June 2024
Summer Gold
The good news is that, as the garden sprang into life without my assistance, so too did a few ideas. Just this week, I delivered a new play (which the company which commissioned it is scheduling for early next year, le cúnamh Dé.*)
Meanwhile, Killian Ginnity has posted a clip he shot at the Dublin New Theatre launch of Material Wealth, the splendid Pat Thomas book of Allen Ginsberg’s archive. It was a super night, with memorable performances by Mike Scott and Catherine Ann Cullen and discussions with Pat and Peter Hale (Ginsberg Estate). I was accompanied on one lengthy piece by scholar Éamann Ó hÉigeartaigh. Hopefully, we’ll get to hear more of that project at a later date.
After the Summer of Love is a poem that I included in the cycle that made up Ascension, the multi-media performance piece staged by Daniel Figgis in the Walled Garden of the Pearse Museum some years back. While it’s anything but joyful, I felt the Ginsberg reference qualified it for inclusion in the event at the New Theatre.
Click the image to watch
It was late last summer, just when I’d finished the final edits of Showbusiness with Blood (Lilliput Press), that I rocked up to chat with radio presenter and all-round old-skool DJ ace Eric Moore for a pilot for a project he was working on.
Instead of a formal Q&A, Eric gave me a tour of his studio, played some blistering remixes he’d been working on and also some rare East Coast classics and made coffee… lots of coffee. In a face palm moment, I even climbed behind his young son’s tiny toy drum kit and, for a minute, imagined I was as cool as Art Blakey. (Impossible, of course)
'All you have to do is be able to feel'
I was there for hours and completely forget what we spoke about except that it was probably everything and anything and, worryingly, unfiltered. A curious thing I noticed; it was the first time I’d properly socialised since the long months of isolation and social distancing during in the wretched pandemic so I struggled to regain the art of conversing. I was rusty. Weird. Perhaps that’s why it took hours to get a few soundbites.
Anyway, Eric’s idea of talking to “music obsessives, to learn more about their contribution to the music industry and the passion that fuelled their journey” seems to have worked. He’s since recorded a series of interviews - It’s Only Rock ’n Roll, But Sure Look…, with luminaries such as music documentary producer Dave Heffernan, singer Mary Coughlan, promoter Pat Egan and many others and is ready to blast off.
Our chat, the first of the series, will be broadcast on Sunday evening (June 23rd) at 6 pm on RTE Gold.
Whoever coined the catchphrase “Be afraid. Be very afraid” knows how I’m feeling right now.
(Reference Note: *With the help of God)
It’s Only Rock ’n Roll, But Sure Look…
