Graduate students don't come with much better credentials than Clarence Fountain and company. The Talladega Institute for the deaf and blind sure knew how to coax and cajole the best out of The Blind Boys of Alabama, and they in turn did just that with the crowds stageside at Nowlan Park on Saturday.
The Ens, Menlow Park, John Spillane and Kila struck the flint in the early afternoon sunshine, but it was those Alabama boys who lit the flame in earnest.
Ebbing sound quality might have hindered performers of lesser experience, but Jimmy Carter's fluorescent vocals shimmied like songbirds soaring atop murky floodwaters.
After that, the Fun Lovin' Criminals' Huey 'DiFontaine' Morgan, loped on stage, suitably louche, armed with little more than a guitar and a hooded smile that would be the envy of any self-respecting lounge lizard, and brewed up a mini-storm with a swathe of home favourites, including Love Unlimited and Party Dress.
Van Morrison proved for once and for all that he's creatively bankrupt, with too many road miles and a tad too many snide sidelong glances at his audience to make us care anymore. Gone are the enchanted moments when he jousted with Pee Wee Ellis on sax, or fenced with Georgie Fame's double-jointed keyboards. Having outlawed the use of the big screens, maybe Van at least spared the back rows his unrepentant scowl. Misery shouldn't come with such a high price tag, (for the audience, at least) should it? And so to the showstopper. Paul Simon, the polymath of rhythm, of melody and of lateral thinking lyrics, stretches, bends and cajoles his audience effortlessly. Bridge Over Troubled Water eased him into what was a magnificent ticker-tape parade through his back catalogue: Graceland, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Call Me Al and Mrs Robinson, revisited and reinvigorated by his dazzling 11 piece band. Some 40 years on the road and Simon is simply rising to a gallop. Most of us skipped with Nureyevian grace (or so we thought) into downtown Kilkenny, buoyed by his sheer exuberance.