DICK Gaughan doesn't whinge, in his performance he is honestly a man. His face is creased in a remarkable X shape, his feet wide apart, compliment the metaphor, leading the eye upward and focusing the listener on the superb guitar playing that is locomotive to, his in tense, passionate lyrics and delivery.
Despite a hint of apology to Christians for possible offence taken from his onetime big, song - Leon Rosselson's Stand up for Judas - like Berliner Bierman this singer takes no prisoners, apologises for nothing, he tells it as it is. In Brian McNeill's profound No Gods And Precious Few Heroes complex counterpoint between guitar rhythm and beautifully asymmetric phrasing of lyrics spotlighted every gem of scaring sarcasm: "Are ye sittin in your Council house drreamin' o your Clan? Waitin for the Jacobites tae come and free the land? Try goin down to broo wi' your claymore in your hand/And count all the princes in the queue."
Nine songs in ninety minutes passed with hardly a whisper, music and words meticulously inter mapped, scorn and derision carefully metered and so tastefully emphatic. And like our own Maire Ni Chathasaigh's harp drone evoking the Uilleann pipes centre of Irish music, this singer mimics Scottish highlands pipes style remarkably. Witty too, Gaughan is the ultimate deconstruction of the myth of modern Labour parties. Tony Blair must have been blushing. Dick Spring is surely praying that this small country does not throw up some formidable locally applied talent like Dick Gaughan.
