Gallery - Slideshow & Review
Barrafest, Barra, Scotland - July 28th 2007
Gig Review by Alison Stephenson, Livingston, Scotland.
Right so when Ali, Mr Tabnab, asked me to write this review my first response was hey how cool…then I went away and though about it and it dawned on me, bloody hell! I may very well not have the vocabulary to do 4GM justice! I went away to the peaceful Isle of Barra with my family for a quiet break…little did I know!
On the second evening we went to the Feis ceilidh at the Community Centre to celebrate the children’s wonderful musical talent….anyway we were sitting around watching kids fiddle (quite literally….& very well) when across the room I see this rather dapper looking gent sitting with an accordion. I put my head across to my hubby Shaun and say, ‘Good god doesn’t that guy remind you of Mick MacNeil from Simple Minds?….so weird that he also plays the accordion!’…the rest as they say is history….
Mick very kindly came over & said hi…OMG I felt like a schoolgirl again. As a teenager Simple Minds had ruled my music world! I’m sure meeting me Mick thought there was surely a village somewhere missing their idiot! I just grinned incessantly!!! He asked us if we were going to the music festival & we said sadly no we found out about it too late and there were no tickets. Being the nice guy he is, he said he’d keep an eye out for us! Over the next few days we bumped into Mick and his family a few times, every time to be reminded there were still no tickets!
Anyway…Saturday came around &..still no tickets; I started packing as we were going home the next day. Feeling really melancholy…& actually quite pissed off…here was my chance to see 4GM which included some of my biggest musical heroes of all time & it wasn’t going to happen. Putting the last of the luggage in the car I was formulating a plan to storm the beach in a stolen dingy! Then at 5:30pm I got called to the phone. It was Mairi, Mick’s partner asking me if I still wanted tickets….HELL YEAH!!!!
So off we went down to Tangusdale walked across the Machair and low and behold hardly a person in sight….what?...was this really a music festival? The last two fans to get tickets were the first in the tent LOL we weren’t going to miss a second! As the evening progressed so did the crowds….there were a few good bands…but then there was FOURGOODMEN!
Just them coming on stage, setting up and playing a few bars of their well known stuff got everyone straight back from the bar tent….you’ve never seen a tent fill so fast when those first few tentative beats of Waterfront were sent out for the sound engineer. For me it was goosebump time!!!
They opened with Waterfront and the minute Malky Button started ‘that’ drum beat the evening started….don’t ask me what order they played which songs in but, between the cracking 4GM material & some awesome Simple Minds tunes …what a set!
The original genius of Mick and Derek combined with solo’s from Graeme, topped off with Malky, the voice of Ian and backed by Jane…answer me honestly what else could a music lover ask for….it was musical heaven!!! Along the way we got treated to some excellent piping by Carrie, Mick’s niece and the stage debut of Ben (Mick’s youngest son) on sax…is there no end to the MacNeil talent?!?!?!? It was my first live 4GM gig and I’m already counting the days to RETRO….One thing that strikes you about this wonderful group of people, besides their HUGE talent, is their friendliness!! Big stars with big hearts…such a refreshing change!
The next day going home on the ferry I got to have a wee chat with Graeme who is such a gentleman! Such guitar talent and a nice bloke! But! All of them are open & friendly and this adds that extra something to 4GM that most bands lack these days!
Thank you FOURGOODMEN for making our trip to Barra!…… You were AWESOME & MEMORABLE…..Gig rating 10/10 !
