Barry Devlin is a screenwriter, filmmaker and the bass player with legendary Irish band Horslips.
Barry will join a pair of fellow music legends - singer Mary Coughlan and writer/saxophonist Keith Donald (Moving Hearts) in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin this Thursday, May 28th as part of the Bealtaine Festival for Sax, (No) Drugs & Rock N Roll, a musical chat show hosted by the Irish Times' Nadine O'Regan.
We asked Barry for his choice cultural picks...
FILM
I enjoyed Mark McCausland's quirky and often very funny road epic The Spin, which defied its ten-shillings-in-old-money budget (and my feature film debut) to garner four-star reviews from The Guardian and The Indo and win a theatrical release in the UK, as well as here. Good soundtrack album, too.
MUSIC
All the Bach cantatas, particular fave currently being BWV 140 Wachet Auf. But I also like Black and Amber by A Lazarus Soul and CMAT’s Euro-Country and Paddy Goodwin’s Greenbank and He Likes Flowers by Proton Pool Party. Oh, aye. Eclectic, me…
BOOK
Jan Carson’s new slice of magic realism Few And Far Between imagines a different Lough Neagh and a different NI and follows the fortunes of the Connolly family as The Flood builds up to engulf them physically and metaphorically. It’s hilarious and serious at once.
THEATRE
I’m really not a theatre goer. Loved Mikel Murfi’s The Man In The Women’s Shoes and The Train by Arthur Riordan and Paul Johnson, but that’s a while ago, eh? File under drama philistine…
TV
I’m a Nationwide nerd… I think it’s great. It’s always well researched and interesting with a good eye for the quirky and great presenters. Every day a school day!
As for scripted TV, a drama series, I really, really loved was How To Get To Heaven From Belfast. Derry Girls kidnapped by the Coen Brothers, it tells us how good Lisa McGee is now. And features the inestimable Roisin Gallagher at the top of her game.
GIG
Jim Lockhart and I will be joining the Pat McManus Band in Ballyshannon on May 29th for a quick whiz down all our yesterdays (or Dearg Doom, as it’s sometimes known) and we’ll be staying over to watch Billy Gibbons play some Curtis Mayfield-inspired soft funk…
ART
Recent exhibition by Tom Matthews, cartoon giant of this parish, upstairs in Hogans. Verbal and pictorial puns whizzing through a room crammed with literati . I bought the slyly scabrous Big Print for a friend’s birthday though I’m not sure where he’ll hang it.
RADIO
Have really enjoyed the Lyric Feature revisiting a time when being contemplative, cerebral and nostalgic was good. John Quinn’s glorious Three Men Standing at The Met was an outstanding example.
Metropolitan Opera by his father and uncles in 1927.
TECH
Apparently there’s something called The Web out there. I look forward to exploring it soon. Ah, heck. GPS is good…
THE NEXT BIG THING...
Roll on the mid terms… for a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Sax, (No) Drugs & Rock N Roll is at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin on Thursday May 28th, as part of this year's Bealtaine Festival - find out more here
