I didn’t really want to go, but it was a Bank Holiday Sunday, and it seemed a shame to waste it by doing nothing. A few friends were off to see Ian Brown - he used to be famous when I was a teenager, you know - playing in that Marquee yoke in the Phoenix park, and I decided to come along for the ride. I’ve been to a rake of gigs over the last month, and I thought that one more couldn’t hurt.

I had last seen the monkey headed chap playing in the Olympia about 6 years ago. He was very bad. I haven’t listened to any of his last 3 albums either. But people told me he was playing some old Roses stuff these days so I thought that that might make it worth the money.

But once again, Brown failed to deliver the goods. His voice is fucking awful. He sounds like a donkey braying into a foghorn, while simultaneously trying to retune a piano with his hooves. Out of key, out of time, dull and monotonous. He murdered ‘I wanna Be Adroed’ as his first song, and it continued downhill from there.

The crowd though, seem to be stuck in some sort of timewarp. They live in a universe where the Roses are the be all and end all of music. Where speaking in a "Manchestah" accent is the epitome of cool. Where dancing like a retarded Thunderbird will impress the ladies. The place went bananas every time Brown mumbled something vaugely profound into the microphone, and no one seemed to care that he was, in fact, shite. Not one bit! Someone chucked a drink at him on stage (probably because they also realised that he was a total and utter shambles) and he invited the crowd to "kill im before i do". 

To compound our misery, the bar closed at 9.45. We only got into the place at about 8.30, due to the long walk from Parkgate Street and that also involved queueing for about twenty minutes like cattle outside the venue while people got searched. The placing of the bar inside the tent (right beside the entrance) rather than outside meant that there was a bit of a problem getting a pint in the first place seeing as it as the first thing you saw whan you got in.

In fairness, we spent most of our time there outside the tent, where a fair old crowd had gathered, because it actually sounded better. 

But yeah. We all left after about 6 songs, and we weren’t the only ones.

I did however manage to buy a pint of wine off some girl for 5 euro on the way out, and I ate a seemingly lovely burger.

I don’t feel well today. I don’t know if it was the wine, burger or singing. Probably a combination of all three.