[23 December 2009]
"And so we gathered at the rather splendid Culloden Hotel to witness the return of Diplomat, the also-rans of the late 70s Belfast rock scene. Their first gig for 28 years, these are men who have neither played the guitar nor peed standing up for the best part of a decade. The occasion, the 50th birthday of the guitarist [name obviously withheld for legal reasons]; the audience, a select band of 150 invitees, friends and business acquaintances who simply hadn’t been quick enough off the mark with an excuse.
Diplomat’s hey day coincided with the worst privations of The Troubles – when they started it would be years before the security situation eased sufficiently to allow the inward flow of a sufficient supply of Eastern European gardeners, nannies, au pairs and street performers.
Back then of course we had to make our own entertainment; largely it has to be said by watching television – noses pressed to the screen trying to tell if Susan Stranks really wasn’t wearing a bra; thrilling to the homo-erotic subtext of Starsky & Hutch; and, later still, getting lost in the intricate weave of Kate O’Mara’s Triangle.
Thank God then for those few souls who blazed a trail … struggling to learn all three chords to 'Johnny B. Goode', so that the rest of us frankly didn’t have to bother. Men who had the vision to see that in those dark, dreary, fun-starved days people of Northern Ireland would turn out and pay good money to see almost anything.
Their career was brief, but for those few short years in Belfast they burned as brightly as a freshly hijacked Austin Princess. All we are left with now of course is a handful of demos, a few live recordings and the band members’ interminable anecdotes.
There are some moments when live music is a truly joyous and uplifting experience, and increasingly those moments are to be found in the company of jobbing musicians in small venues. It is however some years since Diplomat were jobbing musicians and, it has to be said, the Stuart Suite at the Culloden is a pretty big room.
Kicking off with a cover of Hawkwind’s seminal ‘Silver Machine’ we were in an instant transported back to the 1970s – spangles, space hoppers, and rubbish piled three foot high in the streets. This was a time when kiwi fruit was an antipodean insult, avocados were only a rumour, and olive oil could only be purchased from the chemist as a cure for ear-ache … which takes us back to the music.
The volume was a little on the low side, but fortunately the majority of the audience were in a position to discretely adjust their hearing aids.
An interesting medley lurched from ‘Get It On’ to ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ to Abba’s ‘Ring Ring’ and back to a Diplomat original ‘Let Me Out of My Cell Tonight’. To include an original composition in such exalted company, was some might say brave, others might say foolhardy. I on the other hand was always taught that if you can’t say something good, say nothing. The final segue gave us ‘No Particular Place To Go’ – which frankly explained why most of us were here in the first place.
The band then essayed a version of ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ introduced with express “apologies to The Beatles”. I have to say that if I were representing the Beatles, it was an apology I would not initially have been minded to accept, however the band threw itself into the song with almost as much gusto as the guests attacked the buffet.
A band original ‘Hanged’ followed at a brisk trot. It is apparently a story of Western betrayal and intrigue; although as no lyric sheets had been handed out I cannot confirm this. We were treated - and here I use that word in entirely the wrong sense - to ‘Teenager In Love’, which if nothing else proves these guys have long memories.
A 20 minute version of ‘Johnny Be Goode’ finished off the set and, quite frankly, most of the audience. Afterwards, with the threat of future gigs hanging ominously in the air, the band accepted the plaudits of their families and fan and called out for Sanatogen and rubbing alcohol. The rest of us hit the bar.
Happy Birthday Mate!"
