The Blindboy Podcast - Yurty Aherne

Episode Date: November 29, 2017

Meeting an otter called Yurty Aherne who taught me about the last man hanged in Ireland. Also, Carl Jung, St.Brendan and The Kinks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Outro Music weeks because of your sound cunts acting like sound cunts being pure cunts all of you pure sound cunts yeah that was sound cunts by chris de berg chris de berg is a big fan of the podcast and he sent in the lyrics and chords to that song and i merely recorded it so thank you very much chris de berg for that chris de berg had had some big hits there in the 1980s. Lady and Raiden and other tunes. Thank you, Chris. Hello. What's the crack?

How are you getting on? Thank you very much for togging out this week. Getting stuck in to the podcast. The Blind Buy podcast. I hope you've been having a charming week. A pleasurable week filled with little punnets of pleasure and not a painful week

I've had a pleasurable week I got acquainted with an author I'm very privileged to say going for an evening walk well no it was a walk in the dark going for an evening walk not well no it was a walk in the dark I like to sometimes go out and walk in the pitch dark at the back of Plassy

in Limerick the sun was gone and I was beside the Shannon River no one around you know I love to hear the river at night time when you can't, you can't, you can't see it so you can, you can hear it babbling and talking at you, I looked towards the north, down an area at the back of UL, and I seen an otter playing in the water, and he was jumping in and out,

looked like he was having crack, that's what I liked about it, he was having crack, I posted a photograph of him to Twitter, but I've never seen an otter in my life, I quietly kind of walked over, you know, on the sleigh, so I could observe him in peace,

you know, and I got quite close to him I got about I don't know maybe 15 10 feet and I just sat down I watched the otter as it kind of bounded in and out of the water playing you know having crack having a bit of fun it was amazing just watching him a wild Shannon River otter from Limerick a Limerick otter never seen one before going in catching perch or catching eels I know that river well and I've never once seen an otter I'd see the odd heron or I might see a cormorant but never never, never an otter, never

a mammal, the odd shrew, I've seen a shrew, or a rat, he must, you know, he must kind of come out at night time, you know, and it was beautiful to watch him, just prancing around, and I took a few snaky videos and of course he seen the light on my phone and then fucked off into the river

you know to go to the other side so I went on to my phone I sat down because it was such a peaceful evening it was freezing cold and you could see

the stars in the sky and it was gorgeous you know and silent and I took out the phone anyway while I was sitting down and started to to research and look read up about authors you know what was amazing is that the kind of the territory, they're very territorial animals and the minimum territory of an author is about 21 kilometres and you'll very rarely find more than one

author in that region. So this was, that's the Shannon River author. He's the plassy author, he's the only one. The only author and I was looking at him. They're very complex. Like from what I was reading. They've all different little. I was trying to look at the.

I turned on the torch on my phone then you know. To try and look for more. The signs of. That author's patch and his territory they've got different things they've got halts there's an author's halt

which is a it's a place where a female author gives birth raises her cubs for the first three months and it's normally found in secretive places or they're underneath

a rock or in a bit of scrub land so I didn't find one of them. They've got hovers and they're lay up sites right, they're little, where the otters will rest and shelter out of the water for a little bit between foraging or other exploratory outings and they're kind of found close to the river of course I didn't see one of them you've got author paths I saw a little path but it could have been for a rat

and they use them when they're travelling on land an author's path can be hundreds of years old. They'll inherit the pats. An author can have a pat hundreds of years old. And they're very distinctive and obvious when you see them. And when the vegetation dies down in the winter and spring,

the pats become less obvious. And other animals use the pats. And authors use other animals' pats. They've got spraying sites and these are like they're rocks that they spray shit on and they use that to communicate to other otters to stay the fuck away because like I said, this little fella

if he's got territory that's 21 kilometres that's his, that's ridiculous. Anyone steps into that site, get the fuck away. Of course I've spent the past five minutes assuming the gender of that otter, you know. That could have been a female otter. I don't know, to me, felt like a him. Maybe I'm projecting, I'm projecting onto that otter I'm projecting myself and my own gender onto that otter

but I'm gonna refer to him as a hymn they've got little poles they'll like dig out a little pool for themselves beside a river where they can fuck around in and then the cute bastards

they've got a a drying place right which they build themselves and i'm going to be scouring the river for the next few weeks when i'm out there looking for an author's drying place because here's the best part about it it's called an author's couch and an author's couch is when they go and they they find a little area and they raise it above Is when they find a little area and they raise it above the land a little bit. And they find bits of dry sticks and twigs and hay. And they make a little couch for themselves.

And they roll around in it and they use it when they're cleaning their fur. When they're drying themselves out and they get out of the water, you know. They have a little author's couch. And I'm'm gonna have eagle eyes on me now for the next while to be getting a squint at him or to be sticking out my ears to be hearing an after but actually you know what they don't have a mating season otters will fuck each other any time of the year they don't have they don't usually kind of get horny around spring or anything like that

like other animals but while I was out there sitting in the dark out by Plassey listening to the river and watching the author I did start to it reminded me

of the podcast a couple of weeks ago. Do you remember when I was talking to Siri and I was asking Siri to acquaint me with a pine marten because I've never seen a pine marten in real life. Well I think I did, could have been a store. And I was asking Siri for this pine m mountain and then two weeks later this author shows up to be honest as well where I saw that author in Plassy that is the exact spot in the short story Scaphism that I read a few weeks back Scaphism about the fella who at the end of it he's a jealous ex and he floats the man out into the water, I saw that author exactly where the scaphism occurred in the book in that short story. So I asked for an author, I asked for a Pine Martin, a very close relative of the author, in the podcast.

And then I saw the author where Scaifeism occurred. Now I'm not superstitious, but I'm a very big fan of Carl Jung. Carl Jung. Now if you're not conversant. With Carl Jung. He'd be. One of the fathers of modern psychology. Alongside Sigmund Freud.

Jung. See here's the thing about Jung. Jung would be highly respected. In psychology. Which is you know it's a science. The science of human behaviour. see here's the thing about Young Young is a would be highly respected in psychology which is you know it's a science the science of human behaviour half his work would be respected

the other half of Young's work is nuts it's insane Sigmund Freud again Freud today about 80% of what Freud kind of would have been going on about at the time

is now kind of disregarded. But the 20% or the 30% that Freud kind of did discover is the foundations of modern psychology. Freud is the person to first kind of posit the idea of the unconscious mind and the pre-conscious mind and the unconscious mind now you'll hear me talk a lot about the unconscious when I speak about creative flow the unconscious mind is where all your deepest deepest memories go and you can't have free access to the unconscious mind. The pre-conscious mind that takes up

a, no, think of it like this. That otter in the water that I was watching, right? Imagine him poking his little head up above the water, right? He's staying still and just his head is poking up. That's your conscious mind. That's 10% of the author's body. Your conscious mind is what you can, it's what's above the surface of your personality. It's what you can recollect right now, what you can think of right now. You're aware right now that you're listening to me. You're aware that you're listening to a podcast. You're aware of the things around you as you sit down that's your conscious mind that's the author's head now just below the surface of the water another maybe 20 percent the author's neck right down to his shoulders that's the pre-conscious mind

that's what you can immediately kind of recollect the very you know if i ask you to think about a nice dog that you saw last week the little half a second that it took you to think and visualize that dog that meant you you accessed your pre-conscious mind stuff that you can readily recollect but is not always in your consciousness. Going below the author's shoulders. All the way down his back. To his legs. Down to his big long tail. That's reaching deep deep beneath the water.

70% of his body. That is your unconscious mind. Deep below the surface. And in there contains your. Your earliest childhood memories. everything you've ever seen everything you've ever smelt everything you've ever heard gets taken in by the brain

and kind of filed away into the unconscious into an area where you do not have direct access to you do have direct access to it when you dream when you dream your mind chills out

and it goes right down the author's spine to his tail and it brings up all that deep madness from the unconscious mind and also when you're in a state

of creative flow that is the skill of creative flow is to have unfettered access to the unconscious mind and to allow it to come out in a controlled fashion. So you can access the thoughts you didn't know you had.

So that's Freud's model of the mind. Carl Jung went one step further. And this is where Jung starts getting into kind of magical territory. Jung had a theory called the collective unconscious mind that beyond our personal unconscious mind lies this collective unconscious which is a a shared well of consciousness that all of us as humans um can access you know it's it's almost think of it like you know we are just little mobile phones but

the server and the wifi that we all access as mobile phones that server and the wifi where the internet is on that is the collective unconscious if the personal unconscious like I said is that author's body below the water ending in his tail

when that author's body below the water, ending in his tail. When that author's tail touches the riverbed, all the water, all the wisdom of the river and the bed, that massive, massive flowing river, that is the collective unconscious. The author's tail is the personal unconscious, the riverbed and the flowing water is the collective unconscious, which contains all living memory amongst all human beings. And Jung felt that things like metaphor, humans communicating stories and things through metaphor, that that was the collective unconscious at work.

before that that was the collective unconscious at work there's a field called comparative mythology which would have been um pioneered by a lad called joseph campbell and in comparative mythology anthropologists looked at the folk stories and fairy tales of cultures all around the world cultures that had never had any contact with each other. I'm talking Australian Aborigine cultures, South American, Mayans, Aztecs, Ancient Irish and comparative mythology looks at the mythology of all these different cultures that never communicated with each other. But however, their stories and fairy tales pretty much follow the same structure. Jung would argue that is because of the collective unconscious that is where our instinct lies. Just like a bird knows how to fly no one has to teach a bird how to fly. Humans through language can communicate meaning and metaphor through stories

regardless of our culture and upbringing because we can access the collective unconscious. Some people would argue against it and say that, you know, a traditional story is usually set up, conflict, resolution. Some people would say that our innate ability to understand and tell stories across cultures is because, you know, something as simple as you go to sleep, it's dark, you enter a big dream world, then you wake up in the same place and it's bright. Set up, conflict, resolution. But anyway, Carl Jung, on top of his collective unconscious has a theory called synchronicity

and this is where he starts getting a bit nuts Jung would argue that me mentioning me aching for a pine martin on the previous podcast and me mentioning the plassy river this exact spot in the plassy river in the story scaphism a few podcasts back that these two

prompts in combination with the psychic energy of all of you people immersing in that story and immersing in the podcast and listening that not just my prompt but the psychic energy of everybody listening and being relaxed and calm and focused, Jung would argue through synchronicity that this caused these events to happen, that this caused me to spend that moment with an author the other day that's what young would say through synchronicity the event in carl young's life that brought on the theory of synchronicity was one day he he went to sleep and he dreamt of a kingfisher. It's a type of bird, a kingfisher. It's a water bird.

It's like a very ornate cormorant. And then the next morning he went to the bottom of his garden where there was a little river and he found a dead kingfisher. There was no kingfishers in the region where Jung was living and he felt that his dream and the psychic energy of his dream willed into existence this dead kingfisher

that somehow he was also interested in cosmology this time space continuing he would have been looking at the work that Einstein would have been doing and he felt that his dream this time-space continuing. He would have been looking at the work that Einstein would have been doing. And he felt that his dream of the Kingfisher brought that Kingfisher

into physical existence and that this was there to communicate some type of very deep cosmological personal meaning to him. And that's when he started to think about synchronicity as a serious theory.

Jung, of of course also claimed and I don't know was this corroborated by Sigmund Freud at all. Now Young was a bit mad lads but Young claimed that when he and Sigmund Freud would argue about psychoanalytic theories and would disagree and start roaring at each other that the psychic energy present in the room was such that books would start exploding in the shelves

whenever they had an argument only Young says that I've never heard Freud repeat it so Young is a man to be taken with a pinch of salt only young says that I've never heard Freud repeat it so young is a man to be taken with a pinch of salt but a great fucking mind an unbelievable mind you know

very important for the world of art therapy you know young was all about painting and painting symbols and he was big into looking at the symbolism within ancient art as a form of therapy you know he was quite holistic in that respect back to the author and me on that plassy riverbank in Limerick City. That is of course a very hot take. And I'm a rational human being. And I'm not presenting that as truth.

I just think it's kind of interesting. You know. It was a very synchronistic event. And it tied in. Tied in with Carl Jung. But you know what. I would like to thank that otter. For. Giving me that little moment of peace

in the dark and letting me watch him play and having a bit of crack it was beautiful so thank you to that author the Plassy River author who's out there fucking living his best life

having crack and I hope to see him again I really do hope to see him again another thing I thought about as I having crack and I hope to see him again, I really do hope to see him again, another thing I thought about as I sat there in the dark in an isolated area on the outskirts of Limerick City is, you know the concept of male privilege. Some people say male privilege doesn't exist. But my ability to go out. And sit down.

In the fucking dark. In Limerick City. In an isolated area. That's pure and utter male privilege. Because at no point was I afraid. I was afraid of nothing. No one's attacking me. Because I'm a big lad.

And. No one wants to sexually assault me. Because I'm a big lad. And. No one wants to sexually assault me. So that there is male privilege. That's another thing that. That author. Allowed me to realise. And of course loads of women. Telling me what male privilege is.

But. Then I got thinking. It might not have been the author. That. Made me think about this that made me painfully aware of how safe I was how objectively safe I am walking out there in the dark on my own back to creative flow and the story Scaphism

which I'm sure you've heard if you've listened to the podcast and Scaphism is the story of a murderer and it's a murderer who jealously kills his

ex-wife's new boyfriend in a very brutal fashion by the Plassysey River. He walks from, I think it's out by Castle Connell to Plassey in Limerick. Okay, it's all at the back of where the University of Limerick is now. Now when I wrote Scaphism, I wrote that in a state of flow. By which I mean the story revealed itself to me on the page. I literally started off the story with a story about the theme of getting an epileptic fit from having someone else's piss on their pants and getting an epileptic fit from that.

And then the rest of the plot revealed itself to me. But about two months after reading the scaphism story I realised where a lot of that had actually come from. And it came from a story in real life of the last man in Ireland that was hung, the last man to be executed in Ireland, a fella called Michael Manning. He was 25 years of age and he was executed in Mountjoy Prison in 1954. The crime that he committed is that he brutally raped and murdered a nurse in the 1950s in Ireland in Limerick. Her name was Catherine Cooper and the journey that Michael Manning took, he

left the pub at about one in the morning along the Plassy River at the back of Castle Connell and that's where he met this this poor old nurse who was making her own way home just minding her own business and Michael Manning was

obviously off his fucking rocker and he raped and murdered her and killed her I realised that the journey that the character in Scaphism took for his murder was the same journey that Michael Manning took, and that this had found its way into my unconscious when I read about it two or three years ago, and then revealed itself via that narrative,

without me being in any way aware of it, only retrospectively did I spot it and this was an incredibly brutal kind of murder for 1950s Ireland the reports are like the guards didn't know what to fucking do they just, they hadn't this didn't happen in the 50s in Ireland

not that type of serial killer shit it just didn't happen Michael Manning he first of all he was identified as the murderer because he was the only man in Limerick who wore a Canadian Mountie hat and

several people had noticed that he was around this area at the time of the murder wearing his Mountie hat so the guards kind of called over to his house. He was living in a cottage in Rabogue, Castle Troy area. He handed himself in

and the Garda reports suggest that he genuinely believed that he would kind of get off the hook because he was pissed. He brutally raped and murdered someone and thought I should write a few jars yeah you leave me off

the guards didn't know what to do so he was sentenced to death and that's he was hung in Mountjoy jail the last man to ever be hung in Ireland by the executioner Albert Pierre Point who'd come over from Britain. I think he was a Frenchman.

And it was weird for me, seeing that scaphism had come from that, the story scaphism, without me being aware of it. That's how the unconscious works. That's how flow works. And it's also, I think, why, when I was watching that author by the kind of the notion of

my share privilege as a man I don't have to worry about that stuff I don't have to worry about that stuff you know so the next time if you're a lad listening and a woman talks about male privilege there's one of many examples lads that take on board and

actually listen to her, listen to her experiences, fuck's sake, and I don't know, as a lad you're really not aware of this shit, you are not in any way aware of it, you grow up not needing to deal with it or think about it, so it needs to be hammered into you by women and for me it was anyway and since you know since we said that one example of male privilege has come into my head I just change I'm more conscious of my behavior when I'm out or if I see a woman on her own to just I just kind of flag with myself that she might be terrified because of my very presence

for good reason I don't know I adopt a friendlier gait or something I don't know what can I do but it's one to take on board lads please don't call me a cuck or a white knight

fuck you cuck is an interesting word isn't it it's one of these if your if your your politics are in any way liberal you get called a cuck a cuck is a cuck hold

em I think it's related to the word cuckoo, is it? Like the cuckoo, the bird, the, what is it? A cuckoo goes in and lays its eggs in another bird's nest and that bird raises it and then the cuckoo grows up and eats that bird or something. that bird or something it's generally a term that's it means a man who's very a submissive frightened man and he might have a girlfriend

but that girlfriend kind of just uses him for his financial resources while she goes and has sex with physically stronger more masculine men behind his back. And that is what a cuck is. And it's used politically to refer to somebody who, I don't know, if you're pro-refugee, or if you're not a fucking, if you're not a racist, if you're not a fucking if you're not a racist if you're not somebody who is is a you

know what wants Ireland for the Irish I want America for the Americans for white Americans it's this belief that your country is your woman and you are allowing foreign people to come in and fuck it behind your back I think that's what cuck means. I think it's one of these things we've adopted from American culture. If you look up I first heard the word cuckold when I would be

looking at porn websites and you'd see cuckold porn. And cuckold porn usually, there's a strong racial element to it. If you type cuckold porn or cuck porn into a porn site there's a strong racial element to it if you type cuckold porn or cuck porn into a porn site it's a scrawny weak white man with a good looking white wife and then a very large strong black man comes in and has sex with that man's wife in front of the white man it's the white man enjoys he seems to feel sexually humiliated by that and and enjoys it

it's that racial element and i think the the unconscious drive behind it is white American men terrified, terrified that their girlfriends are attracted to black men who they view as being cooler and physically stronger and more physically attractive. stronger and more physically attractive and essentially what it does is it reveals an unconscious a real lack of self esteem on the part of the person who's using that word

chances are if you're calling someone a cuck deep down you really think that you are one you know and I don't want to be too judgmental in that because again separate the

person's behaviour from their value as a human being if a lad's going around roaring cuck at other lads there's probably a world of pain going on there behaviour is still detestable. The behaviour is still something that should be called out.

But there is another part of me that while I do get angry with somebody roaring cock at me, I get angry with their behaviour, I do feel a little bit of empathy for the pain and inadequacy that that lad is probably feeling behind that, deep down, may not even be aware of it, you know? Again, tell me to fuck off. Maybe you just think they're all cunts. And if that works for you, that's grand. But like I said before, I don't like to think that way.

I prefer not to. I prefer to take ownership of my anger around it, and at the same time still dislike the behaviour was that hot take number one of the podcast nearly half an hour into it or maybe the

the otter story was a hot take if this is your first time listening to the podcast you'll probably think you're just going what the fuck is this what the fuck is this what the fuck is this podcast what is it about the podcast is sponsored by Squarespace

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Not sponsorship. Right. Squarespace are giving me a bit of sponsorship. But. I would like to give some. Free sponsorship. Just to be sound. To.

I don't know. A local business. A local Limerick business. Every so often. And. I would like to do that this week. For. There is a pub.

In Limerick. On Sarsfield Bridge called Pharmacia. And it is fucking class. And I'm giving them a plug because I genuinely want to. I fucking love the place. I mentioned a couple of podcasts back that I enjoy cocktails immensely, specifically tiki cocktails, because I believe them to be a Baudrillardian hyper-real simulacrum of a drink. There's only two places in Limerick that you can get nice cocktails,

and one of them has a terrible atmosphere. I'm not going to mention what it is, but it's just not a terrible atmosphere, a fine atmosphere if you're a dad's best friend. But it's not for me. But Pharmacia, that's a cracking place. And as well, the bar staff are sound. So when I go up, there's one barman in there called Cal. And I was bothering Cal at the weekend and I was trying to tell him the history of Tiki Cocktails. and he was listening because he loves making cocktails and he makes gorgeous cocktails and he made me a zombie and he made me a mai tai and then I said to him Cal will you make me a scorpion because I've never had one and a scorpion is usually a massive drink for two people but he made it for me in that one drink and pharmacy is rocking it's just um

it's you could a 90 year old man could walk in there and it'd be grand an 18 year old in college could walk in there and it'd be grand it just has that lovely vibe that lovely feeling you know that a good pub should have and it's new limerick business and they're they're getting everything right but i would say to you if you's new limerick business and they're they're getting everything right but i would say to you if you're visiting limerick if you're in limerick if you haven't been to pharmacy drop down to the boys and have a bit of crack and if you don't like cocktails it's grand you don't have to they've got lovely stuff on on tap as well nice cheap pints and the music is unreal jesus i was there one night they they went from Rage Against the Machine to

Carl Cox to Ross Angano Family. That's all right in my book. And I used to go to, before Pharmacia was Pharmacia on Sarsfield Bridge, it used to be a place called Riddler's and that's where I used to drink when I was a young lad when we were first, when we were doing prank phone calls years ago, back around 2003 2004 I used to go into Riddlers and we used to have

all my buddies used to be in metal bands and that's where I was kind of selling the first rubber bandit CDs at the back there in that alleyway I used to go in with about five or six uh prank phone call cds sell them for about two pounds or no what was it pounds or euros would have been euros at that point selling them and that would give me a few quid into my pocket so hop into pharmacy and the bar manager Mike Ryan he would have been hanging around in the days

of riddlers and i used to drink cans with him under sarsfield bridge and we'd listen to slipknot so i will give my support to pharmacia in limerick class place and then fuck it why not if you go to limerick if you're in limimerick and you want to find an unreal nightclub when you're finished with Pharmacia head up to Costolo's Costolo's is nuts Costolo's is I can't even explain it again you could be 90

or 18 doesn't matter Costolo's is like Costolo's is like if a if a 50 year old man had a nervous breakdown

and got a sledgehammer to all the walls in his house and just let everyone in with cans and played a

Sonic Youth CD followed by Nirvana on loop that's what Costello's is like it is brilliant and it'll be a sad fucking day when that leaves Limerick great nightclub

what's uniting these two places for me it's atmosphere, these are the places where if you're an artist if you're creative, if you're into ideas, if you like chatting to people chatting about politics, whatever having crack, good people, Pharmacia and Costal House, they're the places

in Limerick City, and they're my favourite places to go and have a cheeky, discreet cocktail or a pint. Yart. Just going to have a tiny break and I'll smoke a bit of my vape. I hope you're enjoying the the podcast so far this evening okay

okay hold on oh yeah em I promised you two podcasts back that I was going to start recommending

eh albums for you to listen to and I fucking forgot last week I actually forgot to recommend an album first album I recommended was Blue Valentines by Tom Waits a few people have been tweeting and posting on Facebook

that they really really enjoyed that recommendation and you know what I'm fucking thrilled you enjoyed it I love recommending good music I love music and I love recommending good tunes to somebody and especially a good album

because a good album is a it's a piece of art in itself you know it's not just a collection of songs it's one piece of work and it's a sadly a bit of an ancient tradition's one piece of work. And it's a. Sadly a bit of an ancient tradition. The internet laid waste to the art of the album. Good Kid Mad City.

By Kendrick Lamar. From 2013. That's a fucking album. That's a recent example of a start to finish fucking album. But they're getting rare. So. The album that I was going to recommend last week and forgot was the Village Green

Preservation Society by the Kinks which is an album from 1968 and I strongly suggest you go and listen to it listen to the, it's on Spotify listen to the stereo version not the mono version, the stereo version

but it's the kinks the kinks are gas cons kinks are wonderful example of a pop act a rock act that used humor beautifully in their music and irony and it didn't discredit or take away from the credibility at all. They nailed it. The Kings could have been as big as the Beatles. They started at the same time as the Beatles. Ray Davies is an unbelievable songwriter. Dave Davies' brother is an incredible songwriter.

They used to fucking box the heads off each other on stage. And when the Beatles and the Stones had headed over to America and taken the place by storm, the Yanks were looking for the next British R&B act to do the same thing, so the Kings headed over. And they just, Ray and Dave started beating the shit out of each other. Ray Davies, he got into a fight with the drummer, Mick Avery, at these gigs in America, and the Yanks were not having it.

And they more or less, they got banned from America. They weren't allowed on American TV. They were sent back to England. The rivalry and hatred between the two Davies brothers is unreal. One of the King's most famous songs, You Really Got Me, which you'll know it if you hear it. It's from about 1964.

If you listen just before the guitar solo, you'll hear Dave Davies screaming, Fuck off! And he screams it really loudly. And he's screaming it at his brother, Ray. Because they were on about the 6th or 7th take of the guitar solo and Ray was putting a pure bitter head in him going like don't fuck it up

don't fuck it up so Dave Davies goes fuck off and did an incredible guitar solo which some people credit that guitar solo as being the birth of heavy metal because what Dave davies did is he used to stick razor blades in the cone of his guitar amp and this created a heavily distorted sound which we now associate with heavy metal you know after that you had led zeppelin fucking

black sabbath you know using that sound but anyway the village green preservation society it's a more mature album from the kinks and after they'd been kicked out of america they were kind of stuck back in england and back then in the 60s you know especially the late 60s when you know rock was really at the height of its uh commercial potential and you had to go massive to be a just an english act was seen as a huge huge failure so ray davies as a songwriter kind of embraced this he embraced the fact that they were stuck within the borders of england and wrote an album that is incredibly English the Village Green Preservation Society and it was inspired by the poetry of Dylan Thomas in particular his poem Under Milk Wood

and it's this beautiful ironic satirical take on a disappearing post-war Englishness it's for me it's almost the it's the exact conflict between modernism and post-war Englishness. For me, it's almost the exact conflict between modernism and post-modernism, you know? The modernist World War II Britishness and the post-modern baby boom embracing of American culture and how that conflicted with Britishness and Englishness and how that disappeared.

And that's what that album's about and incredible songwriting and there's a few little little snaky things in there too like there's a song called Monica the Davies brothers they would have grown up I think they grew up in Muswell Hill in London I'm not sure I think

that's where they grew up but they would have grown up around the first influx of Caribbean people in the 50s in London when the likes of Jamaica became part of the Commonwealth so they would have been listening to the Jamaican lads who would have been the in their neighborhood listening to Calypso music. And Calypso is, it's a Caribbean music that would have come before ska and reggae. And there's a song called Monica on the Village Green album, and you'll hear a very strange Caribbean sound and influence there, which wasn't present in British music at the time, no. Reggae only really started becoming a thing with

Toots and the Maytals and Bob Marley of course but you will hear it in that King's song and they have, Dave Davies guitar sounds like a marimba or a Jamaican steel drum em, the second album

I'm gonna, this week's album that I want you to listen to, now you've got two albums to listen to, this week's album that I want you to listen to now you've got two albums to listen to this week's album that I'd like you to listen to is Crime of the Century by Supertramp I don't know you could call it prog rock I wouldn't call it prog rock because the songs are short like pop songs but it borrows from

we'll say the classical aspirations of prog rock from bands like Yes and Pink Floyd are short like pop songs but it borrows from we said the classical aspirations of prog rock from bands like yes and Pink Floyd but it's just a fucking rocking incredibly well recorded album of good songs so that is two albums this week village green preservation society by the kinks and crime of the century by super tramp which is from 1973, I think, 1973. Two crackers. Go and have a listen. You won't be disappointed. You can't. A weekly staple of this podcast is also where I read out some of Donald Trump's,

the most powerful man in the world. I read out his recent tweets in the style of your drunk limerick aunt. Who's had a bottle of West Coast Cooler. Well this week. I'm going to mix it up. I'm going to present to you. Trump's tweets. Still via your drunk limerick aunt.

Except. This time. She's ringing you from Thailand. She's after drinking whatever the fuck they drink in Thailand. A few cobras or tigers and she's ringing you up at four in the morning over the phone in a rainforest in a storm with monkeys howling around her. Please relax and listen. I said it's no good now to go past times anyway. You fucking goals. I swear to God, look at you. Eating pulled pork on Chebatta like you're from Galway.

My God. I can't believe you. And do you know what else? Fox News is much more important in the United States than CNN. But outside of the US, CNN International is still a major source of fake news. And they represent our nation in the world very poorly.

The outside world does not see the truth in it at all. I swear to God, you're kind. Absolute kind. And do you know what else? Do you know what else? We should have a contest as to which of the networks puts CNN in that clone box is the most dishonest, corrupt and dest were the actual words and tweets of President of the United States Donald Trump.

Good man Donnie. Of President of the United States Donald Trump. Good man Donnie. The rest of it was embellished with. The character of the limerick aunt. For authenticity. As she wails from Thailand. I think now.

I'm going to answer some of the questions. And the lovely observations. That you send me. On Twitter. At Rubber Bandits. On Twitter. And the lovely observations. That you send me. On Twitter. At. Rubber Bandits. On Twitter. And thank you so much. I'm still getting loads of fucking class feedback from you.

I'm still getting a load of people saying that. How much you're enjoying the podcast. I love that. I'm so. I'm so. It's just great. It's great to be doing something. And for you to be liking it.

And for me to. To know that you're liking it. And as well. I was looking at the. Stats. And figures. This week. Of where the fucking.

Pad class has been. Listened from. And it's mad. There's like. There's two people. In Sierra Leone. That are listening. And I think there's.

Thirty. Six. In. Saudi Arabia. A hundred people. In Indonesia. I think there's 36 in Saudi Arabia. 100 people in Indonesia. 156 in Japan. The fuck are they doing?

And I'm wondering what the crack is. 92,000 people in Ireland are listening to this podcast. 32,000 are listening in the UK cracking tens that's quite ironic isn't it 32,000 British people are listening just like the 32 counties

of United Ireland give it back please 7,000 Yanks 4,000 Australians 3,000 Canadians are listening every week to the podcast, that's nuts and

I send all the love in the world to every single one of you thank you for listening so let's get to a couple of questions Mark Reachtara asks how come Irish artists across the board get little or no support at home

and often have to be sold back to us by the BBC in order for Irish people to be bothered? Yeah, that's a bit of a common one. You know, that's certainly the case for us. Like, we initially started off, you know, doing our thing in Ireland, and then, we got a pilot on Channel 4, and then we got, two series on ITV, and sold out a bunch of gigs in London,

and all of this, and we ignored Ireland, we concentrated on the UK, only started getting a semblance of, legitimacy and respect, when it was, British people, saying they liked us. I remember there around 2014 we couldn't even get into the Irish media no matter what we did we could have you know we'd Jesus we were the first entertainment act to headline Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London and And it was only really reported on

when a British celebrity of some sort, like Russell Brand or Frankie Boyle, gave us kudos. Then the Irish papers would feel okay to report on it. But it's not just the Irish papers, it's Irish people. We don't respect our own artists until they make it abroad. And I just think it's a collective sense of low self-esteem you know that's all that's the only answer i can think of it's that we we don't have enough confidence in in ourselves as a nation and our own ability to believe that

anything we produce could be of any value so we do you know you can contextualize it within post-colonialism that us as a nation who have been colonized for so long 800 years are unable to be collectively autonomous in our national consciousness and we must seek the approval of fucking proper nations in quotation marks in order to feel good about anything we can produce that's a very hot take opinion that you can really tell me to shove that one up my hole just giving my opinion on a question there

could be very wrong some people will say I fucking love Irish acts and give a shit what the Brits say or the Yanks, but you know what, fair play to you if that's your belief. Speaking of class Irish acts, Niamh from the band Ham Sandwich who have a new song out right now and support them download it, buy it on iTunes listen to it on YouTube, whatever tell your friends, support the Irish act Ham Sandwich

Niamh asks what's your favourite Irish myth or story I love the chat about St Munchen in the last one I've got loads I fucking love Irish mythology, in particular the Fenian cycle, because it's kind of surreal and absurd. So I always fleet between

my favourite kind of Irish myths. There's an irrationality and an absurdity and a humour to Irish mythology. And you see this, the threads of this find their way into the work of like Flann O'Brien and Joyce I love the story of St. Brendan

and the Whale you know which is kind of half true and half not true St. Brendan was a real dude some say he discovered America before Columbus but yeah the story St. Brendan fucks off onto the ocean and sees what he thinks

is an island but it's not turns out to be an evil an evil whale so he sits down on the island turns out to be a whale whale wakes up

Brendan freaks out and then I think a sea monster turns up and then Brendan gives the sea monster communion wafer and everything is grand he comes across

Judas Iscariot weeping on a rock in the middle of the sea being tormented by the demons of hell and then Brendan protects Judas from the demons for one night and then near the end of the journey they find an island where Paul the hermit

is living a monastic life and he's bollocks naked and being fed food by an author so that's the Voyager Saint Brendan I fucking love that one what else is there Salmon and Knowledge obviously I love that

fucking King Sweeney what else is there salmon of knowledge obviously I love that fucking King Sweeney the story of King Sweeney now this is the story as well interestingly that the plot of King Sweeney is seen in mythology around the world

this this not around the world around you find it in Viking mythology in European mythology the story of King Sweeney but in Irish mythology the story of King Sweeney goes that King Sweeney secretly has donkey's ears

so he wears a hat and has long hair all the time to hide his donkey's ears but he's to get his hair cut every so often so when he does he chooses a barber to get his hair cut every so often you know so when he does he chooses a barber to cut his hair but obviously the barber sees that king sweeney has donkey's ears so he murders every barber that cuts his hair all the barbers rocks up the king Sweeney to cut his hair, and he's

halfway through it, and he sees the fucking king's ears, big donkey's ears on the king, and he twigs it, he goes, fuck, this is why all the barbers are getting killed, so he says to king Sweeney, look man, I've seen your ears, all right, I've got a wife and kids, all right, I don't want to die, please don't fucking kill me, I'll be severely missed if I'm killed, I promise you, I will never ever tell anybody about your ears, I promise, no one will find out about the ears, so King Sweeney has a bit of mercy, and he says to this particular barber all right fuck off you're grand i won't kill you so many many years pass and the barber is driven

demented from the weight of this huge secret from knowing that the king has got donkey's ears and he doesn't know what to do hasn't a clue what to do so he heads off into a forest where there's nobody around and he finds a tree and he goes to the bow of the tree there's like a hole in the tree and he sticks his head in and he screams at the top of his lungs king sweetie's got donkey's ears and he gets it off. And he gets it off his chest. He gets it off his chest. So a few more years pass. There's two woodsmen and they chop down this tree that the barber shouted into. And the wood from this tree ends up being made into a harp. So one day a musician travels to King Sweeney's court and everyone is there, all the nobles, everybody. And when the musician starts playing

the harp, the harp starts singing a song about King Sweeney having donkey's ears. And then King Sweeney goes mad because, you know, everyone found out about his ears, and he disappears himself, and starts acting like a bird, and starts hopping around, and climbing into trees, and behaving like a bird, and moving like a bird, and going particularly mad whenever he hears a bell, and again, that's just a fucking beautiful story, but it's one of those ones, where I wonder, you know, because there was a King Sweeney, he was a real,

you know, he was real, the Sweeneys were a, they came over from Scotland, I believe, they settled around Donegal, and then, the Sweeneys,

the descendants of the Sweeneys, the MacSwivna, became what is known as, Gallowglass, which were a class of, became what is known as Galloglass, which were a class of 12th and 13th century mercenary. They were soldiers of fortune and they used to travel all around Europe as incredibly ferocious security guards. And that's what the Sweeneys did, the descendants of King Sweeney, the real King Sweeney. But I wonder, is there a certain degree of truth

not necessarily in the King's ears story because like I said that's present across the mythology of Europe but the bit with him behaving like a bird and climbing up trees and going nuts when he hears a bell

I wonder did the real King Sweeney have a severe mental illness do you know there are there's types of there's a type of schizophrenia where the person who is experiencing it can adopt very strange and odd poses with their bodies and i wonder did king sweeney develop that or the other potential that I often think is wine right kings would have drank wine quite a lot of fucking wine because water wasn't very safe um not if they were living in a keep or a castle but kings drank wine and wine is made from uh wine is wine's alcohol right when the Irish king would have had mead I suppose which

is honey wine but anyway it's still alcohol when alcohol is exposed to oxygen it turns to vinegar which is acetic acid right what they used to do the Romans used to do and a lot of cultures used to do it is that wine used to just go off wine would just turn to vinegar because they didn't have proper bottles it was a given you'd have vinegar wine so they would add lead to the wine and when you add lead to the acetic acid it creates this new fucking chemical i can't think of the name of it, but it makes it taste very, very sweet. So often wine was adulterated with lead to make it taste pure sweet and nice. And this was the best wine. The king's fucking wine was adulterated with lead.

So quite a lot of nobles went mad. You know, they went off their fucking rockers from lead poisoning in the brain because you're not supposed to have lead in your brain so maybe that's what happened the real king sweeney and that's why he went a bit uh started behaving like a bird i don't know but that is the other thing i do a lot of um early irish history early medieval irish history the only kind of trace of stuff we have. Is the myths you know. But they did a DNA study of the Irish.

And it turns out that our blood comes from. It's somewhere around. Northern fucking Spain. What's it not Andalusia. The Basque country. Around there is where the Irish lineage comes from. You know. And.

This is recent enough information. About the Irish coming from northern Spain but if you look at the the book of invasions which is a very very early uh piece of Irish medieval literature you'll see evidence in there of them talking about a people the first peoples arriving on the island from around that region, you know, so there was an element of truth in it. Of course the other great theory of the origins of the Irish is the Atlantean theory, which is a hot take of a theory, but it's interesting, and one documentary maker, I can't think of his fucking name, but he presented the Atlantean theory that the Irish, the traditional view was that the Irish arrived in waves from Europe across an ice age land bridge

going from the likes of Germany and France to Britain to Ireland and that's where the Irish got there. But this historian posited that the Irish arrived on boats from the likes of Algeria and North Africa. He uses similarities in Chano singing and similarities in the music of North Africa and kind of Arabic cultures

and also similarities in the design of early Irish artwork and Algerian and Moroccan works to suggest that the Irish were a North African people that came here many, many years ago. And then, you know, you ask, yeah, but people from North Africa were black. there's recent evidence suggests that the first people to arrive on ireland would have been black because the white skin i think is only about 6 000 years old it's it's what the white white skin is very very new um so probably the first people on the island were dark skinned white skin is a mutation that happens six seven between six and twelve thousand years ago i think that could be history hot take now so go and look that one up look that one up don't be taking my word for it all right danny kelly asks when writing do you prefer typing on a computer or the physical form of writing

i like to type when i'm achieving flow typing is easy. It's autonomous. I don't think of it. I would hate to be writing with my hand and a pen and for flow to be interfered with by the physical pain in my wrist of writing. I'd hate that, so I type. Also, what I was doing is, sometimes I wasn't even using a laptop. What I would do is,'d use like Google Docs and get a shitty 20 euro Bluetooth um type uh keyboard and hook that up with my iPhone and I would do that if I was writing in public it was handy didn't have to carry a laptop around puke party asks what's your audio setup for podcasts and music production I record on software called FL Studio.

It's probably not the best suited for podcasts. A lot of people are going to scoff at me using FL Studio. But I've been using it since I was 16. And I can do literally everything I want on it. I can get any sound I want. Any bandit song that you like and enjoy. That was recorded on FL Studio. I can do what I like.

It's not about the software lads. It's about the person using it. And how comfortable they are with the software. That's my belief. Brad Coughlin asks. What's the best most interesting book you've come across on the history of Limerick? Anything about Jim Kemi. The former socialist mayor of Limerick.

He was a bit of a legend. But he's got a book called the Limerick Anthology. And that's mayor of Limerick. He was a bit of a legend, but he's got a book called The Limerick Anthology and that's a class Limerick history book. And then if you want something that's more contemporary and academic and sociological, there's a book called Understanding Limerick

by Niamh Howdigan, who I think is a sociologist out in UL and that one is quite interesting if you can get your hands on it Jack Gleeson asks have you read any Philip K. Dick if you adore Blade Runner I just finished The Man in the High Castle

has an interesting take on capitalism materialism yeah I've tried to read Philip K. Dick now again you can tell me to fuck off but the thing is with Philip K. Dick is, the man himself was a genius. His concepts and his ideas and his ability to think so far ahead in the future, fucking imaginative creative genius. I mean, from Blade Runner to Minority Report to fucking, what's that one with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Mars and your one has three tits

Total Recall they were all based on Philip K. Dick original novels and books and short stories but I don't think Philip K. Dick himself is a great em a brilliant writer right now you can kick me up the balls

for that what I mean is that he doesn't use the mechanics of the English language particularly well to tell a story. That's my opinion. His ideas are incredible. But on paper, I don't find myself immersing in his ideas. I find it a little bit sometimes confused and frantic and lacking a command of the English language. Just my opinion. Just my opinion, I could be wrong, you might love it and really enjoy reading his stuff, but that's just me. Soapy, Soapy asks, are you planning on officially releasing any new music soon?

Um, probably, right now I've got the horn for writing books that's what I did the past year writing a fucking book I adored it, I fucking loved it the gospel according to blind buy it's called if you want to buy it and I nearly considered that an album to be honest it's an album without tunes

I love music I'm always tapping away at music and I've got like a prince's vault of songs that are unreleased. I mean, like in 2014, 2015, 2016, before I started writing the book, I was doing about maybe two songs a day. So I've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs and ideas and stuff. But what I'm just finding at the moment kind of musically is just you're shifting in styles you know it's like I can't can't make

the same music that we were making six or seven years ago tastes just kind of change right now what's creatively exciting creatively exciting me musically would be the likes of Sun Kill Moon, Sleaford Mods, a fella called Baxter Drury, who's Ian Drury's son, and Bill Callaghan. And I've always loved Bill Callaghan and his former work as Smog. So that's kind of what the type of shit I'm writing at the moment. When I do sit down at the. In the studio and take out the fucking guitar. Or the fucking piano.

And start writing. The demo stuff that I'm doing is very much in that vein. So. Yeah fuck it I might release some stuff. We'll see what happens. But my focus for the next year is writing a second book Patrick Marta asks when you're in a ditch

trying to write and can't get creative flow what do you do that's an interesting one right I think I mentioned before I do a thing called feeding the unconscious which is when you're when you tell yourself right i have to write a book or i have to do some type of creative work

you can put yourself under an awful amount of pressure and you can be telling yourself all the time i must be writing i must be doing that if the word must is in your vocabulary you're going to put yourself into a state of fear and stress that will not allow creativity to happen creativity happens in in when you're feeling fun and playful creativity is like when you're a kid and you're playing with lego when you're four or five years of age playing with lego you don't give a shit what's on the box that lego if it's a ship or a car you don't give a shit what's on the box of that Lego, if it's a ship or a car. You never want to make that ship or car. You just want to fuck with Lego. And you don't know what you're going to end up with.

And you're not very judgmental of it. But, if you're having a bit of creative block, what I would say is that don't beat yourself up or feel like you're sitting on your arse or wasting time if you simply go and do something you enjoy that is not creative. That could be playing a good video game that you like,

it could mean binging on Netflix, reading a fucking book, watching TV, going to a play, whatever, spending fucking five days on Wikipedia. Allow yourself the space to do that, to chill out and enjoy it and tell yourself, I don't have to be writing today, it's not in me today, I'm going to go and enjoy someone else's work. Because what happens is if you truly engage with that activity that you enjoy, it's going to find its way into your unconscious and it will creep out some way or another in your own writing if you connect with it properly. Just back to the start of the podcast, I gave that example when I said that the story of Michael Manning the murderer, which I read three or four years ago online or in a book that ended up

inspiring scaphism two or three years down the line I could have been pissed off at myself reading that book I could have been annoyed going I was supposed to be supposed to be writing now you've got a deadline instead you're reading about this fucking the last man hung in Ireland no if you if you enjoy something and you engage with it, whether it's Netflix or a book, just allow yourself that space and be compassionate with yourself and don't tell yourself, I'm wasting time, I should be doing something else. Whatever you feel like doing at that moment, you will do it. Only by relaxing are you going to actually create something worthwhile.

There's no point nailing yourself to the desk writing if you're not enjoying it you're just going to come up with contrived stuff that you won't be happy with and then you'll use that as further confirmation as to why you're shit that's what we all do the fucking skill i've learned over the years of years and years and years of writing and beating the shit out of myself is to just fucking relax and realize whatever you write you've only one person to please and that's yourself and that's it make sure that whatever you do you like it and don't write for anybody else or don't create for anybody else yart the uh it's gonna take second. I'll take two more. Regular Monster asks,

When you record the podcast, do you wear the bag to get in character? I haven't heard any rustling. I posted a photograph on Twitter and Facebook a couple of weeks back. I actually have a special bag just for podcasting. It is a woolen bag that was knitted for me by a fan in new york a couple of years ago he'd managed to hack a chinese knitting machine and had put in the pattern of a tesco plastic bag and he made us these beautiful woolen plastic bags and he went to send them to us in the post and he actually got mugged along the way and ended up in hospital so and he went to send them to us in the post and he actually got mugged

along the way and ended up in hospital so he only managed to send us the bags on the second trip we got these bags about 5 years ago, when we got the woolen bags we posted a selfie 5 years ago on Twitter thanking him for sending us these woolen bags, then

he printed out the tweet of us wearing the bags and knitted that and hung it in a gallery in new york so that's why you don't hear rustling i'm wearing a woolen bag i don't not wearing the plastic bag for this podcast it would just get annoying it would get in the way of the podcast hug you'd get this crinkly crinkly sensation final question and i'll answer more next week but final question this week iris asks how did a horse outside keep you from pursuing your studies in psychology you mentioned it in the tuberdy interview and that it kept you from qualifying yeah if you know me and you follow me you know i i went to art college and then after that I received psychotherapy in art college and

it changed my fucking life so then I went and studied psychology to become a psychotherapist for two or three years but while I was studying that I was also fucking around with the bandits obviously doing music and horse outside happened and went massive, so I discontinued my study in psychology, because, I don't know, I could tour the fucking world, and do loads of gigs, and have loads of crack, and I was a young lad, so I said, fuck it, I'll do that, and if I want to go back and study psychology at a later time, I can do that too, why not, it's still part of my daily life, I still regularly read about psychology i love it so i'm sure what's a degree only a piece of paper anyway fuck it okay thank you very much everybody

for tuning in and talking out and listening to this week's podcast i hope you got a pleasurable podcast hug from it i hope my takes were not too hot and that um it made your day just a little bit more relaxing and a little bit more nice because that's what i want to try and do for you because i'm just fucking hugely appreciative that i have this space where i can talk for a fucking hour and people like it it's lovely um this space does not exist in commercial media and hopefully a few months i'll be earning a living out of doing this that'd be class i'd love that um when that happens i might start doing more might start doing a couple a week god bless and have a lovely week and i'm going to come back to you at the exact same time next week and if you enjoyed this podcast recommend it to a friend uh subscribe to it on the app that you're

using and leave a nice review of it please um that's essential that's very important for keeping the podcast going and keeping it climbing the charts and having more people hear it going and keeping it climbing the charts and having more people hear it just leave a comment leave a review subscribe to it

thank you have a good all week lads have a good morning good evening whatever the fuck you're doing try and fucking have a lash for the crack

and just for your own mental health try and live your day with a bit of compassion for somebody else or for yourself, just give that a lash

have that as a little goal for the week because I promise you out of the end of that you'll be happier at the end of the night and that sounds pretentious as fuck and I know it does but the nature of our society and especially the way we use

social media, does not allow for basic compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. So just give it a crack. Give it a go. Promise you it is going to work, and it'll make you a small bit happier. All right?

Yacht. 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 center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m 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. Thank you. Thank you.