From Unity, 19 May 2007

Love to humanity and pride in the class

by Hermann Glaser-Baur

Thirty-plus years in journalism have produced many reviews of concerts, albums, and artists, but during all that time I tried to avoid writing about events that I was involved in myself; the more effort you put into a gig, the less critical you become.
     Last Saturday’s “Rock the Loom” concert at the Flax Mill is one of those inevitable exceptions. The preparation had been difficult, and the day was one of many other events—the North-West 200 motorbike race and the ICTU conference in Newry, to mention but two. Our “traditional” crowd is spoiled rotten by big names and not rock-oriented, the work load at the mill hard to cope with these days—in other words, we had no idea how this was going to work out.
     It took until about 5 p.m. on the day before the first visitors started landing; but then the floodgates opened. In all the years at the Flax Mill we never saw as many seventeen-year-olds here in one day. They came hitchhiking; some were left by their parents; many a mother and father stayed on, and as space in front of the stage became less, more and more started coming.
     Mel Corry took the stage first. “I hardly ever play solo and haven’t done for as many people. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to please you” were his starting words—certainly the understatement of the evening. Mel put out a sixty-minute firework of superb music, interrupted only by his unique introductions, each one of them a little lesson in class politics. It took me until about half way through his performance before I knew what makes him unique. Yes, his skill on the five-string banjo is second to none; yes, he has a brilliant voice; but wasn’t there something else?
     It is the bubbling out of love to humanity and pride in his class, the “making no bones of his politics” at any point of the gig, that make him come across to the audience as different from other musicians—more honest, more straight and upright. Everybody felt that Mel lives what he sings about and sings about what he lives.
     I observed four girls sitting behind me. None of them had ever heard the likes of the “Connolly song” or “power in the union,” and I was sure that had he walked off the stage and into the hedge behind it they would have followed him as in a trance. All four quizzed us after the show, like many others. “Which union should I join when I leave school?” “What’s the 15th International Brigade?” “When can we hear Mel again?” . . .
     Mel had to leave shortly after his gig, and at the finishing of the concert the crowd gave a cheer that they tried to make so loud that he could hear it at home in Lurgan. All our neighbours certainly heard it.
     To follow a man like Mel Corry on stage isn’t an easy task for five musicians who are just seventeen years old; and what a job Melatonin—Limavady’s up-and-coming rock band—made of it! The three guitars jumping from rhythm to lead and back were held on track superbly by David Anderson on drums and Ronan Hart on the bass; and when Seán Mullan made his fender “talk,” the crowd was hopping, and I kept thinking, “He must have known Rory Gallagher; he’s not seventeen . . .” He is, though, and so is his friend Daniel, who pumped out the best version of Jimmy Hendrix’s “Hey, Joe” I got to hear since the master died.
     I suppose it isn’t a common sight to see a vice-principal from Limavady, an assistant teacher from Germany and a BBC journalist from Denmark bopping along with countless pupils and others, driven by five “kids.” They didn’t want to let them finish, and the session after the gig ran into the wee hours.
     I have never ended a review without naming my favourite songs or tunes of the night, and we may keep it that way. Mel Corry’s unaccompanied version of “My Old Man” (Ewan McColl wrote the song) made every hair stand on my body, and Melatonin’s interpretation of “Foxy Lady” (Jimmy Hendrix) did two things for me: I loved it, and it assured me that the effort that had gone into “Rock the Loom” was worth it, every bit.
     We like Unity readers to be that little bit in front of others when it comes to knowledge, and can reveal that after the concert both Mel Corry—this time with his band, “Tennessee Hennessys”—and Melatonin have been asked to play at the fourteenth (and very last) Flax Mill Yard Fest on 8 September 2007.

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