On Halloween night, Kerbdog were playing On The Turn in full, thirty years on. But I went to the Olympia to see the support: Meryl Streek, whom I had not seen on stage in Ireland since last year.
First, a big thank you to the bouncer who gave me a wristband and waved me down to the front. He made my night.
The red roses were missing (I may be wrong about that, but I could not see them from where I was), but the TORCH was. Meryl uses it to point into the places people would rather keep dark: the cellar, the back room, the septic tank in Tuam, the files no one wants opened. He came on with his torch as if about to search the place. In a way, he was. On top of which the contact lenses always give him the stare of a hypnotist, though he seems determined to wake the heck of the rest of us up, and don’t we know that Ireland has spent a long time under the spell of the collar and the brown envelope.
Meryl is well worth seeing live.
No one else commands a stage quite like he does, playing light against dark with the eye of a painter working in chiaroscuro. Strings in the recorded tracks give some of the songs an almost classical feel; then the drums come down like a march on the warpath. And Meryl is constantly moving across the stage; catch him if you can! The Olympia, with its red curtain and gilt, made an odd setting for songs that drag the country’s secrets into the light. It was Halloween, after all, and the place already had its share of ghosts.
Meryl is not afraid to name names. When he says “This song is for Bertie”: no one in Dublin needs help guessing who it’s about. The dig-outs, the tribunals, all of it. “Paddy”, written for his late uncle, has a different kind of weight. A name can be used to call someone out or to keep them close, and Meryl does both.
The new songs are stunning.
I was supposed to be in France last week to see Meryl in a place very close to my primary school, when my mum was bringing me up as a single mom, after her divorce (so that place is very significant for me; she used to read to me every single night, but that is another story). Everything was booked, then life got in the way, and I bailed. Shame on me.
Why isn’t Meryl Streek headlining more gigs in this country? Does he tell the truth too plainly? Ireland is fond of a rebel song once everyone in it is dead. Meryl’s people are still alive, still in office, still on the board.
Meryl, really looking forward to seeing you a lot more in Ireland next year, I hope. What an honour to be present at one of your performances. Plus I wore your t-shirt at The Deviators gig the next day!
