Live music review: Ginger Wildheart

Sugar Club, Dublin

Ginger Wildheart has lived on the edge and just about survived to tell the tale.

He’s served time in a Thai prison, partaken enthusiastically of heroin and recorded a single with Courtney Love – three well-documented examples of taking your life in your hands.

Such scrapes and scraps formed the basis of his new project, a spoken word tour with the occasional musical interlude.

However, it seems some of those at this respectably full Sugar Club gig expected more songs, less homespun chatter, and there’s an uncomfortable moment when Gingers offers to refund the ticket price of a couple up front who have been talking loudly (too loudly in his opinion).

But most everyone else seemed to enjoy this mash-up of reminisces and poignant acoustic rock — stripped-down interpretations of The Wildhearts’ heartfelt proto metal.

The musical interludes are testament to Ginger’s surprising nuance as vocalist and lyricist — he wears his heart on his sleeve and strains for genuine catharsis in his songs.

His winning attribute was charisma. Speaking in a yeasty Newcastle accent, and covered in tattoos, at first glance he might resemble a roadie rather than a headliner.

However, he brought gale force likability with his accounts of record label shenanigans, band infighting and endless decades of partying.

Some of it tipped into caricature, true, yet the devilish glint in his eye made you want to hear him out all the same.

You do wonder, however, if Wildheart might not have benefitted from a smidgen more self -awareness — now in his 50s he came across as rather proud of a life sacrificed at the altar of rock and roll.

Had he knuckled down with his career rather than concentrated on having a good time all the time perhaps he would have left a more enduring legacy.

Thus, this evening succeeded on two levels — both as grab-bag of rousing war stories and cautionary tale for the rest of us.

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