PAUL Brady played the Waterfront in Belfast last Friday. I have been a fan ever since I heard Arthur McBride and tried to work out the intricate picking style – without success – on my guitar.

Brady’s playing is so unique that even the great Bob Dylan (who also played Belfast last week) had to take a lesson from him to play The Lakes of Pontchartrain.

The concert was brilliant. Brady belted out hit after hit, from Nothing But The Same Old Story, written about racism towards the Irish in England in the 1970s, to Crazy Dreams.

The song of the night, though, was when Brady put his guitar down, clasped his hands in front of him, and sang The Island.

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You could have heard a pin drop when he sang.

Now we’re still at it in our own place, still trying to reach the future through the past. Still trying to carve tomorrow from a tombstone.

I looked around the auditorium. The respectful silence told its own tale.

It wasn’t always like that. Lots of Irish artists were under pressure to do their come-all-ye bit for “the cause” in the 1980s, and republicans castigated Brady for instead capturing the futility of violence and the escapist fantasy from it.

With that one song, he captured the hypocrisy in espousing the glory of dying........

© The Irish News