THE music business is the only industry where you'll see the wild and the innocent rubbing shoulders with one another. It attracts charlatans, conservatives, radicals, chancers, chameleons and culchies. It's a place where reinventions and rebirths happen all the time. Anything can happen when the lights go down.

The late Jim Aiken was a man who was training to be a priest before he left seminary life in Maynooth to tend to another flock. Let's be grateful for that fork in the road, because Aiken went on to become the premier promoter of his generation. Without pioneers like him, there might not be much of an Irish music industr. He set the standards and everyone else followed.

It began with a car in 1959. A schoolteacher by day, Jim decided to put on a few shows in Belfast to get the cash to purchase a motor he couldn't afford on his teaching salary.

He had spotted that few of the showbands of the day ever made it to Belfast, so he booked the Royal Showband for a New Year's Eve hop. As the new decade began, Aiken counted his cash and realised he'd made half his annual salary in one night. The music business had found another recruit.

A promoter working the live music beat in Ireland of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s faced different problems from those of today's would-be Live Nation bucks. Back then, bands simply did not come to Ireland unless their transatlantic flight had to stop for refuelling at Shannon. Any visits were odd ones, in every sense of the word. International acts didn't play gigs up and down the country in the way they do today.

Aiken changed all that. Just as he had persuaded the showbands to include Belfast on their itenaries in the 1960s, he sweet-talked musical superstars into coming to Ireland. Others might have done their talking on the phone to the band's agent or manager, but Aiken travelled to the act, sat down with them and looked them right in the eye. You couldn't say no to someone like that (unless you were Col Tom Parker).

Jim's career was a list of firsts. The first shows at Slane Castle. The first shows at Croke Park. The first shows at Stormont. The first European outdoor show by Bruce Springsteen. Even the first foreign ball game to be be played at Croker happened on his watch (the US football clash between Notre Dame and Navy back in 1996).

It wasn't just as a live music promoter that Jim showed himself to be an astute businessman. He was part of the consortium that brought HMV to Ireland and the group that established The Ticket Shop, Ticketmaster's forerunner in Ireland. He also had a finger in the broadcasting pie and was a significant shareholder at FM104 and Cork's Red FM.

Throughout all his dealings, he remained a gentleman. That's the word which crops up again and again in all the tributes. People always remembered their conversations with him, just as he always remembered names and faces. Fellow promoters even recall how encouraging he was to them when they were starting out.

To Jim, having a word and a smile for everyone he met were probably just country manners. In a business where coarse ruthlessness is usually the norm, he stood out a mile.

Jim Aiken was truly one of the old school, a man who wanted nothing to do with stupid and pointless showbusiness glitz and glamour. Instead of hobnobbing with artists, he just wanted to put on the best show he could, make sure everyone was happy and go home to his family.

His wife, son and daughters are the ones who will miss him the most. Let's hope it helps them in some small way to have seen the recent outpouring of respect and love for Jim from all who knew him. We will not see his like again.