Tom Dunne's Music & Me: From the Clash to Kate Bush - five gigs I'd love to have seen
The Clash, Freddie Mercury of Queen, Mic Christopher, Kate Bush and David Bowie.
I’m not saying I wake up nights in a sweat about ‘great gigs that I have missed’, but it does rancour. There are so many I could quite easily have gone to, knew about and somehow conspired to miss. Time does not lessen the pain.
For instance, on the way to see Sonic Youth in the Top Hat in Dun Laoghaire on August 21, 1991 my friends and I stopped at the Purty Loft for a ‘swift pint'. All we would miss, we reckoned, was the support act. Two weeks after that show that support act released a single called 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.
But do you ever really realise at the time that you are witnessing history? I’m not sure you do, but here are five gigs I would – if Cher could only ‘turn back time' - have loved to have seen.
Probably as close to the Sex Pistols gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall as we got in Ireland. At that Manc gig, famously, everyone present formed a band – Joy Division, The Buzzcocks, The Smiths. Here, many present – U2, the Virgin Prunes - were already in bands but simply emerged into the night as white lights from God.
Bill Graham, the great music writer, wrote, “What hit me, what happened? I still can hardly begin to calculate it.” It was at the height of punk, only months after 'Anarchy in the UK' had turned the world upside down. Sadly, I just wasn’t allowed go!
Queen were at the top of their game at this point. Bohemian Rhapsody was midway through its nine week run at the top but no one as yet truly suspected how life altering and gigantic that success was going to be. Many critics would later vote is to be the greatest song of all time.
But the Queen playing it onstage that night still had more of a foot in their hard working, hard touring past than their glamourous future. The set is road hardened, with extended solos, crowd pleasing covers and audience favourites. Bohemian Rhapsody itself is split into two parts, separated from each other by other songs!
But two things make me want to have been there. One, is that Bo Rap (you can only write it out long form so often) segues into Killer Queen, possibly the greatest segue in history. The other is that it is Christmas Eve. You have this gargantuan music feast to enjoy, and then, when you wake up, it’s Christmas Day!
Kate’s ‘come back’ shows, her first since her one and only tour way back in 1979 were probably the hottest tickets on the planet in 2014. No one had ever thought they would see her on a stage in their lifetime. So to see her on a relatively small stage was the stuff of dreams.
My mistake here was that I placed my sole request for tickets into one - admittedly impeccably well connected- basket. It was not as well connected as I had thought. I cheer myself by reflecting that the actions of uber fans - embroidering lyrics in jackets - would probably have ruined it for me. But probably not.
Mic played a few shows in The Lobby in Cork from early March to September 2001.Before each one a listener in Cork would beseech me to attend saying there was ‘magic in the air.’ Mic was developing the songs that would become the Skylarking album and there was something in those emails I just knew to be true. But I assumed there would be more times. I was wrong. When Mic passed away, the listener sent me a CD recording of one show. He was right. They were magic nights.
Would you have realised you were seeing the moment when all of Bowie’s travails were coalescing about the point that would make him one of the greatest talents of the 20th century? Or would you have just thought: such songs, such gigs, such a pity he’s breaking up the band? Either way can you just imagine hearing, live in the venue, the opening bars of Five Years?
There have been others: Leonard Cohen’s first comeback shows in Inchicore, Randy Newman in Vicar Street. But for now, once the Time Machine is built, these will do nicely.
What about the gigs you'd love to have seen? Feel free to send us a couple of your picks, and we'll print some of the selections with next week's column:
