trying to pull myself away

As an addendum to the last post: as I was falling over myself to compliment Lisa et al I forgot to mention a brilliant quote from Glen Hansard which really struck me. Glen is famed for his legendary audience interaction - to the point where at the last couple of gigs I've been too I've found the heckling OTT. Along with feeding off those listening, he has a wonderful habit of explaining the meaning behind each song before he plays it, in a way similar to a musician who's assuming his or her audience are hearing this piece for the first time. For many this would come across as quite pretentious; with Glen it always seems quite genuine, even when you've heard it a few times!

Before playing the uber-successful Falling Slowly however, he said something a little different. It's a song that I, like many long-time Frames fans, can feel a little robbed of. Mr. Reddan often remarks how, on the occasion of the pulling together of a uni supergroup to play at the QUB St. Patrick's festival several years ago, we covered the song to a room of unrecognising faces, pleased with ourselves to have found something so stonkingly good that so few people had heard. Now, even those who couldn't pick a Frames song out of a lineup can recall hearing it on Cool FM. Frames fans in Ireland seem to be a tight-knit community of thousands, where instant bonding is made through our loyalties; thus, to have the Swellies escape the pen with Once and become recognisable to millions almost hurts a little. "They're mine!" we scream, "I was there first and I'll be there when you're gone..."

And like I described when talking about Lisa Hannigan, the boys and Marketa still seem to possess that same sense of humble bewilderment when dealing with their fame. It's reflecting on that, then, that Glen came out with this great quote (I'm paraphrasing from memory.)

This next song... I guess, here's the metaphor for this next song. It's like when you get your football, and you're kicking it at the wall in the garden behind your house. And you get a really good toe into it - you know, really get a good hit. And the ball... the ball goes over the wall, you really got a good toe in. But it goes right over the wall, and then over your house, and then out of the town. And that's kinda how I feel about this song. Four fifths of me is going, "That's amazing! That's absolutely amazing! I can't believe I just did that! That's my ball... that's incredible."

But then there's still that fifth of me going, "I want my f***ing ball back."