Personally i have mixed feelings about the Killarney Summerfest International Busking Competition. This is for a number of reasons. It is no mark on the people who organise it in fact the organisation in highly professional and they have attracted some cool acts over the years. In fact this is part of the problem. I used to like just getting over to killarney and just hanging out as a normal punter and check out other peoples shows, partly out of professional interest but mostly just cos i love to see a good show and as i said over the years the standard of act has been very high. Nils Pol comes to mind as does Mr Toons and The Loyal Club and the legend that was Johnny Massacre, Bill Ferguson and many more that i am forgetting. Most of the time you are working at these events and you dont get the chances to see other shows or your mind is on your own show.
So it is nice to just kick back and see other performances and this is the ideal event to do it at. To be at it as a performer, while it was an honour to be invited to perform at it, it did mean however that i didnt get to be a punter but i suppose you cant complain.
More inportantly Killarney summer fest was the last time that i met Johnny Massacre before he died. Johnny was there to perform at the event for the second year ( he sould have won it the first year cos he was the best thing by a mile) he was not long back from Australia at the time. Johnny was the biggest show on the street that day but but then as he was just about to pull his hat lines in typical kerry fashion the skies opened and the rain came not just a little rain but proper big wet in seconds and getting wetter drops. Johnny went to the doors where peolple were sheltering hatting the crowd with the line "money for the wet juggler" classic. He came up in the business at the same time as the fanzinis were starting off and while i would not speak for all the fanzinis past and present he was a big influence on me. If you will the yardstick by which we measured what was possible, an inspiration. He never pulled small shows. In our very early days i once had the privelege of watching Johnny pull a show out of nothing on a dreary April Sunday morning in Tralee he spent about half an hour taking the piss out of passers by until he built an audience that you would not have believed possible by the sheer force of his magnificent personality. These are just a few of the stories that exist of the legend that was the massacre. So for this reason i always spare a though for Massacre around this time of year when i am at the competition especially this year as we were there as performers.
While we did not win the actual competition itself we did absoloutely slay our audience from start to finish in a show that we were proud of and i was nominating it as one of the shows of the year, although Ronaldo disagreed i cant remember now which was his favourite so far. We also as performers decided before going into it not to go too heavy on the hat lines. We dont really busk all that often (dont ask why suffice to say BANGORRRRRRRRRRRRR i will explain some other time as i have already gone off on a massive tangent about Johnny) but one of the thing that we notice as punters watching shows that i hate is that some shows are a half hour delivery of hat lines one after the other. This gets really boring also at busking competitions you will hear an act use a hat line and the very next act using the very same hat line, audiences are not goldfish, i also dont like acts who guilt their audience into contributions. So we decided after discussion to deliver 2 witty hat lines and nothing else. Just a show. We didnt get any pictures of the show cos we were working it too hard.
Of the other acts there was the eventual winners Ozstar airlines two very funny ladies from Auatralia who pulled out two great shows.
My own personal favourite act however was Les Vitamines from Quebec they did some really brilliant acro stuff combined with some really clever and funny physical comedy. Really made me laugh.
Also there were the 2 Mikes from Germany who did a really nice giraffe uni pass finish. They work as Opus Furore.
The other act there was Ella Brawn whose act i did not get to see at all so i will refrain from trying to describe.
Killarney is a really nice place to busk now that they have pedestrianised a good part of the main street people were able to relax and walk aroound and enjoy the shows. You can fix traffic but you cant fix the irish weather and so it was that the weather ruined the party on the Tuesday evening for the second day of the busking. The Australian ladies were pulling a show when the rain started and fair play to them the audience stayed to the end despite the rain for this alone they deserved to win i reckon. But then the rain got heavier there was a break and the Quebec lads tried to do a show but it too was rained off. We had our gear set up and were both bursting to do a show but the organisers wisely decided to pull the plug. There is nothing worse than getting wound up as it were for a show and not to be able to deliver.
The crap weather however could not stop us from having a meal with our fellow performers in the local indian restaraunt where fine food is the order of the day. Fair play also to them as we crashed in the door at close to eleven and he quickly agreed to stay open and serve us super service we will be back. So at least it wasnt a complete waste of time.
The few photos i did take are a bit blurry as my mind was on the job as i said.