O, it’s Damien!

On Thursday last week, Alien Wally and Mags toddled off to the SECC to see Damien Rice in action. He was brilliant from the first note. And then he stopped. In the middle of the first song. “Excuse me, but is everyone late or something?” he queried in his lilting Irish accent. “I’ll just leave the stage for a few minutes until everyone is actually in the hall and settled down in their seats. See you soon!” And off he went to loud applause from those members of the audience who did get there nice and early and whose viewing and listening pleasure was being interrupted by the latecomers. To be fair, though, the latecomers weren’t actually late. Damien was in fact early. A whole half an hour early. The SECC’s website clearly stated doors at 6:30pm, support act at 8pm, interval at 8:30pm and Damien Rice at 9pm. Since Alien Wally and Mags ended up missing the support act when they arrived at 8pm in time to see the band leave the stage, they figured that the SECC and Damien were operating in different time-space continuums, but it appeared that not everyone got the message.

Not all was lost though, and Damien returned to the stage a bit later, although still, technically, early, and continued where he left off. From then on out, all went well, until Damien started performing a short one-man “play” to accompany a specific song. No, the problem wasn’t his acting (excellent), nor the song (also excellent), but the fact that the act was about a man smoking in a bar, and he nearly, so very nearly, lit up until the audience’s oohs and boos brought him back to the reality of the situation and the terrible offence that he was about to commit. Phew! That was a close call!

With an amazing sense of humour, a propensity for story-telling (especially in a Scottish accent), and, of course, a gift for making incredible music, Damien Rice in concert was a fantastic experience, and Alien Wally and Mags are happy that they bought tickets way back when they first arrived in Scotland, before they even had any work… Job? Music? Job? Music? No contest really!