The 2nd of three events in the Bio Rhythm exhibition currently running at the Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin featured Gavin and BP Fallon amongst a cast of music psychologists, therapists and fellow musicians to explore and discuss the relations we have with music. And specifically for the first half of the evening, that effect of music on our emotions. Is music driven by emotion or is it emotion that creates the music? Scientists and musicians discuss!

Pictures by lib-lab

With a selection of audience members linked up to monitors that measured and displayed the bodies physical reacting to a piece of music the scene was set. The role of music was analysed and debated by the panel in the human response to music from foetus to adult with Gavin and BP often, respectfully, dissociating themselves from the panel’s more scientific views and conclusions.

Gavin’s performances bookended the first half of the event. Resurrecting his interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 40 was a welcome opportunity for those of us who missed out on the Stratford debut. Along with Kate Ellis on cello the performance soared and moved on many levels. The panel and audience reaction was enthusiastic, with some members of the audience agreeing that they hear and see performances in colours and that hearing the Shakespeare sonnet performed in this way evoked passionate reds for them. Gavin’s response: “You should see where I live.” Similarly fiddle player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh shared the place that music brings him during performance to the pot holes on the country roads he magically escapes to while Kate conceded that she totally blanks her mind to bring her to another place.

In delivery, structure, arrangement and length, Gavin’s second piece took on some of the influence of Rzewski’s “Coming Together” which he performed with Gavin Bryars and the Crash Ensemble some years back. Kicking off with the popular theme from Coronation Street while footage of Princess Diana’s funeral mass played on the screen, Gavin – in compelling full performance mode – hunched over a table, narrated in a mix of theatre and spoken word the minute actions of an older lady obsessing manically over her mirror and spectacles. As the piece breaks for more of Kate’s emotive playing aided by a backing track Gavin flies with the character through different stages of her surrender and dislocation. This lost soul soon becomes recognisable as the housewife in ‘Kitchen Sink Drama’ only here she is more demented and at her very own end of the world, as Gavin – now alternating between a mic in each hand – gives voice to various strands of her subconscious over snatches of ‘Lonely Girl’ and Skeeter Davis’ ‘The End of The World’. Keeping with the evening’s theme its emotional punch does truly transport us to another time and place. Indeed to another world. As with the best of Gavin’s performances its effect lingers long after the audience has borne witness.

This brought Gavin’s involvement in the evening to a close. The second half was much more a case for the head over heart with a more experimental foray into the mechanics of sound, although local vibe master BP Fallon brought it back to heart and bones with a spoken word performance of his recent single, ‘I Believe in Elvis’ where in no uncertain terms he challenged the very notion of Fame. Apt closer for the evening went to the exquisite fiddle playing of Caoimhín Ó Raghallaig that uniformly seemed to bring everyone to a more peaceful and serene place. All in all the tug of music on the heartstrings triumphed over the theory when it came to the power of music to affect us. Which is just as should be.

Seen at the Science Gallery, Dublin. 16th Sept 7-10pm
With Gavin Friday, BP Fallon, Kate Ellis, Ben Knapp (SARC) with Biomuse Trio, Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh and Mike McCready (Music Xray), hosted by Gerry Godley.

See also: BPFallon.com – Hi-Fi-Sci: BP Fallon & Gavin Friday live

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• Gavin Friday, Kate Ellis and BP Fallon – Biorhythm live: emotion
• Friday stuns ‘Other Voices’ audience

Demand for Gavin Friday, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill performing work by William Butler Yeats on June 30th was so great, the National Library decided to simulcast the event in the Library’s cafe. Gavin, approaching the material in his own inimitable way, read his personal selection of poems covering themes of romance, politics and celtic mysticism, using the full width of his voice to add light and shade to Yeats’ words, and body to punctuate his phrasing.

Hayes (fiddle) and Cahill (guitar) provided musical interludes and improvised on ‘The Stolen Child’, Yeats’ own tale of dazzle and delight. Although they had little rehearsal time and come from very different traditions, the artists managed to find common ground, and simply ‘clicked’. Hayes kept his eyes on Gavin throughout the performance following his lead while Cahill fixed on the fiddler. “I’m not from Sligo,” said Gavin, “I’m from Dublin,” and launched into a purposefully flat reading of ‘The Fiddler of Dooney’, accentuating his Northside Dublin inflection. It worked well with the ballad’s iambic trimeter: “I passed my brother and cousin / They read in their books of prayer / I read in my book of songs / I bought at the Sligo fair.” He ended with two encores picked on the spot and chose ‘Drinking Song’ because the title appealed to him and then closed with ‘Brown Penny’ (perhaps subconciously because it’s theme echoes his own classic ‘Tell Tale Heart’) the words of which sound particularly Fridayesque: “For he would be thinking of love / Till the stars had run away / And the shadows eaten the moon.”

Theo Dorgan, master of ceremonies, paraphrasing writer Colm Toibin in his closing words to the audience, said: “It wasn’t the guitar players and the fiddlers and the actors and the poets who bankrupted the country, who ran our country into the ground, but if we are to make it back, if we are to take it back… I don’t know about you, but my heart will be all that stronger, for tonight we’ve been in the presence of real art, real artists and it seems such a good thing that’s it’s in the heart of the National Library.” He then called for another round of applause. Later that evening, at the Merrion Hotel, the Library presented the musicians with 1st edition copies of Yeats’ books to thank them for their involvement in the Summer’s Wreath festival.

The poems

• September, 1913
• To a friend whose work has come to nothing
• To Ireland in the coming times
• He thinks of his past greatness when a part of the constellations of heaven
• He wishes for the cloths of heaven
• The stolen child
• The fiddler of Dooney—
• A drinking song (video)
• Brown Penny (video)

SEPTEMBER, 1913

WHAT need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING

NOW all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

TO IRELAND IN THE COMING TIMES

Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland’s wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland’s heart begin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured guietude.

Nor may I less be counted one
With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body’s laid asleep.
For the elemental creatures go
About my table to and fro,
That hurry from unmeasured mind
To rant and rage in flood and wind,
Yet he who treads in measured ways
May surely barter gaze for gaze.
Man ever journeys on with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.
Ah, faeries, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune!

While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;
And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,
And all benighted things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth’s consuming ecstasy,
No place for love and dream at all;
For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.

HE THINKS OF HIS PAST GREATNESS WHEN A PART OF THE CONSTELLATIONS OF HEAVEN

I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

THE STOLEN CHILD

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
i{Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.}

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
i{Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild}
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.}

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,.
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
i{Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.}

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
i{For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you can
understand.}

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney.
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With ‘Here is the fiddler of Dooney!’
And dance like a wave of the sea.

A DRINKING SONG

WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

BROWN PENNY

I WHISPERED, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.’
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

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The reviews are pouring in. Here’s what’s being said in the press about ‘Gavin Friday and Friends’ at Carnegie Hall:

Jon Pareles of the New York Times:
“Mr. Friday has built a latter-day career as an eclectic, cabaret-tinged songwriter who hasn’t forgotten rock. The songs testify to romance and disillusion, while taking unexpected harmonic twists. They can be mournful and yearning, but more frequently turn bitterly cynical. They are haunted by death, wounded by love and often disgusted by daily life.”

Photo by tibetjb

“True to Mr. Friday’s repertory, the concert juxtaposed delicacy and brute force, intimacy and irony. It had tender moments, like Mr. Friday’s opening “Apologia”; duets with Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons) on “He Got What He Wanted” and “Angel”; and Mr. Friday’s desolate “You Take Away the Sun,” with the shimmering backup of Bill Frisell on guitar, Hank Roberts on cello and Mr. Seezer on piano.”

Photo by tibetjb

“But the concert’s peak came early, with the reconstituted Virgin Prunes (Dik Evans, Guggi and Gavin Friday), including J. G. Thirwell on additional guitar and vocals, along with Mr. Evans and the singer Guggi from the old band. It bore down on two of its old songs — “Sweet Home Under White Clouds” and “Caucasian Walk” — as insistent, unstoppable drones and imprecations. Even at Carnegie Hall, sung behind music stands by men well past their teens, the menace came through.”

David Fricke of Rolling Stone:
“The silent star of the evening was composer Maurice Seezer, Friday’s longtime songwriting partner. He finally took a bow at the very end. But Friday, who always thought he belonged in Carnegie Hall, sang and acted out his lyrics as if he owned the place, swaggering across the boards, gesturing at the stars and jabbing his forefinger at the front rows with a panache that was part opera star, part Dublin punk. “Do we really need these pop stars?/There’s not enough of me!” he crowed in “Caruso,” a dynamic pairing with singer Eric Mingus. It was a song about the power and pleasures of transformation, sung by a man who took on every role in reach tonight — friend, lover, heathen, glitter boy, Irish poet — and was indisputably himself and in control in every one.”

Poster at Carnegie Hall

Spin Magazine:
“Courtney Love, a longtime champion of Friday’s music, took the stage to read her description of seeing the Virgin Prunes live for the first time. Characteristically unpredictable and unapologetic, the Grunge goddess praised the band’s “sex, snarl, and raw power.” “When I saw U2 they gave me inspiration… but when I saw the Virgin Prunes they FUCKED. ME. UP.”"

Spinner.com:
“The night began appropriately enough with Friday, a gifted singer in his own right with the Virgin Prunes and several critically-acclaimed solo albums, crooning the beautiful ‘Apologia.’”

IrishCentral.com:
“The delicacy of that duet [ Antony/Gavin - Got What He Wanted ] was instantly obliterated by a jump out of your seats sensational announcement. The Virgin Prunes had reformed to sing “Caucasian Walk,” a sonic wall of rock power that vividly underlines why this band were and are so important to the genesis of U2. This lot rock out like no Irish band ever has or will. The well-heeled audience was astounded, and you could tell that suited this band just fine.”

New York Press:
“Some of the songs were powerful and some painful.That’s what happens when you invite everyone to the party. Some will make a mess, but there were some damn good voices and that so-called backup band sure knew their shit. Maria McKee and Friday gave a heart-rending version of “The Ballad of Immoral Earnings” from The Threepenny Opera. Martha Wainwright’s “You Made Me The Thief of Your Heart” was gorgeous. [...] Bono took his cues from Friday, but both were in fine form as co-hosts.”

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Other fixtures were Ed Harcourt and Gavin Friday. Harcourt’s heartbreaking “Farewell Nancy” sounded less mournful with the Langley Sisters leading the vocals. Friday gave an inspired performance of “Baltimore Whores,” perhaps the first truly exciting performance of the evening. The pair shared vocal duties on “Boney Was A Warrior” with a visibly unsteady Shane McGowan on harmonica and were joined by Baby Gramps in backing Sandy Dillon on “Bully In The Alley,” which was all too perfectly suited to Dillon’s cat-scratch vocals.

As Wilner said, you couldn’t get through an evening of sea chanteys without the obligatory rendition of “What Do We Do With A Drunken Sailor.” In the hands of David Thomas, Keith Moline, the still-shaky McGowan, and Gavin Friday, it took on an apocalyptic nature. Despite a light-hearted reference to the accordion on his knee, Thomas succeeded only in making perhaps the best known of sea songs borderline terrifying. However, if a song has been covered to death then it might as well scare you near to death.

Read the full review.

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“A smattering of highlights (there were too many to mention) would be the aforementioned Oscar winner, Mr Robbins taking the lead mic for My Son John, Sandy Dillon (whose voice suggests a Macy Gray/Steve Tyler parentage) pleading Leave Her Johnny and Gavin Friday giving the Baltimore Whores food for thought.”

Check out the full review of the Gateshead show and a photo gallery.
We’ve also got some pictures from the Rogue’s Gallery Dublin show, where Gavin teamed up with Guggi and Dave-id to perform Bully in the Alley.

(Gavin, Shane McGowan, Dave-id)

(Guggi, Gavin)

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Interference were always on the outside of the in-crowd, a peculiar hybrid of muso chops and stoner rock distinguished by soaring vocals and virtuoso violin. Tonight, roughly 15 years after their inception, was a sort of Last Waltz extravaganza organised by allies of Fergus O’ Farrell determined that he should reap the glory of the live stage before the deterioration wrought by muscular dystrophy makes such events an impossibility.

It was often emotional stuff of course, but if this was O’ Farrell operating on one third of his lung power and tired after two days of intensive rehearsal, then most of the vocalists on the scene could be thankful for their egos he wasn’t on full throttle. The first set, basically a reprise of the recent Other Voices set, was actually superior to the electric finale that closed the show – a subtle performance full of intuitive playing and, above all, intensive listening.

But the second act was truly extraordinary, starting from ‘Not Beholden’, a co-write with Maria Doyle Kennedy, O’ Farrell’s neo-classical modulations offset by MDK’s red blooded vocal, somewhat akin to Michael Nyman backing Bessie Smith. There followed the arrival onstage of Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer, not men to do things by halves. The pair’s contribution was a full-blown operetta entitled ‘Here In Your Dreams’, effectively a polyphonic dialogue between deceased and bereaved. Chills abounded, and continued to resonate through a string-driven version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Who By Fire’.

From the trauma of death to the trauma of birth: Mannix Flynn performed the first movement of James X, enacting the childbearing process as a state of emergency. Mannix’s wordplay could wake Finnegan, and his delivery, timing and vocal range were exemplary.

As I said, the subsequent electric set needed pruning, the flow disrupted by pesky tuning delays and so forth, but given what had gone before, only the churlish could complain, especially when Iarla O’ Lionaird offered a perfectly pitched closing sean nos lullaby.

Quite a night.

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B.P. Fallon: “It’s a great vibe, a special treat, that Gavin Friday is coming down to do some spinning. Even before his full-on madness/genius with The Virgin Prunes he was at the cutting edge, this thrusting artist spawned on the challenge of Bolan and Bowie and always glittering with creative anarchy. I’m really looking forward to hearing Gavin DJ – I know he’ll play some amazing records.”

Setlist (Listen on Spotify)

• THE STREETS “Turn the page”

• THE STOOGES “Down on the street”
• RICHARD HELL AND THE VOIDOIDS “Blank Generation”
• PERE UBU ”Non-alignment Pact”
• ROXY MUSIC “Pyjamarama’”
• SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES “Hong Kong Garden”
• GANG OF FOUR “Damaged Goods”
• JOY DIVISION “Disorder”
• LED ZEPPELIN “Trampled under foot”
• THE POP GROUP “She is beyond good & evil”
• CABARET VOLTAIRE “Nag Nag Nag”
• SUICIDE “Ghostrider”
• THE SUGARCUBES “Birthday”
• WIRE “Lowdown”
• FISHERSPOONER “The 15th”
• BEASTIE BOYS ‘Sabotage’
• PATTI SMITH GROUP ‘Ask the Angels’
• PUBLIC IMAGE LTD ‘Public Image’
• X-RAY SPEX “Identity”
• MAGAZINE ‘Shot by both sides’
• BOMB THE BASS “Bug powder dust”
• EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN ‘Seele Brennt’
• A CERTAIN RATIO “Shack up”
• PERE UBU “The Modern Dance”
• THE STOOGES “T.V. EYE”
• T-REX ‘Cosmic Dancer”

Review

From BP Fallon’s site: “Gavin Friday, immaculate from his shades to his shoes, he appeared with a small suitcase of CDs. He looked like a World War 2 wideboy about to flog black-market nylons. Instead, out of his case the spell-making Mr Friday produced a musical set that was provocative, challenging and contageously stimulating.”

“Gavin climaxed with TRex’s Cosmic Dancer. “This song says it all for me” Gavin said to BPF in the DJ hole-in-the-wall/cage, adding “It can make you cry.” “It often has” BP said, as couples lurched around the dancefloor, taken by the spell of Marc Bolan’s magic.”

“As Gavin Friday was leaving the party, a bunch of people burst into spontaneous applause in appreciation of a brilliant night. “I wasn’t able to say anything to them”, Gavin was able to say two days later, his faculties fully restored. “My ears were ringing from the volume and I couldn’t hear anything”. “What, Gavin? My ears are ringing from the volume and I can’t hear anything”… ”

If you have a Spotify account you can listen to the playlist here.

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