Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Galway Arts Festival continues


The two week Galway Arts Festival draws to a close this weekend, but not before some superb gigs take place in the Festival Big Top in Fisheries Field.

David Gray made a return to an Irish stage on Tuesday night, while Nigerian legend Femi Kuti and the Positive Force take to the stage this Wednesday evening. One of the highlight's of the festival is sure to be the appearance by the superb Bon Iver - who produced one of the finest albums of last year in Forever Emma Forever Ago.

Apparently Bon Iver's Justin Vernon worked in Galway several years ago, and this is the reason he chose to play there, rather than at any of the other Irish festivals. Support is from the winsome Alela Diane - I'm heading along to this myself.

Primal Scream, Spiritualized and David Holmes perform in a mouth-watering triple bill to round off the festival in style on Friday - but there is still loads going on around the city - see here.

Having seen the Frames play in the Big Top a number of years ago, I am keen to see how this year's festival compares. See here next week for a full report.

The other question that pops into my head is, why doesn't Limerick have an Arts Festival like Galway or a Marquee Series, as they do in Cork? I went to Crosby, Stills and Nash in the Marquee in Cork recently and see no reason why a set-up like this couldn't be established in Limerick.
With the recent Thomond Park gigs we have started the ball rolling and shown that there is a large audience in Limerick for big shows. The MBNA/ICO festival was a good start, but let's try and get a piece of that marquee/arts festival action, no? Any thoughts, you know where I am.

1 comment:

IndieLimerick said...

Well Said! Limerick Arts Festival is a must plonk a tent somewhere out the country and a way we go! Lets start a pedition, Im off to bon iver too cant wait