Been busy lately… going to be even busier over the next two weeks, as we launch Emerald Radio – our college’s 1 week long Internet-only radio station, which I’m manager of – and the reason why I recently created a 15 minute documentary programme on the Irish language (thanks, Orlagh!).

If you’re interested, the station broadcasts to the world for limited hours daily from March 8th to 12th. More info will be on the web site (which I’m responsible for).

On a slightly unrelated note, here’s Thin Lizzy with “Emerald”:

I like mashups… and I like a wide range of music – from all forms of dance including trance and house to metal, hip-hop and cheesy pop… and I like trying to mix genres together in mashups to create something new… but for some reason, metal and pop mashups have never really come together properly in my eyes. It either comes across as sacreligious towards the metal track or just something created just for the point of adapting something that rocks so that it can be played in a nite club.

One example is this god awful “80’s rock megamix” track doing the rounds (- and it features on our jukebox in work) which melds classic 80’s rock tracks from Guns ‘N Roses, Metallica, Nirvana, Europe, Bon Jovi, AC/DC and a few others – all sped up or slowed down so their BPM’s match – together with a horrible dance style drum-machine beat, and yes, I must admit to having used it in gigs before…

And a quick youtube search, and here it is… (*cringe!!!*)

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way… you’ll understand how pleasantly surprised I was to stumble across a band like Rock Sugar. They’re making pop rock… mashing up pop tracks with metal songs live and making it work.

Check out their version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the style of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”:

Love it!

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• Metallica + Journey = Rock Sugar (metalsucks.net)

During my two weeks in i105-107 (I was there for a week of college work experience, but stayed longer out of choice), I was working on news – this involved writing copy, doing interviews (including Eddie Hobbes!) & editing down clips from them, doing vox-pops and putting packages together (including voicing them). They liked the packages well enough to actually air them during the main (12.45pm) iWitness news bulletin… which was nice

Here’s some of them:

“Brief History of Willie O’Dea” package for iWitness News by niallok

“Love is…” package for iWitness News by niallok

I spent the last week helping out down in i105-107 as part of my work experience for college. I didn’t really need to do it as I’ve had about 10 weeks experience working in radio stations since September (we’re only required to do 2 for the course) but I reckon the more I get – the better, and… well, I just plain like it there – t’is a great little station, so it is.

The highlights of the week for me included:

Singing and busking in the Big Busk-Off with the “iDrive with Nadia & Phil” team in the Bridge Centre, Tullamore. We were up against “Breakfast with Bernard & Keith”. I played the drums (a.k.a. the empty water cooler bottle). Highlights of our performance included Valerie, Fields of Athenry and Hit Me Baby One More Time. Yes. The crowd loved us. Got plenty of hugs and gave out “Hugs & Handshakes” vouchers while there. Bernard & Keith still won. Foul play was suspected. Great craic, all the same

I was in town yesterday for the Ireland vs Italy Six Nations rugby match in Croke Park. I was there with my cousin, a friend of hers and a couple of Italians she knew. It wasn’t a great match by any stretch of the imagination but we had good fun all the same.

Walking back from Croker to my car, I passed along Summerhill Parade where a samba band was playing. An Italian fan decided to help them out and provide us with even more entertainment by popping a horses head mask on and doing a little dance… This was the result: