madlib on parnell street

Myself and the missus hopped on the bikes last night and headed over to the Tivoli Theatre on Francis St. The Tivoli is not a venue that I've frequented too many times over the years. The first time I was there was about 1987 for a schhol trip to a Shakespeare production. The second time was to see Cork band The Caroline Shout whose keyboard player was a mate of my brothers. The next time was to see Alex Reece. I was also at a couple of other crappy dance nights during my raving years but none of them were too memorable to even mention. Last night I went to see a production in the Dublin Theatre Festival called 'The Pride of Parnell St'. It's written by a bloke called Sebastian Barry who I know nothing about. My wife however knows enough about him to have bought tickets for said play. So we found ourselves in the Tivoli and it hasn't changed one bit since my first visit twenty years ago. By that I mean that its stilll a bit of a kip. Musty old seats with ashtrays on the back of them, a throwback to times past. The good old days when you could smoke a fag during a play.

The play is too depressing to write about. Suffice to say there were tears at the end. I had a selfish reason to go as a mate was doing the music for it. As it turned out the music was fairly incidental and was used to break the monologues by the two characters in the play. That's not to say it wasn't good, but there wasn't much of it. Maybe that's a good thing. You shouldn't be going to the theatre for the music, unless of course its a musical that you're going to. As myself and my missus stood outside the Tivoli unlocking our bikes and still teary-eyed from the play we bumped into Kittser on his way into Madlib. Choice Cuts have put on a few gigs by hip-hop legends over the last couple of days including the likes of Mosdef and De La Soul. I was too sad to go hip-hopping so we hip-hopped on our bikes and went home.