SHIRKING THE PADDLING THING – AGAIN.

If you’re in anyway interested in sea-kayaking, then this is not going to be the blog entry for you. I’ve been – not for the first time – diluting the minimum amount of actual paddle action required to make any forward progress with the maximum of diversion and off-sea activity. The last week has been a master-class in not kayaking around Ireland.

Last significant entry – bar even more significant announcement that Sam Crowley completed his circumnavigation earlier today by, I imagine an ability to focus on the task in hand and keep going whatever the distractions, which is so unlike the home life and mindset of your current correspondent – was that I was sitting out poor weather on Malin Head at the exact halfway point of my own aimless circling of Ireland. I may have promised to update my Malin days, but as I haven’t actually left there yet it would seem a little risky to spill the beans on all those nights in various pubs and the characters I met in the days I was based there. I’ll do that when I’ve put some distance behind me and am no longer relying on those same pubs and characters to provide shelter and amusement.

Though I will say that being based in the wonderful Sandrock hostel has been a bar to rushing off into potentially and actual bad weather. So, as I may have mentioned, happy days reading, playing the house guitar and lounging. Though I was looking forward to the Malin Head Christmas Party in the Crossroads Pub. I even had a drink in the afternoon whilst they were putting up the decorations and I felt the atmosphere growing. So much so that I persuaded a Canadian couple and a German girl to march up the road through the drizzle for some carols and mince pies. But by the time we got there there had been some mysterious change of heart and Christmas had been cancelled. There was still a bit of a session but it just wasn’t the same. As a manqué investigative journalist I can’t leave Malin Head until I know why Christmas was cancelled after all the lead up hullaboo. There was, though, a wonderful clear night on the walk back and so a chance to see the streaking ‘shooting stars’ of the Persid showers in the moonless, blackness of the bible-black night.

There was a bit more fun the next night, also at the Crossroads, when there was a dance. I wondered along with a couple of Germans, and it has to be said that my heart sank a bit when I saw that the live band was one of the ubiquitous keyboard, drum machine and whooshy sound effect and backing track computers played by a one-man-band, but in fact it was all very jolly. Not many people actually got up to dance, of course, apart from a couple of dogged waltzers, a few handbag circling girls, the two German sisters who demonstrated the ‘disco fox’ to a riveted bar-front of farmers and fishermen, and – at one point or two – myself trying to make something faintly salsa-ish from the relentless country covers. But then the two Germans took the evening to a different level by asking the one man-band if they could perhaps sing a song. Which they did – the Everly Brother’s ‘Dream’ – in time-stopping harmony, that silenced the whole of a late drinking bar. As did the double harmony folk song they sang next. I was desperate for them to sing ‘Stille Nacht’ and reinstate the Malin Head August Christmas tradition. But it was not to be.

The next day – ushered out by a forecast of many days to come of high winds, small craft warnings, and gales – I took the bus to Dublin. On the Friday morning I had a live interview on TV3 about horse holidays around the world; this required all kinds of horrors like getting up at six without coffee and getting into a taxi and trying to remember what my kayak-addled brain actually knew about horses. A quick dash into make-up – I got the colours, the shades and the rest of the details so I’ll know what to buy for the future so I can achieve a flawless, non-shiny complexion for myself – an injudicious amount of coffee and onto the couch. A quick yak about horse hols – I may have looked a bit bemused, as the whole horse thing seems like it’s from another life – and I was back on the street, and with a holiday feel to the coming weekend.

That night – Friday – I rolled down to the Crawdaddy to see Tom Russell, one of America’s best and most literary and interesting (for which, also, read seriously overlooked) songwriters and performers, who rides the edge between Cormac MacCarthy gothic, Kerouac beat and cowboy cool, with much homage paid to the right kind of boots, red wine, things one should have done but didn’t, and the things one got instead, as well as the coming and goings of good and bad with women. A goodish crowd but not packed meaning I could sit on the side of the stage in peace and enjoy Russell and his excellent accompanying guitarist, Michael Martin, with a pint and at leisure. I’ve managed to miss seeing Tom Russell playing by close shaves in several continents and often only by hours, or a few miles over the past decade so was good to finally catch up with him. Especially as he wrote a song called ‘Blood Oranges’ based on a book by Paul Bowles whom I used to see when I passed through Tangier, and thus I’d told Paul about this left-field homage, and wanted to complete the circle by telling Tom that I’d told Paul. Which I did. So that was that.

Note, there’s a fair bit of music involved in this week’s attempts to avoid kayaking. And it grows to a crescendo. Because my old friend David who manages and tours all kinds of rather groovy band from around the world was in town to put Tuareg band Tinawiren on stage. Now I’d go pretty much anywhere to hear the Malian guitar slingers play – and indeed proved it by heading down with Dave a few years back to the festival in the desert which took, and takes, place somewhere to the north of Timbuktu near Essakane. So the chance of seeing the once-kalishnikov, now-Stratocaster toting lads do their thing out at Slane was too good to miss, especially as they’d signed up the Stones as their support band; there was a bit of a scheduling mix-up that saw the Stones taking to the stage after Tinawiren, though I think that was just so that the Tuaregs could get back to their hotel early.

It was a lovely summer’s day. Ie, not actually torrential rain, and the mud no more than ankle deep. Dave and I and friends of his, the delightful Michael and Abegail who’d been at the last gig the Stones played in Ireland, also in Slane and 25 years ago were smart and took the bus from the centre of Dublin to the festival, at Lord Mountcharles’ place. As did some 70,000 other people. Ah, the elitist joy of back stage passes. The transport may have been bus, but once we were in and flashing our passes left right and centre (I’ve tried using mine since but sadly its power seems to have waned a little, like an overdrawn credit card) we were limo class the whole way.

The rain stopped as Tinawiren took the stage (a huge Fritz Lang Metropolis type affair of such dimensions that it made the countryside and trees around it look out of place rather than the other way around) and their familiar camel lope rhythms and languidly commanding guitar riffs drew the crowd and a kicked off the day in truth, though supporting the Stones (as the Hold Steady and the Charlatans also discovered) is always going to be case of being there and killing people’s time before the main act gear up. But of 70,000 people a significant number might know now where Mali is and a few number might go and check out Tinawiren for themselves.

There was a brief flurry of rain – boats patrolled the swollen river to stop swimming gate crashers, the mud liquefied a little more, and dusk approached. But we missed getting wet as we were back stage in the encampent with Tinawiren drinking mint tea brewed on a small stove that seemed to be their significant backstage ‘rider,’ and drinking the fridge full of Guinness that seemed to be a general artist’s perk. Then it was up to the VIP catering area for a bite to eat, and a pre-gig drink.
Injecting the only slightly off note into a marvellous day was a rather – no, really – obnoxious woman who made the already trying attempt to get drinks from the crowded and chaotic bar less pleasing by queue jumping and queue jumping others. My parting shot when she tried to justify all this self serving and irritating behaviour was a rather terse, ‘Look, just go away, you’ve annoyed me enough already, I don’t want to hear whatever your excuses are…I’d just rather not see you again.”

Then down to the Golden Circle right in front of the stage, and a general air and in my case a very surprising and uncool air of expectancy and anticipation and excitement. Though after half an hour’s wait and given that there were 70,000 souls arrayed around the huge area that is the natural amphitheatre it seemed to pass belief that the woman talking loudly and pushing herself and her friends right in front of us was my pal from the bar scrum.

1. Some smoke, some explosion and just as it got dark there was – I won a bet on this – the opening bars of ‘Start Me Up.’ And so it went from there. The full on show. An inspired mixing of split second timing and choreography and the seemingly loose, juke joint pace of the band. And every song a cracker, given that they chose almost exclusively from the early, solid classics. 'Miss You', 'It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)', 'Satisfaction', 'Honky Tonk Women', 'Sympathy for the Devil', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'. A goodly – sensible choice – of stuff from Exile. A great James Brown cover – upped hugely by Lisa Fisher from the backing singers doing an Uber Tina Turner sex and shrieking act. But enough there are other sites out there that will tell you all you need to know about the concert (set list anyone?

1Start Me Up
2. You Got Me Rocking
3. Rough Justice
4. All Down The Line
5. Dead Flowers
6. You Can't Always Get What You Want
7. Midnight Rambler
8. I'll Go Crazy
9. Tumbling Dice
--- Introductions
10. You Got The Silver (Keith)
11. I Wanna Hold You (Keith)
12. Miss You (to B-stage)
13. It's Only Rock'n Roll (B-stage)
14. Satisfaction (B-stage)
15. Honky Tonk Women (to main stage)
16. Sympathy For The Devil
17. Paint It Black
18. Jumping Jack Flash
19. Brown Sugar (encore)

THOUGHT SO!)
Seemed a pity to end a great evening so early and what with the slow trickle of crowds out of the mud-soaked fields it seemed a sound idea to head back to Tinawiren’s backstage room with its roof, sofa and chairs, oh and that fridge of Guinness. Then we marched back along the road and got the bus back to Dublin (organisation of every aspect of the show was exemplary) and then it still seemed a bit too early to call it day, so it was back to Abegail and Michael’s house in Monkstown and some Jameson and then finally it was five or something like that, and then suddenly it did seem like a very good time to get some sleep.

So, can’t recall much about yesterday. But vaguely recalled that I’d been doing something with boats or similar in a past life. And bit by bit it came back to me; ah, yes, I’m meant to be paddling around Ireland and I’m in Dublin and my kayak is up in Malin and it’s all going horribly awry. But I woke this morning at six, still in Dublin, heard a familiar litany of gales and force 7s and small craft warnings for the coming two days and so just rolled over. Tomorrow I will – probably, well, very likely, surely – head back to Donegal and take to the waves again. Or maybe I’ll just grab my guitar and go back on the road playing blues and hollering. Seeing the Stones still convincingly at it gives us all home. What are the odds, though, that four guys in their sixties have all got their hair (or bloody convincing wigs), haven’t turned to fat, and can still move around a stage at a fair old lick. Of course Mick can sprint up and down the length of the wings and up and down the stairs – that’s what he does, but there was a murmur of ‘Fuck, he can run…’ when Keith made a slight less manic sprint from one of the wing stages. And Charlie was looking bloody spry too, despite a few problems over the past years. And Ronnie may have been staying fit by climbing on and off a wagon a lot at a fair old pace but he arguably was the guy who kicked everything along. ‘The Man from Naas,’ as Jagger introduced him, though he shut him down when the popular applause as Ronnie took an extended saunter down the front of the stage went on and on; ‘Right, right, I think that that’s quite enough…crowd pleasing of the cheapest kind!’
Actually Jagger is the school monitor, on every team, fit and enthusiastic whilst Keith and Ronnie are the two slackers at the back of the class telling jokes and smoking. Often whilst Jagger is doing another run or two the length of the several hundreds of yards of flying stage Ronnie or Keith will stroll over – still playing – to have a word with Charlie (‘where’ll we go after for a drink…up to Henry’s or back to the hotel…’) or to light a cigarette; there is a safety net in one of the backing singers who also hefts an un- or barely-played guitar who I guess is there just in case both the lads decide to light up at the same time and there’s a sudden drop off in guitaring. But in fact it’s the miracle that in the seemingly ramshackle approach to the strumming and picking the two boys are always bang on – it helps that they arrangements are unvarying from when first played, twenty and thirty and forty years ago but still it’s an artfull air of chaos more shamrackle than ramshackle. And Keith is an amazing specimen – effortlessly elegant yet rough looking (at points of passing concentration his mouth falls open and his lower lip, still balancing fag, tends to drop giving him the look of one of the PG Tips chimps).

A brilliant piece of intimacy is provided when the core band tighten around Charlie and his – almost toy sized compared to most skin bashers – drum kit and that bit of stage detaches and starts moving out into the crowd. It’s possibly meant to look space-age but for an Irish audience its little canopy and glass sides around Charlie and the white framework and its stately progress reminds us all of the Popemobile. Which in so many ways is appropriate.
Another miracle is that Jagger seems to get younger as the evening goes on and as he notches up another marathon distance of running and hollering; making him the only man who has a giant, wide screen picture of Dorian Grey above his head to keep him young. It’s apparently pretty nippy up on stage what with the wind and the chill night air. And the oldsters keep shedding layers of clothing and then thinking better of it and pulling on something. This means that Jagger towards the end is striding around the stage dressed in a long white raincoat and a super long scarf wrapped around his neck and trailing in the breeze. He’s either become Tom Stoppard, or the Baker chap who used to play Doctor Who.
And on that note, it being close midnight in a Rathmines internet café and a bit of walk back to the house and an early start to Donegal I’ll stop this digression through the world of music and reinvent myself as fearless, horizon gazing round-nation kayak paddler.