The Medusa Fora

excellent stuff, Michael rocks woith banjo

The crack was ninety in the city of Prague... and elsewhere







The "hogging tour" came to its glorious end. On Thursday, the new Hogs’ CD was launched in the dim cave of Rock Café, a popular Prague music club. The show was a part of the United Islands of Prague music festival, and as such it was introduced by the festival organizers and – to the surprise of everybody, including the band members themselves – also by the Prague mayor, who only recently returned from his successful climb to the top of Mount Everest. The band wasted no time and used the chance to make him launch the CD in the usual manner – by "christening" it with some good Czech beer. Maybe it was the unexpectedness of the request, maybe the incompetency to operate beer bottles, but in any case, much of the liquid ended not only on the CD, but also on (and inside?) the mayor’s shoes. His absence for the rest of the show could thus be excused by an urgent need to rush home to change his beer-soaked footwear.

The gig was superb, as wild and vigorous as ever, and varied by the presence of the popular Czech songwriter Václav Koubek, who sang some of the good old Irish songs (Rising Of the Moon, Whiskey In the Jar, Rosin the Bow...) in Czech versions, adding also the sound of his accordion. A few numbers even saw the appearance of a guest whistler. All in all, the audience was treated to a mammoth portion of joy, energy, and great music till the midnight hour.

After that highlight, one more performance followed in Dobříš, a small town not far from Prague. Despite the strange setting of a community centre, with columns rising to the ceiling and small crystal chandeliers overhead, the wild gig got people dancing with abandon, some of them (only those of the male gender, though) even getting rid of their sweat-soaked shirts. The cheering at the end knew no end – and so did probably the number of consumed drinks.

All joy has to finally finish – but in this case it’s only temporary as Hogging, pt.2 is scheduled for August. Much to look forward to!

oi always moiss the groovy OIrish goigs & events..
damn geography 'n' politicians 'n' boirders 'n' crap!
but as soon as oi escape the land of hells.. agh, OIrish goigs here oi come

I’ve uploaded more photos of the June "hogging" HERE.
Where streams of beer – and great music – were flowing...

Your Czech album is great, Michael!
Finally have given it a try. Zuzana dutifully passed it to me a month ago but I got to it on last weekend only.
What can I say. It makes extremely positive impression. Ok maybe i am just into irish folk. Naturally i know and love most of songs presented on the album in their original irish versions but seems Czech perfectly suits drinking songs, adds them new flavour. I love your "Giving it all that I got". And Kieran.. well Kieran is just gorgeous on last track, gave me shivers.
And my special compliments to sleeve designer.

ahoy Michael, any news? Czech goigs are over by now?

Another non-stop Czech tour will take place in the second half of November (complete schedule HERE).
In the meantime, HERE is a handful of pics from the August "hogging".

seems even better atmosphere than at previous toimes, obviously hoggoin' is proigression' and thois toime Václav's on poictures too

Michael is on the way for the foinal 2007. tour in Czech Republoic!
woish oi could be there

Want to congratulate Pyro & Zuzana...
Pyro (aka Jacob of Letterfrack ) - on stage and TV debut! You deserve it. Keep on whistling
Zuzana - on triumphant entry into ranks of managerial figures

Who knows, guys, maybe this is the begining of beautiful showbiz careers

And thank The Hogs for the opportunity and trust.

Thanks MacRua

Yeah, Letterfrack is a beautiful place to be, I believe that - but to be a person from Prague in Brno often means trouble

Anyway, it was cuntishly good experience, pity I couldn´t be there for whole tour - but anyway, boys said they want me back with them when they arrive here for the next time, so I´m happy as a cun...I'm just happy

I´ve never imagined that drinking could be so much fun, indeed

Thanks for everything, Hogs.

http://www.vagon.cz/

The Hogs are live on here NOW. I tried watching it but my PC / Windows media player won't play it.

As the fabulous tour is slowly coming to its end, it may be a high time to share some visual input aka photos. Chronology be damned, the first batch is from the November 20th gig in the dim and cozy setting of the Vagon club in Prague – two hours of sheer madness and streams of fun and booze... and great music, that goes without saying.

[url=http://www.dzm.com/~zuzana/hogs/photos/nov2007-praha/photos.html]
PHOTOS[/url] (of the Hogs, with Medusa’s own Pyro on the whistle)

Noel, recording of the whole show exists on a DVD, so even if the internet broadcast didn’t work, nothing is lost.

Zuzana wrote:Noel, recording of the whole show exists on a DVD, so even if the internet broadcast didn’t work, nothing is lost.

Thanks Zuzanna. Michael is sending me a copy

So, since it's been so powerful experience for me, I thought I could post here some notes from the journey. I'm ill now so my brain is sort of less-effective than usually, so it will take me some time. Anyway, here go the two first days (thanks to Zuzana for corrections)

Olomouc, 14/11/2007

I felt like crap in the morning, didn't know why. I ate some pills which made me really dizzy, furthermore we had a sort of miscommunication with our driver, Radek, so I was late. Not the best start of the tour indeed. The journey to Olomouc was long, we stopped only at gas stations. We unloaded our stuff in the pub where we were supposed to play and drove to the hotel. The first great advice was, the hotel is across the football stadium (no one told us from which side); the second great advice was, you can't miss it. Of course, we couldn't find the bloody place for quite a while. At last, everything was all right, so we went back to the club.

We sat down and I ordered water (apart from shower, it was the last water I saw in the whole week). Food was decent, I ordered a skewer with fried potatoes, I think. I started getting a little bit nervous – the 3 hours for rehearsal I'd been told about became 2 hours, then 1 hour and if the sound engineer had been on time, we wouldn't have practised at all. If I remember it correctly, Michael and Kieran played me some songs and I tried to get them right. That was sort of a shock – of the songs from the Hogs' CD I had, only two were played in the same way, and I hadn't heard about ten songs at all. The sound was a little bit weird, I almost couldn't hear myself. That had a major disadvantage – I couldn't hear if I played badly or very badly; on the other hand, a major advantage was that the people in the pub couldn't hear it either. Well, Noel later told me that he could hear me and that it was not bad (I wasn't sure if he was honest or just gentle, and I didn't want to be really sure).

After the gig, we sat down to a table with lovely girls who had danced Irish dances there, and we drank some more beer... I wasn't nervous at all when playing, and that brought further comfort to me – I started to like the tour. As Michael said – it was trial by fire, and it could have gone worse. I got a lesson about the Hogs' English, where "cunt" is a universal noun and "fuck" is used instead of punctuation. Some time after midnight, me and Benny, the drummer, went back to the hotel (surprisingly, it was a much longer and colder journey than in our van). In the morning, we found out that the rest of the Hogs had (unintentionally) found sanctuary in a gay bar. Well, better than outside I guess. Good that the guys didn't get raped on their way home.

Brno, 15/11/2007

Ugh, I hardly ever sleep until nine, there I slept until ten in the morning. I don’t remember much, to be honest, only that we had some really good baguettes in the local buffet Radek knew from his earlier visit to Olomouc. Then we got on our way again. It looked like the journey from Prague to Olomouc, just shorter and with less stops for “pulling our cocks” (i.e. going for piss). I was actually worried about the gig, the boys sounded very good last evening, and I’d hate to spoil that. The place where we were supposed to play was nice, accomodation was just next door. Before we started to sound our instruments, we had several fantastic sausages. Despite me being from Prague, I liked Brno so far, good food always makes me happy.

The gig sounded like the first one to me - I couldn’t hear myself too well and I didn’t feel like I could play these tunes too well either. Even few dancers from Olomouc were there. It was nice to meet Zuzana here, who encouraged me warmly. After we finished, I had another sausage (they were very good indeed), and I asked Kieran if he could hear me on the stage - he said yes, something was good, something was bad. Although I felt about it the same way, it was not too good to hear that from someone else. I mean... I knew how difficult it was to catch these tunes by ear with so little practice, but I wasn’t sure if the Hogs knew (or cared). With more beer and Jameson, my mood improved, and when I fell asleep, I was looking forward to the next day again (Jameson is powerful).