About three years ago, Neil Hannon and Duke Special, full-time musicians and part-time drama queens, decided they were going to have a feud. John Kelly, presenter for RTE, decided to enable them. Thus, an episode of The View was dedicated to a climactic feud, involving grand pianos, duetting, covering each other’s songs, being very ungentlemanly, getting kicked out of the Iveagh Gardens for sword fighting (‘We were just trying to kill each other!’), soloing, John Kelly’s best poker face (‘That’s a very bad attitude, Neil’), antique duelling pistols and Arklow Silver Band.
Incidental to the whole settling of the feud, it’s an excellent showcase for the talents of two exceedingly talented people.
They both tend toward epic gradiose settings for songs about the mundanities of life, love, teenagers, fidelity, infidelity and public transport.
Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy in their various incarnations supplied me with a chunk of my secondary school soundtrack. Duke Special supplied a chunk of my postgrad soundtrack. I haven’t seen Hannon live yet. I’ve seen Duke Special live lots, and it never stops being gloriously entertaining, mostly because anyone who has a one-man-band for a percussionist and does things like say ‘Look, I’m juggling apples!’, then fails completely to juggle the apples, gets someone in the front row in the head, apologises profusely and then tries again is the kind of person you want to spend an evening with no matter what the music is like. And the music is excellent.
Some kind soul put it up on youtube. Watch.
They did not, in case you were worried, manage to finish each other.
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