Top acts ambush capital's pub-goers

BRANDON Flowers gave up alcohol last year. Last night The Killers’ singer and Mormon was drinking water when everybody else was toasting Arthur’s Day and the man who gave the world Guinness.

Flowers turned up in Whelan’s for a surprise concert yesterday evening in front of a couple of hundred startled fans who had been expecting local bands Dirty Epics and Butterfly Explosion instead.

Dressed more like a lumberjack than the lead singer in a stadium-filling band, Flowers played an acoustic set from his solo album Flamingo, a couple of Killers' favourites and a version of U2's If God Will Send His Angels.

Arthur’s Day was supposed to have been a one-off to celebrate 250 years of the Guinness brewery last year, but was turned into an annual event following the success of the anniversary event.

Diageo, the company that owns the brand, stressed the philanthropic nature of Arthur’s Day, as did many of the artists involved.

All monies raised are going to the Arthur Guinness Fund and to social entrepreneurs. However, the suspicion that it is a marketing wheeze for Guinness was encapsulated in an Arthur’s Day T-shirt worn by one pub-goer with the painted-on slogan: “To Diageo’s continued profits.”

Manic Street Preachers’ lead singer James Dean Bradford said his concert was “like an extension” of a rugby weekend and he did not have ambivalent feelings about endorsing either the product or the multinational that produces it.

“Look at the Guinness [English rugby] Premiership. Guinness sponsorship is everywhere. It is something that is prevalent already. I don’t think lots of bands playing on Arthur’s Day is going to encourage young people to drink more Guinness,” he said.

Manic Street Preachers was one of the main acts who played at the Guinness brewery along with Snow Patrol, Biffy Clyro and local boys The Script.

The band’s new album Science and Faith looks like it is going to be replaced in the UK’s number one album slot by the Manics this weekend.

All the acts, include Flowers, who headlined the Academy, also played smaller venues. Bradford said he was “too much of a dunderhead” to remember the pub where he was supposed to be playing. They ended up playing Sinnotts off St Stephen’s Green.

Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins, who now fronts The Rogues Gallery Band, could not recall where his secret gig was supposed to be either though it turned out to be the Oliver St John Gogarty pub in Temple Bar.

Robbins embraced old friend, former Clash guitarist Mick Jones, the two having first met on the set of the 2003 science fiction film Code 46.

Jones played the Palace Bar yesterday evening with Carbon/Silicon, the band he set up with former Generation X member Tony James eight years ago.

Jones said his motivation in playing Arthur’s Day was just to have a good time.

“It looks like I came to the right place,” he said.

Other Arthur’s Day events were held around the country, with Paolo Nutini in Cork and David Gray in Galway headlining respective events there.