No time, no quiet, no inclination

It was Bloomsday yesterday and if you’re like me and don’t have the mental capacity to sit down and read Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake, then you might enjoy Chamber Music - a musical adaption of Joyce’s poems by Fire Records and a not-shit-Reindeer-Section-esque Rock & Roll collective.

Chamber Music is a collection of Joyce’s poems but with added jangly guitars and melancholy vocals. With artists like Peter Buck from REM, Ed Harcourt, Mercury Rev and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth lending their talents. There’s a few free songs and if you like what you hear then a mere 15 quid will get you it in touchable form.

Of course it’s not the first time that Joyce has made an impression on musicians - some links are tenuous at best. But, I am The Walrus is apparently influenced by the “stream of conciousness” style of writing that Joyce employed. Sonic Youth’s Secret Girls could be said to take influence from Ulysses (a head melter of a book by anyone’s standards) and Van Morrison pretty much used Joyce lines in every song he released, except Brown Eyed Girl.

So happy Bloomsday, and I’ll leave you with this video that was posted on Slugger O’Toole earlier today.

X (Owen Tromans)

XXI (Great Depression)

XXII (Puerto Muerto)

XXVI (Gerry Mitchell & Little Sparta)