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Mark O'Leary For One Night Only Mark O'Leary For one night only. Ok after a chat with the superb musician and author Mark Wilkins, I have to as per Aoife, get out in front of the Dunque curve with this piece de resistance and get it up, as per Cillian Murphy's Cork, first and fast... When I was the age that Cillian was when he came to me for lessons, 13/14 and yes, I was wearing the ubiquitous Parka and had the antiquated bicycle, one saturday I was up in the tennis club helping out, afterwards I had strict instructions, buy a bottle of milk for my fathers tea, so after tennis, I went to Driscoll's shop and as I was buying the milk, a few lads from school said, are you going to the rehearsal? What rehearsal? Timmy is rehearsing down in Ballintemple and we're all going.. Ok, a little, context, subtext, pretext. Timmy McDonnell was the best Rory Gallagher acolyte I have ever encountered, nonpareil, period, man or boy, and I've seen them all mainly as a teacher, they would come in not to take lessons, no, they came into flaunt their prowess. Fine, but none of them were even close to Timmy. In Adam Curtis parlance, hyperrealism, and Baudrillard, copies without originals, Timmy as U2 also intimated, was better than the real thing. He looked more like Rory and in the Donnelly raison d'etre of ''out Cork, Cork'' Tim out Rory'd Rory! Down to the; check Shirt, the jeans, the boots, the hair, the songs, old chestnuts with fabulously catchy titles like, My Momma's gonna drive me mad and some superlative Against the Grain infused acoustic material.. All of this in juxtaposition to having an actual strat, distortion and copy cat unit into a marshall, he was simply, awesome. There were multiple occasions where he was even mistaken for Rory walking along the street.. So, I went along to this mansion down in Ballintemple and everyone was mesmerized by Timmy. So at half time, Timmy, who was eighteen at the time and the lads went to get a cup of tea and I picked up an ancient electric guitar that was lying about, turned it the other way, as I played lefty ( I play righty now) plugged it in and performed a short rendition of some EVH licks, riffs etc, and a bit of jump, some Mamas boys and some Hendrix, the posse started shouting; Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy... As I was playing lefty. Now Timmy was having his tea and he thought they were shouting Timmy, Timmy and came up and heard me and realized it was a malapropism. Timmy and his band had a concert on friday night in school, he intimated, ''Jimmy, you're in the band for friday night, here is the set list''. I couldn't believe it, I said, thank you Timmy, but I have to go. He said, who are you Jimmy, cinderella? No Tim, but my father is waiting on a pint of milk for his tea, I better get back. Everyone laughed, but then they started chanting; Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy again. The gig was unbelievable, I even had some solos and the crowd were chanting Timmy, Jimmy, Timmy, Jimmy. It was unbelievable. Tim, wherever you are, thank you and you were second to none, simply the best. With Joe B, who is a superb guitarist and great guy coming to town and with the Rory guitar saga, to everyone's delight and relief now in the good auspices of Dublin and with the september Gallagher concert having come and gone, and the custodianship of the Gallagher legacy and the Gallagher bandwagon and so many people who love Rory deeply and one has to be respectful of these people, his family and his cherished memory. But like the Roman Soldier, overlooking the Tyber, the best Rory Gallagher acolyte I have witnessed, is the one and the only Timmy Mc Donnell. |
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