Sonic Youth ROCKED!

So did the Chemical brothers, though they played a rather short set.

Friday evening saw me hotfoot out of work at 4pm, making a beeline for Marlay Park. I got to the front door of my building, dressed for warm weather, only to witness pouring rain outside.

Mercifully it abated, and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

I went to the venue alone, but met a guy and his girlfriend, got talking to them and hung out for a while. I had little interest in the first two bands (though they sounded good enough), I was really only there for New York's finest. So I loaded up on Budweiser (the main sponsor of the event. Bleh!) and got down. I forgot one thing. The cardinal rule of concert-going.

STOP DRINKING 45 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR FAVOURITE ACT OTHERWISE YOU HAVE TO RUN TO THE GENTS DURING THEIR SET.

I was down by the toilets when I heard a familiar-sounding wall of feedback, so I legged it to the front of the crowd, camera in hand. The first thing I noticed was how SY still look good, even though the average age of the band members must be close to fifty by now. Kim Gordon still looks cool at what must now be about fifty-two, though I'm still not sure about that dress. Lee Ranaldo, grey as a badger but there you go.

The way they played their set was to take about two songs from each album, going back as far as Evol. So basically we got treated to stuff like I love you Golden Blue (the opener), Schizophrenia, Pacific Coast Highway, Mote (during which Lee seemed to forget half the words), Drunken Butterfly, Pattern Recognition, Rain on Tin (closing), and other ones I don't remember right now.

Then I went off, drank some more, and came back for the Chemical Brothers. A good set, though a bit short. The crowd were mightily pissed off with this, and booed when the steward came on to signal the end of the gig. Of course at that stage I scoped out a hot guy, bounded up and asked if I could take a picture of him for that reason. He agreed, and his girlfriend seemed to take it pretty well.

All I have to do is wait for the pictures to come out and see if I knew what I was doing. The Pixies are headlining today at Lansdowne Road. Yay again!

Last night I went to the workshop about challenging internalised homophobia. It was fine, if a bit light, and I met some interesting people at it. Of course the two hours of workshop was followed by four hours of sociable drinking and now I'm sitting here wishing I had been sensible and gone home straight after.

It was the first time I'd been in a bar with topless male dancers doing their thing on the bar counter. I'm so out of the loop: there are about two gay bars after opening in Dublin since I went to Brighton and I never knew anything about them.

Now to get my head off the desk and do something...