This picture was the highlight of a visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin on Saturday where a selection of works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera was showing.
This Kahlo painting, Autorretrato en la Frontera Entre El Abrazo de Amor de el Universo, la Tierra (México), Yo, Diego y el Señor Xólotl (The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego and Señor Xólotl), left a huge impression.
It shows a universal goddess, holding an earth mother (Mexico) who holds Kahlo who in turn nurses a Hinduised version of Rivera (with a third eye in his forehead).
As well as Hinduism it has elements of Aztec and Christian iconography.

The Noisettes, Vicar Street, Dublin

1950s pop sensibities, 60s Motown, and 70s glam rock and punk all infuse the music of The Noisettes. They are contemporary and yet their songs are comfortingly familiar.
Singer Shingai Shoniwa dominates their live performances both in terms of her physical presence, vocal delivery and (rather impressively I thought) bass-playing skills.
Dressed in a glitzy party dress Shoniwa looked almost weighed down when the bass was first handed to her. For a singer whose vocal range often reaches the shrill it seemed entirely inappropriate that she should play an instrument whose range is towards the lower end of the musical register.
For much of the set she left the bass-playing duties to a band member who doubled as a roadie, freeing up the singer to prance and dance across the stage, straddle the drum kit, hang upside down from a rope ladder and venture to the back of the venue and serenade those who stood there.
‘Don’t Upset the Rhythm’ is probably The Noisettes best- known song, yet it was the second song in the set which suggests that they are a band who have confidence in their material and are aware that their lesser known songs are just as strong.
My personal favourite is ‘Never Forget You’ which somehow seems to combine the whimsical feel of a Ben E King song with a punk-driven guitar-style chorus.
The set was dominated by tracks from their second album although the encore was funky cover of ‘Children of the Revolution’ during which Shoniwa came off the stage and down through the audience to the back of the Vicar Street venue and then balanced on a barrier infront of the mixing desk. It was a crowd-pleasing move that endeared a besotted audience to her even more.
Guitarist Dan Smith impressed with some blistering guitar solos that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Thin Lizzy concert while the hairsuite drummer Jamie Morrison’s lashing around his kit put Animal (from the Muppets) to shame.

U2 - Croke Park (Saturday July 25)

IT’S 1982 and the roadies have just hoisted four white flags onto flagpoles as the young Dublin band run onto stage at the Maysfield Leisure Centre in Belfast and launched into their set in front of about 1,500 people.
The theatrics are gimmicky and the singer is a bit of a show off as he clambers on to stack of amps to serenade the audience from on high now and again but there is something infectious about this band with the singer’s earnest, falsetto voice and the guitarists searing, echoing guitar riffs.
Forward 27 years and the same band are playing below a sixty-metre-high space rocket, surrounded by huge girders in the shape of the claw in front of 80,000 people.
There are movable bridges jutting out from the stage that allows the band to promenade into the heart of the audience in Croke Park and a dazzling light show that probably uses up more electricity than a small city.
From the moment that drummer Larry Mullen strode on to the stage and started pounding at his kit a collective adulation gripped the Croke Park audience, which intensified to devotion as bass player Adam Clayton and guitarist The Edge joined in and then rose to all-out worship as singer Bono joined the band
U2 are a genuine phenomenon and probably the most successful band in the world but beneath all the hi-tech gimmickry and strutting about the place there was still that distinctive guitar sound and warbling voice.
When I first went to see them at Maysfield Leisure Centre it was to hear songs from their early albums – I Will Follow, Eleven O’Clock Tick Tock, Gloria, Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Electric Co.
In the years since then most of those early songs have been dumped from their set list to be replaced by some of the most iconic tracks in rock music – I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Pride, With or Without You, Elevation, Vertigo, The Unforgettable Fire, One, Where the Streets Have No Name, and Angel of Harlem were all played on Saturday as well as three or four tracks from their new album No Line on the Horizon.
There were occasional musical diversions when Beautiful Day segued into the chorus of the Beatles Here Comes the Sun, and Bono paid tribute to Michael Jackson with an impromptu version of Don’t Stop Til’ You Get Enough.
U2 have always used their huge popularity to draw attention to global poverty and human rights abuses and on this tour it is the continued captivity of Burmese prime minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi who has been held captive by the country’s military for most of the past 20 years.
As U2 played the song Walk On, 100 or so people holding Aung San Suu Kyi masks in front of them paraded in front of the audience and her face was flashed onto the huge overhead screen.
There were also video messages from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the astronauts on the International Space Station.
It was a long way from the days when the edgy, post punk quartet played in a Belfast leisure centre and while I departed musically from U2 some time in the mid-1980s it was still a hell of a show.
(This review was puyblished in The Irish News on Monday.

Stiff Little Fingers - The Academy, Dublin

‘IT’S Friday night in Dublin and we are Stiff Little Finger’. The soft, anglicised, spoken voice of Belfast-born Jake Burns is a jarring contrast to the guttural, snarling lead vocalist.
When he sings you feel you better pay attention to what he is saying in case he looks around and turns his venom on you, yet his stage persona and banter with audience and fellow band members is amiable.
The difference between SLF and other punk/new age era bands which have reformed in recent years is that the Stiffs are still a full working band, recording new material and debuting new songs.
Burns and bass-player Ali McMordie are the only two original members – and McMordie only rejoined in 2006 after a 15-year sabbatical – but Friday night’s performance suggested a band of equals who bounce of each other and were clearly having a good time.
Burns introduced two new songs – a diatribe about former US president George Bush and the tendency of British tabloids to create hate figures and demonise them.
However, these were cushioned among a generous delving into the Stiff Little Fingers back catalogue, focusing for the most part on their first two overtly punk albums, but with helpings form their third and fourth more mature albums and tracks from their post reunification days.
“Inflammable material is planted in my head/It's a suspect device that's left 2,000 dead”
The words of ‘Suspect Device’ – a refutal of paramilitaries and state oppression in the north – may have dated in terms lyrical content since it was written in the late 1970s as has the reference to “the RUC dogs of oppression/are barking at out feet” in their best-known song ‘Alternative Ulster’, but the punk sentiment of refusing to be classified or limited by the society in which we live is still valid.
Lyrics aside both songs have stood the test of time purely in terms of their ability to get 600 people jump around a intimate little venue just around the corner from the GPO in O’Connell Street.
‘Wasted Life’, ‘Barbed Wire Love’, ‘Tin Soldiers’, ‘Nobody’s Heroes’ were all given work outs and – proof that Irish bands can play reggae – the Special’s cover ‘Doesn’t Make it Alright’ and the epic Rita Marley-written (originally sung by her husband Bob ) ‘Johnny Was’.
They were the soundtrack to many of our youths but this concert proved that Stiff Little Fingers are not just playing on past glories and can still deliver a quality set that confirms to their audience why they loved them in the first place and challenges them to move with them into new territory.