Soundcheck is a new indie club night in Dublin (Ireland), and I have it on good authority that it will rock.

Want to know more?

There's a SoundCheck blog, a SoundCheck myspace page, and there's a SoundCheck FaceBook group too!.

SoundCheck launches tomorrow, so go check it out if you're in Dublin!

SoundCheck launch night: May 29th, 8-11pm @ Spy. €5 at the door
DELORENTOS (DJ Set)
Sounds of a System Breakdown
UnaRocks (SoundCheck DJs)

A monthly club evening (8pm - 11pm), we will endeavour to bring you a unique mixture of art, music and people.

Only the most awesome and interesting bands will DJ and perform live. The newest acts and the freshest tunes will combine to bring you supreme enjoyment.

There I was, finger on my mouse button from quarter to nine - at nine am on the dot I saw the tickets become available. I went for the Thursday night show since I figured it might be less trafficked than the Wednesday or the Friday (Friday being Friday and Wednesday being the night a lot of links went to by default).

I entered the captcha, got the searching graphic... for EIGHT minutes before it threw up an error... aaaarrrrghhh...

Ok don't panic, search again, I went through this for Leonard Cohen and got great tickets...

Ok, search for 2 tickets, best available... read the captcha word... WAIT A MINUTE!

No tickets available.

Think I have a case for emotional damage?

Luckily a friend of mine got two tickets and kindly offered the second ticket to me, so I still get to go to Tom Waits. Phew!

UPDATE: Looks like TicketMaster staggered the release of tickets and there are actually still tickets available now for all nights, at time of writing...

Radiohead commissioned a report on how to reduce their carbon footprint while touring and discovered that it is the fans travelling to and from concerts which contributes the most to the carbon footprint of a gig.

This is now apparently widely acknowledged in the industry, and Radiohead have tried to book venues that are as central as possible to allow fans to use public transport to get to their concerts.

The band are appealling to fans to think about how they travel to and from their concerts to make every effort to reduce the carbon footprint of Radiohead's gigs.

Radiohead play Malahide Castle in Dublin in June, and MCD.ie sent out an email which included the appeal, but of course the email did not provide any useful tips on transport to Malahide Castle which would help with the cause, but the MCD website at least provides a link to Radiohead's website which after a bit of digging around has this to say about Malahide:

Please use public transport to reach the venue if possible. A special Dublin Bus Shuttle Service will leave every 15 minutes from Burgh Quay. You can also take the scheduled Dublin Bus route 42 from the city centre. Visit www.dublinbus.ie for more details.

Every fifteen minutes starting when I wonder? Anyway, if you are using the shuttle service, get an early one - last time I used a Dublin bus shittle service to go to a Radiohead gig we missed the first act, which happened to be Beck!

After I bought my Leonard Cohen tickets I said to my friend 'I wonder how long now before Tom Waits plays here...' and lo and behold...

Tom Waits is confirmed to play Dublin this summer. Incredible. How many years have we been waiting for this?

He is going to play in a custom built tent in Phoenix park, despite allegedly having been offered much more money to play open air. According to Hot Press he wanted to play in a tent after hearing positive reports from friends who had played the Marquee in Cork.

So you can all thank us folk in the Real Capital for the more intimate surroundings you will get to hear this legend in

They haven't announced when tickets will go on sale yet, or how much they will be, but it doesn't really matter - I am there.

So Paul Simon is playing Live at the Marquee. I've been so out of the loop lately I didn't even hear until a few weeks back. The official line is that tickets are sold out, and several people told me they were, but a quick check on Ticketmaster seems to show tickets still available. Not great tickets, obviously, but tickets all the same.

I was tempted to get tickets, but it's expensive enough and there are just too many great gigs this Summer and I'm already going to too many of them!

So I was laid up with my knee when the announcement was made, and yes everybody knows by now who the line up so far is surely...

But just in case you missed it, or you just stumbled in here not ever having heard of Electric Picnic, here the acts that will play Stradbally in Ireland 29th, 30th & 31st August:

• Sex Pistols
• Sigur Ros
• Grinderman
• Franz Ferdinand
• George Clinton & The P-Funk Allstars
• My Bloody Valentine
• Goldfrapp
• Christy Moore
• Wilco
• The Gossip
• Duffy
• Underworld
• Tinariwen
• CSS
• Tindersticks
• New Young Pony Club
• Josh Ritter
• Lisa Hannigan
• Cathy Davey
• That Petrol Emotion
• The Breeders
• Michael Franti & Spearhead
• Sinead O'Connor
• Henry Rollins
• The Waterboys
• The Roots
• Kila
• Micah P Hinson
• Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes)
• Hayseed Dixie
• Foals
• Noisettes
• Candi Staton
• Juana Molina
• Turin Brakes
• Faust
• Midnight Juggernauts
• Tartit
• Hadouken!
• Silver Apples
• Mark Geary
• Teitur
• Blitzen Trapper
• Absentee
• Balanescu Quartet
• Lou Rhodes
• Adrian Crowley
• One Day International
• The Yard Dogs
• Tobias Froberg
• Boss Volenti
• Dawn Landes
• Constantines
• Yacht
• Lionheart Brothers
• Large Mound
• Emmy the Great
• Kormac & the BSQ Band
• Jape
• Dublin Gospel Choir

And more to be announced.

Plenty in there I haven't a clue who they are, so maybe there'll be a few gems for me to discover - but all in all it's not a massively exciting line up for me.

Sigur Ros and Grinderman are tempting alright... and there's a fair few in there who I would certainly like to see, but I'd have been more excited about them a year or two ago. Franz Ferdinand and CSS for example - I'm sure both would be great to see, but they don't have that edge of excitement any more do they?

A third date has been added for Leonard Cohen this June. He will now play the Friday (13/06/08) as well as the Saturday and Sunday.

Does anyone else find it marginallly annoying when you buy a ticket to a gig and then dates are added before the date you bought for? You know, like maybe the performer will be tired by the time they get to your gig... I know they're most likely doing a world tour and will be knackered anyway, but you know...

Anyway, tickets for the third Leonard Cohen night go on sale tomorrow morning (Wed 26/03/08 9:00am). Grab em quick!

Wednesday the 26th of March 2008 at 6pm it seems. Electric Picnic. Will I go this year? I think it will take a name I really want to see to get me there this year. I'm already going to Radiohead, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen... now, since I can't get to Nick Cave in Dublin, if he were to play Electric Picnic...

Leonard Cohen will play the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham on Saturday the 14th of June. Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning, Friday the 14th of March at 9am on Ticketmaster.ie. Tickets are €88.50 - €115.00 which is priceyish, but hell, it's Leonard Cohen.

It seems his last tour was in 1993, and I was giving up hope of seeing him perform so this is pretty damn exciting news. I guess somebody heard me giving out about the Summer Music scene and decided to set things right

Now, I better go and do some work so I can afford all these damn concerts & festivals!

So I previously was bitching about the line up for Live at the Marquee in Cork this summer 2008, but then I heard Lou Reed and Neil Young have been added to the line up. Now, I know Neil Young will be a welcome addition for a lot of people, but for me it's Lou Reed.

I saw Lou Reed play the point donkeys years ago and he was phenomenal, I saw him at the Leonard Cohen Tribute and he lived up to his legend and now, at the marquee he is going to perform Berlin in it's entirety.

I refuse to use the words 'rock opera' and will just say that I would go to this gig to hear 'Caroline Says' alone. Not to mention 'Sad Song', 'How Do You Think it Feels' and 'Oh Jim'... wow, it's weird knowing what the playlist is going to be!

I'm going out to buy Berlin today, and I suggest you do the same if you're not familiar with it. It's funny, just last week I realised that I had not updated my Lou Reed collection since my cassette days (yes cassette) and, shocked to discover I did not own a cd copy of new York I went out and bought it. I also looked for Magic and Loss but it wasn't in any of the shops in town. So I was already on a rediscover Lou Reed buzz when this was announced.

I have to admit that after Magic and Loss I didn't follow his next few albums, so they are now on my shopping list as well.