Myself and herself had tickets to support Neil Young’s pension plan last week, so we took the decision to cycle to Malahide Castle & Gardens where he was playing, a romantic and idyllic choice, in theory, but a rather challenging one in practice.
I’d heard the horror stories: people queuing for DARTs until 3am trying to escape the seaside town on concert nights. So I did a Michael Collins and tried to outsmart the lot of them by going on two wheels.
In my head it would be perfect: clear skies, coastal breezes, the healing balm of Harvest Moon echoing over the bay. Instead, we got sideways rain that soaked through the soul and a much longer coastal route than I had bargained for, one that tested not just our calf muscles but the very foundations of our marriage.
Still, we made it. We parked the bikes beside a group of hooded youths in the car park in Malahide and said a short prayer to Saint Anthony before entering the fortress of middle-aged devotion, where Van Morrison was midway through an encore of Gloria that had gone on longer than the recent Papal Conclave.
Neil’s set was solid. Less cranky than usual, more generous with the hits, and thankfully easing off on the three-hour guitar solos. It’s always a strange experience, hearing the Canadian’s countercultural back catalogue and love songs for Mother Earth while queuing for curry chips that cost a tenner and pints from plastic glasses that require a deposit refund strategy.
Don’t get me wrong, I wrote this piece because I love the man. And hearing the classics again was a privilege and his ability to still knock them out as he approaches 80 years old is inspiring. But there is a yawning gap between the ideals of the hippie movement and the transactional reality of the Boomer-led inequality that dominates today’s world. Still, some of us just keep buying the tickets!
Irish artists, go hiontach
The gig got me in the mood for Glastonbury which I attended again this year from the best seat of all: the couch in my front room. Fair play to the BBC, their coverage is consistently brilliant and the whole thing gives you hope. It’s easy to be cynical and say it’s all heritage acts like Neil Young, Rod Stewart, and (dare I say it) Pulp. But scratch the surface and the variety and quality is dizzying.
Glasto may be the last great cultural illusion - a coherent, curated, generation-defining moment - but culture now is a million shards of glass, refracting light in every direction.
The Atlantic magazine ran a piece recently about the supposed decline of American pop culture , about how there’s no monoculture anymore, no mass audience, no shared touchstones. But maybe that’s not decline, maybe it’s just change. We’re not all being spoon-fed by Melody Maker or MTV anymore. Now it comes through Bandcamp newsletters, Substack essays, niche podcasts, or a TikTok by some 22-year-old Norwegian who’s just reimagined death metal as gaeilge (I made that last one up, but I’d love to hear it).
And still, some acts break through. CMAT, Dunboyne’s finest, delivered a barnstorming, career-defining set on the Pyramid Stage. She somehow managed to be both high glam and hilariously grounded, and I’m convinced she’ll be Ireland’s biggest cultural export since Saoirse Ronan.
BBC 6 Music gave Irish artists a serious platform throughout the weekend, and what struck me most is how many of them are flourishing despite impossible odds. It’s never been harder to be a working artist, especially in Ireland, where the housing crisis and cost of living squeeze make it nearly impossible to gig, rent and survive.
Yet this generation is grafting, creating, and doing as much for our reputation as any sports team or state-funded ambassador.
We’d do well to invest in them, and not just with words, but with real support. The Basic Income for the Arts (BIA) pilot scheme was a rare bright spot in recent years. It should be expanded, and if Patrick O’Donovan, now the Minister for Arts, Culture, Communications, Media and Sport wants to make a mark, that’d be a very good place to start.
Who wants to go to Áras?
Speaking of our dear political overlords…in a universe far, far away from Kneecap’s unaired Glastonbury set, Fianna Fáil are struggling to find someone, anyone, to run for president.
Bertie Ahern, who’s been hinting heavily for a few years, looks increasingly like the uncle nobody wants to ask to the wedding. And last weekend Mary Hanafin gently tossed her hat into the ring to the sound of deafening silence.
So let’s make it fun. My pitch is for How Fianna Fáil Are You?, a six-part. prime time Virgin Media reality series to run over the summer. Contestants from the grass roots compete to prove their credentials. Challenges include reciting the full McCreevy ‘if I have it, I’ll spend it’ budget speech from 2000, delivering a moving graveside oration in Béal na Bláth and trying to keep up with Willie O’Dea on the campaign trail without collapsing.
Later rounds involve managing three homes across Dublin, Castlebar and Brussels with only a few special advisers and two ministerial cars. The winner gets to be Fianna Fáil’s pick for a run at the Áras. The losers get enough exposure to probably run themselves anyway.
I know I should be taking all this more seriously but it’s a more solid idea than I’ve yet heard emerge from the party. However, if Micheál Martin would rather avoid this scenario and accept another wild card idea from me , and you’ve heard this here first, folks, he could do worse than thinking “outside the box” and approaching Bosco.
