[Diarmo]

When Bush Comes To Shove...- by Donsie B and Diarmo


Whoo! First Damien gig! We (me, Donsie B and our parents!) arrived at 7 only to find we had no seats as Vicar Street was packed…..our parents wanted to go home but we persuaded them to stay!
Gary Moore
We arrived just as Gary Moore was finishing off his last song so heard about a minute of him……but it was a good song to he gets a high mark! We knew very little about him although apparently he’s been about since the days of Phil Lynot! 7/10

In between Gary Moore and Kathel Keinig was the 1st speaker: an Iraqi condemned to death who spoke of what it is like to suffer torture. He got through to the crowd very well and got over the fact that he was obviously a very nervous speaker. It was very hard-hitting and explained exactly what it is like to suffer that level of cruelty.

Kathel Keineg
We knew very little about Kathel Keinig other than the fact that she was supposedly very good (according to her website!). She only played 3 songs: all good but her final one was definitely the best, twas called “Shaking the Disease”….was disappointed that she didn’t play longer but may have convinced me to buy her cd! 8/10

Barry Murphy
Next on was the comedian Barry Murphy of “Après-match”. He got George Bush (or so he claimed) on the drums and Richard Boyd Barrett to read out dates while he read out some of Bush’s best quotes! Two stuck in my mind:
(1) We have to ask ourselves: Is our children learning?
(2) There are Iraqis who want to live in a free world. And when we find them we shall bring them to justice.
He was funny…but would end up swearing at him later on the night! 7/10

Mary Black
Next was Mary Black and the truth is that she didn’t look that much fun. We were wrong. She mainly took other people’s music. She did a poem by William Blake called poison tree before doing her own song “Heaven in your eyes” and a song about apathy for all those too lazy to come to the gig called “Don’t say: OKAY!” Next she did a song called “Craw on the Cradle” before ending with “Message of love” which in the end turned into “All you need is love” by the Beatles. In all and all Mary Black was very enjoyable when she was doing other peoples’ material and wasn’t that bad when she was doing her own stuff as well. 8/10.

Christy Moore (w/ Hubert)
Up went a gigantic roar as the host says that next we have: CHRISTY MOORE! Everyone was chanting his name and the second biggest cheer of the night came up when he came on! He began with a Native American song saying that he was NOT anti-American. Then he explained to the crowd about how he learned this next song which he and an American had made up called “Irish Ways And Irish Laws” which when the American went home, turned into “Indian Way’s And Indian Laws”. At the end of this song he was playing the bohran so hard and so fast that smoke was coming out of it! His next song was quite a long one about children. It was called “Hiroshima, Nickasaki, Russian Roulette” which was brilliant. Then he told the crowd that when he was doing a radio show with RTE and he heard this excellent band in the backround. They were called Hubert (possibly Hubert something we didn’t hear it properly!). They played two songs called “Close Your Mind” and “One Box Free To Choose”. Both songs were excellent and we both think that Christy Moore was right. To finish off Christy did a song called “The Jackson Browne Song” which was a perfect way for him to finish. 9/10!

Kila
Hey diddle-eye! Kila were great fun (all 8 of them!). They had bohran players, violinists, guitarists etc! Firstly they played a 10-12 minute Irish number, which had the crows jigging, then a song “Sean Bodain ” (for you non-Gaelic speakers it means Old Tears, for you Gaelic speakers…I’m perfectly aware how misspelled it is!) Before their best song: “I see YOU mister president” which was a..... Bizarre kinda rap/traditional Irish music song with a nit of Irish dancing too! They finished off with another big Irish number, which was quite similar to the first but was enjoyable none the less! Kila also said to phone the American Embassy @ 01-668877 to say that you as an Irish citizen do not want George Bush in your country. 8.5/10

Before the next act there was a Palestinian speaker who demanded freedom, peace and equality. He got a great reaction from the crowd!


Barry Murphy
The PA announced that Paul Durkin was coming on to read a poem, which instantly delighted me, as he is a very good friend of my fathers. However it was just Barry Murphy taking the piss to large chorus’s of “F##k off, you f##king wan##r!” from the Bolger family! I refuse to write the rubbish he spouted, as it seemed a tad hypocritical to have some Palestine speaker on before hand that was speaking about freedom and then to make fun of Paul who has done huge work against war and receives death threats on a daily basis from the IRA and has to constantly change his phone number.
Barry Murphy: please F##k off! Sorry to all you Barry fans: just had to get that off my chest! –1/10!

The Revs
Ah the Revs…I had heard so much about them: the country seems divided on whether they are the next big things or they are crap!……..I actually kinda enjoyed them, as they seemed to be good fun! “The Disco is over- the DJ’s been murdered” was mad as people actually started to jump up and down! They played “A-Bomb” for their friend George W. (the W’s for Wan##r they say) and……gave our parents a headache! Seeing as my dad was already pretty pissed off bout the Paul Durkan impersonation it probably didn’t improve his mood! To Finish off they all drummed and paused every few seconds to cries of “HEY!!” before flinging their drumsticks into the crowd! They played for a mere 20 mins and played about 5 songs or so…..a long 20 minutes according to our mother!….the guitarist was dressed as some kind of ghost/Arab/thing! Overall….will have to look into them a bit more before I buy the cd! 7/10!

Mundy
Mundy was meant to be performing at Vicar Street on the 19th of June but instead he let Vicar Street be the hosts of When Bush Comes To Shove and he played at it! He began off with a song he had made up for the occasion called: “Why do we always fight when there’s nothing else to do?!” which was a roaring success. Then he played “Mayday” (which is off his second album 24 Star Hotel) and “Raining Down Arrows” (off third and latest album also called Raining Down Arrows) before giving the crowd the song that they all wanted “July” (being fans of David Kitt we noticed how he finished this song wit the words “and there’s one more hour in my day but that’s ok- from Song for Hope Street, Brooklyn New York off the Big Romance”). Then he finished off with the song that the girl up the front had been screaming for “Gin and Tonic Sky” which we feel he really enjoyed playing! Everyone went mad dancing to this song! July was the best song as it even had my Mam and Dad up dancing! He was brilliant and would get 9/10!

Before Damien came on an American woman with a seriously squeaky high-pitched voice came on and said a few words about how over 50% of Americans now know that their President is a fraud.

Damien Rice
The PA announced that the man who you’ve all been waiting for is here: DAMIEN RICE! Crowd went fairly mental as Damo, Lisa, Tomo and Shane took to the stage!

The First song Damien played was “Black is the colour” which was good although we didn’t now who sang it (probably a LITTLE bit before our time!).

The first song that we recognised was Delicate. The best part of this song was at the end when Damien went pretty crazy screaming “why’d you fill my SORROWS, WITH THE WORDS YOU BORROWED?!”!

Ah Volcano! We heard it live on a free CD a while ago and its just as we imagined (with the crowd firmly behind Lisa!). Storytellin’ Damo was in full swing telling us that this song was about when you do something to someone and only realise what you’ve done until its done tom you in return and you just go “F##k….I shouldn’t have done that!”

The next song that Damo and Co played was Amie. Damien explained that he had been down and went to visit a friend. She gave him her bed and he layed there in the dark looking at the sky when he saw a shooting star and for a second he was happy. The next morning sitting at his friend’s table he made this song called Amie!

I Remember was excellent….so two-sided! It began with the first two verse’s being sung sweetly by Lisa, before Damien exploded screaming how he “don’t care if you gonna live without me!”. It went on for about 8 minutes or so with the place going pitch dark before a single spotlight flying around the crowd!

Once again Damo explained the meaning of this song. He was in the bathtub and he put his head under the water when he couldn’t breath he kept his head under for five more seconds. When he took his head out he thought to himself how lucky he was to be alive. With that he wrote the next song: Cold Water, which turned in the end into Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

Then came the song! Lonely Soldier by Damien Rice and Christy Moore feat: Lisa Hannigan, Shane Fitzsimons and Tomo which was the best song of the evening by far. The song will be out in shops on the 25th of June!

Damo’s rating is (drum roll please) 10/10!

When Bush Comes To Shove Rating 9/10!




Hope u Eskimos enjoyed are review!