IF IT'S not pesky loyalists, it's ancient blues legends bringing our city to a standstill these days. The Guinness Booze festival, also known as the Guinness Blues Festival, opened in Dublin last night with an open air concert in College Green by Buddy Guy, who the publicity people tell us is "the best guitar player alive".
The promotion of Buddy Guy (60, the son of a sharecropper from Louisiana) centred on the above quote by Eric Clapton and that in itself is remarkable for two reasons. First, it seems that black artists need to be validated by white, mainstream bores like Clapton who have basically lifted the sort of music produced by people like Buddy Guy and watered it down for a middle of the road audience.
Second, Eric Clapton once urged people at one his concerts to vote for Enoch Powell. That's gratitude for you, socio historical squabbling aside, a modest sized crowd gathered for Guy's performance last night and listened to music that thankfully stayed on the right side of the "woke up this morning and my baby had gone" blues divide.
The few gardai present tried to enter into the spirit of things by nodding their heads, hopelessly out of time, to the lugubrious blues beat and, while the festival's sponsors had their name emblazoned all over the specially constructed stage, it was most amusing (in a droll sort of way) to witness a large proportion of the crowd drinking a rival drink.
That's gratitude for you.
The festival continues apace all around Temple Bar today and tomorrow. Improbably named bands like Keb' Mo', Bluezianza Swamp and Texmex Blues A Billy will be doing what they do all over the quartier as every pub, club and community workshop space (or whatever they call them these days) is hijacked by musicians doing a neat side line in depressed tales of unrequited love. Enjoy.
