Team Hot Press has just come from the Temple Bar pub – no, it wasn’t our traditional Wednesday night into Thursday lock-in! – where Dave Browne has set a new Guinness World Record by playing the guitar non-stop for a whopping 114 hours and six minutes.
The Dublin muso had started his attempt on Sunday thinking that the record he had to beat was 100 hours set by an Argentine gentleman, but found out yesterday that a new record of 113 hours had been set just last Friday by a guitarist in India.
Unperturbed, he played on through the night and clocked up his 114th hour with a rocked up cover of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, which was punctuated by plenty of ‘Olé Olé Olé’-ing.
Despite being up for four-and-a-half-days, Dave was still throwing Hendrix-esque shapes right up until the last minute.
Helping him over the finish line was Johnny “Big Dog” Warren who made sure there was plenty of bite to the covers of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’, T.Rex’s ‘20th Century Boy’, The Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’ and the obligatory smattering of U2 songs like ‘When Love Comes To Town’ and ‘With Or Without You’, which completed his marathon set.
Earlier in the week, Dave had been joined on stage by assorted special guests including ex-Fat Lady Sings man Nick Kelly, Blink, Tarantella Fall, Kíla’s Colm O Snodaigh and the other Dave Browne, formerly of Picture House.
He was also able to evoke the guitar-playing spirit of the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan having been lent one of his old axes by Dublin collector Pat Henry.
The record attempt, which was proudly supported by Hot Press, certainly gripped the media’s imagination with TV3 and RTÉ news, Radio One, Today FM, Radio Nova and Phantom 105.2 all covering Dave’s heroics.
We’re going to let the new guitar-playing champ get a bit of shut-eye before interviewing him for the next issue of Hot Press!