TO my reasonably certain knowledge, I have never written in this column about rock music. To my absolutely certain knowledge, I have never written about rock music in pubs. Ever.
Some of us have strong feelings about rock music in pubs. And television in pubs. And musak. And video games. And one armed bandits. And anything at all which interferes with the sacred and celestial vocation of the pub, which is to provide alcohol - in legal measures at a time when one wants it - in surroundings which are generally conducive to conversation.
An Exception
Normally I feel about rock music in pubs much the way the Grand Mufti of Tehran feels about Tel Aviv, or Pope John Paul II feels about New York's gay saunas or Greenpeace feels' about Sellafield or Crossmaglen feels about the 23rd Special Air Service Regiment. A certain aversion. This is by way of getting round to today's offering rock music in a pub, approval, of.
There are exceptions, you see, to all rules. This doesn't mean we can expect to see singing and dancing Jews opening up the Israeli Tourist Board in the main mosque in downtown Tehran'. It doesn't mean that PJ II will soon be cruising through the steam baths of New York, naked but for a thong and a knowing wink. I don't expect to see Greenpeace gathering outside Sellafield and chanting, "What do we want, nuclear waste, when do we want it, NOW!"; and I feel the day when a blushing colonel in chief of the SAS is given the freedom of the village of Crossmaglen, a tearful mayor kissing him on both cheeks as he bestows a garland around his neck before an honour guard of the Third Battalion, Irish Republican Army, with crossed Kalashnikovs and a toast of Colt M16s, is still far removed. Alas and alack a day.
Once Only
This does not mean I have to wait that long before I speak warmly of one rock music session before reverting to my normal loathing of the entire phenomenon, which is essentially noise `n' nicotine. NnN can normally be guaranteed to drive most civilised people to enlist in the Falklands chapter of the Cistercians. No decent human being can survive more than 90 seconds of NnN without breaking down and confessing that I dun it guv. It's a fair cop, take me away.
Dawn Kenny and Anima are the exception to my ban on NnN - firstly because the only time I heard them, in Eamon Doran's in Temple Bar, there was little or no cigarette smoke, which is in itself something. Concerts are never the same if at the end you feel like a survivor of the Second Battle of Ypres, and next morning your clothes smell as if a group of schoolboys have been hiding their cigarette smoke there.
No Sacrilege
The absence of tobacco smoke was probably connected with the reason why I did not feel the venue offensive - I detest musicians setting up their equipment in an old fashioned bar. It would be like seeing a bullfight in a cathedral. But Eamon Doran's bar has a purpose built cellar dedicated to putting on performances. One doesn't get that sense of sacrilege normally caused by mixing a pub and NnN. And the cellar has air conditioning, which sucks in all the air with the tobacco smoke, keeps the tobacco smoke, and gives back the air. Poor air conditioning.
The real point about Anima is that what they play is not noise. It is music, really good music, with a clear sense of originality, melody, purpose, composition and rhythm, which lie at the heart of all good, music, whether it is a traditional song or a Chopin nocturne. Those qualities are absent from the NnN one gets in most pub concerts, which are generally provided by young people who could be more usefully employed removing boy scouts from horses' hooves.
One reason why Anima don't play NnN is that their lead singer, Dawn Kenny, herself a serious musician, a graduate of the Dublin College of Music and now working on an MA on 20th century composition. She knows her music. It isn't an illiterate enthusiasm; it is a musicality enriched by real knowledge and understanding; and, most of all, love.
Music Test
That is the very quality lacking in so much of the area, Dawn is studying for her MA. Did Stockhausen - the only composer to be a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew - love music? No. Not love. Does anyone who writes the atonal gibberish which passes for composition these days love music? Answer in under two words, on one side of the paper please. No comparing answers.
In addition to all the intellectual and emotional qualities; Dawn brings to her music, she has that other, moderately useful advantage - she has a quite, wonderful voice, which is both, versatile and strong. She can wrap her tonsils - if she has any: I quite forgot to ask her - around a haunting love song or a rock song with equal conviction and power.
She does more than sing with Anima. She writes many of the group's songs, and she plays on keyboard too. She is in good company. The other band members are excellent musicians as well. They know their music, they like it and they take it seriously.
I heard her songs just the once, and I could hum most of them as I left Eamon Doran's the other night. Before the concert began, I had marked my exit route, ready to make a break for freedom if I couldn't bear what I was hearing. At the end of their session, I bitterly resented I was going to hear no more.
If I were Paul McGuinness I would have signed the band up there and then, if only to escape the humble and meagre conditions in which he ekes out his life. But Paul McGuinness, I am not; and in my dextrous hands, U2 would probably have ended up in the Simon Community.
Final Lesson
Anima are a wonderful band, and Dawn Kenny is a quite magnificent singer. They play again at Eamon Doran's on Monday next at about 10.30; and here endeth my career as a rock journalist, daddy-o.