Christmas came early this year for me. Never did I think that Me First and the Gimme Gimmes would be playing Dublin, and never did I ever think I'd get to shoot one of their shows! Well, that all changed last week when they played the Academy in Dublin on a cold, damp, Monday night! I've been a fan since 1997, when one of the lads I worked with, brought in a copy of Have a Ball . It was love at first listen! I did manage to catch them live back in 2019 when they played the O2 Forum in Kentish Town , London, and it was every bit as good as I'd hoped, but it paled in comparison to Monday night in Dublin. So, how did it come about? Well, back in 2013, I interviewed the band for a now defunct Irish website called Chunk.ie . Over the years, I've stayed on their PR roster, so I took a chance and emailed my contact there. Lo and behold, a few emails later and all was sorted, I was down to photograph the show. How was it? Brilliant, amazing, fantastic,...
Day Two of Forever Young Festival and everything has changed... If you haven't read about Day 1, click here.
Day two of Forever Young Festival kicked off with a message from the organisers saying that the site was closed to Saturday Day Tickets. Unless you were already camping, there was no getting in.
It had been raining all night. Not just a bit of drizzle, but heavy incessant rain, reminiscent of the weather at Oxegen Festival in past years!
Because of this, and due to health and safety concerns, the decision was taken to limit the crowd.
All this bad weather meant I needed my bad weather gear! It turns out that my waterproof pants were, indeed, still waterproof, as were my boots. My jacket though, not so much... I ended up wearing an old style plastic poncho. It wasn't fashionable, it wasn't sexy, but it kept me dry!
So, Day 2 of Forever Young kicked off with Modern Romance. I have to be honest, I didn't remember Modern Romance, the name was familiar, but... nope, no memory of them.
That all changed when they started to play and suddenly I was "Oh, that was them???". Turns out I knew most of their setlist!
Anyway, Modern Romance opened the Main Stage at Forever Young on Saturday, in the middle of a heavy downpour, and they still got the crowd moving. Nice one!
St. Elmo's Fire... Not only a great movie starring the beautiful Demi Moore, but a brilliant song by John Parr. Today I got to hear it live, at full volume, when John played the Main Stage at Forever Young, and he looked and sounded every bit like the rock star he is!
Throw in a nice tribute to Tina Turner, a duet with the late Meat Loaf for Rock 'n' Roll Mercenaries and Danny Boy on guitar and it's safe to say that it was a great set.
And still the rain came down, in buckets, but even in the downpour, the crowd still partied! Up next were Cutting Crew.
When you're at a festival, all you want is to hear the hits and have a good time. That's it, it's quite simple and Cutting Crew did just with a fantastically energetic set, culminating in their world wide smash (I Just) Died In Your Arms. I loved it!
Go West had a string of world wide hits in the mid 80s and early 90s... Songs such as We Close Our Eyes, Don't Look Down, King of Wishful Thinking and Faithful appeared in Top 10's all around the globe. King of Wishful Thinking appeared on the soundtrack to the box office hit, Pretty Woman!
So, with all that said, there was absolutely no reason why the whole crowd wasn't singing along and they most certainly didn't disappoint!
Great set by Go West, wouldn't mind catching a gig of theirs sometime.
Next up, and what turned out to be the final act of Forever Young for me, was the one, the only, Jason Donovan.
Way back in 1990, I brought my sister to see Jason Donovan in the 3 Arena Dublin, or, as it was known back then, the Point Depot.
Jason was a bona fide popstar at the time, and, if memory serves me well, the place was packed. His music wasn't aimed at me, but there was no denying it, he was at the top of his game.
Roll on more years than either of us care to remember and here I am, at Forever Young, and Jason Donovan is on the main stage in front of me and he's belting out his hits, of which there are many! The rain maybe be belting down, but that didn't stop the crowd singing along with every song.
The crowd loved him and, if I'm being honest, I did too!
So, why was Jason Donovan the last act I saw of the weekend? Well, that's an easy question to answer. The weather.
Even wrapped in layers of plastic, water managed to seep into my camera and, after turning it off after Jason's set, the camera wouldn't turn on again, no matter what I tried. As I type, it's sitting in a box filled with moisture absorbing balls, but it doesn't look good for it.
So yeah, that was it. No camera, no photos. On the plus side, I do think I got some good shots. I'm really happy with the shots from Friday night and it was fantastic to see Squeeze live also!
Nothing left to do but look forward to Forever Young 2024.