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.

Yes I know I promised my rundown of Electric Picnic 07, and I will write it up I promise, but I didn't get time after the Picnic before I had to rush off to London for my cousin's wedding. I headed to London a little early too, in order to catch Prince play at the O2 arena in London.

I've wanted to see Prince since I was about 13 or so... then when I was 14 he played Cork and I was all set to go. Until my mother found out it was called the Nude tour. It was called the Nude tour because it was a stripped down set with the focus being put back on the music, no fancy gimmicks etc, but I think my mother imagined all kinds of naked shenanigans on stage... I suppose you can hardly blame her when you listen to some of his music, but there you go.

Ever since then I've wanted to see him live. In fact, last year I originally got interested in Electric Picnic because there was a rumour Prince would play - which turned out to be complete bullshit.

Aaaaannnyway, I went to see Prince at the O2 Arena in London and it was incredible. He has been doing 21 gigs there over the last month, and I had heard they were hit and miss - but we obviously caught him in a good mood. The set was fantastic. I was way up the back, sitting on what felt like a cliff face which looked down over the stage which was shaped like the Prince symbol.

Despite being way up the back, we had a great view, and the sound... the sound was INCREDIBLE. Having just come from EP07, I think I had forgotten how good concert sound could be. Don't get me wrong - I'm the biggest EP fan you could meet, but let's face it the sound sucks pretty bad at a lot of the gigs...

Anyway, I'm being sidetracked, and I'm in an internet cafe in London and I only have a few minutes left, so let's wrap this up.

• Prince did an INCREDIBLE version of Purple Rain.
• Prince sang 'Sometimes it Snows in April' - which for no apparent reason is one of my favourite songs of his and it sent shivers up my spine.
• Prince is an incredibly talented fucker.

I will leave you with Prince playing 'Sometimes it Snows in April' less well than he did in the O2, and I promise I will tell you about my EP07 experience soon:

JUST OVER TWO WEEKS AWAY!

Jim Carrol has a secret source who leaked him the day by day Body & Soul lineup. Go check it out, coz Body & Soul area is the place to be.

These guys should be great at EP - I hope they play a tent rather than main stage as the music is quite intimate. The Good the Bad and the Queen is fronted by Damon Albarn, with bass player Paul Simonon of Clash fame as well as Simon Tong from the Verve, Danger Mouse and Tony Allen.

Love the album.

SEAN! Congratulations Sean!

A big thank you to everyone who entered the competition, sorry we couldn't give everyone a t-shirt

Sean is having a good week, the gods are smiling on him and his blog... he was Dugg this week for a blog post about a leaked version of the new Harry Potter book, which brought him loads of extra traffic!

Sean won a t-shirt of his choice and has picked our Bloggers t-shirt - and he has chosen the black t-shirt with glow in the dark design... which is proving to be very popular since we launched it recently Yay!

Here's a picture of the t-shirt Sean chose, click for more details.

The winner of our other competition has been emailed... check your emails entrants!

When I was on the excellent Indie Hour radio show we had a competition to win a t-shirt, and I'd just like to congratulate Mary Healy for answering the question correctly and winning the t-shirt of her choice!

Mary actually won a shirt not currently available on the site... Mary wanted a Racerback Tanktop, which currently only come in red, but Mary liked the look of our black with Power Reflex t-shirts... so we made Mary a special black Racerback Tanktop with a Power Reflex design on it.

See here for more about what the hell Power Reflex is!

Anyone hear me on the Indie Hour (103.2 Dublin City Anna Livia FM) chatting to Aoife tonight?

Being on the radio is weird!

I got cut off too - I think it was because I was shite-ing on too much... ha ha ha... no unfortunately I think it was down to how crap mobile phones are. I really wish we had a world without mobile phones, I don't have the balls to just dump my own.

Anyway Aoife's dead sound, I'd like to thank her for bringing me on the show and letting me tell people about FestivalShirts... she was really enthusiastic about the t-shirts too which was encouraging.

If you're not in Dublin (ireland), Aoife's show 'the Indie Hour' can be listened to on a live stream on the internerd, every Thursday from 9-10pm.

And if you found the site as a result of hearing the show, welcome! And the answer to the draw for the free t-shirt can be found on this page

Last year at Electric Picnic I abandoned my 3G Nokia phone with camera and all kinds of gizmos because the battery life sucked and I couldn't be bothered guarding my phone at the charging stations for hours. Now, via markhams blog I discover wind powered phone chargers for such events are on the way!

Prototyped for Orange to trial at Glastonbury, these gadgets may become commercially available in the future.

Orange's™ wind generator prototype is of the standard horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) type, with a blade propeller diameter of 30cm. Weighing a mere 150 grams (without tent mount) the wind generators 3 phase alternator produces around ½ watt of power, enough to trickle charge a rechargeable battery. This stored power is then ready for a mobile phone to be plugged into the small control box and fully charged within 1-2 hours.

Critics suggest a solar panel or a hand crank method might be superior, but I'd prefer to have an orange propeller on my tent any day!