WHO THE HELL ARE THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND?

THE PHONECALL came on Tuesday afternoon: "Something's just come up for this weekend and we think it might be right up your street." Warning signals went off in my brain. After all, what could be more pressing than seeing Tommy Carr's charges taking on Kildare in their first Championship outing of the year? Oh, a weekend in New York, culminating in a trip to Giants' Stadium, to see The Dave Matthews Band, America's hottest ticket at the moment, playing to 54,000 people, supported by Beck and Ben Folds Five. I suppose the boys on the Hill can wait.

Saturday morning and Dublin Airport is mad. Thousands of keyed-up holidaymakers are milling about in a blur of passports, boarding cards and duty-free bags. The US Immigration forms are a nightmare, and truth be told, summing up my existence on two sides of a green form is kind of depressing - is this all my life amounts to?

Thankfully, there are no hitches and before you can say "Give me your tired, your hungry and your downtrodden", I'm sitting on an airbus wondering how the animated character (Bod on steroids?) in the pre-flight safety video can manually inflate his life jacket seeing as he has no mouth.

The flight passes uneventfully and arrives in JFK an hour ahead of schedule. Next stop Manhattan. The radio on the taxi-ride informs me that I've landed in America on a day that perfectly sums up this country's paradoxical notion of freedom. While Disneyworld, Orlando, is celebrating Gay Weekend, New York's Daryl Morris is the first man to receive the death penalty since it was reintroduced in the state four years ago.

The Manhattan skyline careers into view and my heart involuntarily leaps. Maybe it's just the first sign of jetlag, but it seems the Empire State Building is smiling down benignly.

Fast forward to Sunday and I'm on a bus heading for Giants Stadium, negotiating the Lincoln Tunnel where Sylvester Stallone saved the city in the movie, Daylight. Half an hour later we're pulling into the vast carpark at Meadowlands, with Giants Stadium looming out of the flat plains like an alien construction. There are literally thousands of cars. Everywhere I look, teenagers are sitting around barbecues with a variety of hot dogs, burgers and other less recognisable foods being consumed with glee.

We arrive into the hospitality section, where they're serving magnificent hot dogs and the biggest "fuck off" hamburgers I have ever seen. Heaven.

Having scoffed a hot dog in the time it takes to say "ketchup, mayo and mustard please", it's out to the Stadium itself where Ben Folds Five are blasting their way through a rollicking set, including a magnificent 'Song For The Dumped'. Why these guys are not huge on both sides of the Atlantic is beyond me. Their manic, piano-driven pop is a joy, although it doesn't exactly transfer into a stadium setting with ease.

It's only after Ben Folds Five have left the stage that I get a chance to take in my surroundings. It's fucking HUGE, and choc-full of kids, with that recognisable mixture of anticipation and raw excitement all over their faces. I also notice that the audience are also far better looking than their Irish counterparts, though they can't dance nearly as well!

I'm in the middle of working out exactly where Ray Houghton picked up the ball four years ago, before masterfully chipping Pagliuca and sending an entire country into paroxysms of unadulterated delight, when Beck hits the stage, pulling me out of my reverie.

Not only the coolest man on the planet, the boy Hansen is a joy to watch live, and is possessed of both soul and swing in equal measures. 'Loser' and 'Deadweight' are brilliant; 'I Wanna Get With You' is pure soul à la Al Green, while the harmonica-and-vocals of 'Nobody's Fault But My Own' brings the barndance into the football stadium. 'Devil's Haircut' bleeds into 'The New Pollution' before he crowns off a superb performance with a blinding 'Where It's At'.

Next up, it's the main purpose of our trip. Dave Matthews Band are one of the biggest acts Stateside at the moment. Their first two albums sold over 10 million copies and their latest opus, Before These Crowded Streets, has seen them go supernova in their homeland. In the words of LL Cool J, it's something like a phenomenon.

They take to the stage - and, as one, the fans immediately take to their feet in response, standing on the seats, where they remain for the gig's two and a half hour duration. This alone says much for the band's pulling power. 10 minutes of it and my calf muscles are aching.

Most of their set is made up of material from Before These Crowded Streets, although they also perform jazzed-up covers of George Benson's 'On Broadway' and Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower'.

All five musicians come from a jazz background, and improvisation is very much the order of the day, with every song taking on an epic feel. At various points during the gig they are joined by guest musicians, Bela Fleck (from Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) and Big Voice Jack (a Johannesburg penny-whistle player), for their musical workouts.

Fusing elements of soul, jazz, blues and rock, Dave Matthews & Co. have the 54,000-strong audience in the palm of their collective hand right from the opening bars. There's judicious use of brass and violin, with Boyd Tinsley's frenetic fiddling reminding this listener of a dreadlocked Steve Wickham.

The musicianship throughout is pristine, and the crowd lap up every solo with whoops of delight. There's no denying that tracks like 'Don't Drink The Water' and the excellent 'Crush' are wonderfully crafted rock songs, but their sometimes overlong duration (some of the songs last upwards of 12 minutes) leads me to wonder if their appeal can successfully cross the Atlantic.

The audience's age profile is another source of wonder - for the most part, the band are old enough to be their parents. I put this to Matthews himself the following day at a press conference in the penthouse of the Parker-Meridien Hotel, with the tree-lined avenues of Central Park stretching out in the distance. So what is it about the 31-year-old's music that teenagers identify with?

"It's all confused, which is standard for 16-year-olds," he smiles, before getting more serious. "There's a lot of celebration in our music and I think that gets across. And their big brothers and sisters used to see us in college. I don't know why we have such appeal - I always thought we were a little bit eccentric and we had too many quirks to get across to a larger audience. I don't know why it's turned out this way, that odd time signatures and weird jazz licks are proving so popular. But I think at the core of what we do, there is a real simple music - that is what they hear."

Matthews then embarks on a gentle tongue-lashing for the music media, who he claims want all their stars to look and sound a certain way.

"The radio and the music media often implies that they know what the audience wants, and their selection is what the audience gets. Because we grew outside of that, we are one bit of evidence against that fact. It doesn't have to look and smell like emaciated heroin addiction in order to sell well. It can be slightly overweight and over 30."

Matthews, by his own admission is hungover, and yet the Virginia native still manages to be convivial and charming as he fields questions from the assembled European press corps. Last night's show is high on the agenda: "That was a big place to fill with sound - I wasn't as worried about filling it with people as I was with sound. The challenge is to make those sort of places seem intimate."

How will their two and a half hour set, with a lot of improvisation and jamming on stage, translate to the European arena, and the festival circuit in particular?

"What happens when we have to play a short set, when you get half an hour or 45 minutes, is that we squeeze all of our really fast songs in and rush through them in a panicked way," he laughs. "The last time we played Europe we didn't even scratch the surface, and the audience was like (adopts completely dumbfounded look). I think if people knew what it's like to be on stage and look down and have half the audience looking at you like that . . . it's the most off-putting thing in the world. If they knew what it was like, they'd just smile to make you feel good. I wish they'd do that in Europe a bit more."

You can judge for yourself it you're around Europe this summer as the Dave Matthews Band will be playing seven dates with the Rolling Stones and a variety of festivals and shows in their own right.

The press conference winds up and all that's left to do is another whirlwind spot of shopping (getting lost in Macy's is an experience) before it's time to head for home. We share the plane with some of the troupe from one of the Oirish dance shows currently treading the boards Stateside: seats jammed with lords and dancers, and all sorts of chancers.

All in all, a hugely enjoyable, if exhausting, weekend in the Big Apple. n