With Arcade Fire demolishing Marlay Park on Sunday night the social medias were aflame with “GREATEST GIG EVER!!” posts, and all sorts of undying praise for possibly the 21st Century’s greatest stadium act. Even as a thrilling World Cup match was being commented upon on Twitter, the images of the bobble-head Pope ripping up a photo of Miley Cyrus next to a TV-head Sinéad O’Connor managed to stake their claim on people’s timelines. With an excess of twenty thousand fans heading along on the night, this kind of social media presence is no surprise. “Arcade Fire” was still trending in Dublin 24 hours after they first took to the stage.
But what about smaller shows, where the post-gig social media presence can be as positive and emphatic but, for logistical reasons, doesn’t quite manage the same penetration as an Arcade Fire. Angel Olsen in Whelan’s towards the beginning of June is a relevant example. The Whelan’s main venue holds about 450 and Angel Olsen’s gig was quite packed, but unless you actually went searching for what people were saying about her, chances are you didn’t take much notice. Having attended both, I have to say that Arcade Fire at Marlay Park and Angel Olsen at Whelan’s were two of the best gigs I was ever at.
But for some reason the Arcade Fire one seems more convincing. First of all there was the gig itself; elaborate stage set-up, die-hard fans dancing, screaming and singing along for the full two hours, and a band clearly at the height of its artistic powers getting into its stride with its new music. Then there was the conversation after. Such a huge crowd means you’re likely to run into a large number of people you know so you get many verdicts on the night; for every lacklustre “that was very good” there was an emphatic “that was the most amazing thing ever”. You could ignore the first person and have your opinion reinforced by the second.
With such a small gathering for Angel Olsen however, the one “pretty good” you get may be the only opinion you get on the night besides your own. When that happens, it’s not that you start to doubt your own opinion, but the show itself loses a bit of lustre if other people didn’t seem to be as moved by it as you were. Nonetheless, the profound silence that met Olsen’s twenty straight minutes of quiet, reflective playing felt like a deep communal experience. It felt as if she skipped the dance-induced shots at our bodies and instead went straight for our souls, and it was a truly profound and moving experience.
Both gigs featured artists who have released new music in the past twelve months, and both of them felt as if they were re-creating them live onstage, not going through the motions as so many bands seem to do, but actually communicating to us through the medium of music. For Olsen she achieved this by making herself vulnerable to the potential disruption of the audience making noise and by almost humming her songs of loneliness and detachment. With Arcade Fire it was more about bringing people together through dancing, but being a socially conscious group, they know how to successfully mix this with intelligent songs.
Putting the question to fellow GoldenPlec writers and photographers, most of their favourite gigs appeared to be large venues or arenas. The likes of The O2, Slane, Croke Park, Oxegen, Electric Picnic and Aviva Stadium all hosted some of our team’s favourite ever gigs, and yet we are a team who frequently attends gigs in much smaller venues. Is it easier for acts to capture the imagination of an individual if that individual is part of a huge crowd? Or is it that generally the best artists will make it to the bigger stages? But then Angel Olsen’s brand of Americana rock would hardly feel appropriate in Marlay Park, it was written for a venue the size of Whelan’s.
What do we expect from a smaller gig then? Is it simply to be entertained rather than wowed? To have something to do on a Wednesday night that’s better than sitting at home on Buzzfeed? And if a musical act isn’t even trying to take us to that point where we could honestly say “that was the greatest gig of my life” then is it a failure from the start? That would be a heavy assumption. Clearly the “greatest gig” candidates are a mix of the stage of life you the audience member are in and the emotional involvement of the band in their show. But the amount of passion the band appears to inspire in the people around you in a given venue plays a part too, and in the larger ones that passion tends to express itself more explicitly.
So we’re putting the question out there: what was the best gig you ever attended, and can the smaller venues compete with the larger shows when it comes to truly great live music performances?
Photos: Kieran Frost & Colm Kelly