“Her eyes they shone like diamonds…..

I thought her the queen of the land

And her  hair,  it hung over her shoulder

Tied up with a black velvet band.”

A must-sing chorus, which is precisely what I’ll be doing tonight when the Dubliners come to Cheltenham Town Hall.

Looking forward to it hugely,  even though they will be without beardy Ronnie Drew with the voice that put me in mind of sandpapering gravel, Luke Kelly and Ciaran Bourke who were all very much in evidence last time I saw them.  Now sadly deceased, RIP guys.

Fortunately the others are still going strong.  I like it that musicians go on and on doing their stuff.  The music only dies when they do.

I expect there to be widespread joining in. I certainly will be. Just the thought makes me burst into terrible cod-Irish accented song.

It made me wonder if there’s some unwritten rule about when it’s correct to sing along with the artist when you’ve paid for tickets to a concert?

At the rock concerts I’ve been to and some recordings of same, artists positively encourage the audience to croon along.  The recording of Lostprophets at Brixton Academy belting out one of their anthems being drowned by the singing of the crowd is one of my favourite You Tube snippets.

Yet it’s actually quite annoying when Robbie Williams on an album that has been paid for to hear his voice (I bought it for my mother if you’re wondering. Not that enamoured with the Robster meself with the notable exception of Angels) holds the mic out to the audience and you hear several thousand people singing albeit lustily but quite badly for minutes on end as he takes a break.  I suppose in some instances, you just have to be there.

An elderly lady of my acquaintance got told off by her fellow concert qoers when she burst into tremulous accompaniment of the Hallelujah chorus.   She used to sing soprano in a choir and couldn’t help herself but her neighbours took great exception to her warbling.

I have sungalongaSting, sungalongaStevie (Wonder) and more others than I can even remember and no-one has yet told me to shut up – which says more about their hearing than my voice.

Obviously I would keep schtum at a Cecilia Bartoli recital.

To sing or not to sing, that is the question….   any views?

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Author: janh1

Part-time hedonist.

53 thoughts on ““Her eyes they shone like diamonds…..”

  2. I remember a Rod Stewart concert at Sun City during the ’80’s. (During the Equity boycott, I happened to be at the concert where Rod Stewart introduced ‘Long tall glasses’ with Elton John on the piano, sanctions busting at it’s best!)

    We are sailing, with all ten thousand of us singing along,with cigarette lighters burning in the auditorium, would of made an awful recording but perhaps you had to be there!

  3. Is ‘The Dubliners’ the band that sang about different heads on pillows with a refrain of ‘Ah yer derunk, yer derunk yo silly ol’ fool’, or was that someone else?
    Anyway, enjoy your gig janh, let the younger janh that you once were whisper in your ear and remember the old times.
    The last gig I attended was an open air concert on Tooting Common given by Mrs Mills, I got confused as I thought it was a rematch between Rocky Marciano and Freddie Mills, I thought she was a strange pre fight warm up.

  4. I’ve just been told by a very good friend of mine that this is a ‘rebel’ song about the unification of the 6 counties (where’s Brendano when you need him?)

    Listening to the lyrics, don’t see it myself.

  5. Soutie, they are nearly all IRA songs. Those concerts are good pickings for the security services!

    I once went to a rock concert, had to retreat to the bar after a quarter of an hour and wait for my lift home.
    It was like a bear garden, dirty unkempt people shrieking both on and off the stage, needed earplugs and a tin of Dettol spray! I should have listened to my father, he did tell me I wouldn’t like it!

    I must say I have never been able to understand middle aged people who want to go to concerts of attenuated geriatrics and relive their youff. Most of them have made more than sufficient money and should retire gracefully, not painfully prolong the agony.

    I apply ruthlessly the maxim of never attending anything written after 1900, with the notable exception of Elgar! It saves a lot of angst to the brain and pain to the ears.
    Those who wish to sing should go to church or join a club, definitively not spoil public performances for others.

    I have to admit I won’t even shop in places with background music, I don’t see why one had to be bombarded with noise at all and every opportunity. No wonder towns are such a bloody mess these days.

    perhaps music is like sex, should be confined to consenting adults only!

  6. Thank Soutie, nice one. And ta for the tidy up. Posted this one in a rush.

    Dead jealous of your Rod Stewart Elton John gig. Sounds excellent.

    Hi OMG yes! The Dubliners do that one. V funny. Yes I hope tonight’s concert will not be but a pale imitation of past glories… that’s always the risk.

    LOL Mrs Mills. Funnily enough I’ve just bought a piano. Maybe I should also get a voluminous dress and practise my glazed smile?

  7. Hi Christina – sounds like you stumbled into a Metallica gig. I think you were correct to leave. I have difficulty picturing you stage-diving into the mosh pit.

    I’m not reliving my yoof. I wasn’t allowed to go to any concerts in my yoof. I was deprived child.

    I’m very glad you make an exception for Elgar. I’d also add Vaughan Williams and Copeland in the classical department. Oh and what about Cheltenham’s own Holst?

    Music should be enjoyed unfettered and unconfined. But I like it to be mine – not anyone else’s. On that, I agree with you completely. 😀

  8. That made me giggle Christina! I went to a few concerts in my ‘yoof’ – Jethro Tull, Foreigner, AC/DC and Queen. Then I found that listening to them on the radio / cassette player / 8 track / stereo etc ws better than walking miles to get there, standing and then walking back!

    Music is personal and as Janh 1 says, yours.

  9. Yyou said: “I like it that musicians go on and on doing their stuff. The music only dies when they do.”
    F or once I disagree. Music does not die with the death of the singer. Look at Queen’s Freddie Mercury, the first example that springs to mind.

    I don’t go to anything too loud these days. Why not?

    One word answer: tinnitus.

  10. Gaun yer own, Janh1, and also fill yer boots!

    Not that I’m speaking to you after the attention-seeking jibe on Isobel’s post.

    Anyhoo, enjoy your concert. In the absence of experts of the ilk of Brendano and hmb, I’m not aware of a rebel context to ‘The Black Velvet Band’ – just a fine song, in my opinion. There is no doubt, however, that most of their songs come from the opposite side of the ‘tradition’ divide from myself.

    Doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy them or know many of them by heart.

    Even ‘Fields of Athenry’ which they will probably do. Please don’t tell JW – he might never forgive me.

    Magnificent top form rant from CO, by the way. Went to the Holst birthplace museum on my last visit to the caryatids.

  11. Yes, enjoy the concert, Jan, and sing along with enthusiasm, if that’s your inclination. I haven’t been to one in ages, but I used to enjoy the folks singing evenings in various hostelries; nothing to beat live music and and audience participation. Singing is good for you, anyway!

  12. No, only Elgar!
    I don’t know who it was, some guitarist seemed to be the top one, all drivel, it was in the Albert Hall and the wine was crap!
    Plainsong chant and the baroque are my things. Harpsichord recitals etc, chamber music. Places where the civilised clap politely and there is a good wine list!
    St David’s Cathedral do a good wine list in the cloisters, I can vouch for it!
    Screaming, drooling, demented peasantry never were my thing.
    Thank God I don’t have to put up with them ever again.

    I used to have folk evenings for the hippies at my Welsh National Trust place, I made it a condition of employment for the head bar to oversee it and I scarpered for a night off! Wouldn’t have caught me dead staying in the place and they could hardly burn down 3′ walls!

    Wouldn’t do to have us all the same! What surprises me is how you all remember so much of your youth as if it were some halcyon period of your lives. Must have been pretty boring since that you haven’t moved on.

  13. Blimey, Tina: do you actually like anything? Life for you seems to be just one long rant against almost everything. Is there a reason for this negativity? I would suggest that most of us have moved on; ’tis you who are stuck!

  14. Hi, CO.

    Aye weel. Another good rant.

    But, to be fair, we have probably all moved on in our own way and, in my case, I don’t remember any part of said moving on being particularly boring. Nothing wrong, however, in my opinion, in doing the Proust bit every so often.

    In re the alleged halcyon days of our youth, many of us are still quite happy about the simple fact that we can remember them. It may not always be so. and you still haven’t blogged about the fur coat, high heels and cut glass English accent terrorising the Falls Road!

    I take it you’re not a Benjamin Britten fan, by the way?

  15. Ara, I dunno, watching the sublime stupidity of humanity tearing itself apart provides a never ending source of entertainment.

    JM that was seriously a fun day!

    I just lived in a different world, a far more adventurous one outside the normal frame of reference of most people. I always saw things such as pop concerts, clothes, concerns about boyfriends and does my bum look big in this as totally pathetic and pedestrian. Some of us march to a different drummer and it is a jolly good thing that they do!

  16. Indeed it is Tina: but how do you know what we did and how we felt? You are assuming a great deal, don’t you think? I am a naturally reticent person, with good reason, as far as the the cyber world is concerned. You really have no idea! We are all different, and good thing too.

  17. Christina if you win any of the Robbie Williams tix they are advertising please pass them on to me. I’ll enjoy the night and you’ll be spared.

  18. I paid a fortune to see Bob Dylan in concert… only to have some American belting the songs out in my ear right behind me so loudly that I couldn’t hear Dylan. Everyone around me was obviously annoyed, and as usual – said nothing.

    I asked him very politely to desist, whereupon a ‘virtual space’ appeared around me as people tried to pretend I wasn’t there, cowardly bunch!

    The American said something like “Hey, in the States we just sing along, lady”.

    My response was, needless to say “This isn’t the States, this is Australia and if I wanted to hear you sing I wouldn’t have paid big bucks to do so”.

    He moved.

  20. Do I mean #freaking out’? He was sort of dancing but with his eyes shut and it involved a lot of longhair tossing. Not sure what the right terminology is.

  21. isobelandcat :

    Do I mean #freaking out’? He was sort of dancing but with his eyes shut and it involved a lot of longhair tossing. Not sure what the right terminology is.

    ‘Tosser’ works for me.

    Mind, I was a Kinks fan, so I might be a wee thing biased, to be fair.

  22. The Kinks! Where did we get to in our game.? Waterloo Sunset has to be the best song ever written about London.
    You can remain on my hero list.
    Must check out your page and see what you’ve been up to. Do you intend to reply to comments there ever?
    Tosser

  23. The Kinks! Where did we get to in our game.? Waterloo Sunset has to be the best song ever written about London.
    You can remain on my hero list.
    Must check out your page and see what you’ve been up to. Do you intend to reply to comments there ever?
    Tosser will do nicely.

  25. Isobel, never say sorry.

    Glad to read (eventually) that ‘Tosser will do nicely.’

    I replied to both of pseu’s comments, by the way, and I was thinking of replying to yours as well but I’m not so sure now. We Jocks take offence very easily, in case you might not have noticed.

  26. Haw, Isobel.

    Interesting.

    Either Janh1 is back from the Dubliners gig and is deleting away or Bearsy or Soutie are tidying up the detritus.

    Whatever, I wish they had left your last version instead of the first. You appear to be calling me a Tosser.

    You could, of course, be right.

  28. Oh John, I’ve already been laughing over on your page, now I’ve got the giggles. Don’t know if I’ll be able to do my blog at all…
    I think we should appeal to Bearsy to fish the other comment out of the bin.

  31. Fine that, Bearsy, and thanks. Our comments make more sense again.

    For the avoidance of doubt, I already know the score in the Bangladesh v England Test match, in case you feel the need to be even more helpful.

    That’ll be a smiley thing, by the way.

  34. Thanks Bearsy.
    And I managed to post. Must get into the pjs in a mo.
    Is it just this laptop, or has my old gravatar made a reappearance tonight?

  35. NZ v your lot right now?

    Not on Sky TV, it’s not. So obviously, peripheral, tangential, irrelevant and inconsequential in the great scheme of cricket. Enjoy the game and please feel free to tell me the score. Especially if you lose!

    My chums, the English, do indeed play cricket. Even if some of them are possibly South African or Irish.

  36. It actually starts in about two hours time, JM. It’s a dead rubber after we won the fourth match on Thursday, but should still be exciting for some of us. 😀

    Isobel – it’s still your little white flowers here.

  38. A propos of absolutely nothing, Isobel, your comment reminds me of the day my second wife introduced me to her best friend’s husband, who was a keen amateur palaeontologist. He showed me the star fossil in his collection, telling me that it was 400,000 years old. He was not impressed, nor was my wife, when my response was to start singing “Happy Birthday to you … “. I wonder why? 😕

  39. Can’t imagine Bearsy. 🙂
    I’ve had lots of fun and laughs here and on John Mackie’s page this evening. Now I must go to bed.
    Thank-you. It’s been great.

  41. CO, I have an aversion to large volumes of the great unwashed in one place, whether they think they are there for the noise or not. If I have to join them, it is only for rugby or cricket, where I have usually not been offended by the smell or the language.

  43. Cliff Richard was playing at Kirstenbosch Gardens, open air, earlier this week. Both concerts were sold out. I cant believe that anyone would still pay to watch him perform. Assuming one did like his music, it would be one thing to hear him sing a couple of songs at bar or club over a pint of beer, but to watch a diminutive geriatric prance around the stage for two hours, belting out teeny bopper songs from yesteryear is really not my cup of tea. Elton is coming here at the end of the month. Think I will give him a miss too, though I do like many of his songs.

  44. Hello everyone. Absolutely nothing of interest on MyT, so I thought I’d look in here …

    Nice blog by Janh1, and I hope she enjoyed the Dubliners. It was a long time since she last saw them if poor Ciaran Bourke was still in the band.

    Soutie’s friend was wrong … ‘The Black Velvet Band’ has nothing to do with politics; it is (as should be obvious from the lyrics) a song about a man who becomes the unwitting accomplice of an attractive petty thief and is transported to Bearsy and Boadicea’s neck of the woods. Christina’s take on the Dubliners’ songs is of course rubbish, albeit amusing rubbish in Christina’s inimitable style. Not many of the songs are Republican, and those that are would relate to the 1916-23 era or before.

    I’ve known ‘The Black Velvet Band’ nearly all my life. It’s a good one.

    As Soutie’s clip suggests, singing along at Dubliners’ gigs would certainly not be frowned upon.

  45. Oh wow. All the comments! Glad you all had a chat while I was out 🙂

    DDgraigmore, I’m sooo jealous of your Jethro Tull gig. Ian Anderson is still doing the rounds I think, so I might catch him one day.

    Pseu, when I talked about the music dying when they do, I meant their live performances, not the recorded stuff. Oh no. Sorry to hear about the tinnitus. That’s awful.

  46. John Mackie, good to see you – so glad you caught the jibe. Hate you to miss stuff. 😉

    It’s worth a blog to get such a magnificent comment from Tina, I agree.

    You have been to the Holst Museum before moi?? Damn. That’s not supposed to happen. Must make more effort.

  47. Hey Christina, does this mean we both have a thing for Gregorio Allegri and possibly even Tallis? I recently bought Spem in Alium. I close my eyes and I’m in Gloucester Cathedral.

  48. Just to be clear, I haven’t tidied anything. I would, of course, have left any insulting or dubious taste comments for the general amusement value.

  51. Hey Brendano 🙂 Just the man. I reckon it must have been twenty years ago I first saw them. But I’ve blithered on about it in another blog.

    Yes “Van Diemen’s land” is the clue in Black Velvet Band. Love it.

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