Irish Examiner view: Concerts for all

Garth Brooks performing at Croke Park. The singer's ability to make hundreds of thousands travel to one place leaves us with plenty to ponder about.

It would be difficult to ignore the impact Garth Brooks has had on the country in recent days, with his five concerts bringing 400,000 fans to Croke Park.

The singer’s own forays out of Dublin, to take in the sights around Glendalough in Wicklow or to sing a tune in Dick Mack’s pub in Dingle, have been well documented, as one might expect, but his ability to make hundreds of thousands travel to one place leaves us with plenty to ponder about.

Residents of Dublin, for instance, were not slow to take to social media to note the influx of vast numbers of music fans in and around the Drumcondra area for Brooks’ concerts: the invaders were readily identified, after all, by the stetsons and checked shirts being worn.

Was there a subtle distinction being drawn with those sweeping generalisations — on one hand the devotees of Brooks’ brand of music arriving in their droves in Dublin, and the sophisticated natives of the capital on the other?

Or were the distinctions being drawn not subtle at all?

To answer that question in another way, the attendance at the concert does not seem to have been affected by high hotel prices — this despite reports of one-star hotels in the general neighbourhood of Croke Park offering rooms for two people sharing on the night of one of the concerts at €430 (with breakfast not included). Prices that high suggest a lot of attendees would have been motivated to travel straight home from Dublin after the concerts. Or perhaps there were a lot more native Dubliners singing along to Garth Brooks than one might think from the stetson-shaming on social media.