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!