Mundy, Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:00:00, O2 Academy Islington, London, The Event on Last.fm.
From a Gig Review post:
OK first of all this was in the Bar of the Islington academy where the second stage was for Uxfest and where I saw Murder One last which was perfect for Mundy. Secondly, and in the current TV climate, I’m A Dub Get Me Out Of Here. Sweet mother of god, I stepped into the venue had a look around and was like “Nah they only LOOK like culchies*” then I put my ear plugs in (we’ve gone over this I wear ear plugs OK the gig sounds better and my hearing aint damaged). So any way I’ve put in the plugs which allows me to hear snatches of conversations, THEY ARE ALL FECKING BOGGERS (see Culchie). I was trapped ARGHHHHH. Thankfully Mundy strolled onstage pretty soon(I headed up late and missed the support act if there even was one) so I could concentrate on him.
In case you didn’t know Mundy (aka Edmund Enright) is an Irish Singer/Songwriter who had a mini hit with Gin & Tonic on the Romeo And Juliet soundtrack many years ago. Sony his then record label dropped the ball and didn’t capitalise on its popularity (and a cracking album, Jelly Legs) by releasing it 6 months too late. He then wallowed in obscurity (read drinking Whelan’s) till he got out of the Sony contract. He then after almost 4 years released 24 Star Hotel and the hit single July (ever been to Ireland during the summer? Then you’ve heard it). Since then he’s built up his Irish fan base and to be honest seemingly his international one is all ex-pats. He is great in my opinion so was looking forward to this.
I’ve seen Mundy before in Vicar Street but that is about 3 years ago (06/06/02 to be exact). I hadn’t really listened to Raining Down Arrows but his latest release was a live CD so there couldn’t be too much stuff I didn’t know. Anyway fears had no founding he played the best of his stuff the albums I knew and a few songs I knew off Raining… and even the songs I didn’t know were great.
There was one problem… Ya see about a year ago(more now?) he contributed to a Sharon Shannon album doing a song with her and Damien Dempsey (who I HATE) called Galway Girl an Irish trad track. It’s OK, I mean I like trad but it’s “Meh”. So with this in mind about two tracks in the unwashed masses (you can take the culchie out of the bog but not the bog out of the culchie seemingly) started shouting, drunkenly for them to play this song. You can see it isn’t on the setlist and they don’t want to play it and they try to persevere but crack an in the end and knock out the first verse and chorus before To You I Bestow to shut them up. But guess what? Yeah that didn’t stop them. This is why I hate acoustic and spoken word gigs, if you are in the audience you are not part of the act so STFU!
Other than that little hiccup it was a sweet gig and if he ever makes it back to the UK I’ll see him in whatever pub he plays 😀
Set List:
Later days,
Halo.
* = An Irish person from outside Dublin