My granny really liked it.
The next day was Joe's birthday. We ended up heading out to Walkinstown to check out a vintage guitar shop. The bus took us down through Thomas Street, where a bunch of hard-looking women stood at the bus stop. One of the women was about forty years old. She looked absolutely vicious, not helped by a tattoo on her arm that said "Proud to be White and Irish". I was glad she wasn't getting on our bus. The guitar shop happened to be located in a deserted industrial estate off the Ballymount Road. There were weeds all along the footpaths, and not a soul to be seen anywhere. I wouldn't want to be walking down there at night. The shop had some nice stuff, though. Loads of old basses from the Seventies. We ended up walking over to the Red Cow to check out another guitar shop afterward... It was only about a mile away on foot, but it felt twice as long. It's a pretty bleak corner of the world out there.
Joanna Newsom was playing last night in the new Grand Canal Theatre. I'd been waiting for months for the show, so I was very excited. I stopped on my way to buy a coffee, and I picked up a copy of Ulysses for three quid too. At that price, who could say no? I walked down by Merrion Square and down towards Pearse Street. You can see all the glittering new apartments and offices by the canal, but there were still crowds of boys in tracksuits on the street corners. One of them threw a stone across the road at me, missing by about a metre. I ignored them and kept walking. The theatre itself is very striking. I had only seen it once before when it was under construction, without the glass covering the front of it. Looking at it you would nearly think you were in Berlin or New York rather than in a part of Dublin that was a no-go area ten or fifteen years ago. I had arrived far too early for the show (the tickets said doors opened at half six, but the gig wasn't starting till eight), so I sat around the foyer reading my new book. Five pages and twenty minutes later, I was exhausted. A crowd started to gather at this stage - loads of girls with nice haircuts and shoes. I went into the venue itself and sat down. It was a massive hall, and they had blocked mobile phone signal. I thought it was a nice touch. Roy Harper was the support act. I only knew him from that Led Zeppelin tune that referenced him, and I didn't know what to expect. He was pretty good. Joanna came on at around half nine or so. People who were sitting in the same aisle as me kept getting up and going to the bathroom, it drove me crazy. Either way, she mainly played tunes from her last album, which I loved. The sound was amazing too, way better than the last time in to the Olympia, and as good as the first time I saw her in London all those years ago. She had an incredible small group with her this time (guitar/banjo/recorder, two violins, trombone and drums) as well as a piano, so she was able to play a much wider range of tunes than before, and the album arrangements were really well performed. She came out for one encore, and I would have loved to have seen a second. Easily the best show I'd seen her do, I reckon.
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