A sad day

I gather the group of Chinese musicians who've been playing traditional Irish tunes around the local gig scene for nearly a year are disbanding. In fact, I'm told that last night's short-notice show at Paddy O'Shea's was probably their farewell performance. Unfortunately, I loathe Paddy's so profoundly that I couldn't bring myself to go, much as I would have liked to see them off.

In recent months they've been going by the rather unfortunate name of The Dublingers (I think that was a passing joke by one of the guys at Salud or Ginkgo, which, sadly, stuck); I much preferred it when they were billed as just Beijing-Dublin; or the very early days when they had no billing at all, and were just "that nameless Chinese Irish band".

I will particularly miss their extraordinarily fine violinist (although I couldn't help feeling sometimes that she was perhaps just too darned pure of tone for a rowdy Irish pub band!), but they leave us many fine memories to cherish - not least their St Patrick's Day show this year at Ginkgo and my birthday party last October in Salud. I do hope we'll see them together again one day.

On a brighter note for music fans..... Alan Paul is back from America for a little while, and playing three shows this week with his popular folk/blues outfit Woodie Alan, to promote their debut CD. The Stone Boat on Thursday and Jianghu on Saturday are both very tempting, although..... well, those venues are both kind of small for the sort of crowd these guys usually attract these days..... and I do kind of have other plans. Well, we'll see. Plans are made to be changed.....