Romantic Ireland's dead and gone. Discuss

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone.
It’s a line from a W B Yeats poem, September 1913, put to music by the Waterboys.
“Love Songs R Us’ said Mike Scott last Friday night at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. Not just love songs.
The first set started at a level of passion and energy that made me wonder how any group of musicians could begin a concert at such a pitch. By the end of the evening, I was wondering how they stepped down and back into reality. It was an intense experience as a member of the audience. I believe what happened to us all for the two and half hours we shared together helps maintain their stamina and creativity. It certainly inspired and energised me.
A back catalogue is both a blessing and a curse, especially nowadays when Radio 2 airplay could lead us to believe that songs like The Whole of the Moon and Fisherman’s Blues were part of the mainstream in their day. We all expected to hear old favourites, but once the concert began, it was clear that they were covering more than old ground.
Irish Rock and Soul. Flashes of Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher and O’Carolan. Traditional jigs and reels. Steve Wickham’s transcendent electric violin, Mike Scott’s distinctively powerful voice, and a powerhouse rhythm section.
Mythical, spiritual, channelling Van Morrison, ‘the healing has begun’. Conjuring up whirling dervishes and faerie folk. I felt like the faerie queen, watching from my vantage point at the back of the circle. And this was before they even started on the set of songs based on W B Yeats poems – the arch poet of Ireland, mystic and occultist, as Mike Scott described him. The Pan Within – swing your hips, loose your head, let it spin. I surrendered and discovered the still point that’s at the heart of all the energy on stage. Goosebumps. The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. Shamanism at its most powerful, through movement, words and music.
And that brings me to the historic part of this post.
Over the years, from 1973 until the late 1990s I went to see Van Morrison, religiously – and I use that word deliberately. Sometime in the 1980s I recognised him as a shaman in the unlikely surroundings of the Ardwick Apollo. (Maybe the clue was in Apollo!) No matter that he was grumpy, disengaged from his audience, a hard taskmaster (an old friend was part of his team of roadies for many years), and a perfectionist. He pulled no punches. The first time I saw him, Summer 1973 at the Free Trade Hall, he stormed off stage, having lashed the audience in the balcony with his microphone lead for daring to take photographs during the performance.
I am now inspired to venture into the mystic once more. I sleep with a piece of Connemara marble under my pillow, and a bhrat bhride tied to the bedhead, courtesy of my friend Nora in Ireland. I am not afraid to acknowledge my belief in the power of music.