Obligatory Tourism

Reporting from Belfast, September 4, 2024

If I’ve learned anything from these last few months of waiting and waiting and then waiting some more for the Big Ass World Cruise to begin, it’s that I’m terrible at being a tourist. Turns out that I don’t really enjoy “going places” or “doing things.” I get drowsy in museums, bored in libraries, suicidal in shopping malls. Cathedrals and castles all look pretty much the same to me. Gray, made of stone, clearly quite old. I do enjoy the gargoyles, though.

As tourists go, I’m a Griswold at the Grand Canyon, perfectly happy to look at a monument/architectural marvel/natural wonder for a minute or two, just long enough to say in good conscience that I’ve been there and then ready to be somewhere else. Preferably, a pub. Or asleep.

This has been a problem because I’ve been in Europe for three and a half months (16 weeks and counting), longer than the Spanish-American War, longer than it takes to plant, cultivate and harvest a vegetable garden, long enough to be out on parole. When I landed at Heathrow on May 14, Joe Biden was still running for President, Donald Trump wasn’t a convicted felon and nobody knew anything about JD Vance’s furniture.

So I’ve been forced to engage in some obligatory tourism. This has consisted mostly of boarding Hop-On/Hop-Off city bus tours, a convenient way of getting a feel for a city without putting in much actual effort. I did it in Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin. I might have done it in Cork, but I’m not sure because this whole European summer has melted into a brogue-inflected blur, a puddle of uncertainty as to whether that pub I particularly liked — you know, the one with the dark wood and the pints and the surly guy slumped in the corner — was in Scotland or Ireland or Wales. (The correct answer is: All Three.)

You want castles, here’s a damn castle. This one’s in Scotland. I think.

I toured the canals in Bruges and Amsterdam, hiked (my least favorite word) to the Giants Causeway on the Northern Ireland coast (and stopped at various Game of Thrones filming locations along the way). I took a ferryboat tour of the Cliffs of Moher, a day-long bus tour of Inishmore and the west of Ireland, another on the Isle of Skye. I took a lot of trains, saw a lot of sheep, stayed in a lot of tiny rooms in hotels that had no lifts. (See? I don’t even say “elevator” anymore! Who am I?)

There were moors and thickets, fairy pools and hedgerows. It was like being in a Led Zeppelin lyric. I saw enough landmarks and spent enough time in Antwerp, Paris, Luxembourg, Copenhagen and Gothenburg that I’ll recognize them the next time they are the site of some newsworthy event. In this way I’ll seem worldly to the people sitting next to me when I’m back in East Bumfuck at the Slaphappy Bar & Grill.

This would be your Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Those would be actual tourists. Happy, now?

Mostly though, I’ve spent my time in concert halls and bars. Which is also how I spent my time when I was living in the Traipsemobile and — if we ever leave Belfast — how I expect to spend most of my time as we float around the world. My aspirations for this epic voyage, as you may have gathered, are ridiculously low, bordering on pathetic. All I really seek — besides, you know, total enlightenment — is to hang out in lots of places that have live music and beer. This has not been a problem so far. It might be tougher in the Middle East.

I’ve managed to see some recognizable-name shows in larger venues these last few months— Black Keys in Manchester, Sting & Blondie in Cork, Waxahatchee in Hamburg, Brittany Howard & Hozier in Lytham, England and Mountain Goats in Glasgow.

But the shows I’ve enjoyed the most were the ones where I didn’t know what to expect. The ones in dank basements and small clubs. There were a couple that made me particularly happy.

Fat White Family, at the Globe in Cardiff. A gloriously loud, sweaty rock and roll show.

I’d gone to Galway specifically to see the remnants of one of my favorite Irish bands, Little Green Cars, who have reconstituted themselves as Soda Blonde. And they were great in the way that I had hoped (although arguably not as great when they were Little Green Cars). But it was the opening act, a local lass named Sarah Brooki, who made my night.

She was only 18, quintessentially Irish, skinny, red-haired, in a little black dress and black boots, a little nervous at first, a little off-key. Her dad was standing next to me, recording her on his phone. Then, out of nowhere, after a couple of gentle folkish tunes, she hit a big chord on her guitar and launched into this unbelievable high-decibel rocker called “Tell Me” which it turns out she wrote. Suddenly, she’d turned into PJ Harvey.

Sarah Brooki, killing it in Galway.

This is the shit I live for. To be in a small club in a city I've never been in before and to be blown away by an artist I've never heard of. The club, Roisin Dubh, which is Gaelic for “Dark Rose,” was perfect. Galway was perfect. She was perfect. Ok, I might be overstating, but not by much. Also, I was a little drunk, but still I walked/stumbled out of there thinking Sarah Brooki’s gonna be famous some day. And that she should move to Brooklyn immediately.

A couple of weeks earlier I was in St. Helens, Lancashire, about 11 miles east of Liverpool, one of those faded northern England industrial towns that used to produce coal, then glass and now not much of anything at all.

The Citadel Theatre there, built as a music hall in the 1860’s, holds 300 people. The floors are scuffed, the balcony seating steep. The venue’s heyday was 20 years ago. Most of the shows thse days are regional comedians, cover bands, local theater troupes. But on this Friday night, Big Country, or what’s left of it, was coming to town.

Big Country was huge in the 1980’s, when they rode the wave of their one global hit In A Big Country, to MTV-propelled fame. But that was a long time ago. There are only two original members left, guitarist Bruce Watson and drummer Mark Brzecki . Stuart Adamson, the charismatic lead singer in their glory years, died in 2001. They found him, hanging, in a Honolulu hotel room.

I was a little worried that the show might be sad, washed-up old guys playing this tiny theater in this washed-up town. The crowd, maybe 150 people, was mostly old guys, too, most who looked older than me, although they probably weren’t. They had thick hands and thick necks and thicker accents. The lines on their faces looked earned. You could tell most of them knew each other. Pints and backslaps were plentiful.

I'll be goddammed if the show wasn't great. And the crowd was fantastic, right from the start, the lot of them singing along to every chorus at the top of their lungs, like they were at a football match. When Bruce Watson, an original member who’s now brought his son into the band, launched into those guitar parts that kind of sound like bagpipes, especially on the song "Big Country,"I got goosebumps. It was as magical a band/audience interaction as I've seen in years. It was awesome. Or as they say in the north, “It was right grand! For a moment there, everyone felt young again.