In the hit Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls, ditsy blond Erin Quinn (played by Saoirse-Monica Jackson ) describes Fatboy Slim as “bigger than God” and “a modern day Beethoven”.
Back in the 1990s when the iconic show is set, she’d be correct of course. Fatboy Slim’s 1998 album You’ve Come a Long Way Baby was massive, especially its big beat singles ‘The Rockafeller Skank’ and ‘Right Here, Right Now’. This quadruple platinum-selling record was produced on a humble Atari ST computer using floppy disks. Kids today have more digital processing power in their jewellery. Kids today probably don’t know what a floppy disk is, never mind an Atari…
It is this nostalgic tint that ensures the news that Fatboy Slim is to play Galway next year will spread far and wide amongst a certain demograph. To add further sepia to that tint, the venue will be Galway Airport, a location most Galwegians under the age of 30 know only as a set for TG4’s Ros na Rún, and a Covid-19 testing facility.
DJ and promoter Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, will blast his electronica dance bangers across the mean streets of… um… Carnmore, on 9 August next year as part of his eight-date ‘Loves Summer’ tour of Britain and Ireland.
Details are sketchy so far, but word on the street in downtown Carnmore (stop it – Ed. ) is that the irrepressible Cook will set up a ginormous DJ tower on the expansive asphalt apron of Galway Airport, or perhaps on the vast grass verges that run alongside the runway of the 115 acre site.
If a mud fest is chosen, then technically this will become a gig in Glenrevagh, and Brighton boy Cook better watch his manners, as we all know what they’re like down there. However, with 3,800sqm of hangar space available, an indoor rave is feasible. The mysterious office where the Pandemic-era snotty nasal swabs used to go will probably be the gig’s Green Room. You couldn’t make it up.
Fatboy might not know too much about the politics of this disputed council territory in Claregalway, but he better get his shout-outs right.
There’s nothing worse than an artist from Ingerland hollering: “Hellooooooo Dublin!!!!”, when he’s actually addressing a racecourse near Naas. In fact, on second thoughts, if the auld Queen could manage a cúpla focal when she came here on her holliers, then surely Norman could deploy some of that sexy cois farraige Irish: “Dia yeeeev Carn Mór!!!!” Except the always-cross Carnmore Cross posse might make beef (I’ve warned you... – Ed. )
Let’s be honest. The odds are that Cook’s agents in Ireland, MCD Productions, haven’t told him that Galway Airport is actually the no-mans-land between Galway City and Galway County councils. These two – the biggest local “authorities” in the ‘hood, according to Garda sources – despise each other based on blood feuds which predate a time in Galway when croissants came in tins.
In an open letter published two weeks ago, City Council chief enforcer Michael J Crowe warned his county council nemeses not to mess with the pact that has kept Galway projects peaceful for forty-five years so far: big acts must play in the Galway International Arts Festival’s Big Top. In the city. Not, out there, in the county, where if you ask for a flat white, you’ll get a lamb sandwich.
What he failed to mention though, were the cheeky assaults on the status quo members of his crew have attempted over the decades. Meatloaf in Leisureland, 1984, Primal Scream in the cellar below Trends, 1990, Radiohead in Castlegar, 1996, and a grumpy Bob Dylan in Pearse Stadium in 2004 all spring to mind.
Indeed, tales of Galway gigs of yore will probably colour the air at next year’s Airportapalooza Festival, as – let’s face it – the target market here is balding dads who rave in the kitchen, and Galway girls who remember being a beour around the town.
Fatboy Slim released a 25-year anniversary edition of You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby for €37 on vinyl last month. Tickets for the ‘Loves Summer’ in Galway next August will go on sale tomorrow, 3 November, for an expected forty quid a pop; maybe more.
With the necessary shuttle bus pass, and walking around money for the no-doubt expensive one-brand choice of warm lager in a plastic pot, youngsters may be priced out.
And yet, there is something about a big gig in an unusual venue that promises future stories to be spun.
Cook’s latest tour will call at some uncommon venues next year, including a moonbase in Cornwall, Roman ruins in Manchester, a seventeenth century labyrinth in Bedfordshire, sunny Scarborough, and Fairview in Dublin.
Galway City Council and County Council should put their airport squabbles aside and take note, however, that Fatboy Slim has not played a large, open-air gig in his home town of Brighton since 2002 when that year’s Beach Boutique show descended into apocalyptic chaos. Police, ambulances, lifeboats and coast guard choppers rescued ravers from the sea when a reported 250,000 punters rocked up to an event expecting 60,000.
Visualise throngs like that amongst the flatlands of east Galway, and the two councils will need the FCA to herd the lost back home.
It’ll be good to use the airport though. Young gig goers might marvel at its dilapidated terminal, and wonder what it was like for the now ageing Celtic Tiger cubs of Galway to fly out from it, sometimes even to music events. Time flies.
