to look at how the Irish fans behave in recent world cups or in the European soccer finals now look if you listen to this podcast you know that I know fuck all about sports I know very little but what I do know about is psychology social psychology I have an interest in it. So I often find myself hugely interested in

the past, the last World Cup and the last European soccer fucking cup, whatever you call it. Ireland's actual soccer team, or football team, sorry. The football team was, actually no, soccer team. No.

Irish people are allowed to say soccer because we have Gaelic football. And you don't want to get too confused. So Irish soccer team were performing shit. They weren't winning any matches, we'll say. So for the past 10, 15 years, when Irish people go to the World Cup or the European Finals or whatever you call it, it's about community. It's there to have crack with other Irish people go to the World Cup or the European finals or whatever you call it. It's about community. It's there to have crack with other Irish people. And Irish people were going viral in the news for these huge displays of kindness.

The Irish people were being like, the Irish fans were trying to be the best fans in the world. And it was amazing to watch so what you had going viral on the news like two years ago is that you'd have all these Irish fans drinking in the street and jumping up and down and then they'd be doing things like there was one instance

where the Irish fans saw it was a female police officer who they thought was attractive so they like all got down on their knees and serenaded her or the Irish fans will deliberately go out of their way to seek fans from different countries and to hug them

and you know even if it means that this is the team we're playing tonight the Irish fans will go out of their way to seek out those other fans in the different jerseys cross the line and embrace them with hugs and cheers and let them know we're only rivals on the sports field but there's no aggression here this overt huge performative display of collective friendliness in the guise of crack and humor it's

also very self-aware so it became isn't it how isn't it so funny that we are so friendly that's what it was about like one instance you had Irish fans ended up getting a little bit out of hand and they were jumped there was sort of like a thousand people in the street and a couple of Irish fans no actually it wasn't Irish fans they were British fans I believe got up on a car and started jumping up and down on someone's car on the side of the road and the Irish fans, they were British fans I believe, got up on a car and started jumping up and down on someone's car on the side of the road and the Irish fans saw this and there's mobile phones ever so this is all being recorded

so when this car had it's bonnet dented which is, that's going to cost you a couple of quid to fix it, so the Irish fans walked over to the car and they all took money out of their pockets and the window was open a crack and all the Irish fans started putting like 20 euro notes into the car but performatively

taking generosity to hilarious extremes to the point that when you looked into this car now there was about three or four grand of cash that Irish fans had put into a car simply because the English fans had broken the bonnet and it was a collective, self-aware, active, hyperbolic theatre whereby niceness became ironic and the Irish became the best fans in the world to the point that Roy Keane got pissed off and said why do we give a fuck about our nice fans when our team is performing shit? But to look at the behaviour of the Irish fans, because what that is,

what I view the Irish fans' behaviour as is that it's, that's the crack. But it's the crack as it's, it's like an exploded crack. It's a hyper real crack. It's crack blown up to theatrical proportions, and it's uniquely Irish. And I believe that what the Irish fans were doing,

it wasn't conscious. It was in the cultural unconscious, I'd say. It was an anti-colonial act. Right? Now, I know I always bring everything back to fucking colonialism and I'm post-colonialism this and post-colonialism that, I know but

there was tension at these European finals and at the World Cup the last one, the European finals, first off there's always tension because of British football hooliganism hooliganism and violence and rioting is a toxic part of british soccer culture and it stems 100 from british colonialism they view themselves as an occupying army and when they go to Spain, when they go to France

it comes out in the British mentality of let's try and take the place let's try and make it ours, let's pillage let's plunder, we don't have that, the Irish don't have that because that was done to us and we find that displays, we find it

disgusting, Irish people don't like British people when Irish people go abroad and there's a soccer disgusting irish people don't like british people when irish people go abroad and there's a soccer tournament on the i don't mean irish people don't like british people that's i don't mean it like that what i mean is irish people do not like very much do not like that aggressive hooligan british type of hooligan display it's very triggering for us because it's like that's how the black and tans were that's how the soldiers were it's the triggering for us because it's like that's how the black and tans were that's how the soldiers were it's the same thing

so when we see this over there the Irish would deliberately support any team that the British are playing against do you know what I mean but here's the broad point I'm trying to make the situation with why the Irish had this overt display of crack, it was an anti-colonial defence mechanism. The British were there at this tournament to be hooligans and to cause a bit of trouble. But also on top of

that what you had was, there was the Russian, what were they called? Russian Ultras so Russia were participating in this it was probably a World Cup if it was Russia it doesn't matter it was a huge big football tournament in the last five years Russia had this new breed of football

hooligan called Ultras and they were pretty fucking hardcore and the thing with the Russian Ultras is culturally they grew up fetishising British football hooliganism from its golden age of the 70s and 80s and they would have been familiar with

I think Millwall and I think Chelsea they would have very much looked up to old school British football hooliganism but at the same time viewed the British they didn't understand that like football hooliganism it's not as bad as it was in the 70s and 80s in Britain. So the Russian ultras very much wanted conflict with the British football hooligans because they're like, the British football hooligans are the best in the world so we must beat them. So there was a lot of tension around football hooliganism at this tournament. So I think the Irish had overt displays of theatrical crack as a way to, first of all to say, fuck the the brits if the brits are over here to throw pine

classes and to trash restaurants then what's the opposite of that we're here to sicken people with massive theatrical displays of kindness but it also it meant the green jersey became safe the police weren't fucking around at those tournaments. The police, the riot police were out to crack heads and they were looking for British, or sorry, for English jerseys and they were looking for Russian jerseys. So the Irish made the green jersey. Almost in a sense, it's, the Irish became the UN peacekeepers. Like Irish, like we're a neutral country. It was almost like an expression of our neutrality.

Irish soldiers tend to be on peacekeeping duties. They're not engaged in war. They're around Africa and some parts of the Middle East for humanitarian reasons, not to provide conflict, not to be aggressive, not to provide conflict, not to be aggressive, not to take over,

but to try and act as security to protect vulnerable people. That's the role of, traditionally, the Irish army abroad. We're not an occupying force or an aggressive force. So I think... How the fuck did I get onto this? The fuck am I doing talking about soccer, I wasn't talking about soccer anyway, I was talking about, this all started

about me talking about the fucking five star hotel, I was trying to understand Canadian culture lads, yeah, so we were in this fucking upstairs in the five star hotel, and people are wearing Gucciy bags and suits and it's what you'd call bougie and we didn't feel very fucking welcome put it that way

people were when we were in the bar certain people were scowling at us and the scowl was as if it was like they'd come to this fancy fucking bar

so that they could be surrounded by fancy, and so they could feel good about themselves, that they could feel successful and wealthy and classy, and all these things in this bar, and people were just looking at us like we were insects, like we were cockroaches. Like I... Like one woman pulled a face at us like of utter fucking disgust.

And we weren't doing... We weren't necessarily being loud or roaring and shouting. We were just off an airplane and wearing shit shorts and t-shirts. But ultimately just being nice and being kind. And the staff fucking loved us because we're having crack and i'm not we weren't like in the corner screaming and roaring and disturbing the peace it's just our presence uh made people who would come there for what i would view as quite fucking artificial reasons which is i'm gonna go here go here and wear my Gucci and be around

other people who are wearing Gucci. Like, these are groups of people, lads, who I'm talking an hour and a half just taking photographs of themselves. I'm dead serious. Like, there was one group of people and we were sitting down just getting our cans, they were

serving cans here, getting the cans sent to the fucking table. Expensive fucking cans, they were serving cans here getting the cans sent to the fucking table expensive fucking cans, 14 quid a pop just for a fucking a local lager, but we were just having our cans sent to the table, having great fun crack chatting, and the table beside us of these people in their late 20s early 30s, very wealthy

an hour and a fucking half of taking photographs of each other for Instagram and not particularly having a lot of fun and I just found it really I found that depressing and then for them, our very presence

I guess what it was is that we made the place not exclusive like we were residents in the hotel and this bar is in the hotel but it's not really

a residence bar it's like a private bar in the hotel that's cool and people go to it we didn't know we're just like

where's the fucking bar so that made us feel like shit but I don't think that's a good reflection maybe of Canadian people I think what happened there is we met some Canadian pricks because the next night, here's a little

yeah here's the next thing, there's a little bit of culture shock I had about Canadians so the next night we were doing our rubber bandits gig so afterwards backstage my podcast So the next night we were doing our Rubber Bandits gig. So afterwards backstage, my podcast guests this Sunday, the Monsters of Schlock, who are two Canadian lads who are, they're like sideshow freaks, that's how they describe themselves. They, you know, stick nails into their tongues and shit and have, you And have body modifications and piercings.

They refer to themselves as freaks. They perform in the tradition of sideshow freaks. That's what they do. And they heart themselves for entertainment. And stretch the limits of the human body. And all this carry on. So they came backstage with us. Because we met them in Edinburgh a couple of years ago.

And they were our buddies. We had a bit of crack. So they came backstage to hang out with us because we hadn't seen in about four years. So backstage at our gig we have maybe two slabs of cans right? Too many cans for three lads basically. Far too many cans

because we have the understanding that sometimes people might come backstage and if they do, we want to be able to give them cans. So if we have a surplus of cans, that's okay. We'll only drink a couple for ourselves and if there's a lot left over, then what you do is you go to the venue staff,

the security, the people behind the desk, the bar people, and you say to them, there's a load of cans in there, take them, take them home. And that's a great way to say thank you to the bar staff, it's a good way to do it sorry just checking there that I'm actually recording this yeah

I'm fighting against the clock a bit how long have I been talking? 20 minutes so we have surplus cans so our Canadian buddies came back we're lashing into the cans we're having crack and after about 15 minutes we realise

the fucking Canadians haven't touched the cans at all and we're horsing into the cans so then we said to him what's the crack are you not drinking tonight or and and basically because they were so politeness i know is a thing in canada because we hadn't offered them a can they would have considered it rude to take one even though it's like there they are on the

fucking table it's like there's the cans lads. Loads. You're in the den of cans. They wouldn't take one. And were waiting for us. To offer one. And they'd gone 20 minutes with no cans. Until we noticed it. And we're like oh fuck.

We didn't think that we had to offer you cans. There's loads. And we're in. The cultural context of cans being drank. So that was the only little culture shock I've done over here. The rest of the time I was just hanging out with Irish people, and other than that I'm just working. I can't believe I've done the first 20 minutes of this fucking podcast talking about soccer. That's a first, lads, isn't it?

and I'd say anyone who knows the first thing about soccer is rolling their eyes at me not only unable to distinguish between the World Cup and whatever the European one is called which I don't even know and me not understanding the importance of the two and possibly thinking that Russia sure wasn't it was it in Russia was it in Russia

did they have a world cup look I don't know you know what I'm talking about most of that was about the psychology of crowds it was about post colonialism and it's my hot take it's what I believe I believe that Irish soccer fan culture and the huge performative display of the crack

is a collective unconscious attempt at breaking down colonial lines. It's decolonizing. It's going, we are not British because we are nice. And their identity as soccer fans is of nastiness and being pricks and vandalizing. So we're going to do the opposite, which is we're going to vandalize you with kindness. That's what the Irish fans were doing. And it was also a way to establish a safe space in a hostile environment where... The Irish fans too, I think they were scared of Russian ultras.

Russian ultras, who I said, were looking for England fans. You don't want the Russian Ultras they were like they were hard looking cunts I remember them they all had shorts and they were young lads in their fucking twenties like who did a lot of fucking going to the gym they were hard looking fuckers

and all the British hold on with the helicopter all the British fans were just men in their 40s who'd have had haven't done fighting in a long time

and have had a few too many beers and then you've got these lads 25 years of age Russian fellas full of fucking muscles and agility

and probably trained in the army and they had all had bum bags or fanny packs as you call them in America and Canada and with ball bearings inside army and they had uh all had bum bags or fanny packs as you call them in america and canada and with ball bearings inside them and they were belting people across the face with them and the irish fans were afraid of that now there's also another theory that some people analysts viewed the behavior of the russian ultras in that World Cup as an actual form of non-linear

warfare, that it was state sanctioned and sponsored hooliganism as simply a chaotic way to terrorise the West and I believe that I would truly believe that because I spoke about it on a podcast before Russia changed, you know, Russia

post-Putin, they changed the game in non-linear warfare, which are ways of antagonizing and affecting and hurting and causing anxiety in your opponents without actually putting a trigger or putting soldiers or even using the military. You know, you look at that poisoning incident there in the UK last year. You know, that just happened after Brexit, the Novichok poisoning.

Like, what's the point of that? What's the point in sending Russian agents to Britain, to a tiny village, to poison two Russian, ex-Russian spies or whatever the fuck they were? What that was is, if you think about it psychologically, it happened just after Trump had been elected and it happened just after Brexit. And the issue with Trump in particular is Britain no longer has a strong ally in the US.

Not really. Trump is too insane. So Britain and the US now, they're still allies but they don't have close ties because Trump is liable to start a trade war with Britain. And then Brexit happens. So Russia loves this destabilisation

of old school Cold War western allies. And I believe that the Russians poisoned those people in that English village. It was to scare the fuck out of English people it lets the whole thing about living in a western democracy is one of the great privileges that most people

I don't mean everybody but most people the great privilege you have is that at the very least you can feel safe and when the russian government can come into the united kingdom and poison two people in a little english village and leave that makes the that breeds chaos it says to the english people your safety is an illusion look what we just did imagine that was bigger look what we can do and when you saw a fear like that that type of fear is very easily malleable when it comes up to

elections you know so there's there's my hot take there i wanted to answer some questions this week i'm going to keep this podcast i'm trying to keep my mouth over the microphone so I'm not going too left and right because this is a stereo mic. So I'm going to answer some of your questions. James asks, when are you coming to Glasgow? Will you interview

Limmy? I can arrange Boldy. That means hash. And also, what are your thoughts on the dairy industry? Firstly, am I coming to Glasgow? Yes, there is a live podcast coming to Glasgow. I don't know when it is or even if it's announced. For some reason, September is sticking up in my head. I don't know, is it announced yet?

But I'm 90% sure there is a Glasgow podcast coming up. Will I interview Limmy? Fuck yes. He's number one on my list. If Will I interview Limmy? Fuck yes. If I could. He's number one on my list. If I can interview Limmy in Glasgow. Yes I will. Limmy even.

This week on Twitter. Limmy is a comedian. From Glasgow. He's a genius. He's. Incredibly creative. And original. And I've been a huge fan of him for fucking years.

And he seems like a good lad as well, but yeah, Limmy was listening to my San Francisco podcast, because he posted about it on Twitter, so that was great to hear, because I think he's considering getting into podcasting, I can arrange Baldy, that's mad, yeah, so someone handed me a fucking, So someone handed me a fucking, our tour is sponsored by a cannabis seed company or something. But anyways, yeah, someone just handed me like a grand's worth of weed the other day. Because I'm in Canada, it's fully legal, 100% legal. And someone just said, handed me an envelope and I opened up and it's like, there's a grand's worth of weed right there. So I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with a grand's worth of weed? I'm here for five days.

So I was very generous with it, we'd say, incredibly generous with the weed. And yeah, then we flew from fucking Vancouver to Toronto and there was a lot of weed. And it's grand, it's like, that's legal, it's fine, madness, fair play to them, yeah, cannabis is legal everywhere, you can walk down the road smoking a joint, if you walk down the road smoking a cigarette, same shit as in San Francisco, people would cough at a distance, this bougie bar that we have in our hotel, with the people who are disgusted at our presence you can't even fucking vape there, like I'm talking there's a full outdoor area with a pool all this crack, like you're outside you can't smoke a fag there

not a hope I'd say get away with a joint people love smoking joints here, fair play to them, they smoke pure weed they don't put any tobacco into it but yeah tobacco here it's taken as a personal insult

if you should dare to take it out and they refer to vaping as smoking there's been a few times I've been seen with my vape and I've been in a bar or even at the venue and someone says no smoking and I go it's not smoke man

this is just a it's like a kettle it's just steam and they're like no no so I feel like passive aggressively going around with a fucking travel kettle and saying have you got a problem with that do you but em

what are your thoughts on the dairy industry so no we're probably over reliant on it i mean that's the interesting thing with cows the environment like apparently the big issue with cows cattle and the dairy industry in the environment the big big problem is obviously the farts that are created. Ireland is actually okay. Ireland is cows that are pasturing, eating grass. It's quite environmentally friendly as global cattle shit goes. Now, it's not great that so much Irish pasture was formerly meadows

that contained pollinating wildflowers. But in like Argentina and Brazil, they're chopping down rainforests, filling it full of cows. Then the cows aren't being grass-fed, they're being fed soya. So more forests are being cleared to grow soya. So that's... You know, the dairy industry isn't great

and any any look any large-scale industrial exploitation of fucking animals or monoculture none of that is great for the environment um we have to move towards a half and half situation it's it's and it's not that hard to envision it's like my mother was telling me about limerick in the 1950s limerick in the 1950s you had your own pig out the back garden and any available space you had you used to grow as much vegetables and produce as you could from the pig shit a lot of your refuse went into the pig's mouth. And you had a self-contained unit that was relatively environmentally friendly. That didn't look after all your needs, but it looked after up to 40% of your needs. So people still went to the shop with reusable bags. People still got milk in glass bottles that you also reused.

People ate and consumed less. People were more conscious of rationing. That's a particularly. Okay at this point of the podcast. There was a helicopter sound. Right there. So I'm just going to choose that as. The helicopter pause.

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before i go back to toronto um a couple of footnotes for before this bit and after before um i kept referring to british soccer very foolish of me of course i'm referring to english uh soccer the england fans not necessarily welsh and scottish fans footnote for after this someone asks a question regarding the music industry um and spotify there's two answers i give i compare i'm basically firstly i'm complaining about the inability for musicians to be able to earn money today in today's environment okay um i go into detail about that if you're wondering jesus playing but why are you complaining about the music the money that musicians can earn yet you are in toronto on a five-star hotel what's that about that is a rare situation because this tour is

sponsored by a very generous cannabis company who seem to have a fuckload of money and they put us up in the hotel as a payment in kind and if we were booking the hotels we'd be getting as cheap as we could possibly get if we were booking it ourselves but this this company were very generous and as a payment in kind they just put they we didn't even ask for it to just put us up in this lovely fucking hotel it's a fair play to them i also in talking about the scale of the rubber bandits i make comparisons to tom waits just to clarify i am not in any way comparing us artistically to tom waits we're not fit to lick the man's fucking boots he's a legend he's a genius i'm not putting ourselves in that territory what i am saying is that in the early 70s tom waits was a low to mid size artist who would be

relatively well known internationally amongst hipsters so that's the comparison I'm making it's a notoriety thing and not an artistic comparison God bless you very choppy sounding blades but

I think that's where humanity needs to return to that kind of 1940s 1950s thing where we are using available space like if you're lucky enough to have a back garden maybe there should be a pig out there if you're going to be a meat eater have that pig eat your waste and then once a year you slaughter the fucking pig and you get a year's worth of pork out of him if you want to continue eating meat and then you use the shit from the pig to try

and fertilise whatever greens you're growing then you get familiar with canning your own vegetables preserving things you know if households were doing that across the world which like I said this is what was going on up to the 1950s until we had mass consumerism and industrialization of our food products. Humans were getting on okay with this stuff.

And you mix and match that with going to the shop. That's kind of, I think, where humanity needs to go. Or even in apartments, you know, using hydroponics to grow as much vegetables you can indoors, like vertical gardening and shit like that, LEDs, solar panel on the roof. What was the question? Dairy industry. I don't know, it's shit, man. Maeve asks, the only time I ever get anxious now is when I'm hungover. I know you enjoy a bag of cans from listening to your podcast,

but you've never mentioned it having any impact on your anxiety. Just curious if it does. Yeah, it does, yeah. Now, how many cans have I had this week? I haven't really gone on the lash this week. I've done four gigs, and after each gig and during the gigs, I will have a few cans. But I'm minding it.

I'm not getting drunk. Five cans. So that means I'm going to bed drinking a lot of water waking up the next morning at 6am fresh as a fucking daisy but yeah if I decide to do I try and keep it to once a fortnight now where I want to be like I'm going to enjoy some cans and some baldy but I'm going to have a hangover tomorrow morning. If I do that, the fear, as we call it,

which is... The fear isn't... First off, it's a combination of... Like, if you were drinking in a social situation, everyone wakes up the next morning and is like, oh oh no what did i do oh no what did i say oh no did i do this so that's one element of the fear where there is a legitimate reason of did i shame myself in public i'm usually all right with that when i get drunk i just get a

little bit more friendlier and sillier. That's about it. You know? I might wake up one of my friends at three in the morning and tell him I need to re-evaluate the music of Sting. Some people drink. They might start a fucking argument. They might start a fight. They might get very, very upset and have a bad night. If you're someone like that, you need to re-appraise your relationship with drink. Simple as that. If when you drink there is a massive negative change in your personality i don't think i don't think drink is for you simple as that we all got to be aware of that

some people i know drink makes them very upset or drink makes uh drink brings up memories of hurt or if people who are in a relationship they drink and all of a sudden they're fighting about something from 6 years ago and it's all this toxic pattern if that's you and drink drink is not for you

find something else if you drink and it just makes you have a little bit of a better time and you enjoy it and you have a healthy relationship and it's not destructive in your relationship towards yourself and other people, work away. I'm fortunate enough to be in that territory. I also don't drink if I'm anxious or stressed or unhappy. Drinking for me has to be a serious fucking reward.

I'm rewarding myself for work done. So when I go into some drink, I'm kind of going, I'm allowed myself for work done so when I go into some drink I'm I'm kind of going I'm allowed to enjoy myself now I've no stress, nothing's going to come up because I don't want stress to come up when I'm drinking I don't want worries to come up

or if I'm fucking unbolding certainly don't want that and you put a whitener worrying about deadlines, a deadline whitener but yes, I do wake up the next morning with the fear so. With the fear. So most of my fear is a chemical fear. Which means I have a feeling of. Anxiety and dread and terror.

It's the underlying hum of. Everything is not okay. Everything feels threatening and worrying. What I usually do with that is I do use CBT around it. Now, that doesn't stop the fear, right? The danger of the fear from drink is... So you have this...

First of all, like... The reason it happens is because it's, you know, you drink as a depressant. You drink a lot of drink and you've depressed your nervous system, so the next day you're going to have some pretty negative chemicals floating around your body. You've also essentially poisoned yourself too, you're not in a good state. So it's normal for stress hormones to be released in your body and for you to experience that as the sensation of anxiety that's perfectly normal but if you are also predisposed to anxiety in your personality you can wake up the next day with drink and the fear will trigger a panic

attack or the fear will trigger greater anxiety and now you're dealing with not only the fear but actual anxiety that doesn't happen me because i'll use cbt around it so i will wake up with the fear which means the general general hum of anxiety but it won't manifest itself as an anxiety attack it won't manifest itself as extreme anxiety it won't manifest itself as an anxiety attack. It won't manifest itself as extreme anxiety. It won't manifest itself as me catastrophizing over things. It will simply be a little feeling. And what I'll say to myself is, when I do feel the fear from drink,

I'll go, last night I took a load of depressants and now I feel depressed. And that's okay okay and it will pass and what nice things can I do for myself today so I will drink loads of tea and get a takeaway and watch

nice stupid things on TV and make sure that I've planned a day of the fear I will not do the fear when I work the next day fucking hell 8 years ago we were gigging in no we were in London and we'd just been working with Channel 4

and Channel 4 had some huge party on and we were invited and it was the first time we'd ever proper gone somewhere and it's like here's all the free drink in the world so we couldn't handle that so we got all of us got really badly drunk foolish mistake um i'll tell you this now it got so bad that by the end of the night when the drink had finished we ended up drinking special brew on the side of the road with a homeless man

a homeless Irish man that's where that had gotten to we'd met an Irish homeless man and we were pissed and we said how are you getting on with the crack spoke to him about his story and he said to us

will you buy me a can so there was a fucking 24 hour Tesco this was back before England had the rules on drink at 10 o'clock. And we bought a lot of special brew and drank it and said it all with that Irish man. And finished at about 8 in the morning. At which point we had to get into a car that was taking us to Manchester, which is about a six-hour journey. And it was one of the worst experiences of my life. Roaring hangover, extreme fear,

and stopping every 15 minutes to vomit into a plastic bag. No crack. It's that cunt of a helicopter back again. Right. Dudley asks. Dudley. It's a cool name, Dudley. Don't meet a lot of Dudleys.

Hi, Blindbuttblind, but what are your views on Spotify? Is it a useful promotional tour or a massive corporate rip-off? Spotify, if you're a listener, is brilliant because it's, here's all the music in the world in one app.

Spotify, if you're an artist, is fucking terrible. It's awful. Like, we did a rubber bandits gig last night but that's the first rubber bandits gig we've done since December 2018 people keep asking me blind by where are the rubber bandits gone you know have you quit and I'm like no we haven't quit Mr. Chrome is still around. It's literally, and I mean this, you cannot earn money as a musician. Okay? In my fucking early 20s, we were able to be rubber bandits, do loads of gigs and have the fucking crack. Because I'm in my early 20s, I can afford to be incredibly poor and not earn money.

And have just enough to get by but I'm older now I can't do that Mr. Chrome can't do that we cannot earn a living from music and we are we're pretty fucking sick

what is it 180 million views on fucking YouTube however many million Spotify. Look, I'm successful enough as a music act that we can just go, How are you getting on? There's a gig in Toronto and it sells out in fucking two days. So we're at that level, which is mid-tier level. But put it this way.

The motorbikes, lads. We're at the level of, I'll say professional success, professional success, which is what you can measure in how popular you are. Like Tom Waits in the early 1970s. Tom Waits in the early 1970s was gigging the venues that we would gig when we go to London. The venues that we would gig when we go to Toronto. So we are at the level that we say

someone like Tom Waits would have been in the early to mid 70s. Which is independent, odd artist. But Tom Waits in the mid-70s, he would have been close to a millionaire probably. Just from record sales, just from being a low to mid-tier international artist. Now in the 80s and late 80s, he became huge.

But Tom Waits in the mid-70s was, you know, you'd really have to know your stuff if you're going to be knowing about Tom Waits so we're in terms of professional success Tom Waits in the early 70's level of notoriety worldwide which is

I can call a gig in New York and it'll sell out in a month or whatever Toronto whatever I want but like because the way Spotify is like you can't earn money so you can only really earn money from gigs now there's only so many gigs you can do in Ireland so then you have to say well I need to do international gigs now but if you start doing international gigs as a mid-tier artist most of that money goes on simply getting there flights hotels whatever

so you're not really like we're not really earning that much money doing this gig here this is as i said i said to the boys let's essentially have a holiday and pay for it with gigs so when people say where are the rubber bandits not earning money doing the fucking rubber bandits so therefore not doing a lot of gigs not really having much incentive to release like we're working on new songs we've got a couple of new videos that will be out

but they're time consuming they're expensive the Patreon type model for some reason doesn't really work for music because I think we expect music to be free. And we think of also as well the nature of being a music artist. It's performative. You're there up on stage.

You've loads of people screaming and shouting and roaring and you're the center of attention. And you see that and we view that as look at all that adoration, that must be success. But your favourite artists, I'm not talking big ones now, but let's just take heavy metal as a genre because metal tends to have a lot of this. Your favourite heavy metal artists

who are doing large gigs, they also have second jobs. They're working in Nando's in the kitchen, do you know, people who are famous this is how it is now for musicians unless you're Ariana Grande unless you're at that level, but mid to small, no no no, second

job or fuck off and crowdfunding isn't really a thing for music, because like I said a part of being a musician is, the theatrics of it demand that you, look kind of successful, which is strange, that's odd,

you have to look successful as part of the theatrics of it, so then people go, sure why would I give that person, why would I donate to that person, it doesn't clock as they need a donation, so Spotify, Spotify has ruined it for the fucking artist millions and millions of plays

you're earning nothing you really are earning nothing and it's the same with all facets of music I often for the laugh if I get a royalty check I'll put it online just to show people how bad it is just to laugh at it to be honest

we had our song in Dad's Best Friend and the music video in the huge Hollywood film Trainspotting 2 massive massive film in 2018 our royalty check for our song and video being in Trainspotting

and I'm not joking I put it on fucking Twitter because it was so funny I got my royalty check for our song and video being in Trainspotting and I'm not joking I put it on fucking Twitter because it was so funny I got my royalty check both of us for being in Trainspotting 2 soundtrack and film 36 euro for 2018

now in 2017 when the film came out it was slightly more but like nothing you'd talk about not enough to maybe two months rent but like 36 euro between us and then 4 euro for our agent

so in 2018 I the money in royalties that we both earned from having a song and video in Trainspotting 2 was not enough

money for either of us to be able to buy cinema tickets to see Trainspotting 2 so that's the reality of music so that's what I think of Spotify it's only marginally better than, like let's be honest, Spotify exists because of illegal downloading.

And I'm complicit in that. You know, I've illegally downloaded thousands and thousands of albums and music over the years. Because I started doing it when I was fucking 14. And I had this hunger for music, and I loved music so much, and, you know, I would buy CDs. You know, I remember having to save up 25 euro to buy a David Bowie CD, and I'd have to save up, you know, maybe,

it would take me three, I'd be in secondary school, so it would take me three months to save up 25 euro to buy a david bowie cd and it was good it was brilliant it was a better way if i spent 25 euro on a cd like i'm fucking listening to that cd from start to finish and i'm not allowing myself the luxury of it being shit so if i get an album back then and i'm not short of it I fucking stick with it until I understand it every so often you end up with genuine stinkers and that was terrible but a lot of the time you end up with something that

you don't like at all on the first listen but you force yourself to listen to it and you end up discovering a classic like the album Discovery by Daft Punk I got that 25 quid had it on CD took it home

put it into the CD player hated it seriously considered bringing it back because I was sickened I was like oh fuck 25 quid and I hate this

but I said no I'm sticking with it it's one of my favourite albums of all time but when illegal downloading came about I was illegally downloading

everything I could get my hands on and so was everyone I knew so I helped to create the system that now me as a professional musician that I suffer under like

a horse outside that was the last time really that fucking sold a couple of singles for that but really it's like no one was buying it was 2010 so it was the last time really that fucking sold a couple of singles for that but really it's like no one was buying it was 2010 so it was the end of CDs and no one really young people didn't have credit cards to go on iTunes in 2010 so a lot of people just legally downloaded

it and now Spotify is the new thing and everyone has Spotify. But you don't earn... It's a billionth of a penny for every play or a thousandth of a penny for every play. No one's earning money from Spotify. Like, even I think that song Blurred Lines, Robin Thicke and Pharrell, the one that's questionable themes around consent. Like, that was one of the most widely played songs in the world on Spotify and I think they ended up getting 60 grand and like 60 grand is a lot of money but

not really when you're talking about the biggest played song in the world 60 grand is not a lot of money then 60 grand will buy you the cheapest house in Limerick if Robin Thicke and Pharrell want to go and have a go at that

so yeah that's what I think of Spotify I think as well there's a brilliant music journalist called Liz Pelly she does some good work around Spotify and around the critique of it and the critique of what

not only what Spotify is doing financially for artists but what Spotify is doing to how we listen to music and this is where it gets so no one gives a fuck about the radio anymore everyone uses Spotify and people have stopped going to

people, what they've found is that Spotify obeys the algorithm so it's music that's listened to. I've got a small gaggle of Canadians around me now and I don't know why this is happening. I'm at a cul-de-sac outside. It's a Sunday, so there's this weird fucking library thing and I don't know what it is. But I'm at the end of a cul-de-sac on a bench. Very quiet area and there's all these fucking Canadians all on.

Business suits. They're all after what? What are you doing? Yeah, they're lost. very quiet area and there was all these fucking Canadians all on business suits they're all after what what are you doing yeah they're lost that's why we haven't had any interruptions they came down to the end

of this call in a second they're going who's this I look like a spy it's some government building or whatever and it's a Sunday and it's mad quiet

our hotel is in a fucking shit like it's a 5 star hotel and it's a lovely hotel but it's in a queer old part of town where it's just a little bit too far on foot and I've no internet here

the sim card I bought in America doesn't work here, so I'm going on wifi, so to be getting taxis then is difficult, so I'm kind of just stuck, and it's 20 minutes to walk into town, which is a kick in the balls as well, so I'm in a queer old park, and it's a Sunday,

so it's quite quiet, so a gaggle of Canadians come down to interrupt us there, but I'm here with my fucking recorder. And my earphones on. Looking like some type of spy. So they gave me strange looks. Spotify. Yeah.

Look up the music journalism of Liz Pelly. And the things she has to say about Spotify. She speaks about the Spotifyfication of music. She speaks about how. People no longer. Even look for genres anymore so if but most people who use now i'm different because i'm like a music head i'm i'm you know okay what is a positive about spotify for me i do like the algorithm i do like that if i'm listening to an album i I can go into my discover weekly.

And it will find an album. I haven't heard that I would really like. Using algorithmically generated predictions. I love that. I'll be honest. I really do. But I use Spotify in that fashion. Because I'm a music nerd.

Some people just. They type in moods. What the fuck is that helicopter doing? It's circling the place like what's it looking for so i yeah uh most people are looking for liz pelly's theory and it's quite similar to my theory of the podcast hug is that in our society today the housing crisis thing that's happening in most cities around the world it's not just the Dublin thing

it's happening everywhere young people are can't really pay rent and have extreme stress in their lives the way neoliberalism has made things that careers have disappeared so most people don't feel they have aism has made things that careers have disappeared

so most people don't feel they have a career they just feel that they have a job right now but no true sense of security so most millennials will say so millennial is the older millennials i think it goes from 37 down to about 25 now, and then you've got Generation Y or Z underneath. So Z and millennials, we don't have certainty. We don't have a sense of certainty. We don't have, I can have a career. I can have a house.

We also have now an increasing awareness of global warming. So you're like, I don't know what it's going to be like in 50 years so it is very uncertain and how we live our lives is through the convenience of apps so in our available time we also too

on top of the uncertainty of our lives we have Google, Facebook the apps that we use very much needing and want wanting us to be emotionally reactive in order for them to make money so we walk around the place with these boxes in our hands where we look at we get our news and our social media from and the boxes need us to interact with them as much as we possibly can. And the best way to do that is to appeal to our most base emotions of fear and jealousy and shit like that. So our social media keeps us in a continual state of anxiety because it needs us that way.

Because then it's... Is it BF Skinner? This is one of the things I cover in my BBC documentary that's coming out anyway, but, so Liz Pelly's theory about Spotify is this hyper-anxious society that we have of millennials and Generation Y, they go to Spotify and they don't type in genres,

they type in moods. And the most popular mood on Spotify is chill. Like one of the terms that's used in our lexicon, in our culture, Netflix and chill. Although I think that means sex. It doesn't though. It doesn't. People say Netflix and chill means sex. It doesn't.

It means two people in front of Netflix and getting into a box set and going, will we have sex? Can we watch one more episode before we have sex and before you know it then it's two in the morning no one wants to have sex so netflix and chill does not mean sex it actually means let's watch so much netflix that no one's having any sex at all um but then so yeah the continual anxiety we feel from uncertainty about the environment about jobs about housing and about is that one of those fucking canadian wasps on my leg no it's a fly the can i'll get on to the canadian wasps in a minute but we've so much uncertainty in the environment and all this shit and then these apps that make us feel this way continually as a feedback loop that we search for moods so we go

into spotify and we say not heavy metal not indie not hip-hop we say chill give me the chill playlist give me the relaxing playlist give me the i'm on my journey home from work playlist. Give me the running playlist. So we search instead for functional moods. And what this has done is it's making, it's pushing to the top of Spotify. For most people who use Spotify, looking not for music but for emotions, it makes everything a little bit magnolia. emotions it makes everything a little bit magnolia so spotify is by creating a digital environment and marketplace whereby the the most successful music is the one that's most likely to make you feel a certain mood that removes a lot of artistry it removes challenging stuff it removes it the artistry it moves removes artistry and creativity from music

and it makes it much more similar to Muzak, which is background music, which is wallpaper. Music, of course there's a place. I spoke about this before with New Age music. There is a place for functional music. There is a place for music that is wallpaper. There's nothing wrong with wanting to throw on some fucking smooth piano jazz in the background and just let it be there to feel a certain way.

I do that. I do that myself. But I also make a lot of space for, I want to get into 70s New York punk. I want to see what that stuff's about. I make that space, do you know? But it means that the artists, we'll say the Tom Waits, who in the 70s were trying to do something incredibly challenging, incredibly different, they're now, they're definitely

not getting heard. And the beauty of the internet is you think, wow, how democratic. If your stuff is good it will rise to the top. But the Spotify-fication model, which is we are now using spotify as a simple aid to alleviate us of our anxieties then that's the crack like look look look look

what i'm doing here like i'm consciously like i'm trying to be engaged and interesting in what I'm talking about. And I am talking with passion about stuff I'm interested in. I like to give you that content. But I'm also very conscious of, I've come to a park today. We have sounds, unfortunately there's no fucking birds. Because we're in Toronto and I'm surrounded by trees but there's very little biodiversity. I was's no fucking birds. Because we're in Toronto. And I'm surrounded by trees. But there's very little biodiversity.

I was hoping for some birds. But I'm here in a park. You can hear the sound of the air. Passing cars. Ambient noise. I try and keep an eye on how I speak. So that I'm speaking in a relaxing tone. And a lot of people listen to this podcast

for what I call the podcast hug, which is to simply take a space out in your day where you're removing yourself from the chaos of apps and the chaos of uncertainty. And that's a huge part of this podcast. Is that. And I'm doing that. So.

I don't know. Would you call this the spotification of content? I suppose ASMR. Like ASMR is simply. Listen to a person. Talk about anything. Just to feel relaxed by it. To escape the hell of uncertainty.

And just your mobile phone. People listen to just someone talking about anything. And the sound of their voice. So I'm taking elements of ASMR aesthetic. But trying to contextualize it within content that's actually engaging and interesting as well and a space for me like i i like the fact now that i you know i'm sitting here on a park bench for a fucking hour on my own and i know technically this is work but it doesn't feel like work i'm just talking to you and responding to questions that you ask me and i'm enjoying it

it's good crack and the weather's lovely Wouldn't mind a bit of a breeze. Helicopter's coming around again to act the fucking bollocks. Can hear them in the distance. Here we go. Choppy bastard. Listen to him. Grow up. Attention seeking prick.

Any more questions hello blind boy I was wondering if you know anything about ancient Irish food let me check how long we're into this now I haven't done a fucking ocarina pause or nothing I'll throw it in somewhere at random lads and you know the crack with this podcast is supported by Patreon

alright patreon.com forward slash blind boy podcast if you're enjoying it you can be a patron give me the price of a pint price of a cup of coffee once a month if that's how you're feeling if you want to listen for free you can do that as well it'll be grand so let me check the time time just over the hour point so I'm going to take one last question I need to get some din-dins before I do my live podcast

as well I'm doing a live podcast tonight so I need a small bit of din-dins hello blind oh great it's a question about fucking food and I'm starving I was wondering if you know anything about ancient Irish food. Yes. I can't remember.

On last week's podcast, great feedback for that by the way. Where I had Dr. Billy McFlynn on talking about Irish folklore. Ancient Irish food. You know most people when you think of Irish food Obviously the potato The potato was It was a bad thing to happen to us The potatoes you have to remember

There's Food can be broken into two categories lads And there's Post and pre-Columbian Colombian meaning Christopher Columbus Columbus The great bastard who quote on quote Discovered the new world And there's post and pre-Columbian. Colombian meaning Christopher Columbus. Columbus, the great bastard who quote-unquote discovered the new world. A lot of food staples that we eat every day, they didn't exist before 1492.

They didn't exist in Europe. They were foods that were in the Americas. Potato is one of them. The potato comes from Peru. The potato arrived in Ireland, I believe, in the 16th century somewhere around Waterford Portuguese sailors accidentally brought it in and so the

potato started to grow brilliantly in Ireland it was good other thing about a potato is that a potato it has everything fat, carbohydrates, vitamins vitamins nutrients so people ended up not needing anything more than potatoes we became 100% reliant on it the brits were cunts it was a monoculture the blight you know the crack famine but prior to the famine what did we eat if you look it up like a bizarrely

dairy based diet huge amounts of dairy, traditional Irish food prior to the potato and prior to like you have to view, around the same time of the potato too, it was around the same time that we would

have had the plantations you know prior to the flight of the earls you still had an Irish aristocracy em there was a lot of there was like 20 different types of milk dishes

em what was there there was like about five or bubbly sour drinks of milk fermented milk heavy cream milk mixed with oats

the Irish apparently used to love milk that was very tangy and sour so a milk based cheese culture there was bog butter I'm surprised hipsters haven't started there was bog butter I'm surprised hipsters haven't started making

fucking bog butter and fetishising it bog butter was butter that was wrapped in straw I believe and left into a bog for maybe 10

20 years and matured and I don't know what it would have been like but this was a delicacy I'm sure there has to be some fucking hipster in ireland who's making down in west cork making 10 year old bog butter and serving at the

fucking dublin restaurants it has to be so a butter based milk uh butter milk sour fizzy milk culture is what ancient irish food was that was. Now, because cattle were a huge thing in pre-Norman and also kind of Anglo-Norman culture, the amount of cattle you owned denoted the power that you had. That goes right back to Irish mythology. You look at the taun. It's all about the person with the most power is the person with the most cattle.

So if you've got a bunch of fucking cattle and that's your power you're not killing them for fucking meat you're going to be milking the milk out of them so there was milk mixed with oats the other interesting thing too that a lot of people ask is sometimes when you go abroad

you're in Spain or Italy and you look at all the delicious flavourful spicy food that they have. And, you know, pasta, tomato sauces, the Spanish with all their elaborate spiced sausages. And you look at Irish cuisine and you go, we don't have any of that. We don't really have that. And a lot of people think it's because of the famine. Because we only relied on potatoes, we don't have a food culture. think it's because of the famine because we only relied on potatoes we don't have

a food culture but the fact of the matter is we didn't really because we always had access to fresh ingredients and a good climate so the Irish, if the Irish wanted cabbage they just took the cabbage out of the ground and boiled it and ate it

and ate carrots and didn't need to there was long seasons, you might get two seasons of fucking crops like do you know, so the Irish didn't need to rely upon preserving things or worry about heat making things spoil quickly

there was access to caves to keep things cold, they used to have forts and keep things, have refrigerated units underneath forts, so an access to fresh ingredients meant you don't need to heavily preserve things you had bacon preserved in salt, things like that Irish weren't colonial either so we didn't have a huge access

to spices in the way that the Spanish and Portuguese did they had access to spices that they could spice their meat with, so that's why the Irish don't have this large variety food culture thing it's not because we were so poor we had no fucking food therefore it didn't it's just fresh ingredients

fresh potatoes fresh boiled cabbage and why would you want to that stuff tastes grand alright that's over there I hope you enjoyed this em like I'm not letting a week go by That stuff tastes grand. Alright. That's over there. I hope you enjoyed this. I'm not letting a week go by without a podcast.

So if I have to record one in a fucking park. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I've got to do. To be honest. The past month or two. I've technically been almost on a podcast break. Because I've been doing either these type of podcasts. Or live podcasts.

I haven't had proper hot take podcasts that take 3 or 4 days of research to make because I've just been too busy and as well the listenership is naturally down in the summer too because like I said in the summer people kind of like enjoying their walk to work because it looks nice

so they don't want to listen to podcasts they're just like I look out the window. The weather is nice. Podcast listenership goes up in September when the weather starts to get shit and people need the therapy of it, we'll say. So yeah, I've been on a bit of a break. I've been doing the podcast in a day's work.

But once the deadlines are over and all that shit I'll be back to the regular boiling hot take podcasts with 3-4 days research into them that I can really have a good go at I'm looking forward to getting back to it I can't wait as well

I'll have the new book coming out in a couple of months I'll be reading stories from the brand new book on the podcast really looking forward to doing that as well and yeah this is my second attempt out in a couple of months I'll be reading stories from the brand new book on the podcast really looking forward to doing that as well and yeah this is my second attempt at a podcast this week I meant to say I was in Vancouver and I met a legend of heavy metal music Devin Townsend from a band called Strapping Young Lad and the Devin Townsend Project and we very hastily met up in a cafe and I set up my recording equipment

and me and Devon spoke for an hour and that was going to be this week's podcast I was going to get the sounds of the traffic out of this except it's me talking to another person so what I had with me was this recorder that I'm using now and then also a separate condenser mic that was going into it and whatever bollock acting happened Devin's mic didn't record so I can fix it I can

but it means a good hour or two in my studio back home to get the quality listenable so that's why I'm horridly doing

the fucking listening so that's why I'm hurriedly doing this podcast in the park. Wasps. So there's fucking wasps over here lads in Toronto. Huge bastards.

And their arses and their bodies are completely separated. In the middle they have this one little line like a thread. And they have these massive long stingers that look like it would penetrate your eye they're flying around outside my hotel window and I'm fucking terrified of one of these

cunts landing on me so that's another thing alright look I'll talk to you next week I hope you enjoyed this best of luck I hope there was a bit of some more Canadians I hope there was a bit of a little environmental ASMR tingle for you they've realised there's a bit of a little environmental ASMR tingle for you

they've realised it's a dead end and it's the funniest thing in the world to them it's just a dead end lads it's fine we'll leave them past

I'll talk to you next week best of luck Rock City you're the best fans in the league bar none Best of luck. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play come along for the ride and punch your ticket to rock city at torontorock.com