Traces Of The Real

The last couple of months have seen a whole host of much-loved institutions around Dublin close down due to lack of money, lack of business, unreasonably high rents, and all the other difficulties that the recession has brought – music outlets (Road Records, Comet, City Discs), restaurants (Gruel, The Mermaid Cafe), bookshops (Waterstones), and most depressingly of all, the best cinema in the city (The Lighthouse). Up until a week or so ago, it looked like The Button Factory was about to join that grim list too as it had entered a period of examinership at the start of the year. As I understand it, this meant that they were under the financial microscope and unless they could prove that there was still a viable business there, the plug would be pulled.

This would have been a disaster for the live music scene in Dublin. Since the remodeling and refurbishment it underwent a few years ago, it has become by far the best venue of its size in the city. The sound system is amazing, the layout is great, the staff are friendly, and there’s a constant stream of really good acts on there. Thankfully, the following press release was issued from Button Factory central last week.

The Button Factory is pleased to announce that we have come out of examinership. We wish to thank all our customers for their support over the past couple ofmonths. We look forward to seeing you in the future at all our up and coming gigs.

For a full list of gigs including the likes of Less than Jake, Hercules &
Love Affair, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Black Lips check out
www.buttonfactory.ie. To celebrate the end of our examiner-ship period, and our new beginning as a stellar venue on a serious mission, we’re throwing a special FREE ADMISSION party featuring Solar Bears, Andrew Hung DJ (Fuck Buttons) & Young Montana on Saturday May 28th. We’re also giving away some free tickets to the following awesome shows:

Trans Am on Tuesday July 12th

Meat Puppets on Tuesday May 31st

Corrosion of Conformity on Saturday June 25th

Neurosis on Monday July 25th

To enter, please send an e-mail with the name of the concert you’d like to attend in the subject line to buttonfactoryenquiries@gmail.com. We’ll let you know if you’ve won within 5 days. Expect announcements of some very exciting events in the next couple of weeks.

So hurray for that and well done to all involved. To celebrate, the photo at the top is of US garage rock band Black Lips playing there on Wednesday night. I can’t say I enjoyed what I saw of their set all that much. I think I was mostly put off by the guitarist’s habit of constantly gobbing in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth. Someone should have a quiet word with him about this. I did enjoy opening act Squarehead though and I have a good photo of them that I will put up soon.