Hi.Rise have just been added to Tom Dunne's night in the Olympia Theatre, 23rd December in aid of Temple Street Children's Hospital to promote the album. Hope to see you all there!!!

said it before and i'll say it again - prayerboats polichinelle - everyone should have a copy. the obvious one - written by ro byrne and still performed by the man in his new band "earthquake hair" - look out for them i tells ya... hi-rise, fair play on gettin that gig... ambassador first and now the olympia - whens the point gig???!

tom dunne started out good but has now turned into a corporate whore who cant wait to get his hands down Louis walshes pants. but the guy on 2 fm on sunday nights is rather good

In fairness to Tom he's no more a corporate whore then the rest - you have to remember that he was in a band that did well commercially (i.e they were never an 'underground' band so naturally Tom will have an eye on what's what in the commercial end of music at the mo (he is a radio dude on a commercial station afterall) yet he still champions young Irish bands that are getting little exposure on the commercial side of things. He has played and recommended bands like Sonora, babelfish, Pugwash etc, oh and of course Hi.Rise, so he is doing his bit for 'the greater good' (heeheehee)! Whereas you get c*nts like Louis Walsh who's sole purpose in life is to exploit young wannabes by producing out and out Sh*te. In a world of tits like Louis Walsh, thank-f*ck for people like Tom Dunne and Donal Dineen etc.

Totally agree with Dromed on this one. The reality is that Tom works for a commercial radio station and to be able to get away with the music he plays at all is an achievement worth acknowledging. He plays lots of Irish stuff and whilst it might be a bit alt.country and indie light for a lot of people, the reality is that if he were not there, we would have another three hours of chart much or even worse, talk shows every night. I even believe that his intentions with the 1st Best Of album were admirable. It started out as a listener poll, after all. Personallym I think the 2nd is shameless corporate cash in but if thats what it takes to have a half listenable couple of hours of music in the airwaves Mon to Thurs I am prepared to overlook. Good Luck to Tom & Donal Dineen I say!

Ah come on!!! Tom Dunne and Donal Dineen are worlds apart i.e. Donal Dineen is Good and Tom is s**tE!!! Yeah we all know Tom works for a commercial station but, the point of his show was to compete with Fannings show which fell off the 'anything' meter because old man Fanning lost touch with what was going on with music in any shape or form. Now Tom Dunne is only 2 steps behind him. Look at John Peel. He is older than all of them (and it is the format that they are trying to adhere to anyway) and he has had his finger on the pulse for well over 30 years. and is still on the ball playing new/fresh and even obscure music that you might not hear anywhere else. Tom Dunne only plays INDIE which you hear on heavy rotration on Phantom FM, Oh look 'gee whizz' its the Stokes, Ryan Adams, Mundy or Gemma Hayes...never heard of them...who are they?? yeah right Tom is a twit!! Leave Dineen out of it though..he is doing his own thing and doing it mighty well!!

I always thought the point of these cd's was to help out parents/older relatives who are in a tizzy over what to get for their 'hard-to-buy-for' teens relatives.

i never listen to tom dunne...donal is great but i can only listen to electronica for so long, as good as the stuff he plays is, so i tend not to tune in as much as i should...(his no disco days were nothing short of seminal though...trash can sinatras, american music club, palace bros., kristin hersh etc.; all brand new to me back then)...jay ahern on 2fm sundays (11-2) is the best show around although i get the impression he doesn't know as much as he lets on...nevertheless, he's committed to playing new and vibrant music...where else would you have heard people like joy zipper, american analog set, kevin tihista's red terror, kid loco, wilco, mum, etc. on heavy rotation this year?

All admirable points but the reality is that on commercial stations, niche music gets niche time slots (ergo the 11-2 slot for Jay Ahern). Personally I'd rather listen to Tom Dunne playing what obviously many people believe to be hackneyed indie in a decent slot than Larry Gogan churning out chart pap of some dizzy bint reading my tarrot (and lets be realistic here, that is the alternative). Why is it that Tom Dunne is being villified for not being cutting edge when his show has never even tried to be so? As for Donal Dineen, he gets my upmost respect for his No Disco days. (Trash Can Sinatras are probably my favourite and most underrated band of all time) but I find his radio show very difficult to listen to on a regular basis.

another trash can sinatras fan, brilliant!...the most overlooked band in history is no idle statement spleen; you're dead right...anyone who thinks travis are good should be beaten around the head with trash can albums...and even people who think no-one has come close to the smiths in modern times should listen and discover an even more melodic and vastly more diverse band...any news on whether they're still around?...i think donal dineen said recently on his show that they might have a record out this year...my top 5 trash can songs...1 the genius i was (possibly the best song ever) 2 orange fell 3 i'll get them in 4 send for henny 5 i've seen everythng or unfortunate age (the cake album is great too but the other 2 eclipse it)..."bury us with shovel and bible fuss/like the books that we've strummed we're dog-eared and well thumbed/we don't fold the pages we know where our place is/a tree for a headstone/roots grow through our bones"

I've been on the lookout for trash can sinatras for ages - has anyone seen their cd's about town?

What about Toasted Heretic? Another great underrated Galway band. "Another Day Another Riot" is a classic.

The Sinatras are still around alright (just about!). After a rather acrimonious split with Go! records circa 1997, they were declared bankrupt and as a result couldn't gig in the UK. As their popularity elsewhere was spartan this meant that they have only giged sporadically. Over the last two years they have been writing and recording a new album and even released a cd single in Japan called "Snow". The album is slated to be finished this spring but whether they have a record company lined up to release it is unclear. As for the albums, Cake & I've Seen Everything are generally available from Amazon and the like. Their last album "A Happy Pocket" is really very rare which is a shame as it is, in my opinion, a seminal release. I looked for about 3 years before a friend picked it up in a 2nd hand store in Brussels. If you ever see it for a decent price, but it - it regularly gets good money on eBay. Also check out their own site www.trashcansinatras.com for info & a couple of CDs of live, demo and covers (be warned, the quality is not great so not a good primer. If anyone is coming to their music fresh, I strongly suggest you get the lyric sheets from their website. They are sublime and probably the cleverist lyrics I have ever come across. A particular skill is their ability to be bawdy in the most inoffensive way possible. That's enough eulogising for one day. Brian "Punch drunk on patriotism, blind drunk on borderism, maybe I should drive" "I'm off to the ladies and she's off to the gents. It's a curious relationship"

Just getting back to the Tom Dunne issue (ironically enough I heard him play a Trash Can Sinatras song last night! Hardly been reading this thread has he?) Anyway fair enough, although he does play some obvious stuff sometimes (U2,Travis,David Gray etc.)over the last couple of nights I've also heard Microdisney,Stephen Malkmus,Lemon Jelly,Soundtrack of our Lives...hardly what you could call commercial s**te? I doubt if he would ever claim to be the new John Peel but equally I don't think you can say he's licking Louis Walsh's arse.He seems to have a good sense of humour and doesn't take himself too seriously either, so here's another pro-Tom vote. (Also someone said you can hear all that stuff on Phantom, well that's only if you live in Dublin, which a lot of people don't)

phantom might be interesting if you're 14 but otherwise...

Jebus! What is wrong with all the bods on this threads dissing Tom/Phantom? I'll be the first to admit that they are flawed but I'd much sooner listen to them than chart pap. Ok, so they probably will not expand your musical horizons to the levels some of us might want but the very act of standard indie music being played on the radio (particularly a commercial station) means that there is some hope for the future. I also find the veneration of John Peel a bit OTT. I lived in London during the heyday of indie music and I have a lot of respect for the man but the reality is that for every decent track he played there were ten to fifteen others that were dross. Don't get me wrong, he did great things in a time where that sort of music was at it's least accessible but the reality is that the internet has all but obsoleted the need for bands to get played on the radio to get a fan base. In many ways a similar thing happened to Fanning here - just as soon as people had a way to find new music without listening to his sycophantic bleatings, his show was in decline (again, hats off to him for championing alternative music in a time when it was very tricky to even buy obscure albums here and virtually no bands from overseas giged here). Right now, most new music I get turned on to is via the internet or through gigs. I don't expect Phantom/Tom Dunne to inspire me but I'd certainly listen to them over most of the rest of the FM spectrum.

I'd just like to add my own vote of support for Tom Dunne. Like a lot of others here I was a regular Fanning listener before his show was butchered by the powers that be in 2fm. At that point I began listening to TD on a regular basis. I would have to say that I would never have heard at least half the bands I listen to were it not for Fanning and to a lesser extent TD. Yeah there's always going to be people who complain that their selections are "too commercial" but hey ! We don't all want to listen to Boards of Canada albums. Oh and Spleen don't believe the hype - we don't all have Internet access at home..some of us are still in the stone age and depend on "de wireless" for our access to music.

Fair point about internet access John Doe. However, the need for extremely niche shows like John Peel and to a lesser extent Fanning has declined now that virtually every band has a website and a couple of sampler tracks to download. As a result, I generally listen to Tom Dunne/Phantom for entertainment mostly and if I get turned on to a new band, I consider it a bonus rather than a requisite. Personally, I get turned on the new Irish acts primarily from discussion/reviews on this site. Another good source, particularly for UK/American acts are the reviews in Uncut (OK they flog the Americana thing a bit but I've caught some gems like Hamell on Trial, Lift to Experience, Jeff Tweedy in various guises, Jim O'Rourke etc).