The Underground of Happiness

I did this last year. I'm doing it again this year. Live shows of the year and my thoughts on them. It helps me make sense of it all. I hope you enjoy. x *********** February was Marina Allen first. Aircoach. Burger. Beer. I spoke to her before the gig and recorded the conversation . Lovely person. The California-ness of her. Considered. Balanced. Thoughtful. Then into hardcore punk as a teenager. And Meredith Monk. I bought her a Moretti. Upstairs at The Workman’s Club where they queued at the bar in a straight line. Me and P went to the show. Her wonderful voice. Clear as water. Her primary instrument. Kacey Johansing played too. It was one of the moments of the year to hear The hiding from that album. The album of 2018 that went all over west Cork and Kerry. I slept on the bus home. It was a good roadtrip. Centrifics by Marina Allen The Hiding by Kacey Johansing

On the most significant weekend in the Christian calendar, there was something appropriate about the primal and even pagan undertones of this wonderful show of live music and (I’m going to say) ideas. Firstly we must speak about the sheer presence of Natalie Mering on stage (which is only added to by the remarkable sky blue with white clouds trouser suit, a sort of David Byrne meets Pop Art statement). You could call it a certain kind of cool. It certainly comes across as a confidence but with no sense of distance or aloofness to it. There’s a distinct warmth to her stage persona, or we might just say her personality because there’s no hint of artifice, just an easy engaging quality. Her between song patter also has a distinct air of playfulness. She has a mischievous streak, no doubt about it. ‘Seven words’ is introduced with a wry smile as “seventeen words...it’s grown another ten words...a lot has happened”. One of the encores (a krautrock classic) is billed as “a more Ge...

At the end of my twenties I was standing in Waterloo Station in London. I was over for a long weekend with Songs to Learn and Sing . As he queued for food someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “do you like the Trashcan Sinatras?” I was wearing my I Hate Music t-shirt, bright yellow text on blue, the one I bought at their gig in Nancy Spain’s in Cork a few years earlier, which had a series of anagrams of the band’s name on the back – Anarchist Has Ten and the like. I used to wear this t-shirt around town. It had an uncanny ability to draw comments from people as if it was the controversial opening salvo in an argument, a blatant provocation, a long straight middle finger – “Well I love it”, “You don’t mean that do you?”, and other things. People would approach me distraught, vexed, furious. This particular guy in Waterloo was none of those things. He was politely curious. I told him I did like them and he said, “would you like to meet them?”. Still in the dark, I told him I...