Category Archives: articles

Medium-Sized Kitten, Fairly Big Rescue

By Ronan | Published: August 2, 2011

My weekly ‘Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story’ slot for Break­fast with Hec­tor on RTE 2FM was a game of cat and mouse this week. With silly sea­son well and truly upon the regional news­pa­pers of Ire­land, there were few men­tions of politi­cians, pot­holes and the promised land of the All-Ireland Foot­ball or Hurl­ing Cham­pi­onships, aside, […]

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Those classic mix tapes revisited

By Ronan | Published: July 28, 2011

The demise of the cas­sette tape was never fully expe­ri­enced in my kitchen or in my wife’s car over the past num­ber of years. I have about ten tapes set aside which still get played to bits, most of them are com­pi­la­tions but there are also a few albums in there too, such as Iron […]

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Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story — RTE2FM July 26th

By Ronan | Published: July 26, 2011

After a two-week break I was back on RTE 2fm this week for the weekly ‘Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story’ slot on Break­fast with Hec­tor. Refreshed and rar­ing to go with over 20 regional news­pa­pers at the ready, it was bumper week for sto­ries, par­tic­u­larly from the south of the coun­try. There were tales of […]

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Reach for the Sky

By Ronan | Published: July 13, 2011

I knew the third album from The Hor­rors was going to be spe­cial when the BBC showed a cou­ple of songs from their John Peel Stage Glas­ton­bury set, but I gen­uinely didn’t expect to be as as good as it actu­ally is. Bought for a bar­gain €11.99 on Fri­day it has not been off my […]

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Telling tales from Timoney

By Ronan | Published: July 12, 2011

Paul Tim­o­ney is best known as one of Ireland’s most tal­ented emerg­ing artists — a painter whose work has been feted by Aos­dana mem­ber Patrick Gra­ham and which can be bought from no less an insti­tute than the Saatchi Gallery; and a art prankster who achieved noteri­ety at the Gal­way Arts Fes­ti­val for a loud, colourful […]

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Charlie Casanova wins again

By Ronan | Published: July 11, 2011

The 23rd Gal­way Film Fleadh is the lat­est film fest to acknowl­edge Terry McMahon’s superb sil­ver screen debut ‘Char­lie Casanova’. The Mullingar man’s film was among the win­ners of the week­end, pick­ing up the Best First Fea­ture award at the Fleadh. The whole back story to the pro­duc­tion of Terry’s film makes for interesting — […]

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Happy cyber birthday to Nolan Micron

By Ronan | Published: July 7, 2011

For many, many years, the musi­cal and his­tor­i­cal mus­ings of Nolan Micron on his pair of excel­lent blogs Cas­tles in Space and Spinster’s Rock have been my first daily port of call on the inter­net. A man with an impec­ca­ble musi­cal taste, his links to old gold has evoked many’s the happy mem­ory of a misspent musical […]

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It was five years ago today…

By Ronan | Published: July 7, 2011

Today, June 7th,  mark’s the fifth anniver­sary of the pass­ing of Syd Bar­rett. The found­ing mem­ber of Pink Floyd was one of my musi­cal heroes, and one of my ear­li­est musi­cal mem­o­ries is felling this great sense of con­fu­sion upon hear­ing “Piper At The Gates of Dawn” the week after I was ter­ri­fied by the […]

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Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story — July 4

By Ronan | Published: July 5, 2011

No whoo-dee-doo Amer­i­can non­sense to cel­e­brate the 4th of July — just plain old Irish com­mon­sense and non­sense from the regional news­pa­pers to mark the first Medium-Sized Town, Fairly Big Story of July on RTE 2 FM’s Break­fast with Hec­tor. We could have filled about an hour of radio with sto­ries from the country’s regional news­pa­pers this […]

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Bon Jovi, RDS, June 30 — If there was a doctor in the house he was probably at the bar

By Ronan | Published: July 5, 2011

If there was a mod­ern day award for ‘Mr Show­biz’ it would have to be handed to Jon Bon Jovi, who last week returned to Ire­land for two nights at the RDS and a spot of knee surgery. Even though Bruce Spring­steen would prob­a­bly be the right­ful holder of the award – there’s no show […]

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