Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 6 September 2008

Dàimh

TIME. There’s never enough of the stuff. And no more so than at this Taste of Blas concert, taking place for the first time at the recently redeveloped Eden Court in Inverness. Translated from Gaelic, “Blas” means “taste” or “flavour” and that’s exactly what we got; a brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it taster of what’s best in this year’s Blas programme.

It didn’t help that things didn’t get going until twenty-five minutes after the proposed kick-off time of 7.30pm. Still, when you have almost a hundred people to get on and off the stage with Usian Bolt-like rapidity, you can forgive the organisers and stage management for their elasticised watches, while long-suffering fear an tighe (compere), Arthur Cormack, did his best to fill the gaps.

When the stage curtain did eventually drop, the youngsters of Fèis a Bhaile and Fèis na h-Oige (for those who don’t know, that’s the two Inverness-based Fèisean skilled in traditional Gaelic music and arts) were unveiled to an almost packed house of friends, family and curious listeners. They then gave way to a slightly older group – a late addition to the programme – charged with performing a specially commissioned piece of music by Skye-based composer Blair Douglas.

Commissioned by Highland 2007 and first performed in that event’s closing gala at this venue in January, it will be Scotland’s contribution to the Project Of A Nation Project, one of the highlights of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture 2008 celebration. The youngsters were rehearsing this week in Inverness, thus their late addition to the show.

Featuring solo clarsach, step-dance, and duo bagpipe pieces, the two fifteen-minute-or-so segments from both groups of youngsters set the tone for the rest of the evening. Starting, as you might expect, rather tentatively, by the time it came to depart the stage, they seemed unwilling to leave. If there was a fault – and there weren’t many – it lay firmly at the feet of whoever was engineering the sound.

The large fiddle contingency struggled to be heard, and whoever forgot to switch the microphones on for the two lead female Gaelic singers in the first song of Dougals’s commission deserves to have his or her knuckles rapped. A few parents may have offered their services for that one. That said, the youngsters’ enthusiasm and finely-honed chops proved, if needed, that the future of Scottish traditional music is in firm hands.

Bringing the first half to a close, seasoned veteran JP Cormier and his wife, Hilda Chiasson-Cormier, brought a suitable dash of humour to proceedings. With time already tight, and, with the sound engineers struggling to get Cormier’s onstage monitors working correctly, the multi-talented songwriter from Cape Breton, wasted little time in relaying a joke of the toilet variety to keep everyone entertained.

Referring to his native land as “Scotland on acid” Cormier’s four-tune set was a bit of a mixed bag: acoustic and fiddle tunes punctuated by a rather self-indulgent classically-themed piece; imagine Paganini fighting it out with an errant bumble-bee and you’ll have some idea how it sounded. Fun, though.

After a quick dram and a toilet stop, it was back to the main event. Fred Morrison and Friends’ chirpy, largely undemanding twenty minute set passed off nicely, and without (thankfully) any major onstage sound problems. With guitarist Matthew Watson and bodhran player Martin O’Neill flanking the piper, what the trio lacked in numbers and presence they more than made up for with their full-grown frisky instrumentals; the last tune played so fast, it was as if Morrison was saying (to Cormier) ‘whatever you can do fast, I can do faster.’

With Dàimh (pronounced “da-eve”) up next, Arthur Cormack, took time out to teach the audience a few music-related Gaelic words while the band set up the stage. Cormack’s impromptu singing of Happy Birthday in Gaelic to a woman in the audicne (he had earlier led a chorus in English for Blair Douglas’s imminent brithday) wasn’t quite Cliff-Richard-at-Wimbledon, either, but you had to hand it to him for holding the evening together.

Hailing from Cape Breton, California, Ireland and the West Highlands of Scotland, Dàimh’s brand of high-energy, fast-flowing tunes was a mild taster to the fully-baked fusion sounds we were soon to receive courtesy of the Peatbog Faeries. A dour-looking bunch of laddies, as Morrison rightly indicated earlier, their set was simply a case of getting the head down and giving it “yee-hah.” With bagpipes, mandola, guitars and just about every other instrument competing for attention, just like every act on the night, it was a shame we didn’t get to hear more of them.

So, then, to the Peatbog Faeries. With dry-ice creeping up on them like some Kate Bush music video, it was left to the hard-living teuchtars to bring the evening to a thunderous close. There was no need to worry. Led by soon-to-be-departing fiddler, Adam Sutherland, the Peatbog’s all-too-brief appearance understandably never got beyond second gear. Although dominated by the band’s sickly synthesisers – both ill-fitting and dated sounding – the band nevertheless wasted little time in putting their collective pedal to the metal.

Sutherland’s ‘Invergarry Blues’ came across like the theme tune to some make-believe Scottish cop-show from the 1970s. But that was before the band’s monument to the Isle Of Rum festival, ‘Still Drunk In The Morning’, a self-explanatory account of the group’s high-jinks at last year’s unforgettable festival.

Then, just as you were getting into the groove, it was all over. In the blinking of an eye, the house lights had switched on, and everyone was in the car park and leaving for home before you could even think. Aye, it was a Blas(t) right enough, as those from Inverness-shire might say.

(Blas 2008 runs across the Highlands & islands until 13 September. Northings’ reviewers will be out and about at events all week – see their reports next week)

© Barry Gordon, 2008

Links

• Blas Festival 2008