The two best rock concerts I have ever seen were both by Moving Hearts, and they were as different as chalk and cheese. The first was their incendiary debut at the National Stadium in 1981. Maybe you're easily impressed as a teenager, but I wasn't alone, writes Frank McNally.
Unlike any standing ovation I have seen since - typically begun by a small group of enthusiasts and then swelling gradually until there's a tipping point when the rest of the audience joins in out of embarrassment - the one in the stadium was unforced and unanimous.
Unanimous, that is, except for me and my friend Derek, who sat awkwardly through it and applauded in a restrained fashion. I'd like to claim now that this was a conscious attempt to distance ourselves from the message in the music. The truth, probably, is that we were too stuck-up to join a standing ovation for anyone. But there certainly was a message in the music: one that made the name of the band sound like a mission statement.
The joke then was that Moving Hearts were the political wing (in some versions, the musical wing) of the Wolfe Tones. Their songs spanned a range of mostly respectable lefty causes, from Jim Page's Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette, to Jackson Browne's environmentalist elegy Before the Deluge. It wasn't all politics, either. One of the stand-out performances at the Stadium was a punk rock/heavy metal version of Nancy Spain. But the real showstopper - the song that earned the standing ovation - was No Time for Love (if they come in the morning).
This too was fairly right on, name-checking an international roll-call of outlaws, from Sacco and Vanzetti to Connolly and Pearse. It was the mention of Bobby Sands that, in 1981, brought the sentiment bang up to date. And just to underline it, Christy Moore ousted "Newton and Seale" from the original lyrics to make room for Patsy O'Hara, the INLA man who also died in the hunger strikes.
The song was an all-embracing call to revolution, railing against the "boys in blue" and various other enemies of freedom. But it had a particular message for those not primarily involved in the conflict. "The fish need the sea to survive, just like your comrades need you," sang Christy. "The death squads can only get through to them if first they can get through to you."
You had to take sides in 1981, and neither side was comfortable. I voted for the first time in that year's general election, when the candidates in our constituency included Kieran Doherty, then three weeks into his strike. I hated Margaret Thatcher's intransigence on the prisoner issue. But I also hated the way the hunger strikes were being rammed down our throats and used (or so it seemed) to seek a wider endorsement for the "struggle". Doherty topped the poll and was a TD for the last seven weeks of his life. But he went to his undoubtedly courageous death without my vote.
The early 1980s were a generally horrible time in Ireland. Even if you weren't much affected by the Troubles, you had the economy to worry about. And nobody was totally immune from the Troubles. A friend of mine, Gary Sheehan, got a good job when he left school and then lost it - a common experience at the time. So in 1983, he decided to follow his father into the Garda. I last met him on the day of his medical, when he was a bit alarmed at the prospect of the physical training in Templemore.
In the event, he never got to finish it. He was still a trainee boy in blue when pressed into the countrywide search for businessman Don Tidey, who had been kidnapped by the IRA. Gary had the misfortune to stumble upon the hiding place in a Leitrim forest, and died in the shoot-out.
I don't think the crowd in the Stadium in 1981 had necessarily signed up to the ballot-box-and-Armalite strategy. If hearts were moved, it was by the music. No Time for Love also happened to have the some stunning solos, none more so than Keith Donald's, whose strategy involved having an alto sax in one hand and soprano sax in the other, and playing them simultaneously. Who listens to lyrics at a rock concert anyway?
And yet when I next saw Moving Hearts, as a purely instrumental band, I didn't think it could work. It was the National Concert Hall in 1986 - St Patrick's Day, if memory serves. Ireland was still a mess, and in Ballinspittle Boogie, the Hearts immortalised the latest trauma to sweep the country. But the band itself had been transformed. They only wanted to make us dance now, apparently. And they succeeded to an extent that must have made the venue's management nervous.
I doubt if the Concert Hall has witnessed anything like it before or since. The question of a standing ovation didn't arise, because people were standing anyway. They danced in the aisles and some of them danced on the seats. It may be as well that the band broke up soon afterwards, because they would hardly have been asked back. But in its way, the concert was as good as 1981. Perhaps better.
I don't know whether political differences were a factor in the band dispensing with singers. At any rate, they were still instrumental when they returned to the Dublin stage on Tuesday night, after a gap of 18 years, so that must be their definitive form. No Time for Love would have sounded a bit odd, anyway, now that Sinn Féin has signed up to policing.
The band is still good, though the concert did not quite reach the heights of 1981 or 1986. It remains to be seen whether this is a long-term comeback. If it is, they will need a few new tunes. No Time for Love belongs to an era, for good or bad. You could say the same about Ballinspittle Boogie.
Maybe Moving Hearts were of their time too. And a terrible time it was.