X Factor stars Jedward have been forced to withdraw from this year’s UCD Ball as a result of the ongoing air travel restrictions around Europe.

Their cancellation comes just one day before they were due to play in Belfield.

Jedward’s booking to appear in UCD was subject to the UCD Students’ Union being able to offer helicopter transport from UCD to Castlebar, Co Mayo, where the twins had already announced a gig as part of their ongoing nationwide tour. It is understood that no helicopter clearance has been given, as Ireland’s airports work to remove the passenger backlog caused as a result of the ash cloud, and that the SU have thus been forced to allow the twins prioritise their earlier commitments.

Monotonix are known as a rock band where at one time 80 per cent of their gigs were stopped by the police (albeit when in Israel) – no understatement then. Videos of their gigs show three longhaired, bearded, semi-naked men, completely surrounded by an enraptured crowd, creating very, very loud frenzied music.

Their Electric Picnic showcase will no doubt be a strange experience because there is no need for a stage when Monotonix perform: “We swim between the audience, and it makes it easier if you don’t wear a lot of clothes!” They truly want the gig taking place beside, above, below and generally all around them.

Monotonix’s performances break down any barriers that conventionally exist between crowd and performer. “We decided, ‘Let’s try to perform on the floor, and among the audience and see what will happen’, and then we put on a first show like this. And I mean it was wild and very fast, and the energy was great; so it’s the best way for us to perform.”

Regardless of what language Shalev may choose to sing in, it seems unlikely that the enamoured crowds will disperse anytime soon.

DUBLIN GOSPEL CHOIR

“We do the Sunday morning slot around 12 o’clock, and kind of wake everyone up and introduce them to their hangovers with lots of loud, raucous noise”- so says Orla of the Dublin Gospel Choir, of the Choir’s annual performance at Electric Picnic. Gospel music is clearly no longer just the preserve of American churches – it has spread its wings and been embraced by a whole variety of people.

“It’s equally at home everywhere, and I think the audience is very diverse, but you know I think one thing we hear back from audiences is a lot is that you feel great after it…So it kind of cheers people up.

“We’re a group of people from I’d say all different walks of life – we just have a shared love of music and gospel music in particular”. The choir was set up in Dublin’s inner city 13 years ago- it now comprises almost fifty members, who, except for Orla herself, perform on a voluntary basis, “but they still manage to keep a life outside of choir!”.

The choir have collaborated with Riverdance, John Legend, Damien Rice and Paddy Casey, and are planning to release their latest album in the UK and Scandinavia. Orla finds being part of the choir is “really rewarding” and maintains that it is because the singers love the choir so much that they devote so much time to it.

Ticket Information
Weekend Tickets are €240 / Family Camping Ticket €240 per adult. Each adult can bring up to 2 kids under 12.. There are no single day tickets.

Artist: Jonsi

Title: Go

Grade: C+

Hooray! The Sigur Rós frontman – famed for singing in the made-up ‘Hopelandish’ language – introduces some English lyrics to the songs of earlier albums. We can finally understand what they’re singing about –though this does detract from the warmth of singing in a different language and having to guess meaning by tone and mode alone.

Altogether Go is a very musically loose album, with drums rumbling and leaping through light-playing flutes, warming strings and a vocal line with collapsing harmonies. It is hardly a coincidence that Sigur Rós consider themselves to be of the pop genre. Applauds must also go to composer Nico Muhly for his well-placed and delicate arrangements throughout some of the instrumentally-heavy pieces.

In a nutshell: Fun, playful, innocent and vibrant. Not as sad as others – more of a mixed bag really.

Colin Sweetman

~

Artist: Various Artists

Title: Kick-Ass OST

Rating: A

Randomness can often be the greatest forte of film and music, and the two combined on this occasion make for a visceral treat. Highlights include the ever-electrifying Prodigy’s rendering of ‘Omen’ and ‘Stand Up’, not to mention ‘Banana Splits’ by The Dickies, which frames the entrance of Hit Girl in suitably anarchic fashion.

Taylor Momsen (of Gossip Girl fame) surprises everyone by having a halfway decent band and sultry voice to match with ‘Make Me Wanna Die’, a track much better than its angsty title suggests. Most intriguing is the appearance of Quentin Tarantino-esque vocal stylings from the film on the tracks, but the film almost exceeded him in self-congratulatory coolness, so this works quite brilliantly.

In A Nutshell: A gloriously deranged accompaniment to a gloriously deranged film.

Grace Duffy

~

Title: Ten

Artist: Gabriella Cilmi

Grade: C-

Cilmi is back with her sophomore album – taking on a new synth direction this time around. Although vocally strong, musically it sounds like Cilmi’s jumping on the electro bandwagon. The result, inevitably, is disjointed.

‘On a Mission’ tries too hard to pack an opening punch by drawing on far too many 80s influences simultaneously, missing the mark and ending up being more kitsch than cool. The album picks up halfway, but efforts like ‘Robots’ and ‘Boys’ start strongly, then peter out into formulaic blandness.

The album finally gets interesting with the laidback finale ‘Superman’, only for the album to end with a bonus rehash of her 2009 hit ‘Sweet About Me’ – which tellingly sounds fresher than most of the new content.

In a nutshell: Bland, with some showers of borderline cheesiness.

Lynda O’Keeffe

~

Artist: Pete Lawrie

Album: How Could I Complain

Grade: C

The album offers some nice tunes to tide the listener over – but besides that there’s not much to this CD. The solid rhythmic beats and throaty western lyrics of the opening track are reminiscent of of Josh Ritter, while the repetition in both lyrics and tempo leaves you tiring of the title track far too soon.

‘Panic’, with its mash up of electric and percussion, is the best and most original track and offers a nice tune to bop your head to, very well complimented by the smoky rasp in Lawrie’s voice (though it sometimes sounds like he’s straining to be Tom Waits).

Lawrie’s lack of originality makes this little more than something nice to listen to. You won’t find yourself singing the lyrics or having the violin move you, which is a shame because the album shows a lot of potential that it never delivers upon.

In a nutshell: Excellent elevator music – which, sadly, means a failure.

Ronan Breathneach

Sarah Ní Mhuirí won a majority vote for the position of Irish Language Officer over Ruairí Ó Maoilmheana, while Regina Brady was successful in her campaign to become Women’s Officer. Next year’s Environmental Officer is to be Alan Pierce, who saw off three other candidates, and the position of Postgraduate Officer was won by Martin Lawless.

In the various Programme Officer elections, current LawSoc auditor Conor O’Hanlon was elected to Law and BBLS Programme Officer, Edel Ní Churraoin and James Doyle were chosen as Arts Programme Officers, Maggie O’Connor won the race to become Science Programme Officer, and current SU Irish Language Officer Aoife Nic Samhráin was elected Health Sciences Programme Officer.

In other faculties, Emma Fortune won the position of Business Programme Officer, Patrick Alvarez was elected Engineering & Architecture Programme Officer, and Cian O’Donnell was named Agricultural Science Programme Officer. The position of Veterinary Programme Officer was without a candidate.

With so many people telling me they think I have a meditterrainean complexion, I reckoned I was the best person in the otwo office to examine whether our cuisine is really for the foreign pallet.

Gallagher’s Boxty House, located in Temple Bar, is a place for Oirish-American tourists to get back to their questionable roots, with its wooden (but comfortable) furniture, the backing track of Irish traditional music, and its apparent lack of foreign staff (which is vital for that all-Irish setting).

For these reasons, any Dubliner would automatically know that Gallagher’s is specifically catering to eaters of a non-Dublin origin. So, being shown our tables by the tremendously polite waiters and waitresses, we took our seat to dinner on a post-Paddy’s Day evening.

The proof of the staff’s politeness is in the pudding. I overheard some Americans sitting beside us say, “Excuse me waitress, what’s that Oirish drink that young man is drinking? Can we have some of that?” “Ehm, yes, it’s Heineken. I’ll bring some right away,” was her response. I know if I was working there at that time, there would be no possible way I could refrain from laughing. So to me, that’s good service.

For starters, myself and partner-in-crime/roommate-to-whom-I-owed-a-dinner ordered Soup of the Day and potato cakes – the latter being something I am particularly good at eating. Needless to say, they were extremely tasty – the only problem being that there weren’t enough of them. Soup was good too.

The main course had to have been one of the strangest meals my eyes have seen. Imagine a pancake wrapped around beef steak, covered in gravy. I’ve eaten ham wrapped around fudge before, but this topped the lot. For the most part, I thought it was tasty and flavoursome, but towards the end I eventually admitted defeat because there was simply too much. Again, my date ordered the salmon, the verdict of which I still need to get, but I remember eyeing it thinking, “I’d love that piece of fish right now.”

Dessert was similarly delicious and whoever made it should be beatified. The important thing to remember is that this is the Irish way of doing food. Although strange at first, you should get used to it. I prefer coddle, but went out on the limb and ordered boxty… I’ll know in future though.

Soup – €4.50

Potato Cakes – €6.95

Beef Boxty – €14.95

Salmon – €16.95

Gallagher’s Boxty House, 20-21 Temple Bar, Dublin 2 – (01) 677 2762. www.boxtyhouse.ie

GD: My proposition is to show you that the modern collusion of contemporary and classical is nothing to be sneered at. In fact, where done correctly, it can be magical. Ergo, I should warn you that while my dear superior has decided to refer to my examples under the blanket term of heavy metal, if I even refer to one so-called heavy metal band I’ll be doing well. This shall be a discussion of the much-maligned symphonic metal – which does not include Evanescence, dear.

While I acknowledge that some may find the union of searing guitars, an amp, and an orchestra (digital or otherwise) unusual, bizarre, or downright ridiculous, it’s an absurdly underrated genre. What you’re talking about people, essentially, is the combination of film music – beautiful, soaring, orchestral extravaganzas – with the passion and conviction of guitars. It’s awesome. I just don’t see what the problem is.

Now this debate is labouring under a fundamental flaw – that is, the disdain my superior harbours for symphonic metal is not matched by a disdain for classical music. By definition, I love classical music. It laid the foundations for everything that has come since and remains unmatched in scope, idealism, or innovation. I’m extremely partial to a bit of the old Ludwig van, Mozart, and especially Wagner (oh I do love Wagner)… but I also like my classical music embellished.

CS: Bar the fact that I heavily edited the above soliloquy (I do outrank Grace), I have kept to her main points. Firstly, let it be known that the collusion of heavy metal to its musical artistic counterpart is an agreement brought forward only by the former.

Had Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Vivaldi, Verdi, Bach and others been alive to witness the atrocity that is befouling their music, I think they would have self-consciously written terribly so such an amalgamation of “music” could never have been borne. Upon hearing Evanescence (not before mistaking it for a screaming whale), I scramble to turn or hit whatever bastard has scuffled to offend my ears.

Heavy Metal and all its counterparts are largely based on repetition of every known quantity. I know this because I used to be fan and a player, until I said in bold lettering: “To hell with this shit”, and turned instead to a more appropriate, refined type of music that has at least a pinch of thought placed into it.

Guitars strum the same power chords with the ambition of creating distortion (in other words, not music). Same goes for the drums and singing. To make music, one needs the ability to put math and sound together. To make metal, all you need is a wanker’s wrist and some noisy equipment.

GD: I scorn the notion that a wanker’s wrist is sufficient to create symphonic metal. Shows how little you get up to with your hands.

CS: I was making the point that skill level in heavy metal is based on how fast you can stroke a guitar or how fast you can repetitively strike some drums.

GD: This reminds me of the whole maths bias in school – where you’re simply not a genius until you’re good at maths, no matter how good you are at everything else. So you’re evidently not a good musician unless you can make sweet love to a piano.

CS: What does that even mean? I’m applying stylistic elements of composition to music and you’re comparing geeks in math class. Stay on topic!

GD: Get down off your classical-ist pedestal. A lot of heavy music still involves, as you term it, ‘stylistic’ elements of composition. You can’t write a ten-minute metal song accompanied by a full orchestral suite without having some degree of expertise on the classics.

CS: And I’m sure that these heavy metal bands compose it themselves? As if! They probably hire some goof like me to do it. That or they just compose the most harmonically simple tunes known to man.

GD: Clearly you have never familiarised yourself with Nightwish. Or Epica. Epica are a better example, actually. If someone is ghost-writing their orchestral parts they’re certainly not being credited. I suppose that is the advantage of having a classically trained pianist as part of the band. It is possible to write both!

CS: Ah! You’ve named two bands who have actively stolen off classical composers. They’re not credited because the statute of limitations has run out on them, so technically they are in the public domain. Plus, they’re shite.

GD: Define ‘stolen’. And if you’re going to bring legalese into this, then use better arguments than that ‘they’re shite’.

CS: Most would agree I think. And that’s that, argument won.

GD: Majority rules eh? Then actual musical sales will hold that Jedward owns both of us.

CS: While I agree with that statement, think about this: no one will know who Jedward are in twenty years, whereas Bach and Vivaldi are still actively spoken of. Their music will be played many more times than those two.

GD: Hmm… technically you can’t use age as a justifying argument when our two genres are separated by about two hundred years. That’s giving you a ludicrous advantage.

CS: Well I should just stop arguing then, I think!

GD: Haha. You lose.

Many of us have been woken by our phones as our boss calls frantically, trying to get us to go to work because we’re already an hour late – and so we cycle/walk/run hysterically to work, arrive there, only to be berated and told to clean the toilet.

But in some students’ lives, there is no such early morning anguish. John “Poker John” Daly is an engineering student in UCD who has managed to find the perfect job for himself: online poker. But how did it all begin?

“Well, very bored one Christmas Break in first year, I was on my own in the house. I found Paddy Power’s website, and saw that they took Laser payments, so I just went onto it. It was just me being really bored, and I said, ‘Oh, poker – I’ve heard of that, I’ll give it a go.’ I had no interest in card games – I didn’t know too much about them. But I started playing, and then I think what motivated me to get better was that people were berating me on the tables – [saying] ‘Oh, you’re doing it so wrong’ and all that.”

But surely it couldn’t be that easy? Surely you’d need a rule-book to find out more? “Eventually I did – I had to try get down on the rules. Eventually I started realising that there is strategy, method and information out there to approach these things.

“At the time I was incredibly broke and I wasn’t playing for the money,” Daly continues. “I mean, I wouldn’t have gotten any decent money out of it so it was just for fun. But eventually, I was getting very poor in the pocket and noticed my skills were getting better, so I decided to start making money from it.” Shortly thereafter, he informs me, Daly managed to pay his rent with money won from poker.

Playing with your own money is risky, however, as you could lose a lot of your hard-earned cash. This is why John doesn’t play with his own money. Instead, he plays as an investment to others. “I played about $5 stakes. I found a community of poker players, on a site called parttimepoker.com, learned the strategy and began playing seriously. I also found a site that tracked your results, so it tells you your profit and loss… With those statistics, people can check and see if you’re a good investment to them. In terms of investors, if you lose money, you’re only losing their money… if you win, you get to keep part of the profit and so do they. When you’re playing poker like me, you’re referred to as an investment because you will get money out of it if you are playing correctly. This in the long term will always make you money.”

One of the major differences between playing poker online and in person is that you cannot read your opponent’s face expression. John believes this isn’t a problem: “It’s such a common misconception that there is no reading into your opponent’s gameplay. There’s so much information! Even the best poker-players will tell you that when you’re playing live, the facial expressions count for about ten per cent of your read. The rest is about betting patterns. Players typically play consistent strong hands and then you see that they’re playing something really small or vice-versa. You look for a pattern, and when you see something out of character, you say, ‘Something’s up’, and then you can tell.”

But if it happens to you, and you’re out of character? “Well, then you have to manipulate them. Be aware that you have a character too,” Daly advises. “You should try to mislead them, as if you had a bad hand. Then they don’t know what to believe.”

Of course, the main attraction to playing poker comes from the monetary benefits. “My earnings depend on the volume of games that I play. When I was playing full-time, in a typical week I’d play 200-300 games a week. So I’d earn about $600 a week, which I get 70 per cent of, so that’s $420. Usually you get a 50:50 ratio for profit, but a player’s cut can go up depending on their skill-level.”

So does John see this as a viable career? “I’d like to keep a balance of both, but having a degree and a job is far more stable a life than just depending on poker. As a full-time income it’s hard to rely on – it’s just too stressful for that kind of thing. Hopefully I’ll keep it as a money-making hobby, which I hope to make a lot from. But I certainly don’t want to count on paying my rent and bills from it, which I was doing for a long time.”

I conclude by asking how someone gets started on the road to financial security. “The absolute hardest thing is finding the right information… But you should find a good coach – they only take a certain amount of your profit, so you don’t have to pay them directly. If you’re not winning, neither are they.”

A spokesperson for UCD said that staff in the School of English, Drama & Film Studies would be relocated to the premises currently occupied by the School of Languages and Literatures this summer, as part of an ongoing project “to provide appropriate space for the delivery of programmes.”

The assertion comes only days after the Director of the Newman Regeneration Project, Cliona de Bhaldraithe Marsh, assured staff in both schools that the relocation plans had been shelved for the forseeable future.

Academics from both schools held a staff meeting during the mid-term break to discuss the matter, to which both schools have significant objections.

The relocation undertakings had been intended to collate the office space currently occupied by the School of English, Drama & Film Studies which has become scattered across the Belfield and Blackrock campuses as a result of the growth of student numbers and the gradual academic restructuring undergone in UCD in recent years.

The intended co-location of the school’s premises, however, would have decentralised the School of Languages and Literatures by redistributing all but one of its own departments across the Newman Building, from their current home on the fourth floor of the D Block to the second floor of the J Block on the other side of the Arts complex.

One staff member of the School of Languages and Literatures said that staff in their school were “not happy in the slightest. Part of the reason is that we don’t want to move – you get attached to your office if you’ve been in it for a few decades – but the main reason was that the proposed co-location of the School of English was apparently to be brought by splitting up the School of Languages and Literatures into two different locations.”

The academic added that when UCD first informed staff members of the proposed reallocation of their office space, “many of us were opposed because we felt we had departments with strong identities, and that they were all going to be amalgamated into this thing that didn’t really have a reason to be.”

This dissatisfaction was echoed by Professor Alan Fletcher of the School of English, Drama & Film Studies who conceded that while there was a small practical benefit in the co-location of his School, the benefit was insufficient to merit swapping the offices of the two Schools.

We were somewhere after Barstow on the edge of the desert when sleep began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit hungover; maybe you should take my iPod…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us as the bus slowed down to let us passengers take a glimpse of the sky, which was full of what looked like some kid’s gigantic Lego set, all towering over the bus, now going about a twenty miles an hour with the air-con broken to the central strip of Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! Get me off this goddamn sweatbox!”

Of course, this is only a rewrite from the popular Hunter S. Thompson novel, but it arguably sums up my arrival in Las Vegas. That said, Vegas bears little resemblance in real life to how it’s depicted in literature and films (Ocean’s Whatever, What Happens in Vegas, other crap movies). The main strip is currently undergoing massive construction work as one of the world’s largest hotels, the MGM CityCenter, is readied for opening in a few months.

Sadly for us, this meant walking around the entire street just to get to the other side, which – in desert weather – meant arriving at our nightclub destination drowned in sweat.

Despite this, Vegas appeared just as I expected it to: unbelievably elusive. After driving for several hours through dirt and sand, its mirage just pops out of nowhere.

But let’s cut to the chase. Drink in nightclubs is very expensive – just a tad bit higher than say, Lillie’s Bordello. One might pay $20+ into one of the lesser-known clubs that charges $5 for a bottle of Budweiser. But that’s not the money-grabber: in the three days I spent there, I spent only about a fifth of my money on alcohol, about half of it on gambling losses, and the rest on travel expenses.

The thing about gambling in Las Vegas is that the minimum hand for most games (excluding the slot machines) is $5 in cheap casinos, and $20 in the more upmarket ones. Of course, you also have to know how to play – a persistent problem for me – so I did what most big non-gamblers do, and threw all my money (about $200) on red, black, odd, even, and 24. Needless to say, I didn’t win a single thing throughout the entire trip. But even in losing that much hard-earned cash, how often would you find yourself in Vegas?

My fellow gambler, on the other hand, was one of those winner-loser people. He persisted gambling throughout each night, once coming back to the hotel room having lost as much as myself, and the next night having won twice as much as he had lost.

There are of course, other pieces to this story, but what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… except for herpes.

Between 350 and 400 students took part in the game, which was played on a mat covering a ground area of 1438 square metres. The record was previously held by students from the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who played a game on a mat measuring 1411.8 square metres – approximately ten mats fewer.

The event itself, which was chiefly organised by the Suas society, was supported by UCD Students’ Union and by UCD Societies’ Council, and was held in order to raise funds for the Rag Week beneficiary charities.

A reported €890 was collected at the event, which will be distributed among five UCD societies including Suas, St Vincent de Paul, Rotaract, the IPA Society and the Gaisce society.

The central Suas Educational Development organisation assisted its UCD branch by providing buckets, t-shirts and photography for the day, while also offering advice for safety and guidance plans.

MB, the manufacturers of the Twister game, assisted the society in breaking the record by offering to sell game mats at a significant discount.

Auditor of UCD Suas, Dave Hegarty, has expressed his satisfaction with the event, telling The University Observer that “it went well on the day, and everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves.” He added that the record attempt “started off as just an idea, but quickly gathered pace; [eventually] hundreds of students took part.” Hegarty thanked those who had helped the society run the event, commenting that the society “had great support from the college and from MB in particular.”

Hegarty went on to say “it’s all for great causes. I volunteered with Suas in Kolkata a few years ago and I know that the money raised here can go a long way over there.”

Suas is a charitable organisation that raises money to enable educational development in underprivileged countries such as India and Kenya. Hegarty stated that the UCD society hope to run one more fundraiser before the end of the semester, but said that the success of such an effort would depend on the academic commitments of the society’s committee members.

Other fundraising events during Rag Week included a Pancake Sale on Tuesday and a performance from the Saw Doctors in the Student Bar on Wednesday.