We arrived when the show was supposed to begin, and there was a group already playing on stage. For the first hour, there were probably six different one or two person acts. Most of the performers played quirky folk music, with extra personal lyrics (one man explained he was going to play a song about moving into the country from Dublin when he was thirteen years old, and then went on to sing, "I was thirteen, and we were movin' to the country"), but one man played a really cool eccentric mix of traditional Irish music, world music, and Billy Joelesque rock piano. A lone guitar player belonged to Bell X1, a group of guys who used to be in Damien Rice's college band. A lot of the solo acts seemed to be connected with the Frames in some way. Essentially, the entire Dublin music scene was in attendance.
The whole show was very family oriented, and not just in terms of Irish brotherhood. It turns out that the show as a benefit for Glen Hasard's mother's school for the disabled--Mrs. Hasard came on stage and told us that the school could rarely come up with the money to rent a bus and take the disabled students out, so she asked Glen to get some of his friends to do a benefit for the school, "because then we could just buy a damn bus!" Glen asked her to sing a song after she gave her speech. She resisted, but then broke into "Crazy," claiming it was the only song she knew. Earlier in the show, Glen had his teenage niece come out and sing a few songs, just because that was the nature of the show. Even his violinist sang an old Irish ballad in honor of a folksinger who had passed recently. It was such an all-singing, all-dancing kind of show!
The actual Swell Season didn't perform as many songs as I thought they would--they sang maybe six songs from their album, and then did a lot of Frames songs. It was sort of obnoxious, because the Frames are like the Irish equivalent to Barenaked Ladies fans--they know all the words to all Frames songs, and like so sing them on the tops of their lungs. It was still a lot of fun, though, and by the encore it was kind of a free-for-all. Some opening performer would come on stage and whisper to the band members what he was going to play, or give them chord progressions, and then they'd just jam out. Also, Glen Hasard sang this song called The Banana Man. Here's a link if you don't believe me.
Other than the concert, it's been a sort of miserable weekend. It snowed three days in a row, big beautiful movie snowflakes, but seeing as I didn't come prepared for snow, I was very unhappy out in the slush. So unhappy, in fact, that I caught some sort of illness and was out for the count all yesterday with terrible chills and a fever. I tried to pretend I wasn't sick and went out to UCD with a few of the people on my program to see the original manuscript for Kerouac's On The Road, which is on one single massive scroll. The exhibit was small but very informative, and I now know much more about Jack Kerouac and 1950's publishing practices than I ever knew before.
Caitlin's been doing her own thing this weekend more often than not--at this point, she's more of another flatmate than a guest. This weekend has been a lot less expensive, probably because I've been too ill to drink. I've also been reading a lot: I always knew that I only had one essay per class to assess my knowledge of the subject at hand, but I didn't know until last week that four out of five said essays are due at the end of March. That means three 3,000 and one 5,000 word essays in what, six weeks? It might be typical at Hamilton, but at Hamilton you at least get more than one chance to prove yourself.
Though the next few weeks are going to suck academically, they're going to be fabulous socially. Sally Kral is coming to visit me for Valentine's Day weekend, and the weekend after that me and a few of my Dublin friends are going to Barcelona for Carnival. The week after that my parents visit, and then Andrew visits, and then Ami visits, and voila, it's April!
Quickly, a short Irish slang lesson:
-Grand-adj-fine, good. i.e. "Abrakebabra has a chicken kebab special? That's grand!"
-Craic (kr-ae-k)-noun-fun, a laugh. i.e. "We should go to Doyle's tonight, it should be good craic."
-Bullocks-noun, adj, adv-terrible, bullshit. i.e. "This bullocks weather is a pain in my arse," "Professor McBrien's lecture on 'Playboy of the Western World' was bullocks, don't you think?"
-Cheers-exclamation-a toast, a greeting, a goodbye, a well-wishing, i.e. "Well, I've got to run. Cheers!"
No comments:
Post a Comment