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LONGSTANDING NORTH DUBLIN band Aslan will play the first of two gigs this Friday in the Iveagh Gardens in Dublin.
The band is marking 30 years since the release of their iconic first album Feel No Shame.
Ahead of the gig, Aslan’s frontman Christy Dignam sat down with TheJournal.ie to discuss their music, the highs and lows of the band throughout the years, contemporary pop music, the upcoming gigs, and his own struggles with his health over the years.
While talking, Dignam used some strong language to lay into contemporary Irish society and how it treats addiction, the ongoing homelessness crisis and the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
“I’ve a thing about the whole addiction thing,” said Dignam.
“If we put a quarter of the money into treating addiction that we put into fighting addiction and putting people in prisons and stuff like that.
If we put a quarter of that money into treating addiction we wouldn’t need to be filling our prisons with people that aren’t criminals, that just have some sort of… they have mental illness you know? Treat it as such.
Dignam also took issue with the Welfare Cheats campaign which ran last year while then-Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar was in office.
“For example, Leo Varadkar came out a while ago talking about people on welfare and all ruining the… bleeding the country dry,” he said.
“This country is not bankrupt cos some bloke is claiming a hundred euros or two hundred euro a week.
This country is bankrupt cos the bankers fucking bankrupted us. But they won’t say that, so what they do is they blame this girl who’s claiming unmarried mothers when she’s really living with her fella, they blame her and our attention goes to her.
“And we’re all fighting among ourselves down here while the bankers are still up here making millions.”
And then… we’ve 4000 kids living on the street and in hotel accommodation. It’s outrageous.
You can read and watch our full interview with Christy tomorrow evening on TheJournal.ie.
Aslan play the Iveagh Gardens this Friday 13 July and next Saturday 21 July. Tickets for Saturday’s show are sold out but tickets remain for this Friday’s gig.
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You don’t need to know them to realise their out for themselves and their friends….
@David Cotter: yawn
@David Cotter: Instant negativity without giving them a chance shows you may be just. Negative
@thomas molloy: wtf. They’ve been around years mehole is there since 1998..and these party’s have 100 odd years of power between them
Ans straight outa the gate the make lowery kingpin…..it’s pathetic
@David Cotter: and who would you let run the country that you think will make such a substantial difference. Maybe you should run, you seem to have all the answers. Simpletons all over the world think they know it all & next thing you have the likes of trump in charge causing a total mess.
@David Glynn: well David for one I wouldn’t let lowery boss around the place doing grubby deals and getting a one term TD the ceann job. You’d agree whit that for sure?
@David Cotter: 100% correct. Wait for the corruption scandals to start emerging now that the FFG crime enterprise proved they will break laws and violate public office ethics with impunity, without any consequences!
@Johnny Wilson: take a nap johnny
That you can be friends with Dennis O’Brien, break laws and get into government
Evokes memories of spitting image for the 80s …. With puppets sitting around the table
@Harry Paisley: up all night sniffing glue and praying under the Queens picture again Harry? I see you, the shinners are rent free in your brain, poor soul.
Jack Chambers like ffs??
Would you look at the two lads at the head of the table..They shouldnt be left in charge of a piss up in a brewery not to mind the country.As for the motley crew behind them God help us all.
@Róisín Flemping-Bunt-Himmler: you certainly can and would you look at the lad behind Harris straining his neck out to get his snout into the trough Patrick Donovan or curly Pa as we call him around these parts.
@Róisín Flemping-Bunt-Himmler: and what about lady behind Micky Martin with the fancy two syllableq name who barely made it in in Galway East now in a top tier job at the top table.God give me patience.
Irish politicians. The most forgiving profession in the world.
I know ,you know ,we know , dogs on the streets know, but unfortunately you keep elect most of them !
Any of them interviewed so far seem to have a serious interest in doing their sincere best.
“By their deeds, shall ye know them”
Its like going to the STD clinic and being asked by the doctor do ya know which one is which……at the end of the day we will lose as taxpayers like we always do. So get lots of cream folks cos this is gonna be a dodgy 5 years
And they’re off !
Look they were voted in . Irish people spoke ff and fg can do no wrong and that what one problem is with politics in Ireland. Nepotism is bigger one
“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering”.. Paulo Coelho
The Court of owls at a Spectre committee meeting. I know them all as vanity villains.
@Chop Chop: no mirrors at home ?
Crazy how much you Irish revere these criminally corrupt people, I suppose the gaping ideological wound left by the abandonment of the church has left ye all running to the closet authority figure so you can ‘think’ pathetic and explains a lot why the country is in such shambles with everyone ignoring it. Yalls new religion is politico ‘In Dail Eireann we trust’ absolutely pathetic
Criminally corrupt disgusting so called public representatives the damage this crowd has caused will be felt for a very long time and the arrogance to boot, there fooked anyways US money is gonna be pulled out fast will make 2008 look like lost change
@Chop Chop: A rogues gallery!
To fkn well
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