You’ve probably already heard the rumours and read the arguments about Lana Del Rey — or Lizzy Grant — that have been exploding on the blogosphere over the past few months as the backlash has begun before here “debut” album is released. The argument has been that Del Rey is not the ‘real’ talent many had been bowled over with when ‘Video Games’ hit the internet last summer and in fact has been moulded and modelled to fit this brash, pouting and confident ‘Nancy Sinatra’ image.

On Saturday, The Guardian published a fine, fine piece, that kind of pulls the whole story to-date together. You can read it here

It basically tells of the change she’s undergone in the past number of years; the money pumped into her (she’s the daughter of a millionaire) and the extent that her record company and management have gone to try and erase her past career as Lizzy Grant from the internet. For example, here is a video for Kill Kill, the lead track from a 2010 Lizzy Grant EP, that I couldn’t find anywhere on YouTube (the re-recorded Lana Del Rey version is up there).

Her ‘debut’ album, Born To Die, out next week, is actually her second album. Her first was released under her real name, Lizzy Grant, and was called Lana Del Rey (confusing, yes).

Below is one of the Lizzy Grant clips mentioned in The Guardian article. It’s an article well worth reading. And Lana (above) looks quite different to Lizzy (below), especially in terms of attitude.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/taste-has-never-met-shame-i-love-you-conor-oberst

——————————————–

Jeff Buckley and Ireland

Jeff Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert, carries a shillelagh everywhere she goes. The quaint twisted knobbly stick can be found in the back seat of the car she drives around LA. It’s her weapon of choice. “Jeff brought it back for me after the Trinity Ball in 1992,” she remembers. “I treasure it. Most people in LA carry a gun around with them,” she laughs, “but I’ve got my shillelagh! I just shake it at anyone who bothers me!”

This coming November might have seen Jeff Buckley get a playful whack of that shillelagh. Were he still alive he may have made her laugh as he recalled its purchase whilst celebrating what would have been his 45^th birthday. Could have, would have, what might have been.

In hindsight it’s the timing of Jeff Buckley’s death which seems particularly cruel. He was just 30-years-old. Grisly parallels with the death of his father abounded. Tim Buckley, the cult songwriter, was also taken years before his time. An accidental heroin overdose brought him to his grave at just 28-year’s-old. Jeff had met him only once.

While Tim managed to release nine albums in his sort career, the extravagantly gifted Jeff had only just begun to record the follow up to Grace, his debut and only completed record.

Released in August 1994, Grace remains a certified modern classic. Full of hope, longing and incomplete beauty, it is a record which has left an indelible print on modern music. Intrinsically beautiful, its influence remains incalculable. Without it we would arguably have never heard of artists such as Anthony and The Johnson’s, Damien Rice or Coldplay.

Unsigned and having never before left the US, let alone performed outside of the country, Buckley arrived in Ireland for the 1992 Trinity Ball.

As a record, Grace too remains indicative of the path Buckley’s record company saw him moving towards. Referred to as a “heritage” artist, Columbia Records viewed Jeff as the completion of a holy trinity at the label. Dylan had passed the torch to Springsteen, and Jeff would in turn lead on from The Boss. Yet all thoughts of that lineage were lifted on May 29^th 1997. In a move typical of his impulsive personality, Jeff Buckley waded into Tennessee’s Wolf River. He would swim to the other side. He never made it. That evening he drowned, and Jeff Buckley’s short yet wondrous recording career had come to a premature end.

Five year’s earlier such a career had yet to begin. Yet Jeff Buckley had already made his first trip abroad as a performing artist. Unsigned and having never before left the US, let alone performed outside of the country, Buckley arrived in Ireland for the 1992 Trinity Ball.

“I remember the Trinity Ball gig well because Jeff used to recall it in quite a funny way,” reminisces Mary Guibert. “When he came back from Ireland Jeff acted things out and was quite animated about that particular show, which was one of his earliest. He was so impressed and so enlivened by his visit.

“So he told me about how he flew there for the Trinity Ball and how excited he was to be a part of that, because it was such a lively event, and how warm and pleasant everyone was in greeting him there. It was his first trip to Ireland, and he stayed in someone’s home, either one of the promoters or a friend, I’m not quite sure. But he recalled this story about how he came downstairs for breakfast one morning in this sweet little house and his host turned around to him and said: (adopts Darby O’ Gill Irish accent) ‘Oh Mr Buckley will you be having beer with your corn flakes this morning!’ Because he said, ‘Mom, they drink beer with everything! There’s beer everywhere! They bath in it; they have it on their corn flakes!’

It’s one of the stories I remember best about Jeff because he was so taken by his experience in Dublin.

“He said as the evening went on, the beer drinking at the Trinity Ball went on to massive proportions that he had never witnessed before in his life. At one point he said, he was walking home and there was a row of people in ball gowns and tuxedos bending over a wall. A spontaneous vomitorium as it were! And then laughing! He just thought that this was a magnificent sight, the liveliest bunch of people he’d ever been around. The most tolerant, let and let live people he’d ever met. He really loved that. It’s one of the stories I remember best about Jeff because he was so taken by his experience in Dublin.”

Buckley’s appearance at the Trinity Ball was one of many random, yet noteworthy, connections he had with Ireland up until his untimely death. He had Irish roots. Tim Buckley Senior, Jeff’s grandfather, was the descendant of a hedge master from Cork. Within the family was a wealth of stories on the Buckley’s ancestral roots, though in the absence of his father, Jeff would have heard little of such stories in growing up.

“It was really on his own, in his twenties when he came into contact with Irish people for himself, that he began to explore that side of his roots,” explains Mary. “For Jeff exploring them sort of explained his way of waxing poetic and seeing things in a particular way. He had a very Irish way of looking at things”

It was unusual circumstances that first brought him into contact with Irish people. Living in LA, and eager to relocate to New York, Jeff spotted an opportunity. The Commitments was about to open in the US, and the producers were looking for musicians to play at premiere parties in LA, Chicago and New York. It was summer 1991, and Jeff was hired as a guitar player and tech to one of the films stars, Glen Hansard of The Frames.

“Me and him just got on so well because he was a Bob Dylan freak and a Van Morrison fan and so was I,” Glen told Hot Press some years ago. “And every night we would just rattle on about Van, we were travelling through America, and when we got to Chicago I remember sitting at the soundcheck with Jeff and I started playing ‘Once I Was’ by Tim Buckley, ’cos I’d just gotten into him at the time. And Jeff was like, ‘He was my da, y’know’. And I looked at him and I was like, ‘No way. Wow. That makes a lot of sense. That’s mental!’ And he says, ‘Well I didn’t really know him that well to be honest, but he was me da… anyway, what was that song you were playing?’ So we sort of left it at that.”

Two years previous he had opened Sin-É, a tiny café in the city’s East Village

The week long tour ended in New York. Jeff had bagged $2,000 and first class air tickets. His final gig with The Commitments took place in The Beacon. Shane Doyle, an Irish emigrant was there. Two years previous he had opened Sin-É, a tiny café in the city’s East Village. Doyle arrived at The Commitments party in the hope of getting the band down to Sin- É.

“I just thought to myself that maybe I should get them down to Sin- É, to play,” says Doyle. “That’s what I did. Whoever was in town, U2, Hothouse Flowers, whoever, I’d try and get them down to Sin-É. It didn’t matter to me that the place was this tiny space. So I went up and eventually got talking to Bronagh Gallagher. She said they’d be up for it and that was that.”

It’s unclear if Jeff had travelled with them to Sin- É. If he had, then this would have been his first introduction to the venue which would come to serve as his public workshop. Some months after The Commitments tour, and now living in New York, Buckley played his first gig in Sin- É.

“He just ambled in and asked for a gig,” says Doyle. “It was easy enough to get a gig that time. So I gave him a shot. He was definitely outstanding. There was no doubt about that. He was way out on his own and I was fortunate enough in that he played there for about a year before the limousines started pulling up with all the record executives.”

Sin-É was the most important step in Buckley’s career. He played there from 1991 right up until its closure in 1995. His first recording for Columbia was an EP recorded in the venue and entitled Live at Sin- É. He adored the place.

“Jeff adored Shane in particular,” says Mary Guibert. “He loved Sin- É and the whole atmosphere of being able to go there and play as long as he wanted to. That was heaven to him. Jeff absolutely found himself when he arrived at Sin- É. If Jeff was a germ than Sin-É was the Petri dish. It was where he was allowed to incubate and expose himself.”

Sin-É was a rough and ready kind of venue. There was no promotion and no set schedule. Jeff was given a Monday night residency though this could be interrupted by whoever was in town. “It was very free flowing in Sin-É,” says Doyle. “You never knew who might show up. Sinead O’Connor, Paul Brady or Shane MacGowan might drop by. You just never knew. Nobody owned a night. It was an incredible place, and totally happening. You know, I myself never wanted to miss a thing. Anyone might show up.”

He had no time for any kind of God like status

Amongst the many Irish emigrants who hung out around Sin-É’s chess board like coffee tables was a nineteen-year old Mark Geary. His brother Karl helped run the place along with Doyle.

“The first night I arrived in New York I headed straight for Sin- É,” remembers Geary. “It was also the first time I met Jeff. I remember lots about that first night” he recalls fondly. “I arrived at Sin-É fresh off the plane and with no idea what was going to happen next. Jeff Buckley happened to be playing that night. He was resident there on Monday nights. So as I sat down, caught up with the brother I hadn’t seen in five years and Jeff began to play. The first thing that struck me was his voice, his phrasing and his wit. He was mind blowing. Absolutely stunning. It had such an impact on me. When he finished I was introduced to him, and pretty much for the next couple of months I watched him every time he played. We began to hang out and we became friends.”

Geary and Buckley hung out a lot in Sin- É. Doyle remembers them hardly being out of the place. “People have tended to put this fallen angel label on him, this star who died too young, what a talent he was and what he could have been and whatever,” says Geary, “but he never seemed like that. He never seemed that troubled. I remember him as having this incredible wit, that’s the thing I remember the most. He was a great story teller and incredibly fanatical about music. He had no time for any kind of God like status, and was very irreverent when it came to people who fawned over him. He was very dismissive of it; very Irish I have to say. I think that was half the reason why Sin-E was kind of the place he gravitated towards because he could be treated like a normal human being.”

“He loved that aspect about Sin-E where by he was simply treated as Jeff who would come in and play music,” adds Mary. “Though he was well loved, nobody treated him as if he was above putting on an apron and scrubbing down the sink. That was the whole theme of the career part of his musical career, the management part. You could see the heal marks for miles when his management and record label, wanted him to do something that was status quo or mainstream orientated. It was all about Jeff keeping it real and not allowing success, as it were, turn him into something he didn’t want to be.”

Somewhere around this time success came knocking. The first hint of it was the Trinity Ball. Neither Doyle nor Guibert or too sure how Jeff came to be invited to play, though it doubtless had a Sin- É connection. On his return from Dublin, limousines began to pull up outside Doyle’s tiny café. They would arrive on Monday nights to catch Jeff’s performance. “They were always his worst shows,” remembers Doyle. “It might have been nerves or it might have been an unwillingness to impress them” he adds.

By October 1992 he had signed to Columbia. The following year he released the Live at Sin- É EP to little fan fare. A tour followed in spring of 1994 bringing with it a return to Dublin.

“I remember the groupies hanging around the dressing room,” laughs Dave Allen, the then venue manager at Whelan’s in Dublin when Jeff Buckley first arrived on Monday the 14^th of March 1994. “It was just him on electric guitar the first time he came in. He didn’t have the band at that time,’ says Allen. “At the time of the first gig, he filled the down stairs part of Whelan’s. The groupies were a surprise. He wouldn’t have been all that well known at that stage and yet he definitely had a lot of female admirers should we say. That could have just come from the show. They must have been bowled over, and they weren’t young either!”

Mark Geary also recalls this show. “I was still in New York at the time, so I obviously wasn’t there but I know that Hot Press did a little article about him. I vividly remember that. Somebody had ordered Hot Press into Sin-E and I remember Jeff, when he returned, being really anxious about the review. I think he went into the toilet with it and had a little peep and then let me see it as well. He gave a shit about what people thought of him, and he gave a shit about how his gigs were received or whatever.”

By this stage the recording of Grace had been completed. On August 23^rd 1994, Jeff Buckley made his second last visit to Ireland. His final visit would be an uneventful gig at the Tivoli theatre four months later. August 23^rd however was special. “I remember little about that night except it was the night Grace was released,” says Allen. “Katell Keineg did a song with him that night and the place was packed. I remember she had to walk over the tables to get to the stage.”

Mary Guibert knows little of that show. “For Jeff to be in Ireland on the day that Grace was released was just, in a very strange way, very prophetic I think. There couldn’t have been a more significant place for him to be, truly. The ancestral eyes were upon him truly. What a lovely thing.”

Originally published in The Irish Independent, 2007
© Steve Cummins.

Went to see Ash play the first show of their Free All Angels anniversary tour in Dublin earlier this week.

Wrote a new story on it for NME.com which you can read on their site or down below.

Good gig. Free All Angels really is a great LP and the songs – especially the heavier ones — sound much better live than on record. A Life Less Ordinary was a proper highlight.

From NME:

Ash play their first gig with Charlotte Hatherley in five years
Band kick off six-date ‘Free All Angels’ tour in Dublin

Ash played their first gig in more than five years with former guitarist Charlotte Hatherley as they kicked off their ‘Free All Angels’ anniversary tour in Dublin last night (October 18).
The Northern Irish band revisited their 2001 Number One album in its entirety at a sold-out show at The Academy, Dublin as part of a week-long tour that will visit Birmingham tomorrow (20) before travelling to Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester and London.

Hatherley joined Ash in 1997 and recorded three albums with the band — including ‘Free All Angels’ — before her departure on amicable terms in January 2006.

Last night, a beaming Tim Wheeler announced “I’d like to re-introduce you to the fantastic Charlotte Hatherley”, before launching into album opener ‘Walking Barefoot’.

After regular set staples ‘Shining Light’ and ‘Burn Baby Burn,’ Wheeler commented: “So this is where it’s going to get interesting. Lots of these songs we haven’t played in 10 years,” before playing ‘Candy’.

They went on to give “a debut of sorts, 10 years on” to ‘Someday,’ “although Rick [McMurray – drummer] claims we played it once, which is open to debate”, while Wheeler announced that ‘Sometimes’ was his “favourite” track on the album.

The 45-minute set ran through ‘Free All Angels’ in order as Wheeler admitted the first performance had been “nerve-wracking” before the band encored with a ‘Best Of’ set that included “songs we haven’t played in years – since Charlotte left” such as ‘Projects’, ‘Wildsurf’ and ‘Starcrossed’.

The band were also joined onstage by two-time Irish Air Guitar Champion, Deku Chan, for a riotous version of ‘Lose Control’.

Ash played:

‘Walking Barefoot’
‘Shining Light’
‘Burn Baby Burn’
‘Candy’
‘Cherry Bomb’
‘Submission’
‘Someday’
‘Pacific Palisades’
‘Shark’
‘Sometimes’
‘Nicole’
‘There’s A Star’
‘World Domination’
‘Projects’
‘A Life Less Ordinary’
‘Starcrossed’
‘Oh Yeah’
‘Orpheus’
‘Wildsurf’
‘Warmer Than Fire’
‘Lose Control’
‘Kung Fu’
‘Girl From Mars’

My Electric Picnic story originally published on NME.com

Pulp ended their summer reunion tour at Ireland’s Electric Picnic festival last night (September 4) with Jarvis Cocker hinting that the 90-minute set may have been their last ever gig.
Before launching into set closer ’Common People’, Cocker declared: “This may be the last time we’re ever all on stage together again.” Earlier in the set the Pulp frontman had told the 30,000-strong crowd in Stradbally, Co Laois, that: “This is the last gig of the tour, so if we start crying or get emotional, you’ll understand.”

However, his last words to the crowd as the band left the stage hinted that the band may yet return, with Cocker saying: “Maybe our paths will cross again.”

Pulp’s set was similar to their ecstatically received sets at Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds festivals earlier this month, taking in crowd-pleasing hits ’Mis-Shapes’, ’Do You Remember The First Time?’ and ’Common People’.

Throughout, a fired-up Cocker engaged with the crowd, peppering his between-song banter with quotes from Oscar Wilde, in reference to the names of one of the festival’s campsites.

Earlier in the weekend, the three-day festival drew well-received sets from Interpol, PJ Harvey, The Drums, Best Coast and The Rapture, among many others.

However, it was Arcade Fire’s return to the festival that hosted one of their most memorable shows — back in 2005 — that drew the weekend’s biggest crowd. In reference to that gig, frontman Win Butlertold the crowd on Saturday night: “The first time we played Electric Picnic, it pretty much changed our lives. So we wanted to come back to say, ‘Thank you’.”

With Butler stagediving from the main stage and the band opening with ’Wake Up’, he also declared: “We have two hometown shows. One in Montreal and one here in Ireland.”

The band’s set largely drew from current album ’The Suburbs’ with the band ending with an encore of ’Rebellion (Lies)’ and ’Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’.

Other memorable moments during a largely dry festival included a bizarre appearance by Toots And The Maytals. After just 30 seconds on stage, and with his microphone not working, Jamaican frontman Toots stormed off the festival’s main stage leaving his group to carry on the gig without him, much to the uproar of the gathered crowd.

Read this on NME.COM

So it’s official, rock n’ roll can seriously damage your health. A respected scientific study, published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, revealed that rock and pop stars are twice more likely to depart the world stage at an earlier age than the rest of us, with a life expectancy of just 35-years-old in Europe and 42-years-old in the US.

Without so much as an encore; suicide, drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, bizarre accidents and a high prevalence of cancer, heart disease and liver failure have robbed us of 100 of the most popular US and European musicians whilst at the peak of the creativity.

Yet in an industry notorious for self-destructive behaviour, the high instance of young deaths is hardly groundbreaking news.

You don’t need to be a scientist or university Professor to work out that a lifestyle fuelled by blackouts; bizarre stories of biting the heads off bats; nights spent choking on your own vomit; or lazy afternoons injecting oneself with enough Class A drugs to supply a small nation, is unlikely to lead to a long and fulfilling life.

A study of the 1,064 most popular artists in the world found that, of the 100 that have passed away, nearly a third of their deaths were drug or alcohol related.

Unsurprisingly, the study of the 1,064 most popular artists in the world found that, of the 100 that have passed away, nearly a third of their deaths were drug or alcohol related.

Cancer was the next biggest killer, whilst suicide, heart disease and violent death were also highly prevalent.

“We’ve looked at this as an employment industry just like any other,” says Professor Mark Bellis of Liverpool John Moores University, who led the report. “We are looking at it from the public health side and our research found that within the music industry, factors such as stress, changes from popularity to obscurity, and exposure to environments where alcohol and drugs are easily available, can all contribute to substance use as well as other self-destructive behaviours which may lead to death.”

Yet, though a high-octane lifestyle more often than not goes hand-in-hand with a successful career in the music industry, Professor Patricia Casey, a Consultant Psychiatrist with the Mater Hospital, says pop stars aren’t necessarily alone in having a higher mortality rate.

“Some (pop stars) would be at a higher risk given that they are perhaps placed in an environment where there behaviour is socially acceptable,” she says, “but in any group of substance abusers there is a high risk of death or serious illness. Alcohol and drug abuse can lead to major mental illness and disease, while accidental overdoses are also very common amongst drug users. Constant exposure to these elements would put anybody at a higher risk of death.”

Perhaps most interesting about the study though, is the prevalence of death amongst those newly introduced to the early excesses of fame. Frighteningly, in a world where every teenager dreams of winning The X-Factor and a life as a pop star, the study found that within the first five years of chart success, rock and pop stars are three times more likely to die than the rest of us.

This suggests that the first wave of fame is the most dangerous stage for a star and the period in their career when they are most inept at juggling a lifestyle of drink and drugs with the pressures of creativity, touring and promotion.

Such a statistic is buoyed by the high number of extremely young deaths within the industry. Artists who fall into this category include Kurt Cobain, 27 (suicide); Jeff Buckley, 30 (drowned); Nick Drake, 26 (overdose); Sid Vicious, 21 (overdose) and Janis Joplin, 27 (overdose).

With this in mind, the current plight of modern-day stars such as Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse is brought into sharper focus. Given their self-destructive lifestyles, both Winehouse and Doherty are stars we expect to see make a tragic exit sooner rather than later.

Last week, Winehouse added an alleged drug addiction to her litany of problems (which include periods of anorexia, bulimia, manic depression and heavy alcohol abuse). She is currently four years into her career, though her recent problems have arrived hand-in-hand with a huge rise in her chart success internationally. It is only in the last eight months that her profile has rocketed in the US.

It’s a horrible feeling to arrive into work each morning thinking that you’re going to get a phone call to say that Peter’s died.

Doherty, meanwhile, has proved the indie poster boy for heroin and crack cocaine excess. Two year’s ago he was voted the coolest rock star in the world by UK music magazine, NME and in the last five years the 28-year-old Babyshambles frontman has shot to fame as he effectively plays Russian roulette with his life, having overdosed a number of times on a cocktail of drugs.

“It’s a horrific thing to be around the centre of,” says Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, who was Doherty record label boss from 2002-2006. “It’s a horrible feeling to arrive into work each morning thinking that you’re going to get a phone call to say that Peter’s died. It’s not a good feeling, and to actually feel very powerless in not being able to do anything about it. But you know that is the problem with junkies. It reaches a point where you are powerless and it becomes up to the individual to actually take some action for themselves.”

Yet should the industry as a whole be doing more to castigate those who embark upon a self destructive path? In his research paper, Professor Bellis suggests that: “Pop stars’ health and, in particular, risk-taking tendencies should be addressed by the music industry – and not just in the short term. More widely, public health consideration needs to be given to preventing music icons promoting health-damaging behaviours amongst their emulators and fans”.

Travis, to his defence, points to his label having funded numerous rehab attempts for Doherty in the past. Winehouse’s label and management have also done the same, while Professor Bellis’ study does show a drop in mortality rates post 1980, suggesting greater awareness of the perils of substance abuse in the last 25 years.
Changing the culture entirely however seems an impossible task. This, remember, is a way of life founded on the slogans ‘Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll’, as well as memorable lyrics such as The Who’s line – “I Hope I Die Before I Get Old” and Neil Young’s “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away”.

We, the public, may also be arguably part of the problem. We expect our rock stars to live fast, die young and, in the process, to leave a good-looking corpse, and though we publicly condone the lifestyle choices of Pete Doherty, et al, our fascination with his behaviour fuels his celebrity.

One could even argue that Doherty has been rewarded by the public and the music industry for the drug use which has made him a household name. Despite the fact that many would struggle to name one of their songs, Babyshambles will play their biggest shows to date this November, while last year they penned a coveted deal with EMI records, one of the biggest labels in the world.

“I suppose that there is a certain car-crash fascination when it comes to the likes of Peter,” notes Geoff Travis, who ended his contract with Doherty last year. “There’s something in our psyche that attracts us to people who are self-destructing before us. I mean there is a strand to it which is exciting, but that whole rock n’ roll lifestyle has become rather tawdry now. People like Peter are at risk of becoming casualties. Our view with him was that if he were to sort himself out, we’d love to make more records with him. We tried to point out people like Shane MacGowan as examples of great talents squandered. Peter’s answer was “Shane’s still going”. What can you say to that?”

Originally published in The Irish Independent, 2007

An Irish woman became nationwide news in Australia on St Patrick’s Day after getting stuck in a drain outside an Irish pub in Melbourne.

Julie Halton, of Whitehall, Dublin, made national radio, television and print media down under after getting her arm caught in the drain outside Father Flanagan’s bar in the city’s Fitzroy suburb.

Ms Halton was trying to retrieve a friend’s mobile phone at the time when she found herself unable to free her elbow from the storm drain.

The incident occurred about 8pm local time last Tuesday, in the midst of St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Fire fighters at the scene were forced to use the jaws of life, a huge tool commonly used to free people from mangled cars and burning or collapsed buildings, to free Ms Halton.

The 23- year-old, who has been in Australia since December, was not injured in the incident, though the rescue scene — which saw a number of fire brigade trucks and police attend the scene — caused at least one minor car accident from passing onlookers. Within minutes, TV news crews and newspaper photographers appeared to capture the unfolding events.

Afterwards Ms Halton laughed off the incident as “all part of the St Patrick’s Day banter”, joking that “it must have been the leprechauns or something that pulled my arm down there!” She said: “The phone just fell down the drain so I offered to get it. Next thing I know I can’t get my elbow out! So after a bit of manoeuvring and no joy, we called the fire brigade and the whole thing began.”

The bizarre story caught the imagination of the Australian media with the story featuring on national television stations, Channel 9 and Channel 10.

It even made the news in Asia as well. It was crazy

It also appeared in Australia’s largest selling daily newspaper The Herald Sun as well as Melbourne-based broadsheet, The Age and popular radio show The Hamish & Andy Show. Ms Halton was even asked to have her photograph taken with ‘Sam the Koala’, famous for drinking water from a fire fighter’s bottle during the recent Victorian Bush Fires.

“It got a ridiculous amount of coverage here,” commented Ms Halton. “I mean I was totally shocked really. It even made the news in Asia as well. It was crazy.

“There’s 15 of us living in a house here and the next day we were just laughing and joking about it when all of a sudden it flashed up on the television as one of the main headlines. Within a few hours we had a camera crew around to the house and then I did an interview with one of the biggest radio shows in the country.”

Of the incident itself, she added that “it was one of the highlights of my holiday here to be honest! I mean it’s all a bit of craic, a bit of banter. You have to laugh about these things. Afterwards I went back into the pub for a few pints and laughed it off. In all seriousness, though, I have to say a huge thank you to the emergency services here and the Melbourne fire brigade. They were brilliant about it all. It was a much bigger job than you’d think”.

Ms Halton was trapped in the drain for over two hours as steel re-enforcing in the concrete made it difficult to free her. Melbourne fire fighter Darren McQuade joked that “to have an Irish woman with her arm trapped down a drain outside an Irish pub, well it’s probably got to be St Patrick’s Day”.

Read this on The Sunday Independent’s website

So at 11.30am this morning (July 19) this year’s Mercury Music Prize nominations will be revealed via a live stream you can watch here.

Here are my guesses as to who will be nominated.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Wild Beasts – Smother
Adele – 21
James Blake – James Blake
The Horrors – Skying
The Unthanks – Last
Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Everything Everything – Man Alive
Noah & The Whale – Last Night On Earth
Jamie XX – We’re New Here
Darkstar – North
Katy B – On A Mission

Update: Here are this year’s actual nominations. I scored 6 out of 12. Shows what I know! Wild Beasts omission is a bit of a surprise.

Adele – 21
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!
Tinie Tempah – Disc-Overy
Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Katy B – On a Mission
Metronomy – The English Riviera
Everything Everything – Man Alive
James Blake – James Blake
Gwilym Simcock – Good Days at Schloss Elmau
Ghostpoet – Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine