keepintime & Brian Cross (B+) in Limerick 03/2004

A very wet and rainy Saturday night in Limerick. I am at my first ever match in Thomand Park. Rugby becomes a different sport in these conditions. A life long GAA fan , I'm only lured to this match out of curiosity and because I got a free ticket. Only about 100 others brave the terrible conditions and its an international! Ireland v Spain. In European competition, womens rugby.

Growing up in Limerick Brian Cross also played a lot of rugby in his time and was a mean player. Tonight he is back in the city playing in another guise as a special guest at the hush night in Daffys Bar on Catherine Street. He plays this homecoming gig as his acclaimed film keepintime is released on a special live DVD. While he DJs the film is going to be projected onto the backdrop.

Walking up to Daffys I think back to the first time I saw Keepintime in public- very different circumstances and very different climate. It was in Havana, summer 2001 and the seventh Cuban hip hop festival. There in a small cinema I listened in vain to the excited introduction in Spanish by the compere. No such lack of comprehension by the audience of the short
yet sharp documentary however which captures the meeting of four veteran drummers with four of the best hip hop djs. Music a universal language. A few days later I'm telling another tourist I meet about it. They already know the festival is going on , it was on billboards all the way in from the airport. The only advert (it was a state run festival!), all other billboards had revolutionary slogans and pictures of Che.

Entering Daffys and the place is heaving with some very heavy funk and soul. Hush is my favourite club in Limerick and I think that it is possibly unparalleled in Ireland at the moment. Brian H (promoter) casts the net very wide taking in everything from African rhythms to reggae and onto to drum and bass. Its varied and evolving mix reflects the settings of Daffys very well. I remember hearing the statistic once that there was over 50 different languages been spoken in Limerick at the moment. Well on a busy night in Daffys you are sure to hear quite a few, and while its title International Bar might seem unnecessary, it also makes a bold statement in Ireland 2005. Respect.

Less then a hundred yards from the front door of Daffys is Hanrattys hotel and it is here 40 years earlier that Che Guevara stayed. Apparently he also went on walk about taking in local Limerick Culture and night life. Today he would have finished his night in Daffys.

While Daffys looks ahead on one level, on the night its disregard of modern technology meant that sans remote for the dvd player we could only watch the documentary again and again and we couldn't jump onto the second chapter which was the live recording of keepintime. A minor issue which was more than made up for by the musical output. First up on the decks was Peter Curtin, who swung from modern day afrobeat in the form of antibalas back to classic soul and funk. He was followed by code who dropped drum'n'bass with precision and with out upsetting the dancefloor friendly vibe that was already building up. A Limerick DJ who is also carrying the b+ DIY ethic to heart , code has recently set up his own record label subtle audio out of the city.

Then it was time for B+. Over his last few appearances in Limerick in Costellos or Mickey Martins Brian has been steadily increasing the Latin American quota in his record box. Not mainstream salsa but underground and raw funk and batacuda from Peru, Brazil and right across the continent. In the last few years he has spent a large amount of time in Brazil geting his Brasilintime project ready. Tonight this dovetailed perfectly with the up for it Saturday
night party crowd who jostled for space on a crowded dancefloor as B+ dropped the jazz and latin flavours. You can hear some of the set here.

All too soon it was over and the very satisfied crowd starts to disperse. Some faces and friends from way back in the day in Limerick queued up to meet B+ and over in the corner I notice a group of women dressed in identical blazers preparing to leave. As they pass I notice the insignia, its the Spanish womens rugby team