Know your British wrestlers? We’ve a couple of tickets for Luke Haines‘ gig in Whelan’s on Sunday night to give away if so.
Variously described as a national treasure and one of Britain’s greatest living songwriters, Luke Haines has been ruffling feathers and kicking against the pricks for almost twenty years now. After a brief spell at the helm of C86 ne’r do wells The Servants in the late 1980s, he formed a band called The Auteurs who were quite plainly anything but. The Auteurs were always solely Haines’ mouthpiece and their debut album New Wave, released on Hut in 1993, could easily claim to have kicked off the whole movement. The record was short-listed for the Mercury Music Prize – although as Haines once remarked, “£25,000? Haven’t these guys ever heard of inflation?” Since then, Haines has released albums as The Auteurs (Now I’m A Cowboy, After Murder Park, and How I Learned To Love The Bootboys), and as Luke Haines (Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry, The Oliver Twist Manifesto, Das Capital). Another incarnation as the popular Black Box Recorder has seen Haines performing extracts from England Made Me, The Facts Of Life and Passionoia on Top Of The Pops and as the decidedly unpopular but no less magnificent Baader Meinhof on several stages several miles away from Top Of The Pops.
In 2005, Haines released a retrospective boxed set called Luke Haines Is Dead, a collection that included the extraordinary Future Generation, a new song that brought comparisons to Lou Reed and saw Haines himself catapulted into a different realm altogether – that of the timeless songwriter. The following year he came up with his best collection yet, Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, which was hailed as “British pop at its best” (The Independent), “Album of the year!” (Gay Times) and conclusive proof that “genius and consistency aren’t mutually exclusive” (Observer Music Monthly).
2009 saw the release of 21st Century Man which cemented Luke Haines place among the truly great contemporary English songwriters and contains within some of the finest material of an already spellbinding career which was followed in 2011 by Nine and a Half Psychedelic Meditations on British Wrestling as Haines succumbed, like most songwriters at this stage in their career, to writing a psychedelic concept album about the wonderful and frightening world of 1970s and 1980s British wrestling.
Haines is one of the true visionaries of the last 20 years of English music and his wit, courage and raging iconoclasm demand your attention in Whelan’s on January 15th.
If you fancy a chance at winning a pair of tickets just send an email containing the name of one (or more) 1970’s British wrestler to [email protected] with LUKEHAINESTICKETSPLEASE as the subject line by midnight on Thursday 12th January. EASY EASY EASY.
Whelanslive.com presents
Luke Haines
+ Guests
Sunday 15th January
Whelan’s Of Wexford St
Doors 8pm
Tickets are €14 and are available to buy online from Whelanslive.com, or the WAV Box Office on 1890 200 078
