Christy Moore wows Cork's big top yet again

THOUGH the skies threatened to open above Cork City as a sell-out crowd made their journey to Monahan Road on the city’s docklands, Christy Moore’s 17th appearance at Live at the Marquee on Saturday night was unhindered, albeit narrowly, by the weather.

A well-established presence on the summer season’s billings, the folk music veteran took to stage solo as the floor-level seats finished up — no support act, as per usual - and went straight into ‘City of Chicago’, the first of many signature songs pulled from the former Planxty man’s generation-spanning songbook that surface throughout a show that displays Moore’s time-tested mastery of live crowds, from the working-class catharsis of ‘Ordinary Man’, to the reverie and weight of ‘Viva La Quinta Brigada’.

The hits, of course, make their appearances, as is par for the course for one of Moore’s biggest annual appointments - ‘Ride On’ gets the crowd in singalong form early, while ‘North and South’ and ‘Black is the Colour’ are joined by ‘Beeswing’ - recorded by Moore, but, as the man himself wryly observes, brought to casual music fans’ attention by country-Irish star Nathan Carter - and Johnny Duhig-penned ‘The Voyage’ is dedicated to Cork Life Centre director Don O’Leary, in attendance with family; while ‘Lisdoonvarna’ and ‘Joxer Goes to Stuttgart’ take their place at the encore.

But the circumstance and ceremony of Moore’s annual Marquee appearance has never been lost on the veteran singer and songwriter - he’s prepared a new song singing the big-top’s praises, while furiously name-checking a parade of Corkonians famous and infamous, from Penny Dinners’ Caitríona Twomey and the Two Norries, to John Spillane and the former Cork Examiner.

Spillane himself is in attendance, and afforded a spotlight after Moore plays his composition ‘The Ballad of Patrick Murphy’.