A crowd of around 1,000 people descended on Stephen’s Green last Saturday for a Black Francis guerilla gig, which had been announced on his website and hotpress.com.
“I’ve stopped doing encores at my official shows, and replaced them with ‘precores’ in unusual locations, which I ask fans to come up with,” the Pixies legend told us beforehand. “Somebody suggested Stephen's Green – so I checked it out on the net, and thought, ‘Hey, let's do it!’”
Originally earmarked for the bandstand in the middle of the green, the 5pm precore was switched to outside the main entrance when the park authorities got wind of the stunt.
“We arrived at a quarter to five to be told in no uncertain terms by a park-keeper that we weren’t getting in to the green,” said 16-year-old Daragh Moloney who travelled up with two of his friends from Enniscorthy. “That was a bit of a downer, but then Frank arrived and played an amazing acoustic set. What a legend!”
Fans scaled the gates and pillars to get a better look at their idol who entertained with both solo material and Pixies classics like ‘Nimrod’s Son’ and ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’.
Less delighted with proceedings were the local Gardai who took the singer and his publicist, Stevo Berube, by van to Kevin Street station where they were given a severe ticking off.
“At first we thought we'd been arrested,” Berube reveals, “but as we drove to Kevin Street the mood lightened, and we escaped with a ‘Don't do it again!’”
Was Black shaken?
“Yes,” Stevo deadpans, “but only because one old lady in the crowd thought he was James Blunt!”
Sprung from the nick, it was up the road to Vicar St. for a rather more conventional sell-out show. The first – of many – big cheers came when Francis announced from the stage: “Don’t believe what
they tell you, the food in Kevin Street Garda Station is great!”
According to our woman on the spot, Roisin Dwyer, 40 or so punters turned up expecting to see the similarly named, but somewhat musically different Frances Black.
“I overheard one lady outside on the phone laughing to her friend and saying: ‘...some heavy metal fella, I won't be throwing me knickers at him!’” Ms. Dwyer reports.

Photo by Ronan Johns