Charlie Adley’s Arts Festival views

Date Published: 27-Jun-2008

RECENTLY I was asked what I thought about the Galway Arts Festival. Now that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, I tried my darndest not to allow my memory to turn the past into a Bulmer’s cider commercial, where buxom girls wore frilly frocks; the sun shone from a cloudless sky; there was not one miserable fecker pulling a long face in sight; and we had all the time in the world to sit around and laugh and flirt and get pissed on cider.

Trouble is, the first memory my addled brainbox harvests of attending a Galway Arts Festival event looks exactly like a Bulmer’s commercial. Hundreds of happy sweaty young bodies are crammed into the Festival Big Top. There is straw on the floor. To my left, thick-set farmer’s sons from Abbeyknockmoy; to my right, brick shithouse trucker’s nephews from Tuam. The air is thick with the smell of beer and mud, and up on stage, the Saw Doctors are playing a blinder at home.

To this recently-arrived London boy, that night was a revelation. I was so musically and spiritually far away from the Marquee on Wardour Street, I could have been in Nebraska, or a different universe. But hell, I enjoyed the gig. That night was made possible for me by the inestimable Ollie Jennings, himself a co-founder of the Arts Festival.

Back then, writing a colyoom in this Noble Rag under a nom de plume, I had complained that while the Shams were enjoying worldwide success, they were at risk of neglecting the very roots that had inspired their music and their fanbase.

Months later, an envelope appeared in the newsroom………