IT'S official: the Irish summer festival season has begun. Between now and Sunday night, more than 200,000 people will turn up at open-air arenas in Dublin for their share of the aul' festival fever.
Disenchanted youths can raise a fist as Metallica and Guns 'n' Roses rock the RDS. The nostalgia freaks can twist their melons and compare hip replacement operations when The Eagles take over Lansdowne Road. Everyone else will be making a right mess of the Croke Park pitch watching Robbie Williams doing his hackneyed Benny Hill impersonation.
But you can be sure that all three events will have certain things in common. Some sights, after all, are part and parcel of the Irish festival experience. They are as Irish as complaining about the rain and then moaning about the heat. They are characteristics that make us what we are. They are 10 things which you will always see at an Irish music festival.
(1) A young lad with a tricolour: there will always be at least one chap who brings along a flag. Everyone else will bring flagons, sandwiches or drugs, but you can rely on this eejit to bring the tricolour to wave when various English, Scottish and American acts are playing.
(2) A man wearing a Feile '90 T-shirt: it was the first Irish festival of the modern era and the debut trip to Tipp featured such crowd-pleasers as No Sweat, the Little Angels and The Stunning, the Sawdoctors, Thee Amazing Colossal Men and Energy Orchard. The T-shirts, though, had more staying power.
(3) A couple of bikers: there's nothing like a gathering of Waterford or Limerick bikers to give an event a frisson of Altamont. An omnipresent part of the Irish festival scene since the days of Lisdoonvarna and Siamsa Cois Laoi.
(4) TV personalities: they dread these outings and will spend the entire day hoping that people recognise them. Usually to be found huddled around the guest area or trying to get into the guest area, surrounded by punters gawking at them and saying "Isn't that that bollocks from the TV?"
(5) The bass player from a band that was big in the 1980s: he spent the second half of that decade rocking such hotspots as Newmarket's Hi-Land or Drogheda's Boxing Club as part of an Irish Next Big Thing until he got sense in 1993. Now works in the music or media industry doing something that doesn't tax brain cells.
(6) Punters in GAA jerseys: forget Munster or Brazil replica tops, the sight of a gang of punters from the same parish wearing Carlow, Sligo or Offaly jerseys is something that will make you feel Irish to the bone.
(7) Mad-out-of-its: there is nothing quite like an encounter with a mad-out-of-it who wants to be your best friend to make you swear off acid for life. While they're usually to be found in the dance tent, some mad-out-of-its have been known to wander along to the main stage to have an animated conversation with the speaker stacks.
(8) Jugglers: Irish festivals tend to be where you will find those who've acquired ropey juggling skills while travelling through Asia and Australia casting off their lives as mobile phone salesmen and estate agents to reconnect with their bad-boy, bohemian alter-egos. Usually to be also spotted wearing stupid hats and surreptitiously smoking spliffs.
(9) A rather useless Irish band: they will have spent the last few weeks hassling the promoter and the promoter's family for a slot, any slot, on the bill. Having played the third stage at noon, they'll spend the rest of the day swaggering around the guest area, asking people did they see their performance and bitching about the promoter.
(10) Civil servants: in years gone by, it was staff from the Revenue Commission who were racking up the overtime by making sure all those chip-vans were charging VAT on their batter burgers. This year, it will be people from the Pensions Board trying to persuade punters to think about saving for their retirement. We wish them luck with number 7 above.
