Ireland’s first festival of cover bands took place on Saturday in a field in Newbliss, Co Monaghan. It was nothing like Oxegen. There was no rain, for a start
THE COLLISION HAPPENS as if in slow motion. Bodies move in a blur of Monaghan colours – blue and white, for the uninitiated – and denim, arms splayed, fists clenched. When the two young men finally collide, after a build-up that seems to silence the entire pitch, there is a deafening thump. Both fall back, stunned by the impact, on to the ground and into the dirt. There is a cheer, someone shouts “go on ya boyo!” and the two jump up from the ground. There are hugs.
The place is Monaghan, the time is 7.30pm on a Saturday and the event is PaircFest, Ireland’s first tribute-band festival, subtitled an “open-air rock concert” (because, God knows, we don’t have enough of those). On this balmy Saturday the weather gods have smiled on the residents of Newbliss, and the rain, except for a few frightening seconds at 11pm, stays away.
Driving into Newbliss is like driving into any Irish village. There are brightly painted houses; there is a garage selling bunches of flowers, groceries and some random souvenirs for the hapless American tourists lost en route to Newgrange. But a few seconds outside the village, signs of PaircFest begin to appear. A trio of men hold signs saying “Car park €5”, next to bollards at the entrance to the event, which is held at Pairc na Sairsealaigh, a GAA ground in the epicentre of farming country. Overheard, 8pm: “I wonder what the cows up there think of all this.”
The evening starts in Dan’s Bar, where it seems the entire town has congregated to begin the evening’s entertainment. “Well, how’re ya? You’re not from around here, are you?” There is a friendliness you don’t get in Dublin, and an unnecessary desire to impress. “We know it’s no Oxegen, like.” Damn straight: there’s not a rain cloud in sight.
In Dan’s a young man attempts to shimmy, Spider-Man-style, up a lamp post. There are cheers, there are whoops, there are dismayed bellows when he slides down and comes to a painful halt at the bottom. The local menfolk want to talk, and, above all, they want their 15 minutes. “Will you put it in your article? The Quigley brothers are local studs – I’m Mr June and this is Mr September.”
The laughs come quick and easy. The craic, without a shadow of a doubt, is ninety. These are Ireland’s midlands, this is Saturday night and this is a music festival, right in Newbliss. Plus, it is the night before the Ulster final, in Clones. The locals’ cup surely runneth over.
As with all Irish festivals, there is no escaping the fact that PaircFest is being held in, well, a field. With a crowd of just over 1,000 – tickets sold numbered almost 2,000, with a 5,000-person capacity – you can see through pockets of people to the grass below, the cows in neighbouring fields and, oh, what’s that now, a bucking bronco?
Nothing will better assure you of the falsity of romcom myths than a bucking bronco. Will you look hilarious and as if you are really good fun, Cameron Diaz-style? Not if this writer's experience is anything to go by. You will last 10 seconds – 10 excruciating seconds, during which you will pray for relief, for the blasted thing to stop spinning, for an alternative universe in which you'd taken that job in the Civil Service and done your mother proud. You will also pray that the man in your peripheral vision who's shouting something about YouTube is joking.
The best thing about the bucking bronco, though, is that it’s free – and here’s where PaircFest does an excellent job of showing up every other festival in Ireland. A chocolate doughnut will set you back €1.50; T-shirts, printed right before your eyes, are €10. A chocolate bar is €1, just like it would be in the corner shop, and a pint of Heineken is €4. That’s €1.20 less than at Oxegen, where punters paid about €100 for a day ticket, compared with PaircFest’s €32.
The headline acts – Bon Jovi Experience, AZ/DZ and Knights of Leon – do an excellent job, but they seem almost surplus to requirements. Everyone knows everyone else; the messing around and beer fights
coexist happily alongside hip-hop-dancing six-year-olds. We’re all smiles, inquiring glances and friendly hollering.
Craggy Island doesn’t do rock festivals, but if it did the end note on its website might ask festival-goers to be tidy: “We will be moving our sheep back into their fields on Monday.”
