A great compilation!

What do you get when you put together:

5 Guitars
4 Mandolins
3 Harmonicas
2 Grumpy old men with gray hair
and
1 Hurdy Gurdy

and if you also add a great Venue (Vicar Street), an enthusiastic crowd, a couple of drinks and a tin whistle, then you have the makings of a great night of entertainment.

And that's exactly what we were treated to last night.  I'm not normally a fan of Irish Traditional music, all that bemoaning our fate at the hands of our oppressors or lamenting our loved one's as they cross the Atlantic Ocean usually sends me running to the CD rack to look for ABBA Gold or Lady GA GA or Disco Hits from the 80's!!  But when the two grumpy gray haired men are Andy Irvine and Paul Brady then that's a very different compilation altogether.

I would be a fan of Paul Brady's style of music normally, but I wasn't sure what to expect from this duo so I was a bit apprehensive before the lights came on!  But once the music and the banter and the story telling started I forgot all about my apprehension and got right on with enjoying myself.  And I am not doing them justice calling them grumpy old men as they were far from that.  The stories told before each song were sometimes better than the songs themselves, especially the one about never bringing the woman that you love to your wedding!  And then there was the one about the Farmers daughter, the 147 soldiers, her mother, the dictionary and the word 'orgy'.  But I'm not going to tell you that story, you will just have to wait until they come to your town and go and see them and hear it for yourself!

And never again will I care when I play a bum note (or several) on my guitar, as the great Mr Brady a couple of times had to start a song over as he got it wrong.  He was also struggling with the 'technology' which was funny as it was an 'unplugged' gig, but that just added to the intimate atmosphere and made it all the more enjoyable.

I have to go now and re-think my CD collection.

Although, I'm not sure tho' that I can part with Disco hits from the 80's just yet......(I thing they play a Hurdy Gurdy on 'I Will Survive'.....)