The National Stadium is where they hold big boxing matches in Dublin. I am not known for my fondness for pugilism, but I have actually been to a boxing tournament there. However, when I was there on the most recent St. Patrick's Day it was not to watch the Hartnoll brothers batter each other but to see them play techno music together. And it was first time seeing them play in an absolute age. The spur was an "are you going?" message from one of my 1990s Orbital mailing list buds, with whom I reconnected during the pandemic, without whom I would probably not even have heard of the concert and would have spent the evening at home with my pipe and slippers.
The concert was not sold out (speculation abounded that the young people had been lured away by something called Bicep in the Point) but it still felt pretty full, with the crowd profile feeling like it was a mix of some young people and an older crew who remember Orbital from the 1990s and were out for their one big ravey gig of the year while also wondering if they still knew anyone who could source them some disco biscuits. And it was a lot of fun, with the moment the brothers bounded onstage in their funny glasses reminding me of how enjoyable their sets can be.
I was impressed by how they mixed a lot of newer tunes into their set instead of turning into a rave nostalgia heritage act playing a set of 1990s classics. It is great seeing long-running bands who aren't afraid to play the new stuff, provided of course that it is any good. In Orbital's case the newer songs seemed pretty strong and were not the product of some radical new direction. It was still the old tunes that excited the biggest response (though there was a lot of singing along to the one from the new album featuring yer man from the Sleaford Mods).
After the concert I made my way home, wondering if I had made a mistake not sourcing a ticket for the aftershow party (at which one of the Hartnolls was joined on the decks by his son (probably a grown adult, given that like us the Hartnolls have also been getting older, though I would like to think the son is some 6 year old from a recent temporary liaison)). Maybe I would have been too *tired* to really enjoy it but it is after all better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done.
No comments:
Post a Comment