So, the question on everybody’s lips, microchips and macro-hips / an cheist atá ar liopai na coitiantachta ná, is:
-What will be Jeff and Mutt’s follow up single to the duo’s debut monster smash-for-cash hit:
–Ebony and Irony-free.
Yes, indeed, the notoriously difficult Second Single Syndrome, not least for the duopoly – dup in text – especially red-hand picked to launch Tune One of a Yunefied Island
The venue for the first rendition of the second single (and not involving a tent although the tolerant, open and generous militarist mindset of both Jeff and Mutt first mulled over same, as is their synchronised intellectual way, and then canvased tirelessly rather than tentatively for a bivouak to make a vinyl comeback) took a while to decide. In the final end it was Yune-animously decided to choose the following sky-scraping Liffeyside edifice:
-Liberty Hall.
That is the venue: the second item on the musical menu has also been chosen, but is under strict embargo, Margo. (Jeff is often mistaken for her bro). It is on one’s solemn word of honour that this interdict will be kicked to kingdom come before you go, go. (And don’t slam the door behind you, wee Whammy).
But why, y’all say, Liberty Hall ?. A sinch. Apart from being the tallest sore thumb in DUPlin by more than a few inches, give or shake, it is also the building which hath appallest by far the most discerning eyes. Ever since it was first seen to rise in all its unearned glass and steel ghastliness.
From its dysfuntional erection in 1965, it has long been a shoo-in for THE uglierst building on the flat surface of Planet Earth in that architectural subgenre known as Shoe-Box. It is so repugnant that even its smug owners, SIPTU eventually called for its demolition some years ago, go.
Their wish was a simple one: to turn the post-modern eyesore into ghost-modern nevermore.
Only to have the green light of the Dublin City Council quashed and turned to red by An Bord Pleanála-B aka An Bord Fanála. Thus, compellng SIPTU to sip the bitter drop which in their case was blood Orange Squash.
The motto in Leprechaun of An Bord Pleanála-B, who specialise in decisions which delete the ‘wrecking’ from their balls up, is:
–Fir lána gan ghníomh do na Foirgnimh ghranna le suíomh.
‘Form Follows Function’ is, of course, the predominant maxim of post-modern architectural barbarism and Liberty Hall follows it to a, erm, T. Even, a T-bags.
While Jeff, that old son of a gun, is content to restrict himself to commenting that ‘maxim’ is a daaarling word, Joxer, Mutt will bark in that remarkably aware way of his. And be the first, as always, to attribute the coining of the maxim to an Irish-American who matters. (Taking up where he left off with Fr. Charles Coughlin who kept the Reps and Dems alike agog with his begorratory).
That would be Louis ‘One Shillelagh’ Sullivan who first fashioned the phrase back in the Floor-soaring Nineties. The sainted Louis, in the wall eyes of the trendy barbarian, was the son of an immigrant, name of the leprechaun-speaking Pádraig ‘Sail Éille’ O Súilleabháin. Sadly, Louis blew off a sky-scraper he was shaping in the (gasp) Windy City in 1924 and fell to his death, ere he could even yell.
He had been a virulent critic of The Chicago School but critics who attrribute this criticism as a factor in his high-rise demise are justifiably dismissed in the hometown of the novelist James T. Farrell as ‘scraping the barrel’. As indeed are those narky snarks who attribute his ‘one-eyed’ shillelagh style of architecture to his monocular surname; these duds merit the full force of a Studs Lonigan boot in the butt.
So, then, how does Liberty Hall follow the function of its Shoe-box shape? Another cinch.
True to form it has, for more than half a century, warehoused a (gulp) storied number of boxes containing hard-wearing (gasp) crocodile shoes. Of all shapes and sizes, but with a disproportionate number of , erm, pear-shaped pairs with two left feet. A F.O.T.-like fact to do with feet unseen but laser sensed nonetheless during her recent jaunt to the DUPlin Defroster of Post-Pater Nosters for genuine Imposters by the ever alert Arlene Foster. Who came accompanied by her crocodile handbag as part of her intuitivetly azure ensemble.
-Seems more like the Garden of Eden to me.
Said she, as she read the address (bound now for the redress board) of Liberty Hall:
-Eden Quay.
As the Glib One of Jeff and Mutt (who’s who? Heads or Harps? Ooopsy, doopsy, Heads or Crowns?) might remark, just another reason why Liberty Hall is the chosen venue.
Apart altogther from the Bang-Bang Connection. Read on.
Bang-Bang’s penchant, dammit, for taking pot shots at lots of passersby with his prisonkey-shaped gun from the platforms of CIE double-decker stage coaches had run. What? The gammut of fashionable jargon from shell-shock to, yes, post-traumatic stress. Across the myserious decades, including joyful, sorrowful and glorious itself .
As a result of Liffeyside’s gasest man being gassed by the huns in the blood-sucking muck and after a-kickin’ and a’ gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer of the Somme. Even as the wee Sons of Ulster sang psalms with rare apolomb next door in the wee Abbey Theatre.
Fake news, of course, prefabricated in all probability first of all by the (gulp) Fakirs of (gulp) The Unionist Times.
For Bang-Bang was on hand (of the unread palm) to rejoyce in the unveiling at the commencement of the first Great Anglo-Saxon (G.A.S.) Civil War (14-18) of a banner across the facade of Liberty Hall (mark 1) to the barking mad effect of:
-We serve neither King nor Kaiser.
If B-B had been a Boy named Sue back in the day he was hopping on and off Streetcars named Desire he could of hadding made a bonny lot of cash, Johnny in de Halls of Defame.
The fact was that said offensive banner of the dungareed workers had a spanner thrown in its less than delightfully Turkish-leaning works by being dragged down. By ? By the overwhelming forces of the goateed Peelers under the ‘Defence of the Wilhelm Act’ and this, naturally, was another thumbs up from the red and redder hand of Jeff and Mutt alike.
Liberty Hall is the venue; but what of the musical menu?
Confucius say: If Malta be home of Lateral Thinking (cf Edward de Bono) then Occidental England be home of Flatulent Thinking (cf Bono).
So, is this then a not-so subtle hint that their next release will be a cover version of a recording fit to scuttle even the most C-worthy of muscianships? A recording of Me and U2, the greatest super sonic rock brand, man, since the iconic stick of Isle of Man rock? And from where did Bono with his manky band derive the idea? Of? Of protruding his reasonably ugly gob, while yet so badly in need of a nose job, into the Gambian-shaped ambiance of the In-Mob with the likes of the lanky Sir Bob but from the Manx Hob Knob itself.
So, then, while the tensh builds, it’s back to the benchmark saying of the non-circumlocuous Confucius.
The scary thing here is that Edward de Bono and Bono are both associated with Glasnevin where, in keeping with a widespread disbelief, the streets do actually have names: it is scary, but only for the former in case he is mistaken for the latter day saint.
While the Malteser of the Mind Games is a Professor of Philosophy (honorary) in the Dublin City University the future Crusade in an Eyeshade made a right hames of Doh, Ray, Me in the local primary school. Being obsessed with the making of tonic sol fa a one-note:
– Me, Me, Me.
As a result of which he became the music teacher’s very own petomane, learning in the process the f. art and craft of controlling his musical abdominal muscles. To such a remarkably breakwinded degree that he was soon able to perform the Trouser Cough Concerto by Broims, in F-major right from the very off to the bottom itself.
Which just goes to show how he ended up knowing FA about tonic sol but a lorra ‘bout making a lorra, lorra notes. Not bad for a po’ boy from Ballymun.
-Eh, Ballymun?
-That’s Bonospeak for Glasnevin.
Ballymun, like, is a tad better for the old nameless streetcred and does look rather twee on one’s CV as Bono KBE, don’t you see. Not least in the designer scruff of Tír na nOgus, in that bogus rough neck of the sans-ronnie Woods of the Prole-ing Bones. Better, say, in anyways, than that unleavened Glasnevin where the streets have no Naomi, not.
Is fearrde thú Dubhghloiní
Ní thig Gounod a mheascadh le Bono
Chum Dubhghloiní Ave Me-a, y’know
Dá spás Baile Munna
Rinne sé Ballymoney
Meallann a ghleo níos mo notaí ina threo.
But back to Jeff and Mutt, and their venue.
-Liberty Hall.
Mind you, let’s hope it lasts. It is, after all, still within the living memory of Methuselah of the Methylated Spirits, the Metropolitan’s most enduring non-whinging street-sleeper, one with the requisite skill-sets to be still alive, one late Easter afternoon when he arose to find the capital in flames and his eyebrows singed.
But then, some buildings are so hideous they deserve to be hid from view or at the very least have an Orange Band feel the urge to play a dirge, to sound the fife less than lively and to beat the drum slowly, with:
-Conflagration once again !
Yes, a building such as L.H., / ar a dtugtar Halla na Saoirse, where Ronanism is rife. Other buildings, sans doute, are so elegant their pews are the least deserving of Le Feu.
And the musical menu….?
But first, and finally a Shout Out for good old Father Prout.
Yes, the same chap from de People’s Republic of Cork, like, who, as Francis Sylvester O Mahoney once really got up the non-Roman nose of Elizabeth Barrett Browning over in Roma. Shall one count the ways? Perhaps. But that’s for another day of days.
I’ve heard bells tolling Old “Adrian’s Mole“ in their thunder rolling from the Vatican, And cymbals glorious, swinging uproarious In the gorgeous turrets of Notre Dame, But thy sounds were sweeter than the dome of Peter, Flings o’er the Tiber, peelingly solemnly, O, the bells of Shandon sound far more grand on, The pleasant waters of the river Lee.
Quasimodo, a la mode.
Ligimis, mar sin, do chloigíní an tSean Dúin clingeadh agus bainimis ding a ling binn as an Claisceadal Cois Laoi. Déan an crios a tharraingt aníos agus anuas, a bhuachaill ! Ring-a-ding-Ringey, boy !!
TUILLEADH LE TEACHT : TO BE CONTINUED
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