Something For The Weekend: Kevin McAleer's Cultural Picks

Direct from the West End of Tyrone, Kevin McAleer emerges from two years completely locked in the back of his own head, to inflict his deranged comedy insights on an unsuspecting world, ably assisted by his hilariously boring Uncle Colm persona from the multi award-winning Derry Girls.

Brace yourselves...

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We asked Kevin for his choice cultural picks...

FILM

The last film I saw on a proper big screen was The Favourite, back in the mists of 2018. I loved every minute of it, and I highly recommend that you should have gone to see it, if you didn't. I also loved Amazing Grace, a live recording of Aretha Franklin's show at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in LA in 1972, accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir. She's simply the best. The film is also a stunning snapshot of Black American culture and social history.

MUSIC

I still haven't heard Aldous Harding's latest album Warm Chris, but any day now. My son pointed me towards her music a few years ago - when I watched the video for The Barrel online, I laughed all the way through, at the sheer originality, attitude and style of the song, the lyrics, the performance and visuals. I've been spellbound ever since.

BOOK

Over Christmas I got lost in performance artist Marcia Farquhar's Pushing 60. Her autobiographical musings about reaching the landmark age were addictive, and the style so deeply dreamy, I can barely remember a word. Time to read it again. And Paula Meehan's Selected Poems: As If By Magic. One of my favourite poets of all time and space.

THEATRE

Conor Mitchell's Abomination: A DUP Opera, which had a run in the Abbey and the Lyric recently, is a perfect fusion of political anger and art. The Belfast show got the best standing ovation I've ever been part of.

I don't watch TV, something I'm constantly trying to convince the BBC's licence inspectors about. So if you're reading this, please go away. Curb Your Enthusiasm jumps out as my all time favourite, followed closely by The Savage Eye and The Larry Sanders Show.

GIG

I'm really looking forward to Kae Tempest's performance in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Festival in May. The tickets are a brilliant birthday present from my daughter. The show is in the festival marquee, never my favourite setting for live music, but if anyone can transform a big tent into a cathedral of energy and emotion, Kae can.

The last gig I attended was Christine Bovill's Piaf, also in Belfast about six months ago. She's from Glasgow, with a great voice and stage presence, a class act in every way.

ART

I'm a big fan of Rachel Whiteread's work, going back to the early Nineties and her amazing sculpture 'House'. She made a concrete cast of the inside of an actual Victorian house in East London, shortly before the entire street was demolished. The sculpture then stood alone on the original site, and won her the Turner Prize in 1993, while the local council added its appreciation by knocking it down a year later.

RADIO

John Kelly's Mystery Train on Lyric FM is an obvious choice, but the man is a national institution, if he doesn't mind me saying so, and his choices never fail to surprise, entertain, broaden the musical mind. Even if he plays something I don't like, I'm still intrigued by what he might see in it himself. In that sense he reminds me of John Peel, who lit up the Seventies for me on BBC radio.

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TECH

Not exactly cutting edge, but I love Google Translate's instant camera translation feature, where you point at some text and it translates into a language of your choice. You can confuse the App (and possibly the reader of this) by asking it to translate from Spanish to English, for example, then point the camera at some text in English. The technology produces some amazing flickers of surreal poetry on the hoof, as it does its best to make sense of your unreasonable request.

THE NEXT BIG THING...

I have been predicting for many years now, and my family are witnesses to this, that short grain organic brown rice is going to make a spectacular comeback on menus in the hipster culinary underworld. You heard it here first.

Kevin McAleer plays the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire, on Friday 29th April, with additional dates in An Grianan, Letterkenny on May 7th and Strule on May 21st.

Something For The Weekend: Kevin McAleer's Cultural Picks

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