Yeah, Baby!
- 8 May 07, 10:07 AM
In a parallel life, I΅―m involved with an organisation called , that aims to develop a dedicated music centre in Belfast. We΅―ve been hacking away at the idea for 16 months now and on Saturday, we threw the doors wide for an open day.
It was a risky call for many reasons. Firstly, the venue, an old whiskey warehouse on Gordon Street, needs a lot of renovation. Would people be able to see the potential? Also, health and safety issues meant that we had to spend loads of money to bring it up to standard. And finally, we had a secret gig in the evening that involved the likes of Snow Patrol, Duke Special and Elbow.
To our satisfaction, it worked well. The morning and afternoon sessions were busy, with loads of young bands, budding industry players and curious parents all checking us out. We had a discussion panel, DJ tutorials, a dozen music-related stalls and some live music from The Fools and virtuoso guitarist Thomas Leeb.
We held a raffle and visitors from the open day won 40 tickets to the evening performance. The volunteer workers and stall holders were also present, plus allies, media people and friends of the bands. And so our grins grew ever-wider as we listened to Jetplane Landing, Paul Archer and Burning Codes and James Walsh from Starsailor. The latter was introduced by James Nesbitt, who was totally enthusiastic, while Gary Lightbody sang with Lisa Hannigan from the Damien Rice band and then bellowed out ΅®Teenage Kicks΅― with Guy Garvey.
Elbow had come in from Manchester while we had to good fortune to have Duke Special and Rea Curran in the house. The night was effectively blessed when Peter Wilson sang that Ash tune ΅®Oh Yeah΅― and the audience responded with gusto.
I promise not to witter on about this project all the time. But forgive me if I sound a little self-indulgent. It was a bit magical, and you have to enjoy that stuff when it does reveal itself.
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