Day Two of the Guinness Fleadh (part two):

Anyway, Mom told me not to get sunburned and not to get trampled ("Altamont was a long time ago!" I told her), but she forgot to warn me against drowning or pneumonia!

Although the good thing was that no matter how much it rained it never got a bit cold, so that was okay.

Anyway, after Too Cynical to Cry I walked back to the main stage to see my man Billy Bragg and to meet up with Andria and Sean, but I couldn't find them, so I just enjoyed Billy, who was in fine form. He sang a bunch of the new Woody Guthrie songs (Woody could neither read nor write music, so after his death many hundreds of lyrics were found to which the tunes have been lost, and Woody Guthrie's daughter invited Billy to write tunes for them) that were just rockin' and announced a show at The Bottom Line in July that I simply must see now.

After the set, there was a tap on my shoulder, and there was Andria and Sean! She had pierced her tongue as a reaction to turning thirty, and I laughed and said that that was exactly why I pierced my nose! The things people are compelled to do when they turn thirty boggle the mind.

After Billy was an Irish group called The Saw Doctors, and just like Great Big Sea was my great big find on Saturday, The Saw Doctors was it on Sunday. They are absolutely glorious.

There were a ton of beach balls in the air during their set (every time I turned around there were two more in the air. Were they breeding?) and I got smacked in the face more times than I could count--not just during the Saw Doctors, but the whole weekend. It's like high-fiving, I could never be alert enough to smack it before getting hit, but for once. I was very proud of myself!

There were also many a crowd surfer, which was a new experience for me, since in my limited mosh pit days in the 80's there was no such thing as yet. My little section was mostly kept occupied by trying to steer the crowd surfers away, since there was a group of three homeless punks camping on the ground beside us.

Yes, you read that right.

They seemed majorly out of it, and one of them was having a kip, and then, of course, the crowd surfer was dropped right on him. The punks seemed pretty miffed, but I think if you choose a place like that for your nap you should accept the consequences gracefully.

Also re crowd surfing--if you are six and a half feet tall and weight 250 pounds you should not even attempt to surf, especially not by hoisting yourself up by my chest. Just my opinion.

After The Saw Doctors was Patti Smith.

I was looking forward to seeing her, not because I'm much of a fan of her music, but she's an icon of cool and I do admire her, but I must say that she, bar no-one, was the best performer I saw in both days. The woman is incredible. She radiates charisma out of the ends of her hair.

She would just walk to the lip of the stage and squat down and stare at the audience, grinning, and they'd go mad. She is one of the most compulsively watchable performers I have ever seen. Also, she saw fit to give a short anti-drinking lecture at an alcohol-sponsored event, which pretty much defines punk rock, I think. I decided, during the course of the set, that Patti Smith is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, because she is fully and completely herself every second. I aspire to that.

Atone point, towards the end, I looked at the sky, and for the first time in two days the sun was out and the cloud cover was gone, and I swear I thought with no irony at all "Patti sung the sky blue!"

That's how great her set was.

Afterwards, I was going to see X on the second stage, but I needed to decompress, so I wandered around for twenty minutes or so, then went but did not stay for longer than six or seven songs, because after the sublime Patti I just couldn't appreciate them properly.

They were great, though. It was cool as hell seeing John Doe and Exene, but the greatest thing of all was seeing Billy Zoom in his splay-footed stance, looking out into the audience with that sweet smile on his face. It was also really something to see Exene and John share a mike, their lips almost touching--it was an amazingly charged moment, considering their history.

Worth the price of admission.

Lastly were the headliners, all three of which I was dying to see.

On the main stage were The Indigo Girls, on the second stage was Shane MacGowan, and on the third was Black 47!
How do you choose?

Well, Shane MacGowan was out quickly, though I'd dig seeing him sometime, so it was between Indigo and 47. I thought maybe I could see half of one and then half of the other, but that didn't work at all on Saturday when I forgot to see Loudon Wainright, so I decided to make a choice.

And I thought, here I am at an Irish music festival, and it would be a sin not to see the greatest Irish rock band in New York if not the world!

So I decided, fuck The Indigo Girls, I'm gonna see The Mick Boys.

And they were the greatest. They bitched loudly about being on the third stage for the second year in a row, which was of course absurd, they were entirely right. They are at least as famous as The Saw Doctors, who were on the main stage!

They had step dancers too, like The Chieftains, but their's were these little girls. One, around ten or so, was in this bizarre costume and a tiara so weird that she must have been some sort of child champion, and there was this tiny tot around five or so, and a couple of older girls, and I thought that the kiddies looked slightly startled to be faced by this roaring crowd of drunks jumping up and down, but when they finished they raised their tiny fists in the air and grinned, which is what one does at a Black 47 concert, so I guess they've worked with them before!

Then I thankfully took my muddy, aching self and went home.

One year ago today:
"Twister's comin'! Take cover!!"

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