Music things to see and do this month

Tweet "Nothing lasts for ever in the cold November rain" is a lyric Axel Rose wrote after he was kicked out of Whelans and left holding a bag of half-cooked chips from Roma II one pissing November night. Sure enough, those chips never saw the watery dawn, and Axel suffered inside himself. However, suffering begets inspiration, and earth is now one hair-ballad the richer.

Like Axel, many of us find the month of November as grim as a greying carpet of tripe of left out in a butcher's window in Phibsborough. Yet, we needn't turn to smack to help us through the gathering gloom. Why? Because there are a bunch of fun things to keep us otherwise occupied (in Dublin at least - if you live in Offaly heroin might be a reasonable seasonal crutch). Here are a few of them in order of their occurance.

Tripe: its repeating honeycombed surface makes it a foodstuff much feared by magic mushroom gobblers and neurosurgeons alike

Analogue Episode 1 Launch Party: Joy Gallery (Thursday November 5th, 7.30pm)

Analogue, the online Irish music magazine, is launching its excellent new Web-TV show in the Joy gallery this Thursday.  For the price of a pint you can catch a screening of the first episode of the show - followed by music from Hunter Gatherer (sepulchral grooves from a wandering boy poet's mind), Angkorwat (smudged expressionist electronica that walks a tightrope between euphoria and worry), and The Great Lakes Mystery (gliding half-way house between post-rock and techno). Like Analogue's excellent Peeek! CD, this night promises to be a signpost toward the innovative, the fresh, and the left-field in Ireland.

Check out Angkorwat here

Check out Hunter-Gatherer here

Yours Truly: Crawdaddy (Friday November 13th, 11pm)

Yours Truly is a night starting soon in Crawdaddy (Tripod). I know the lads behind this and they have great musical taste. They will be casting their net broad and wide to pull in a bunch of quality bands from home and abroad for some proper alterno-weekend fun. As the night is in Crawdaddy and on a Friday, it will go on late. It will feature regular DJs (including Aero - my old bud from Kells), and should prove a proper tub of happy craicers. We Have Band are headlining the first night with support from Feed the Bears. A lot of brilliant acts are on the agenda for this night (from Ireland and abroad): more details will follow.

Homelights: Whelans (Friday November 27th - Monday November 30th)

Foggy Notions and Adrian Crowley are behind this one. It is a sort of micro-festival taking place in Whelans at the end of November, which appears to reflect the musical sensibilities of Adrian Crowley as it is quite a folky weekend. It is also a potentially awesome weekend. In addition to Adrian Crowley, you can catch the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Minotaur Shock and Hulk. You can also see AN-ALL-TIME-COMPOST-HEAP-FAVE in the shape of Adem Ilhan, who is playing on the Saturday. The tickets for this are priced between €12/€15/€20 for single nights or €45 for the weekend. If you have 45 quid to spare it might be a nice weekend. Whelans smells of pine and Christmas as winter draws in.

MP3: Adem-Statued