Wreckless Eric and Amy Rigby

Andrew’s Lane, Dublin

What kind of person goes out of their way to attend a gig that co-stars a cult figure from UK punk rock, circa 1978 – a figure that was never really punk rock, but whose stylistic dysfunctions and dissimilarities made him tailor-made for punk's ill-fitting demeanour? It should be an easy question to mull over, but the truth is the sheer disparity of the depressingly sparse audience at this gig makes it difficult to come up with a definitive answer.

I know why I'm here: it's to bear witness to the appeal of artists on the outskirts of success, the apparently luckless oddities who may have experienced a moment or two in the limelight many years ago but who have subsequently lost (or in some cases, for whatever reasons, deliberately severed) connection with a mainstream audience.

People you can't readily sum up are essential for art, and pop music in particular, and one such is Eric Goulden, aka Wreckless Eric (with Amy Rigby). For many, Eric is a nobody; even for a paltry semi-partisan audience, he is one of rock's barely remembered outsiders, as curious a misfit now as he was back in the day. The galling truth, though, is that Goulden has talent to burn; you only have to listen to his best-known songs and his more recent material to know that, given half a chance and an even carelessly thrown piece of luck, he could be playing to at least three times more than 30 people on a Friday night. Goulden is not alone, of course. He was in Ireland last week in the company of his wife, US singer-songwriter Amy Rigby, who is just as talented in a different way (think Tina Fey with a crush on The Ramones), but who is also a casualty of the world's fundamental lack of enthusiasm.

Yet despite the shared songwriting skills and the amusing levels of weighted cynicism, the gig was bereft of sparks. Goulden just couldn't go beyond second gear, and Rigby (possibly) felt it wasn't her place to hastily rearrange the billing and take control. Either way, it was a missed opportunity. The real worry? You walked away with the distinct impression it was neither the first nor the last.