REVIEW: THE DUBLINERS AT PLYMOUTH PAVILIONS (08/03/12)
Appearing in Plymouth celebrating 50 years in the folk n roll business one of Ireland’s finest outfits The Dubliners dragged the eager, generally older generation, South West folkies to the pavilions with a glorious ease.
The first of the two sets for the evening was started off with “Seven Drunken Nights”, their number one from 1967. This allowed The Dubliners of now to interact with the sadly missing and deceased former members via a large back screen video projection. Several times through the night the technology was used as The Dubliners could play and sing alongside Luke Kelly or Ronnie Drew. Seeing Luke Kelly singing his “Monty” to an original smaller crowd of 60s folkies with their beards and glasses wearing female companions. They could easily have done Irish classic after Irish classic but this would ignore the musical writing talents The Dubliners still are.
Lyrical songs were split up with many traditional jigs and reel medleys. A violin piece first performed in Norway on the weekend of the mass murder there was particularly poignant. As the second set progressed we were reminded of their youthful days listening to the radio with their families, learning the traditional songs and the importance of storytelling. As this set neared the end the medleys of sing a long tunes progressed. “The Black Velvet Band” came with “The Irish Rover” and then they played “Whisky in the Jar” to finish things off. But of course the shouts of more couldn’t let them leave the stage. “The wild rover” was played with crowd participation increasing all the time. Then still they couldn’t leave and to finally finish the night a song I first learnt in primary school “Molly Malone”. Once done a very happy crowd, of all ages in reality, left the pavilions.
Words: Peter King.
