Justin Timberlake in Dublin

By Rodney Edwards

And there I was, sitting on an extremely uncomfortable concrete slab-like seat in the backend of nowhere at the weekend, waiting for Justin Timberlake to sing and jump about on stage a bit.

Thousands of people packed into the open-air RDS in Dublin to see the megastar and as we waited, I wondered relentlessly if I switched the emersion off before I left the house or not.

‘Cos I’ll be frank; I’ve never particularly liked Timberlake – he sings like a girl for a start. Plus, Dublin would never be the first place I’d want to go and visit because it takes nearly four hours to get there. And I’ve always thought of the place as a sluggish, unexciting city where everyone is either drunk, selling lucky charms or travelling on horse and cart; “to be sure, to be sure”, and all that.

But how wrong was I? The place is vibrant, fast moving and overflowing with prosperity and I didn’t spot one Lepricon or a pot of gold at all,  it’s no wonder a global superstar like Justin Timberlake decided to play his 75^th show here, sending all the stereotypes into oblivion. That was until I spotted a parked tractor corroding metres from the stage of course.

Black Eyed Peas star Fergie kicked off proceedings as JT’s support act and the assembled gathering strangely lapped up her boisterous screeching of absurd tosh. The singer stretched her entire back catalogue of about four songs into an half an hour set, which included three costume changes.

Her rather excruciating recital of ‘London Bridge’ and the other one about ‘humps’ rang through the air like an erratic siren, and then she went on to sing other tracks that I can’t really be bothered naming because they were so unbelievably gruesome. But be honest, you don’t really care anyway.

For the time had arrived, as Timberlake rose from beneath the stage on some sort of mechanical podium thing, opening his set with ‘Futuresex Lovesound’, taken from his new album of the same name. Accompanied by a troupe of dancers and an eight-strong band, the crowd went wild as he performed a host of Grammy Award-winning ‘Justified’ favourites including ‘Sexy Ladies’, ‘Cry Me a River’ and the smash hit ‘Rock Your Body’.

During the interval, music producing legend Timbaland took to the decks, firing up the mob of fans into a DJ’ing induced frenzy. Then Justin returned with fresh new hot rocking ‘toons’ and ended the the two-and-a-half-hour gig in a riotous, lively Timberlake way with ‘Sexy Back.’ 

Snow Patrol rocked Bangor

By Rodney Edwards

Snow Patrol played a blistering homecoming set at Ward Park in Bangor last week.

Front man Gary Lightbody looked grubby and destitute and not a chart-topping superstar, following his experiment with facial hair. Nevertheless, his face fuzz didn’t affect his singing voice, as he kicked off the performance with ‘Hands Open’ to a deafening torrent of sycophantic praise.

Lightbody and drummer Jonny Quinn both come from the seaside town so it was a fitting choice of venue to end their current world tour and Gary couldn’t contain his excitement; ““This is probably the best day of our lives, we used to play football in this park when we were kids, I never imagined we’d be playing here years later,” he said.

Many of the 30,000 people that turned up were inebriated by the time Snow Patrol played their second song ‘Chocolate’, although many of them had been soaking up the atmosphere (and booze) for quite a while as earlier in the day they were treated to such bands as Kowalski, Simple Kid, The Dead 60s, We Are Scientists and Ash. Still, it was fairly entertaining to see some of them throwing some abnormal shapes in the air as if they were at some sort of rave.

Next up for Snow Patrol was ‘lt’s Beginning To Get To Me’, ‘Chasing Cars’, ‘Spitting Games’ and ‘How To Be Dead’. Before the pending encore, they performed the brilliant ‘Run’ from ‘Final Straw’ - the album responsible for catapulting the group to mainstream success. Unfortunately, this top tune was savaged to death by an overemotional girl a few places in front of me waving a lighter and howling the words in a nauseating manner. C’mon love, pull yourself together.

Snow Patrol headlined Tennents Vital in Botanic Gardens last year and also sold out the Odyssey Arena in December but this was the first time they had staged a show of this size in their home town and they loved it. So much so, when the band came back onto the stage, Gary pledged to return, even if the neighbours disapproved; “If you’re listening in the houses around the park, you can complain tomorrow but we will be back again, hopefully we can do this every year or every two years.” he said.

And at that, Snow Patrol rounded off the evening with ‘You’re All I Have’, neatly topped off with a glittering display of colourful fireworks lighting up the cold dark sky. Don’t worry if you missed it, Snow Patrol will be home again soon.