This was the second of Brendan’s three gigs in Ireland and a big improvement on Dublin, the night before.
There was no support act this evening, so the doors didn’t open until 21:00. Happily, the Pavilion has a downstairs bar, so there was a good place to sit, drink and chat before the gig.
Brendan was still doing the soundcheck when I got there at 19:30. I could hear the muffled strains of Wintersun emanating through the walls of the venue into the alley outside.
The big man came downstairs at about 20:30 and invited me and another fan to sit with him at his table outside. We talked a little about the previous night’s Dublin gig.
Graham Wood, sleeve designer of Ark, was also there, so I got to hear a little about his involvement in the project. He mentioned that the retail version of Ark will have different sleeve artwork to the tour edition.
At 21:15, it was time for Brendan to get ready for the gig and for me to find a suitable vantage point for viewing and recording the gig.
The Pavilion is a very nice venue. It’s quite small, but not nearly as small as Dublin’s Crawdaddy. On the other hand, it was more than half-empty this evening. I’d estimate that there were no more than 150 to 200 people there; perhaps even fewer.
The venue has a raised perimeter that is home to high tables and bar stools. Down on the dance floor, there are yet more tables and chairs, again at the edges.
Amazingly, this meant that when Brendan and co. took to the stage at 21:45, there was no-one standing anywhere near the stage. People were sitting at the various tables, sipping drinks, or standing at the back of the dance floor, a good 15 to 20 metres away.
Usually, one must jockey for position at the front of a gig, but tonight, no-one wanted to be anywhere near the stage. Hardly anyone even wanted to stand up. Bizarre.
The sound was much, much better than in Dublin. The audience were appreciative and respectful, but not effusive. You could have heard a pin drop between songs. In fact, if you put on headphones whilst listening to the recording, you can probably hear my heartbeat: that’s how quiet it was.
I sat on the far right, along the raised edge, on a bar stool about two metres back from the hanging PA. Ideally, I would have stepped back another couple of metres to be in the direct firing line of the PA, but there was furniture in the way.
It turns out to have made very little difference. The quality of the recording rivals and arguably surpasses that of the Brussels gig I captured back in March.
Brendan’s guitar shines through particularly well on this recording. A Passage In Time has never sounded better and just listen to the ending of The Arcane.
Although we were treated to a complete rendition of Voyage Of Bran this evening, we lost Severance from the set.
Once again, the audience fell silent as the band exited the stage after Spirit. There was no clapping, cheering or stamping of feet. It was like a library in there.
Why do Irish audiences not expect and/or desire more than one encore? I really don’t know.
Anyway, this time Brendan wasn’t giving away any gifts. Encores are the earned reward of an enthusiastic audience and, despite their warm appreciation of the main set, they were decidedly lacklustre in demanding the band’s return to play yet another song. If you don’t ask, you don’t get; and we didn’t ask, so we didn’t get.
Within a few minutes of the lights coming back on, the place started to fill up with people considerably younger than me. The venue was performing double duty that evening, once for Brendan and now as the host of the Chic afterparty. Scantily clad twenty-something women invaded the space and rammed painfully home just how long it’s been since I was a twenty-something man.
Brendan emerged from the shadows after a while and we had a chat. He was happy with the gig, but lamented that the audience hadn’t been bigger. He also remarked how strange it is that Irish audiences don’t seem to care about getting more than one encore.
The highlight of tonight’s concert for me was Spirit. Brendan seemed to put a lot of emotion into the performance and the sound was perfect. The bass and keyboards really made the song pound along and it was a great moment to finish on.
Musically, the band were also in better form than the night before. In fact, the only thing wrong with tonight’s show was that it wasn’t completely sold out and packed to the gills.
Plane, train, car or boat, get yourself to one of this man’s upcoming gigs.
I still remember that hot starry summer evening in 1986 when, in the Fréjus arenas, Dead Can Dance’s Baudelairean second album was played to a disparate audience as part of an equally disparate festival; even the alcoholics on all sorts of drugs who had come to see their favourite rock band were silent, even between songs. I too, after the performance, exchanged a few words with him. A few. He was elsewhere.