“The doors don’t close, love – especially not for you two!”
Oh dear. It should
have been the time we went into the Olympia to watch Neil Finn’s support act
Tiny Ruins take to the stage. Instead,
we were checking with the doorman whether we could definitely still get in once
the support act had finished, so we could go drinking instead.
Being the classy ladies we are, my friend and I had already
drank pre-mixed G&T and Pims & lemonade on the bus down, and a cocktail
each on arrival in Dublin. As another
cocktail started calling to us, we decided to ditch Tiny Ruins, as good as they
might have been, to go drink a Harvey Wallbanger and a shot of something foul , in a pub
populated with slightly creepy old Irish men.
It was a good idea at the time.
Eventually, we put our glasses down and headed back to the
Olympia. Where we immediately lifted our glasses again, plastic ones this time, filled the foulest wine we ever had the misfortune to drink. I had been worried that our
seats in row L wouldn’t exactly offer a memorable view, so was pleased to see
that we actually had a pretty clear view of the stage. Still for a woman who’s used to being crushed
against a barrier in the mosh pit, it took a bit of getting used to. I also
had a pretty clear view of the arse of the man in front of us, who frequently
had to stand up for whatever reason, letting his low-riding jeans travel further
southward.
I should add a disclaimer to this, namely that I am a huge
Neil Finn fan. And, as this was my first
Finn gig, I was practically jumping up and down in my seat by the time the man
himself took to the stage. Unexpectedly,
he began the gig with a piano-led version of Black and White Boy, one of my
favourite Finn tracks, so I was sold already.
“It’s good to be back on the sloping stage of the Olympia”,
Finn enthused as his backing band joined him on said stage, “though no-one
knows why it’s sloping, exactly”. The
set list for the evening obviously contained numerous tracks from Finn’s
excellent new album Dizzy Heights, but also ran through plenty of his greatest
hits, from his Split Enz days right up to Pajama Club.
I was pleased to hear the Split Enz track
Strait Old Line get an airing – it’s not exactly a well known song in this neck
of the woods by any means, but is another favourite of mine (hell, they’re all
favourites of mine) and Finn performed it in the gospel style he
had originally intended.
One particular highlight of the evening came when Finn’s Crowded House band-mate Nick Seymour joined him on stage for a couple of
tracks, and even an impromptu dance routine of sorts. Having never seen Crowded House live myself,
it was rather lovely to the see the two of them on stage together, clearly
enjoying the brief reunion.
Special mention has to go to the beautiful backdrop behind
Finn and his band, designed by former Split Enz cohort Noel Crombie and his partner,
Sally Mill. Thanks to some clever
lighting the backdrop appeared to change colour according to the song being
played – during Divebomber, for example, the backdrop looked like a gorgeous
sunny morning sky as the aircraft sound effects soared across.
The Olympia, Finn told us, has “a soft curfew” and, having
recently seen Bruce Springsteen play a three hour set he saw no reason to end
his own gig any earlier. And so it was
that Finn came on stage for what amounted to a 12 song encore, just him, his guitar
and his piano. As the evening wore on,
people began leaving in order to catch public transport or relieve babysitters
of their duties, but if anything this reduction in numbers only improved the
atmosphere.
Going to a Neil Finn gig doesn’t feel much like going to a
gig at all – instead, it feels as if he has invited quite a lot of people to
his rather large living room for a bit of a sing-a-long. The decreasing crowd served to make the
proceedings feel a bit more intimate, and certainly the crowd that remained
definitely appeared to sing along much louder than they had been before.
I did, fuelled by alcohol no doubt, attempt to call out a
request for Song of the Lonely Mountain which sadly went unheard, but he did
play a request for Love Is All That Remains which, in retrospect, was probably
a much better choice anyway.
The gig ended with Better Be Home Soon, the audience singing
louder than Finn, and considering it was midnight before we left the Olympia,
it was an apt choice of song. My
friend and I did attempt to hang around for some Neil Finn Stage Door Action
afterwards, but alas, we left empty handed.
Considering the man had just played a three hour set, we could hardly
complain.
So, yes, my own fangirlishness probably gets the better of
me here and prevents me from saying anything negative whatsoever about the
evening. If I had to make a complaint it
would be that seated gigs just don’t do anything for me in general, and I had
to make do with dancing in my chair during tracks that were really too good for
chair dancing. However, as a large amount of the gig was Finn performing solo, I admit it was hardly moshing
material.
The journalist Peter Paphides once wrote about “Crowded
House moments”, where certain songs have defining moments that stay with you
forever. Not having been a Crowded House
gig it’s perhaps a bit redundant to talk about that, but those of us in the
Olympia that night certainly had a Neil Finn moment anyway.
