Larry Kirwan of Black 47

Deja Vu All Over Again

2012-01-31T19:23:00.000-08:00

Can’t you just feel it coming? The loonies are on the loose again. Let’s go in and sort out Iran! Have they learned nothing?

Meanwhile, the mullahs hang in there by the fingernails for the one lifeline that will save them – a rumble with the US. Tweak the American nose in an election year and even the calmest of presidents may lose his cool and lash out.

The scenario is as predictable as Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction = invasion = unleashing that most potent of forces – nationalism. It’s the one card the mullahs have left to play.

Leave them be and the US/EU/UN economic sanctions will slowly choke the already tottering Iranian oil industry. And if sanctions don’t work a burgeoning Iranian youth population with a desire for modernity will eventually turn the final screw.

Mess with the mullahs, however, and they’ll resurrect memories of a besieged Persian Empire. You think the Iraqis have attitude problems, Iranians were ruling the world a couple of millennia before Columbus mistook America for India.

The first shot fired in the Strait of Hormuz will knock 10% off whatever nest egg is supposed to cover you when your Social Security has been well and truly gutted.

And don’t even think of taking your gas-guzzler out for a gallop unless you can fork up six bucks a gallon.

What’s the big rush anyway? It’s not as if the Iranians are going to drop a whopper down on McLean Avenue any day soon. Worst-case scenario - as soon they can float a nuclear warhead within a hundred miles of Israel they’re toast.

Speaking of which, someone ought to tell the Mossad to quit the bombings and assassinations in Iran; it has to be them, not even the CIA is that out to lunch. Perhaps a little moratorium on the annual billions Israel receives in US military aid would help?

This is a time for cool heads - give the mullahs enough rope and their own people will hang them, just as the Iraqis would have done to Saddam if we hadn’t butted in.

Guy was shacked up in one of his palaces dreaming about Condoleezza Rice and writing bad romance novels. With a no-fly zone to his north and south he couldn’t have even made darts night in Paddy Reilly’s without George Bush’s permission.

And what did he do – rush in and blow up both Baghdad and our deficit when, given time, a coalition of disaffected Sunnis and Shites would have done the dirty work for him.

What are the chances of a patient, sane policy? Pretty slim, I’d say, given this is an election year and belligerence will play well with every cheap politician whose own children are at zero risk of fighting another stupid war.

And just when we got out of Iraq too and are on the verge of cutting an exit deal with the various drug dealers, nationalists and religious nuts who want to see the back of us in Afghanistan.

Did you ever wonder why this country has been on a permanent war footing since 1942?

Could it have anything to do with the military-industrial complex – as the last great Republican president suspected? But even Ike could never have foreseen the influence of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire on US political life.

There’s always a need for a bogeyman in Mr. Murdoch’s world. If it’s not Ahmadinejad, it’s Saddam; if not Noriega, it’s some other clown who knows he can rally his rubes by picking a fight with the ever-willing US.

Maybe it’s time we went into Canada? Who’s not sick of hearing about their oceans of oil and universal health insurance? While we can’t afford to maintain our infrastructure, properly educate our children or provide an adequate safety net for our citizens. But, hey not to worry, we have a “defense” budget greater than the rest of the world combined!

Its main focus right now, however, is on a two-mile wide shipping lane in the Strait of Hormuz. Let’s hope calm heads prevail and we don’t allow ourselves to be sucked into another military quagmire.

Cincinnati Irish Heritage Center

2012-01-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

What is the current state of Irish-America? In the 90’s it throbbed with political passion.

It’s no overstatement to suggest that many Irish-Americans were as interested in the troubles in the North of Ireland as most residents of the Irish Republic.

Native Irish often tend to look on Irish-America as some vast homogenous green-beer swilling, Aran-sweatered, politically naive mass. Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the South side of Boston to the West Side of Cleveland, through Butte Montana and on to San Francisco’s Geary Street, each enclave has its own traditions, opinions, peculiarities and different ways of seeing the world.

With the diminution of political problems in the North the focus of Irish-American communities has now veered more towards culture and celebration of their own individuality.

Irish festivals still host great gatherings but the local cultural center provides a year round home for those who wish to celebrate and nourish their heritage.

In the coming year I’ll be doing a Rock & Read solo tour of some of these centers and will file the occasional report.

My first stop will be Cincinnati on Saturday, Feb. 4th. It’s not a city that immediately springs to mind as Irish, rather more German – in fact its public schools were bilingual until World War 1. I know it tolerably well from gigs at Bogart’s (one of the best clubs in the country) and nights spent carousing at the late lamented Sudsy Malone’s Rock & Roll Laundry and Bar. I kid you not – a saloon cum laundromat!

Though Cincinnati is calm on the surface one can notice a simmering urban tension on a midnight stroll down Vine Street. But that’s hardly unusual in a vibrant city and you can’t beat Cincinnati’s music fans.

There’s a marked southern influence that breeds a certain graciousness; it’s not surprising that America’s greatest songwriter, Stephen Foster, spent formative years in Cincinnati, though one would have to surmise that he made the occasional short trip across the Ohio River to Kentucky where booze, tobacco and other delights have always been easy, if not entirely free.

I don’t know where the city’s Gaels used to congregate but they now make their home at The Irish Heritage Center. Only operating since late 2009 it has already made a huge impact on both the city and the Irish-American community.
The center’s founders are ambitious. They purchased a 44,000 square foot East Side school and went to work with a vengeance restoring it.

They used as their model the very vital Chicago Irish-American Heritage Center once also a cavernous school building.

The Cincinnati Center already has a functioning theater, tearoom, library and dance studio, with plans for a museum; not to mention that managing director, Kent Covey and his executive committee provide Irish language, history, dance and painting classes.

I first learned of the center through their dynamic theatrical artistic director, Maureen Kennedy, who directed Blood, a play of mine. In barely a year she has mounted three other productions while unearthing a valuable lode of local acting talent.

I’m sure the odd drink is taken there too and knowing some of the local staunch republicans I would imagine that there’s the occasional dispute over politics late at night – all par the course for any respectable Irish center.

Ah, but it’s hard to think of Cincinnati without Sudsy Malone’s Bar and Laundromat – what a combination for a band on the road! Finally, a bullet proof, hygienic excuse to spend one’s night getting wasted!

Still, I’m looking forward to going back to the city where Stephen Foster wrote Oh Susannah, maybe some of the great songwriter’s magic will rub off on me.

Make sure you visit your own local Irish cultural club or center, there’s a home there for anyone with a Celtic soul and plenty of rewarding work if you’d like to volunteer your services.

Perhaps I’ll run into you at one of these hives of activity over the next year. Hey, maybe your center has a working laundromat – you never know, it might be close to the members’ bar – and who couldn’t use a good excuse for a drink every now and then.

Gabe, Hendrix and Ballydehob

2012-01-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

Back in the 70’s if you wished to spend a little time in the US and were engaged in any form of study, legitimate or otherwise, ISETA was the organization for you.

I can’t remember what the initials stood for but, along with bookies, bartenders, jockeys and sundry blackguards, I was provided with a social security number on the assumption that I would return to Ireland and fund my studies with my legally gained remuneration.

I’m not sure if Gabe Hannon came to the US in that manner but he sure fit the profile.

Gabe from Ballydehob was a credit to West Cork. He passed away in Newport, RI some weeks back.

I can’t even remember when I first met him. Seemed like I knew him forever. But then Gabe knew everyone worth knowing and many others besides.

He had that particular charm, earnestness, quick wit and easy intelligence that is peculiar to the wild west of Cork. He was also a bit of a soft touch and was drawn to musicians, actors and writers – not a good combination at the best of times, particularly if you were proprietor of Gabe’s Bar in Ballydehob.

He was also a poet and a fine artist who delighted working in wood. This inevitably led him to theatre design, which is probably how our paths crossed.

He liked to hold business meetings over breakfast for he didn’t trust liquidy promises made late at night. My first such repast with him was at the Dublin, Ohio Irish Festival when we agreed to produce a play of mine.

It was there he first informed me about the long lost tapes of Hendrix. In many ways this wooly tale sums up Gabe and the whole ISETA generation.

After Jimi Hendrix final date with The Experience in 1969 neither band nor crew had been paid in some time. Bassist Noel Redding decided to take out a little insurance.

He visited Hendrix storage rooms, filled a truck with guitars, amplifiers and the live tapes of the last shows, and lit out for West Cork where the living was easy and marijuana was not unknown to grow.

While driving through Ballydehob he happened upon Gabe. They struck up a conversation and Noel stated that he had would like to purchase a house. He explained, however, that while he had mucho dinero coming, his liquidity left much to be desired.

Gabe noted that such problems were common enough in the county of Cork but that the manager of the local Bank might be willing to grant a mortgage should Noel have anything of value that could be lodged for surety.

Indeed he had – Hendrix hot-off-the-board last concert tapes! The bank manager suitably impressed - the tapes were lodged in the vault, a house purchased and a mortgage granted – everyone being of the opinion that royalties and gig monies would be arriving forthwith.

Alas, life is rarely simple in the music business. Hendrix upped and died; his estate became mired in a Sargasso of litigation and an uneasy calm settled on Ballydehob.

Not for long, shady figures were seen lurking around the bank and Mr. Redding had occasion to believe that his life was under threat. His legal situation was no less fraught; while he was definitely owed monies, he was in illicit possession of some very valuable Hendrix chattels.

Added to this he was apparently often reluctant to settle his bills; this occasioned “burglaries” of his own storage room leading to the disappearance of certain Hendrix guitars that are still floating around the province of Munster.

Gabe had promised me final details at which time we were going to submit a full written account to Rolling Stone or National Geographic. Alas, the best laid plans of publicans and rockers…

Fear not, I have a ticket booked to Ballydehob! I plan to lease the now vacated Allied Irish Bank building, rescue the tapes and solve a mystery that began in that long-ago psychedelic summer of 1969 – unless you beat me there first.

So long, Gabe, I won’t shed any more tears for you. I know you have a permanent front seat at the ongoing Hendrix jam in heaven.

Reduce Taxes and Cut Regulations!

2012-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

Hey, you GOP members, help a brother out!

I know you read The Echo. After all, Irish-America has vastly changed since: “Pat Murphy couldn’t have turned Republican, I saw him at mass last Sunday!”

I’m counting on you to demand a couple of answers from your presidential primary candidates. Like most politicians they’re way too handy at answering a specific question with an unsolicited stump speech. Unfortunately, both "Trotskyite" PBS and "fair and balanced" Fox News allow them to get away such parrot-like behavior.

But what exactly are their economic plans assuming one of them whips that raving socialist in the White House come November?

Yes, I know – reduce taxes and cut regulations! But where will that get us? President Bush flogged those two nags ‘til the cows came home with the end result that he decimated the Clinton surplus and ran up a humdinger of a deficit.

Likewise, 40% of President Obama’s stimulus went to cutting taxes and while this massive outlay may have helped alleviate the recession, there’s little enough else to show for it.

Why - probably because those not in immediate economic peril saved their handouts for a rainy day. Nor is there much point in cutting corporate taxes since American companies are sitting on record-breaking cash reserves.

As regards regulations, I agree with you – shred all unnecessary bureaucratic red tape, particularly that which stifles small businesses.

But hands off the EPA and other such agencies! Profit and job creation are one thing, regulations that will prevent power plants from spewing mercury and other neurotoxicants into the atmosphere are quite another.

Apart from saving us all from industrial poisoning, the necessary plant conversion will provide construction jobs; but even more importantly these regulations just might stymie the staggering increase of autism and other developmental problems over the last couple of decades.

At the risk of sounding like a tree-hugger, passing on the planet to the next generation in somewhat the same condition we inherited it is a sacred trust.

But back to our noble GOP primary candidates, to quote Ronald Reagan, “where’s the beef?” It’s okay for Mitt Romney to say that he’ll cut the unemployment rate and get this country moving again; but how exactly?

He did go to Harvard Business School and introduced a decent health care system while governor of Massachusetts? So, he’s probably got some viable economic plan under his hat. Has he just been wary of broaching the matter while campaigning in the evangelical wilds of Iowa where one must be seen as tilting more rightward than Attila The Hun?

Unfortunately a large part of our economic problems may be structural and not immediately fixable by any politician. Because of Internet and digital communication advances white-collar workers are presently experiencing the same redundancy rates that their blue-collar brethren have been suffering since the 70’s.

What we don’t need right now is a fresh dose of election-year voodoo economics. Cutting budgets too far, too fast, could really hinder consumer spending and without credit cards revving up American malls the whole economic system could go into a tailspin.

So steady as we go! It took eleven years of financial mismanagement, rose-colored navel-gazing, and two wars to create this mess; it may take even longer to clean it up. One thing is certain, however, when the unemployed do get back to work it will be for less pay and fewer benefits, and that will create its own problems.

Crazy though many of his theories and proposals are, the one visionary Republican politician is Rep. Ron Paul. Why are we fighting overseas wars, supporting corrupt foreign governments and stationing troops in rich democracies like Germany and South Korea, he asks? So far, none of his rivals has even hazarded an answer.

Likewise the truth was not revealed to him during the current administration - he was one of the few in his party to insist on fiscal restraint in the budget-busting era of George W. Bush.

One can only hope that he’ll continue on to the Republican Convention in Tampa and demand a few meaningful answers from Newt Romney or whomever else is raising the inevitable illogical banner of “cut taxes and regulations!”

The Irish-American Princess

2011-12-23T20:15:00.000-08:00

She was my first IAP (Irish-American Princess). Well the first that I lived with at any rate. Tara had somehow made her way down to the Lower East Side from the leafy, lace-curtain environs of Westchester, although she was anything but stuck up.

Back then I had a regular Sunday gig in the less than ritzy Archway up the Bronx and she fit in there like a fist in a glove. Of course, she was quite a looker so that didn’t hurt with the lovesick Paddies.

She had beautiful grayish green eyes that would mist over in any kind of conflict or passion; there was much of both in our relationship. The boys said that she could twist me around her little finger. They were right, but oh that twisting could be so sweet.

Things came easy to Tara. She had succeeded at everything she’d turned her hand to. But she wished to become a successful singer, the rock that many have foundered upon.

I must have seemed like a good step up the ladder; along with gigs in the Archway and John’s Flynn’s Village Pub, I regularly strutted my stuff at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City.

It was to be a match made in purgatory for both of us. Whatever, as they say, I was in need of some stability and moved into her apartment on First Avenue.

I always seemed to have “just missed” her parents on their visits to the city. That should have set the bells ringing but I guess when you’re in love…

Actually, our first major disagreement was over my parents - when I announced I’d be spending Christmas with them in Wexford.

“Our first Christmas together?” She shuddered.

“Well, you can come too.” Although I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of telling the Mammy that we’d be bunking together in the ancestral homestead.

“I couldn’t desert my parents,” she countered as though I was sentencing her whole white-picket-fenced clan to twenty out on Rykers.

“But what about my parents?” I retorted. And on it went as lovers’ quarrels do until her eyes were so misty and beautiful I feared that her heart might indeed break.

Well, I wrote my Mother a particularly tear-stained letter full of half-truths (God rest her soul, I suppose she knows the full story now). I didn’t dare telephone; I wasn’t man enough to bear two loads of womanly angst.

In truth though, the part that really hurt was that I would miss the traditional Wexford boys’ night out on Christmas Eve. And so I extracted a promise from Tara that we’d at least tie on a decent substitute.

“No problem,” she said and was good to her word. She was fairly abstemious for those times but, when called upon, could drink like a fish with little ill effect.

We bought a tree, decorated it, and strung flashing lights all around the apartment. I almost felt like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Almost! For around 7pm I slipped on my black leather jacket, she dressed up to the nines and off we strutted up First Avenue to get well and truly shellacked.

God knows how many bars we hit, I certainly don’t; but I was feeling no pain by the time we reached Max’s Kansas City. Why Max’s on Christmas Eve? Well Tara liked to make the scene, besides I knew the doorman and got in free.

I was also familiar with the bartender who slid many the shot of watered-down whiskey towards us. And then, through the shroud of smoky darkness, I heard the London accent.

“Roight!” The spiky-haired ghost in black leather wearily exclaimed.

The platinum blonde next to him droned on as junkies do.

“Roight.” Sid Vicious reiterated whenever a response was expected.

I casually whispered his name to Tara.

“Oh my God!” She shrieked as though Jesus had just hopped down off the cross and offered to buy a round.

Sid looked up blearily, whereupon Tara flashed him a smile that would have done justice to Marilyn Monroe on steroids.
“The blonde looks like a piece of all right,” I countered and winked at Nancy Spungen.

“From a bottle!” Tara sniffed just as Sid laboriously hauled himself off his stool and stumbled towards the restrooms; whereupon Ms. Spungen laid her head down on the counter for a wee snooze.

We were still awaiting Sid’s return when Tara looked at her watch and gasped. “It’s ten minutes to twelve.”

“Expecting to turn into a pumpkin?”

“No,” she moaned, “we won’t get into St. Patrick’s!”

“What for?”

“Midnight mass, of course. What do you think?”

Was she kidding - from Max’s to matins?

When we arrived at the church off Avenue A, I could tell it wasn’t exactly what Ms. Westchester had in mind. For one thing, the priests all wore shades and spoke Polish.

Still, the place was packed and we reverently stood in the transept in close proximity to an ornate candelabra - wax dripping from its many branches.

Perhaps, it was the heat, though it could have been Max’s watery whiskey; for one moment I was sweating and swaying, the next I was writhing on the marble floor painfully disengaging myself from a myriad of hot waxy candles.

There was immediate uproar with many Eastern European ladies screaming at me, and Tara, no doubt, wishing she was safely home in leafy suburbia.

When I awoke on Christmas morning much of her extensive wardrobe was laying atop me. She was modeling a matronly gray jacket and skirt, the hem inches below her knees, damn near a foot down from its usual height.

I leaped from the bed and grabbed my Doc Martens, pink shirt, and black leather tie and jacket. Unlike my dearest, I had long before settled on an outfit appropriate for my first appearance in Westchester.

“You don’t look well, baby,” she laid a cool hand on my brow and cooed, “You’re just burning up.”

I did feel as though one of those monsters from Alien was ready to hop out of my stomach but I had much experience of that condition. “No, it’s okay. I want to do this for you.”

She hemmed and hawed before blurting out the truth, “It’s my mother…she wouldn’t like you.”

“What’s there not to like?”

“Well, your clothes, for one thing. I mean, are you serious?”

And with that, the fight fled from me. I could just picture the whole clan dressed in Kelly green singing Danny Boy around a turf fire - her auld one, no doubt, peering out at me through lace curtains.

Tara took me in her arms whispered that I should go back to sleep, and hinted that on her return Santa might provide some x-rated delights. But I wasn’t that easily mollified and delivered one last parting shot as the door closed behind her, “So what am I supposed to do, have Christmas dinner in an Indian restaurant?”

Well, I didn’t fall back asleep and the hangover was of the galloping nature, gaining ground all afternoon. But the hunger was no joke either and when I eventually sauntered up First Avenue the only places open were of the Indian persuasion.

A dusting of snow was descending as I stormed into The Taj Mahal. The lone customer didn’t even bother to look up from his book; I sat there glaring at him, cursing all cruel-hearted IAPs and wishing I was home with my Mammy in Wexford.

The snow was swirling around First Avenue and White Christmas was leaking from doorways as I headed back to the apartment. I turned on the blinking Christmas lights and took a couple of fierce slugs of Jameson’s whiskey, turned the Clash up to eleven and rehearsed ever more vicious and vengeful ways of breaking up with Ms. Westchester.

She must have forgotten her keys for, at first, I didn’t hear her knock above Strummer’s bawling. I strode over to the door, angrier than any Old Testament prophet.

She stood there, face flushed from the cold, snow in her hair; she was expecting my fury and accepted it with grace. She smiled gently, her grayish green eyes misting over, and I barely heard her murmur, “I missed you so much.”

She reached up, held a sprig of mistletoe over my head and kissed me as if for the first time. And when she whispered, “Merry Christmas, baby,” all the fight fled out of me and young love in all its passion returned.

A Christmas Candle

2011-12-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

Every Christmas Eve I place a lighted candle in my window – less for any cultural or religious reason than for fear my granny might appear and scare the wits out of me.

She always claimed that such a gentle flame helped guide lost souls home. I think she may have been theologically mistaken and its purpose was to assist the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph find a safe spot to deliver the baby Jesus; still I never disagreed, for my granny was a formidable woman.

It wasn’t that she was inflexible; she merely went her own way without regard for the world or its ways. In fact she was of an extremely sympathetic nature and, when given, her love was unconditional and never withdrawn despite all grievances, real and imagined.

I don’t think the term “drama queen” had been coined in her day, but it summed her up to a tee. There was little she couldn’t make much of.

She shed copious tears every time she heard “Too Soon To Know” by Roy Orbison. She claimed he had written it in honor of his wife who had been burned alive. I’ve never corroborated the veracity of this showbiz tragedy – sometimes ignorance is bliss with regard to family statements.

She claimed to be married to “the most unimaginative man in the world.” And perhaps she was for I never heard my grandfather reply to this particular charge, often as it was hurled at him.

In fact I don’t think I heard him say much of anything to her; men back then didn’t say a whole lot to women, especially when children were around. He must have murmured “sweet nothings” on a number of occasions, however, for they had five children not counting three that died soon after birth. She missed those three souls dearly and often whispered their names.

Silent though her relationship was with my grandfather she called out mightily to him as the undertakers wrestled with his coffin the night he died; my father matched her grief in sheer blasphemy as he labored unsuccessfully to unhinge the jammed door of the bedroom.

Through gales of tears my granny cried out that she would soon be joining my grandfather. My father, a rather salty and unsentimental merchant marine, in the midst of all this keening declared loudly that, “this goddamned door will have to be crow-barred off.”

When such a tool could not be located he removed the windows instead and we managed to lower the coffin into the hearse through gale-force wind and rain.

The shenanigans did not stop there. My grandfather was a much-respected man and the ensuing well-oiled wake reached riotous proportions. So much so that when we arrived at the graveyard two days later amidst the still blowing gale, the conditions were, in the words of the race-horsing community, extremely soft.

My two brothers and I along with three of our male teenaged cousins had been conscripted to carry the coffin from the hearse to the graveside on woefully hungover shoulders. Lo and behold, the youngest cousin slipped on the wet clay of St. Ibar’s cemetery and, but for a leap across the grave by my ever-profane father, all half-dozen of us would have ended up six feet under the coffin.

Regarding this save, my Uncle Sean was heard to murmur that if Wexford ever had such a goalkeeper, Kilkenny would have won far fewer All-Irelands.

My father was apparently not blessed with great imagination either for later that night after my granny had retired to her own room, spent from his labors he lay down on my grandfather’s bed. His last words before slipping into coma-like sleep were, “out with the old, in with the new.”

As Malachy McCourt once opined, “I come from a long line of dead people.” I suppose we all do. Whatever imagination I’m blessed with, I daresay my granny had a large say in it.

So, this Christmas Eve, in her honor, I’ll light a candle in the window for I know she’s hovering out there somewhere keeping a melodramatic eye on me. I just hope to God she doesn’t read this column.

Thanksgiving in Australia

2011-12-13T19:06:00.000-08:00

I was in Sydney for Thanksgiving. A long way to go for a bite of turkey!

Over 10,000 miles, in fact, but I’ve been working on Transport - a musical - with Thomas Keneally of Schindler’s List fame, and had the opportunity to do a workshop of the piece Down Under.

Keneally was inspired to write the book on account of his wife Judy's great-grandmother who was transported to Botany Bay in 1839 for stealing a bolt of cloth in Limerick.

It was a riveting experience to collaborate with new directors and a cast on a piece so central to the Australian psyche; to tell the story of four young Irish women sentenced to penal servitude who ultimately went on to create a new country.

And what a country Australia is. At times it takes your breath away - a mixture of opposites, the familiar and the strange.

Tom Keneally is emblematic of the place. Educated by the Christian Brothers, a wonderful writer with deep roots in Irish literature, he has a rare and uncanny facility for creating fully fleshed women characters. However, just when you think you have him nailed, he slips away from you for he sees the world through uniquely Australian eyes.

You could say much the same for Sydney. The churches and bank buildings might have been lifted straight from Dublin or London, and yet instead of granite or limestone they’re hewed from a dusty red sandstone that gleams oddly in the harsh sunshine.

When you visit The Rocks – the equivalent of New York’s rowdy 19th Century Five Points - you can almost hear the bustle and boozy banter of freed convicts creating an alternative culture to their conservative English masters and jailers.

The two traditions have only recently, and uneasily, coalesced; scratch the surface and you’ll find a caustic rebelliousness beneath the tanned skin of most Australians.

The country is booming, largely because its mineral resources are in demand by China; nor has it been scarred by recession because its well-regulated banks were unable to behave like casinos as happened in the US and Europe.

Sydney actually felt like Clinton-era New York. One almost expected to see Bill and Hil gliding by on surfboards such was the sheer optimism in the air.

A cautious understated people, Australians however were not trumpeting their good fortune; rather they seemed content with their lot, much in the way that we were back in the 90’s.

Yet there’s a definite “can-do” feeling in Sydney. It was ricocheting around the theatre the first morning Keneally and I walked in.

The actors and musicians had 18 new songs to learn and a whole script to flesh out onstage in five days. A tall order to my mind, but they seemed, if anything, under-whelmed by the task ahead.

Sure, they had their problems in the course of the rehearsal process but they never doubted that they would come up with the goods.

Contrast that with the “Super Committee” in DC charged with reducing a small chunk of the US deficit. Given the self-imposed strictures on revenue raising and reducing benefits, was there ever a chance of success in an environment that has been poisoned by lobbyists, ideologues and a scavenging 24/7 media?

Don’t get me wrong! Australians are no saints: their politicians are raucous and self-centered, and yet they’re able to agree to disagree and ultimately come to a consensus for the general good.

It used to be that way in this country and, with a bit of luck, it will be someday again – but not until we turn away from televisions and computers, take off the headphones, look each other in the eye, and seek common ground.

Australia was inspiring. It reminded me of how we used to be a decade or two ago. And on the last night of Transport, as the audience gave a standing ovation to the cast, the thought struck me that if four chained and destitute Irish women prisoners could go on to create a great country, then why can’t we come together and do the right thing by ours?

Bert Jansch

2011-12-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

Bert Jansch passed away recently. As Earle Hitchner noted: his death was overshadowed by that of Steve Jobs.

It probably wouldn’t have bothered Bert; he had grown used to being a footnote. Nonetheless, guitarists all over the world picked up their axes and had another run at Angie, the instrumental that gained Jansch his most renown. Kind of fitting, I suppose, since he didn’t write it.

Though unknown to most, Bert Jansch was treasured by musicians and those with an ear for innovation. Neil Young once said that what Hendrix did for the electric, Jansch did for the acoustic.

Quite an endorsement! To add to it, Neil took him around the US as an opener on his last year’s solo tour, even as Bert’s health was fading.

Perhaps, the greatest compliment – and heartbreak – was when Jimmy Page lifted Bert’s arrangement of the traditional Blackwaterside and turned it into Led Zeppelin’s Black Mountain Side! Listen to them back to back sometime.

There was no acknowledgement of the influence and a lawsuit was threatened but the prospective costs caused Bert and his label, Transatlantic Records, to let the issue slide.

Odd, in an of itself, since Page adored Jansch’s playing and haunted his appearances in London’s folk clubs back in the mid-‘60’s. Strange too that these two brilliant musicians were both addicted for long stretches of their lives – Jansch to alcohol, Page to heroin.

What is it about musicians and addiction? I have only to figuratively glance over my shoulder to witness a trail of destruction and heart-scald amongst friends and acquaintances.

Perhaps it’s generational, for many younger musicians lead relatively straight lives. Was it something in the times, the general fracturing of society that occurred in the 60’s and 70’s?

One thing I am certain of - there’s a marked difference between musicians and performers. Many musicians are simply not born for the stage. Their focus is music – you'd be surprised at how many are even quite shy; and yet, almost all are forced to stride the footlights to pursue their craft.

That shyness has to be blotted out in some form or other; add the sheer availability of free booze to the boredom of the road and you have one hell of a lethal cocktail.

Bert Jansch’s drinking was a problem through much of his career, although he always showed for gigs – sometimes, however, without a guitar. There’s many the guitarist whose sole claim to fame is that Bert borrowed his instrument before hitting the stage.

But whatever his state, his playing was magical. Despite his innovative work with Pentangle - the groundbreaking folk/jazz group he formed with John Renbourn - I still love his first album, simply called Bert Jansch, recorded by Bill Leader on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Leader sold the tapes outright to Transatlantic Records for 100 pounds; the album has sold over 150,000 copies – a whole bitter story in itself. Sometimes his guitar slightly distorts when he hammers a chord in his distinctive percussive style but it’s all Bert and in your face. You’ll hear his arrangement of Angie just as Paul Simon did; Garfunkel’s better half copied it and changed its name to Anji – without an acknowledgement either.

You’ll also hear the chilling Needle of Death, a tribute to his addicted friend, Buck Polly. In three minutes and twenty seconds you’ll learn why you should never mess with heroin.

Ironic, in ways, because for all Jimmy Page’s adoration of Jansch, he didn’t take this advice to heart!

The redeeming part of this story is that both men kicked their habits and went on to live very productive lives. Jimmy Page is a rock legend – and rightly so – one can tire of Robert Plant’s affected keening but Page’s riffs, writings and production still make Zeppelin the pride of their field.

And Bert Jansch? Will he forever remain a hidden gem? I have a feeling that his star will glow in the years to come – a pity that he had to die for that to happen.

But that’s the crazy world of guitars, shyness, and taking that one step too far over the line.

Enniscorthy & Brooklyn

2011-11-30T05:36:00.000-08:00

One upon a time I was in a teenage band. The drummer, not fancying our prospects, got married and moved to his wife’s hometown fourteen miles up the Slaney River. A rather laconic type, when next I met him he growled uncharacteristically, “You think Wexford is bad, it’s got nothin’ on Enniscorthy.”

I wonder if he’s read Colm Toibín’s wonderful novel, Brooklyn. It opened the eyes of this Wexford man – opened the heart too for I’m haunted by its heroine.

This is hardly surprising since Toibín, like Australian Thomas Keneally, is that rarity: a male novelist who brings women to life on the page.

Though I’ve long admired his writing, I picked up Brooklyn because it’s situated in two very disparate areas I’m familiar with – the borough of the title and Colm’s hometown of Enniscorthy. Oddly enough, I have more affinity for the former though I grew up a figurative stone’s throw from the latter whose inhabitants we called “scalders.”

Back then Enniscorthy seemed never less than gloomy and claustrophobic, perhaps because it doesn’t gaze out onto the sea as Wexford does. I suppose I just didn’t understand the place.

I do now. For Toibín casts light into the dark corners of this small Irish town in the 1950’s, allowing us to experience both a womb-like familiarity along with the class-consciousness and innate nosiness that paralyze such places.

Colm’s genius is that he contrasts this brooding parochialism with the turmoil of immigrant Brooklyn where cultures collide indiscriminately and the recently arrived are forced to shed whole layers of identity in order to fit into a complex and self-assured new world.

And then there is Eilis Lacey, the book’s central character. I know her. Well, not specifically but she’s a dead ringer for the older sisters of a number of my childhood friends, though instead of returning from New York City, these ladies took the boat train from Paddington for their fortnight’s holidays home from London.

Nurses or secretaries with money to burn, they were glamorous in their Cricklewood fashions as they shattered hearts in Wexford pubs and hotel dancehalls. But after a couple of Babychams, you could almost touch the longing in them to be what they once were but could never be again.

You’re on Eilis’ side from the first page of Brooklyn and you’re still there at the bittersweet ending. For like the sisters of my friends, she is loyal, lovely and brave, and will ultimately do the right thing, even if it means hurting herself and others.

In some ways, this is a tale of two cities, for Enniscorthy is a metropolis when you’ve never been anywhere else - while in Brooklyn the best of times and the worst are always close to hand.

As you might imagine, there’s a love interest in both locations and they couldn’t be more different. Each is viewed unsparingly through the prism of class-consciousness. One promises a rise in stature, reassuring but ultimately suffocating; while the other is “beneath” Eilis, and yet in such a union she might one day reach beyond herself.

I wonder do we root for her because we feel she could “do better?” Or perhaps the book leads us to question some of the choices we ourselves have made?

In real life Eilis would probably be a grandmother now, either living in one of those McBungalows that bruise the stalwart Wexford countryside, or presiding over a large, fractious Italian-Irish family in Long Island.

During the final pages she must make her choice and your heart is in your mouth for her.

I’ll never look at Enniscorthy in quite the same way again. The town seems brighter to me now, the gloom is gone and with it the claustrophobia; even the Slaney jigs to a different beat as it rushes under the new bridge on its way to Wexford and the sea.

Or have I changed and am seeing the old town through different eyes? Who knows, who cares? Great books do that to you.

Hallelujiah!

2011-11-23T03:46:00.000-08:00

So it’s finally over – well almost – the long national nightmare of Iraq. All American combat troops are to be withdrawn by Dec. 31st. Halelujiah!

We’d still be there, of course, if Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the radical Shia Mahdi Army, hadn’t insisted we depart.

Still, almost 9 years later, 4400 deaths, 30,000 wounded, more than a trillion dollars wasted we’ve finally thrown our hat at this hellhole.

Only time and the VA will tell how many who served now suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress – upwards of a quarter of a million?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the countless Iraqis slaughtered, maimed and dislocated.

Sorry to upset you with these figures, but they’ve been on my mind since catching a glimpse of President Bush doting on his beloved Texas Rangers during the World Series. God bless him, he still has no problem sleeping through the night.

And the outcome was all so obvious. Like Yugoslavia splintering into religious and ethnic factions after the death of Marshall Tito, something similar was bound to happen in Iraq as soon Saddam Hussein was deposed by foreign forces.

People just don’t like being invaded, simple as that! Put Iraqi troops on the streets of America you think the natives will be saying, “Yoh, how you doin’, Ali? Nice to see you bro!”

How could we have been so hoodwinked into allowing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the others talk us into this foreign misadventure?

Well, we’re suckers for good old razzmatazz. Just wave the flags, blow the trumpets, and we’ll follow any dingbat, especially with a media only too willing to be manipulated. The New York Times even saw some sense in this looming disaster, and forget about the Post, News and the puppets at the various TV networks.

President Bush and his team were not bad people, in and of themselves. I never thought they were going to war to enrich the oil industry – no, they did so on the somewhat plausible idea that if you create an American style democracy in Iraq it will fan out over the region. Hey, given time, these new Iraqi Republocrats might even accept Israel.

The best laid plans of mice and DC dreamers! Was there ever a chance of such success? Sure, the occasional nag comes in at 60/1, but your doddery old Aunt Statia is the only one with a couple of bucks on it.

You would think that after the 50,000 lost in Vietnam lessons would have been learned. But, no, hope springs eternal for the best and the brightest - especially when neither they nor their children will do the fighting.

The big question is: will we allow it to happen again?

Given the economic climate, there’s a decent shot we’ll give up the ghost on Afghanistan in 2014. Karzai’s corrupt government will fall, the Taliban and Haqqani syndicates will nail down their piece of the action, Pakistan and India will go on squabbling, and so it goes…

Then what? Will the trumpets blare and the flags wave someday for another foreign misadventure disguised as a national crisis?

The Republican presidential contenders are understandably reticent on such matters - apart from Ron Paul who level-headedly questions our armed and expensive presence in Germany and South Korea. It’s vitally important that we hear their foreign policies – or lack thereof.

Iran has already been set up as the next bogeyman – “let’s take out their nuclear weapons!” – when, given time and demographics, the mullahs will be unseated by their own people, just as would have happened with Saddam.

In memory of the 4400 who didn’t make it back alive from Iraq, let us vow that this travesty not be repeated.

And for those who did serve – especially the injured – let’s be sure we honor them not just with yellow ribbons and hollow words but with education, jobs and the simple slogan – never again!

Nothing against Texas, but there was a certain symbolism in seeing the Cardinals win the World Series. Would that all victories came at such little cost and over seven games on a bloodless October.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-16T04:37:00.000-08:00

The main rap against the Occupy Wall Street Movement is that it has no discernible goals.

Contrast that with the Tea Party whose desires are easily articulated – defeat “Obamacare,” reduce deficits, and send the sheik in the White House back to Kenya or wherever he came from.

So, let me suggest three goals; but first, let’s examine the roots of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and why it’s unlikely to dissolve with the snows of winter.

Americans have been distinguished by their lack of envy of the rich, mainly because they’ve always felt there was a pathway - albeit narrow and crowded – to their own life of luxury.

Protesters would not be quite so vocal against the fabled upper 1% if they thought there was a prayer in hell of joining them in their penthouses and McMansions. What really irks the noble souls down in Zuccotti Park is that even if you’re willing to bust your butt nowadays you may never make it to the shrinking middle-class.

Once upon a time if you got into a union or went to college you could bet the farm you’d end up in the suburbs. Now graduate from Harvard and you’re still not guaranteed a gig; or get a gold-plated membership in the UAW, you’ll step onto the assembly line for 14 bucks an hour. You won’t even afford a shack out in Levittown on that paycheck – let alone get a mortgage.

To say that there’s a mass disenchantment with the state of the union would be putting it mildly.

And so to the three goals!

Number one, reform the political process. Nothing of significance can be achieved while the system is clogged and corrupted by money.

Politicians may huff and puff about issues but nowadays politics is all about the mighty buck – raise enough of them, stay off Page 6, and you too can get elected.

And you ain’t seen nothing yet! With the new Super PAC bundlers and the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unlimited corporate donations, the floodgates of crony capitalism have just opened.

There is a solution – tighter campaign donation laws. But this obviously won’t come from politicians; it has to come from us – and the good God in heaven who might whack a couple of backwoodsmen on the Supreme Court.

With or without divine help - if we don’t act soon the Republic will sink even deeper into this current cesspit of legal bribery known as politics.

There is no way to create the new industries that will provide well-paying jobs for the protestors – and everyone else - unless we invest in research, education and the national infrastructure. But where will the money come from, unless taxes are raised – and who wants to pay the piper nowadays?

Which brings us to goal number two: there is no reason - philosophical or practical - why the US has to spend more on defense than every other country in the world combined.

The armed forces are a great employer of last resort but few would dispute that defense budgets are bloated, while the cost of weapons perennially exceeds estimate.

President Eisenhower warned against the growth of the military-industrial complex. The poor old soldier must have been doing somersaults in his grave watching arms industry lobbyists and alarmist hawks double the defense budget since 9/11.

On to goal number three: Healthcare! We spend double the amount of every other industrialized country but trail much of the world in actual good health.

Costs must be reined in before the whole country is turned into a hospital waiting room. A decent first step would be for opportunistic politicians to stop their paranoiac and misleading yelping about “death panels” and “socialized medicine.” Some hope, right?

A federally guaranteed single-payer system is the only shot. Administrative costs would drop, deals could be cut with a rampaging drug industry, and businesses could actually budget ahead. As it stands, employers can’t afford to hire new workers because of burgeoning health insurance costs – hence, so much outsourcing.

Enough said! I’ve got some flyers to print. See you down Zuccotti Park!

Killing The Thing You Love

2011-11-08T17:12:00.000-08:00

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Oscar Wilde wrote many a brilliant verse but none more troubling than the above.

I was reminded of it recently when a young man spoke to me about his hope for a career in the music industry.

Oddly enough, I never thought of such a step back in Wexford. Music was something I more or less fell into.

The conditions were very different; rock music was then on the cutting edge of politics and social change. Few people saw it as a business.

The genre has very little connection to politics nowadays as demonstrated by its pathetic reaction to the War in Iraq. Hip-Hop has long supplanted it as a vital social force, though more so internationally where it continues to fuel the Arab Spring.

I considered warning the young man about the heartbreaks ahead but he had the fire in his eyes. Besides he could spend his life in many a more boring and equally financially insecure career. The once $20 an hour jobs that he might aspire to are being downgraded to $10, sometimes even less; not to mention that most musicians get to sleep late in the morning!

Rock music, unfortunately, lost much of its social drive – and some would say, soul - when it was co-opted by MTV and the advertising industry in the plastic 80’s.

How ironic though that fans of the genre are now themselves killing the very thing they love by both legal and illegal downloading.

Not that there won’t be interesting “serious” artists and even superb cookie-cutter pop; those with the fire in their eyes will adapt to the changing fortunes of the biz. But the era of the independent rock & roll band touring the country is winding down because of the imminent disappearance of the CD.

Why so? Well, sales of CDs subsidize traveling bands, particularly if the musicians retain their proprietary rights and can manufacture them inexpensively.

What about downloads? Well, an album of them retails for $9.99 at the most, whereas a CD brings in $15. Do the math!
But even worse, most people nowadays download individual songs for 99 cents rather than whole albums. Give Steve Jobs his 30% and the vendor who has set up the deal another 10%, and you get the picture.

But that’s only a start. Many managers now advise artists to give their music away free; and they have a point, since 90% of downloads are illegal and available at no cost.

And forget about Spotify and all the other new fangled rip-off platforms – do you actually think musicians are getting much of this pie – no it’s a carve-up between the old baronial record companies, the few platinum artists and the new digital cowboy start-ups funded by investment bankers.

Depressing? Each man kills the thing he loves? Well, it’s just the way of the world. My generation downsized to groups from the larger showbands who in turn had shrunk the big band ethos. Life goes on and we’ve entered the age of the downsized, economically viable unit.

It often amazes me how few musicians are aware of the shifting ground beneath their feet. Don’t get me wrong, I love albums/CDs – the idea that an artist can stretch and deliver a work defined by a concept, sound or series of lyrics.

Unfortunately, “it’s the economy, stupid!” The new breed of musicians will more likely be entrepreneurs who record a series of singles at home using computers; they’ll come to terms with the financial reality of iTunes and Spotify, and supplement their income by branding themselves in the worlds of advertising, fashion and pop culture.

They’ll love music just as much as Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, Brendan Bowyer and Benny Goodman. Hopefully, some will be real innovators and, while creating music, will change society rather than merely reflecting it.

And perhaps they won’t kill the thing they love and prove old Oscar wrong once and for all.

Slouching towards DC

2011-11-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

As we slouch towards another presidential election the common wisdom is that we are undeserving of the current crop of Washington politicians, as if they were foisted upon us by some divine hand.

This is probably inevitable since many of the elected feel that the much-saluted deity who provides home runs to baseball sluggers has also had a hand in guiding their footsteps into congress.

Still the sad fact is – we voted for this posse of political procrastinators, grandstanders and poll watchers.

So, what to do in 2012? Well, a rule of thumb would be to vote for some person, idea or course of action rather than against.

Cutting spending in the midst of an economic downturn is like closing the stable door long after the nag has wandered off. The time to do that was when we were cutting taxes and fighting two wars on a Chinese credit card.

And you’re quite right, that is water under the bridge, besides which the current occupant of the White House is indeed still fighting a war without end in Afghanistan and has as yet been unable to turn the economy around.

You’d also be right in saying that, just like President Bush after 9/11, President Obama blew a great watershed moment after his election by a reluctance to go for the political jugular coupled with a lofty desire to rule by consensus.

And yet, let’s consider the alternatives. I seem to hear just two major ideas from the Republican Party – cut taxes and regulations. Am I mistaken or were those not the two domestic policies at the core of the Bush presidency?

I beg your pardon I have not mentioned Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax policy - all credit to a candidate who has at least offered a concrete suggestion. His proposal would certainly bring change – an even greater handover of wealth to the top 10% earners and a further flaying of the working and middle classes.

And all hail Michele Bachman for reminding us that if you turn Mr. Cain’s figures on their heads you will be confronted with the mark of the devil – who would have suspected that she was a closet Black Sabbath fan!

There is no doubting that either Mr. Cain or Rep. Bachman would provide more exciting presidencies than the present ho-hum and steady-as-we-go office-holder. But I’m still flummoxed that an electorate so badly burned by the recent financial crises would be willing to jump straight out of the frying pan and back into the fire of tax and regulation cuts.

How anyone can be for eviscerating the anemic Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act baffles me? But I suppose credit card companies, mortgage brokers and banks have mothers that love them too and should be protected from a rapacious public sick of being overcharged and taken advantage of.

Even more troubling - neither the SEC nor the Treasury has a finger upon the almost daily dizzying lurches on various stock exchanges. Has anyone even suggested regulating high frequency program trading on super-computers? But that will come too – after a seismic crash.

Less regulation, you say, Governors Romney and Perry? You obviously haven’t got your 401(k) shekels invested in mutual funds like many regular Americans.

Tax cuts should work to some degree but of late that hasn’t been the case; probably because of the double-whammy housing bubble-burst and the reluctance of banks to give credit. Tax cut recipients are wisely paying down debt rather than rushing out to buy new flat-screens or Manolo stilettos.

Now is the hour for investment in American infrastructure; the cost of labor, capital and equipment will never again be as inexpensive – and it better be done soon or the joint will come crashing down around our ears.

Sure, it will raise the deficit in the short term but a resurgent economy will inevitably reduce it as happened in the Clinton years.

Tax and regulation cuts are yesterday’s solutions. In fact they caused today’s problems.

So come on you nattering nabobs of negativity, time to reboot and come up with a couple of decent new ideas.

On Raglan Road

2011-10-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

She was one of the most beautiful women in Dublin; fashion designers sought her out to wear their creations. She could often be seen strolling along Grafton Street or sitting in its more fashionable cafes attended by her many admirers. Intelligent, vivacious, a medical student, the world lay at her feet.

He was eighteen years her senior, a crotchety character at best, often enough a mean drunk. A small farmer he had turned his back on the stony grey soil of Monaghan and walked to Dublin with a view to becoming a poet.

He fell hard for Hilda Moriarty the dark haired beauty who loved the poems but not the man. He became a nuisance, showing up uninvited and behaving badly.

She married a dashing young politician and broke the poet's heart. But his unrequited passion spawned one of the great love songs - Raglan Road.

Patrick Kavanagh's poetry has aged well; it often captures a lost rural Ireland tinged with violence and mystery. Like the poet himself, this landscape is unruly and unpredictable.

One can imagine the young woman being flattered by the poet's attention while at the same time embarrassed, and even frightened, by the intensity of his passion. And yet, there is a gentility and acceptance of the price of love in these lines that also give us an idea of Hilda Moriarty's dangerous allure.

On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might someday rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said "Let grief be a falling leaf
At the dawning of the day."

Kavanagh is often compared unfavorably with Yeats - too parochial, not universal enough - but Yeats never fulfilled his ambition to write the lyrics of a great song. He once said, "Poetry should be as cold and passionate as the dawn." And perhaps Yeats' words are too finely calibrated, so that when a composer seeks to do them justice, the end result is off kilter, invariably mawkish and melodramatic.

Kavanagh's lyrics are more pliable and natural as befits a man used to saving hay. To my ear, most interpretations of Raglan Road are over-sentimental, yet I'm always moved, no matter how limpid the rendering. The song is damn nigh indestructible; still the hint of bitterness that pervades Raglan Road is very rarely explored so the true potential of the piece usually goes unrealized.

The greatest version is by Luke Kelly of the Dubliners who delivers the song in a powerfully stark voice; as befits an acolyte of Ewan McColl who demanded that his students find the inner core of a song and then get out of the way of its message.

Kavanagh gave Kelly the words while both were drinking in The Bailey in 1966. He instructed the young singer to set the verses to the melody of Fáinne Geal an Lae (The Dawning of the Day).

Kelly was awestruck when he matched words and music to discover a masterpiece. It became his signature song, though it has been suggested that it eventually broke his heart for as the Dubliners' popularity mushroomed their audiences preferred the bawdiness of Seven Drunken Nights to Luke's sensitive interpretation of Raglan Road.

Tragedy followed Hilda too. Her husband - Fianna Fail minister, Donagh O'Malley - died at an early age leaving her with two children and never achieving the office of Taoiseach as many expected.

She outlived Kavanagh also but never forgot his unrequited unruly love. She sent a wreath of red roses to his funeral. Her beauty had faded by then. But she did not need a mirror to summon up her youth or the fragility of love and life; the poet had already done that for her.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walking now
And away from me so hurriedly
My reason must allow
That I had loved, not as I should
A creature made of clay,
When the angel woos the clay, he'll lose
His wings at the dawn of day.

Rock Seen- Bob Gruen

2011-10-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

So you wanta be a Rock & Roll star? Well, it might be a bit late in the day.

But oh, there was a time and it all came flooding back when I opened Bob Gruen’s beautiful new book, Rock Seen – a sparkling collage of live concert shots and portraits from the last 40 years.

Who the hell is Gruen, you might ask. Well, he’s the guy who’s always there when scenes begin and is long gone before they become stale.

I used to wonder about Joe Strummer. Was he really so tuned in that he found Black 47 at Paddy Reilly’s early on?

Nah, Gruen took him, for Bob could hear the grass grow when it came to new music.

Strummer is on the cover of Rock Seen. Funny how you can miss something so obvious - even though I’d been up close to the Clash at their ferocious best I never realized Joes was such a knockout.

That’s Bob’s magic – he didn’t just click on a camera until he struck lucky. No, he waited until the moment was right and mainlined straight into the soul of his subject.

I used to see Bob at shows all over town but I’ve little memory of him with a camera stuck to his face. He was part of the scene – he loved the music and the players - he didn’t just run off home to bed as soon as he’d nailed a decent shot.

And that’s why if you want to know what Rock & Roll was all about in New York City don’t bother reading some self-serving rock critique. You’ve got the real deal now – a book reeking with the magic of so many electric nights. It may not be for you, but there’s a music head in your circle who has need of remembering, or someone who cares but was too young to be there when it mattered.

That was what they said about The Clash – “the only band that mattered.” But there were legions of others and many are nailed to the pages of Rock Seen – Chuck Berry, Ike & Tina, The Stones, The Boss, Bowie, Tom Waits, Led Zep…

Of course Gruen is synonymous with John Lennon. He took the iconic portrait in the New York City T-shirt. In fact Bob gave that shirt to his mate. Took the lovely Statue of Liberty portrait too – to hammer home the point that Lennon was a New York City treasure and shouldn’t be deported.

But, for me, it’s the downtown gang that lights up this book. The New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center before it collapsed. Johnny Thunders, young and beautiful, before the dope ate a hole in him. Debbie Harry, our Marilyn, in a tiger striped dress, and The Ramones so young and almost vulnerable.

Have you ever seen the inside of Max’s Kansas City? I nearly cried. Bob’s pictures brought me back to a Christmas Eve when I stood in a darkened corner with my Irish American Princess, Sid and Nancy next to us, listening to their junky conversation and observing that, “this guy will be lucky to be alive next year.” It never struck me that Nancy wouldn’t make it either.

There are scenes from CBGB’s so vivid the familiar lines of graffiti jump from the walls and I can almost inhale the particular smell of beer, sweat, leather and cheap perfume that pervaded this dump on the Bowery that changed music!

And friends in the crowd that I haven’t seen in thirty years! What are they doing now - gone like Strummer and Joey, or alive, survived and gratefully older like David Jo and Debbie?

Open up Bob Gruen’s book and the throbbing nights will come flooding out at you and with them the faces, wild-eyed but far from innocent, without a hint of irony, parody or American Express exclusivity - a lovingly detailed kaleidoscopic account of a bygone time when Rock & Roll was bible strong in this town.

Rock Seen captures the visual beauty and integrity of a precious scene before MTV and corporate greed irrevocably cheapened and distorted it.

Rock Seen by Bob Gruen Abrams Books

The Irish Rep and the IAW&A Eugene O'Neill Award

2011-10-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

You begin something without knowing what you’re really getting into. Twenty or more years later, you look back and discover that it has defined your life. Any awards that come are at best icing on the cake. It’s the work that counts and that’s always been the ethic at the Rep.

Nonetheless, Gabriel Byrne will present Charlotte Moore and Ciarán O’Reilly of the Irish Repertory Theatre the Irish Writers and Artists annual Eugene O’Neill Award on Monday 17th October at Rosie O’Grady’s in Midtown Manhattan.

And what work they’ve accomplished! Armed with the bare bones of an idea and fueled by a desire to do things their way they’ve come to define Irish theatre in New York.

They jumped in off the deep end with The Plough and The Stars back in 1988. I’ve always loved O’Casey, his Protestant working class sensibility strips away much of the sanctimonious green paint and shows us post-1916 Dublin as it really was.

There was a joy to the Rep’s first outing and an energy that radiated off the stage. From that moment on things changed for Irish actors in New York. The Rep meant business and would mount a full season every year, come hell, high water or whatever dollars needed raising.

A theatre is only as strong as the ambition - or madness - of its founders. Even by theatre standards, Charlotte and Ciarán were an unusual partnership.

Charlotte positively glows with a refined theatricality. Still, this woman from the farmlands of Southern Illinois has a will of steel - a legacy no doubt bequeathed by her emigrant Wexford forebears. Razor-sharp and beautiful she had reached the actor’s Rubicon – continue manifesting someone else’s vision or do it your way, aka become a director!

Ciarán matched her in intensity but was also blessed with that particular native-born Irish quality – the quiet determination to follow your dream despite, or even because of, the begrudgers.

To my mind this Cavan man has always shared a unique trait with David Byrne of Talking Heads, he improves with every outing – be it acting or directing.

With such different personalities at the helm, the Rep must have had some humdinger early production meetings before a modus operandi was worked out.

Their first production that knocked my socks off was Tom Murphy’s violent A Whistle in the Dark. The ructions sparked onstage by a dysfunctional Irish emigrant family were so alarming that, in the pub afterwards, one stood back and allowed the actors time to shed the sheer aggression of their characters.

Still, I felt the Rep really came of age with Philadelphia Here I Come. Such was the truth in their rendering of Brian Friel’s masterpiece I swore never to see the play again. It had hit too close - this tale of a father emotionally unable to ask his son to remain at home.

And the Rep has done it all so professionally. Back in 2002 I wrote music for their Playboy of the Western World and was thrilled just to have the opportunity to weave Synge’s brilliant intent into rhythms and melodies.

On opening night while lost in the magic unfolding onstage, a check was slipped into my pocket – unasked for and unexpected. But that’s the Rep for you - providing a safe haven for those dreamers who have no other option but to test the rocky waters of theatre.

How fitting then that they should receive an award that also celebrates America’s greatest playwright, Eugene O’Neill, the turbulent narrowback who insisted he could recreate the universe onstage through the characters in his own family.

The Rep have never made such claims but every week in their beautiful playhouse on West 22th Street they fashion a world of dreams, ideas and magic, that take us far beyond this threadbare Facebook universe we inhabit.

They have an appointment with their own destiny on Oct. 20th when they tackle the luminous, but thorny, Dancing At Lughnasa. Miss it and it’s your loss.

But before then come and celebrate, Ciarán O’Reilly and Charlotte Moore, two remarkable people, at Rosie O’Grady’s, Manhattan Club, 800 7th Ave/52nd Street at 6pm, Monday 17th Oct. For tickets and information go to http://www.i-am-wa.org

Christy's Close Shave

2011-10-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

“Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
Flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
The bedroom’s gone white, the celestial light
Pummeling you in a stream of fists.”

I had been through it before, waiting by a hospital bed while a dear friend lay in a coma, wondering if he’d ever resurface.

Johnny Byrne, Black 47’s soundman, didn’t make it, but this time there was a happier outcome. Chris Kelly, poet and college professor, awoke eventually and with the help of his wife, Ally, and his many friends has slowly but surely returned to us.

Many of you know Chris; some of you have been touched by his extraordinary kindness and humanity. I first met him in Paddy Reilly’s in the early 90’s with a crew of visiting Clare men. He was studying at NYU at the time. I can still remember his eager face, full of life and so thrilled to be part and parcel of New York City.

Though bursting with ideas he was equally interested in yours; you only had to mention a dream or problem and he was right back at you with some suggestion or solution. It wasn’t just barroom talk either; soon after you would receive a phone call informing you of a train of events he’d set in motion only waiting for you to jump aboard.

He became a professor at NYU and was beloved by his students. In his official capacity he escorted groups to Ireland where he introduced the students to other writers and immersed them in the cultural life of the country. Who knows how many have nurtured these links, but none will ever go thirsty in Dublin for lack of knowledge of pubs with a first class pint.

Chris has turned his hand to many kinds of writing but it’s his poetry that inspires. As Miles Davis said, “I could look at a great picture and come up with a thousand musical ideas but none of them meant anything until I found my voice.”

Chris found his voice early on and, despite the horror he has been through, he still retains it.

“Here is the known hand again remembering silently
Lifting the rafters of shadow into an opening of sky
Where the hidden children we were are greeting those
We've yet to become…”

Step by painful step, he’s fought his way back until a year after his accident, he’s walking, laughing, joking with friends, and chomping at the bit to get back to teaching in his beloved Columbia and NYU.

But as with every Traumatic Brain Injury there’s a ways to go and miles to be traveled, and health insurance only covers so much.

Chris is a proud and obstinate man, the very thought of pity or patronization would be like a knife in his heart; in fact, he’ll probably kick my butt when he reads this column. But it will be worth it for there are bills to be paid and the man is too damned valuable to New York and our community to be denied a full recovery because of a lack of some small change.

Take a look at this site http://www.giveforward.com/friendsofchrisbarrettkelly to see some more of his writing and the problems he faces. I’m sure you know how it is, the thought counts - knowing that people are rooting for you makes a difference on the bad days.

Chris has been there for so many people – students, writers, musicians, the man and woman on the street. He’s beaten the odds and it’s nothing short of bloody marvelous that he’s back with us again.

“You raised your hand to your face as if
To hide, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
Streamed straight to the bone,
As if you were a small room enclosed in glass
With every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
The mystery is that there is something to keep the light
From passing through.”

Nick Drake

2011-10-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

A friend first pointed it out to me in the 70’s – an appreciation that appeared on the back page of the Village Voice every November. Nothing fancy – just a plain “Nick Drake 1948-1974, thank you for the music.”

Back then very few people had even heard his name. I had - through listening to John Peel play his incandescent songs on BBC Radio. Still, I only possessed one of his albums, the debut, Five Leaves Left. It’s funny, I can remember the cover so well – green bordered with a picture of a willowy young man looking out from an attic window. I had to be in a certain mood to play it – besides there were times when you just wouldn’t want Nick in the room – especially if you thought someone with you wouldn’t appreciate him. If it was someone you were romantically involved with – you especially thought twice about it - supposing they didn’t like Nick, then what? One of them had to go and I well knew which one. I can summon up that mood and a lot of other old feelings by just thinking of that album cover and the songs within.

Nick Drake’s music was enigmatic – deep and churning but deceptively calm on the surface. It never seems to date, perhaps, because he captured a mood, rather than a time and place.

His other two albums, Bryter Layter and Pink Moon are no less enthralling. They too evoke the same mood. He died in 1974 – a failure, in his own eyes at any rate. He is now best known in the US for a Volkswagen ad but you can hear his influence on so many artists. Many of them are attracted to his essence – none grasp it. All three of his albums sold less than 5000 copies in his lifetime. But obviously each person who bought one treasured it and the mood it identified, then passed on the word. Incredibly, his three albums keep getting better with time.

The memorial in the Voice eventually stopped. Did the admirer die, move on, move out of New York? I watched the back page of the Voice for a couple of years and then I too moved on. Just another New York oddity that I rarely give thought to, until Saturday mornings on Celtic Crush when I play Nick.

It never seemed like morning music to me back in the day – I rarely listened to it before midnight. But Nick Drake’s songs have become timeless and hourless – much like the man himself.

Happy Birthday, Malachy!

2011-09-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, Malachy! You once told me that if you were lucky you’d still be working at 90. Well, my dear friend, you’re now within 10 years of your target.

You also once proclaimed that you’d never want to be Grand Marshall of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, “for who’d want to walk up Fifth Avenue with 50,000 Irishmen at your back!”

And yet, for all your bitter-sweetness, you’re the real deal - an Irishman unto yourself.

Your mother, the infamous Angela, once murmured to me over a fag and a drink in the Bells of Hell, “Each of my sons is a private Gethsemane to me.” You’ll be happy to know she didn’t single you out, although she was looking directly at you and Frank doubled over with laughter.

The bad Limerick years were far behind you all by then. Life was full of laughs, and the particular warmth that comes when the booze is flowing freely in the company of good friends.

But in quieter moments the wistfulness was palpable; that’s when the pain and despair of your upbringing could flare suddenly at some perceived slight to the weak or oppressed.

I could never understand the accusation that the poverty of body and spirit in Frank’s book was exaggerated. Wexford in the late 50’s still had streets reeking of malnutrition and ignorance, what must Limerick of the 30’s and 40’s been like?

Others from such backgrounds could put maters in perspective, but not you. Injustice was a cancer to be confronted, head-on if possible.

I know you attended many protests, for any I showed up to you were already there. It was reassuring to see your girth and conviction and to fall in step behind you. One was heartened to know that if blows would be struck or rocks thrown you’d be a bigger and better-known target.

You were the first shock-jock I ever heard – articulate and egalitarian, unlike most current rating-obsessed ranters. I once accompanied you to the studios at WMCA. At that time you were on Nixon’s enemies list. Little wonder, for you cleaned his clock in your opening soliloquy.

The phone banks instantly lit up; most callers were Irish-Americans who, at the least, cast doubt on your parentage, manhood and various imagined peccadilloes, sexual and otherwise.

You retorted in kind and I was amazed at your pointed, slanderous, scathing eloquence until I remembered that you were a product of the back lanes of Limerick where a sharp tongue was more common than a hot dinner.

You were often seen at Irish Republican protests and why not – your father was from the North, and Sean South wasn’t just a name in a drunken sing-along to you. But it was more than that: Habeas Corpus and the right to dream have always been sacrosanct in your book, as is the belief that democracy means a lot more than just having a vote.

When you “stood for” Governor of New York I supported you because I’d never seen you being dishonest, except when you refused to pay the Con Edison bill for the Bells of Hell and got poor Jimmy Gavin to drill a hole through the wall to hook up to your neighbor’s power lines.

But to tell you the truth, Malachy, I always felt you should run for Pope! We’ve never had an Irish one but you look the part and you’d do a slap-up job.

I know, you’ve been happily married for 45 years and your wife’s a carpenter, but every pontiff has drawbacks and wouldn’t Diana be great around the Vatican. There must be a rake of unhinged doors, warped windows and the like.

The truth is, you’d suit any office for you’re a man of principle. I never saw you turn down a fight for justice no matter how daunting. You’ve lost many, but won a few humdingers. More than anything else, though, you’ve been a light in the darkness for those coming behind you.

Happy 80th, Malachy! By the way, I think you’d make one hell of a Grand Marshall – sure, you could always walk backwards.

Up The Republic!

2011-09-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

What is the nature of a republic?

Well, broadly speaking, it could be described as a political system where each citizen has an equal say in governance.

A worthy aspiration but hardly the case throughout history! The vaunted Greek and Roman republics indulged in wholesale slavery. The first French Republic violently repressed its citizens. While the founding United States of America granted voting rights only to its male propertied class, and might not have come into existence had it confronted its own slavery issues.

And yet all three provide the DNA of our current republic which not only grants universal suffrage but allows us to “throw the bums out” on a regular basis.

Then why do so many people feel disenfranchised? From Tea Party to egalitarian dreamer there is a negative mood abroad concerning the efficacy, and even the need, of government.

Cynics can handily say, “You get what you vote for!” And with barely half the American electorate even bothering to pull a lever they have a point.

Money has corrupted the republic. It’s not just that this is the era of the permanent campaign where candidates step off the victory podium and immediately dial their donors; if you’re plain old Joe Blow from Jericho you can’t afford to run for congress.

66% of Senators and 41% of representatives are millionaires, whereas the general population boasts only 1%. Even in the great pitchfork revolution of 2010, the average worth of a newly minted senator was $4 million, that of a rookie representative $500,000.

1% of the population now owns 35% of the wealth of the nation while the top 20% possesses 85% of the national pie. So, where does that leave everyone else? You got it - buying Powerball tickets!

Such wealth distribution figures closely resemble those of the Gilded Age of 1870-1890. Thus, after 140 years of striving that gained universal suffrage, the right to collective bargaining, and a once expanding middle class, the country is in many ways back to square one.

That’s not to say that there have not been huge advances in health and education, although each is getting progressively more expensive, in some cases prohibitively so.

But not to worry, at our fingertips we have access to whole worlds of sports, music and celebrity gossip that would dazzle previous generations. Or is this just “bread and circus?” Keep the plebs occupied while you loot the treasury.

Take the current efforts to regulate the financial industry - one would imagine that the 80% of have-nots who suffered the brunt of the recent economic downturn would welcome any efforts to protect them.

Not so! By merely waving the banner of “over-regulation” financial industry lobbyists are merrily de-fanging this crucial legislation. In our 24/7 ADD cable culture, judicious sloganeering will always whack common sense.

In previous eras – both Republican and Democrat – the rising tide lifted all boats. Now only the yachts are rising.
Basic capitalism has been upended – where once profit was reinvested in industrial expansion and human capital, now many companies are sitting on huge cash reserves or paying outlandish salaries to top executives while making do with fewer workers.

Given the recent whiplash dips and jumps in stock prices does anyone have confidence in the integrity of stock markets now dominated by high-frequency trading programs? And yet a large percentage of the private retirement capital of the nation is at risk in these Wall Street casinos.

Surely it’s time for the federal government to offer some kind of well-publicized, tax-free retirement bond that could provide ballast to the current roller coaster mentality of the 401(k)?

But that would take a major initiative in a political culture beholden to big money; and that paralysis will likely continue until the bottom-feeding 80% of the population demands a more equitable share of the national pie in a reformed republic.

Unlikely, you might say, but there is a deep unease across the entire political spectrum. Many people feel that it’s finally time to get beyond the dumb slogans that pass for politics today before this “shining city on a hill” becomes just another banana republic.

The Priest and the Fireman

2011-09-07T03:03:00.000-07:00

Anyone knocking around Manhattan in those days knew people who perished, but for me it all comes back to the priest and the fireman.

Even ten years later I can look offstage and imagine where each would be – Father Michael Judge standing by the bar, impeccably coiffed, surrounded by friends; and Richie Muldowney NYFD, darting around the room bantering with all and sundry, crooked smile lighting up the joint.

Though both frozen in time they summon up the city as it used to be. For New York changed ineffably on 9/11when the spirits of so many unique people departed. They’ve been replaced, of course, great cities do that, but it’s not quite the same, is it?

I often thought of Mychal as a mirror, he was so empathetic he seemed to reflect your own hopes and fears. I never knew anyone who helped so many people; he was always concerned, forever providing a shoulder.

I guess he came to see Black 47 to let off a little steam. I’m not even sure he liked our music – his own taste ran towards the more conventional – but the rhythms, juxtapositions and overall message fascinated him and, anyway, he liked to be in the thick of the action.

Richie was hard-core Black 47. He knew all the words, the players, the other fans. He delighted to show up unexpectedly at out-of-town gigs; the moment you saw him you knew it would be a good night. To think such an irrepressible spark was extinguished so early.

I remember jaywalking across Times Square the first September Saturday the band returned to Connolly’s. The “crossroads of the world” was so deserted in those immediate post-9/11 nights it felt like a scene from a cowboy movie where sagebrush is blowing down the street.

But cops, firemen, emergency workers, the mad, the innocent and those who just couldn’t stay at home needed somewhere to go – to let the pressure off – and that was the band’s function.

Those first gigs were searing. You couldn’t be certain who was missing, who had survived, who was on vacation, who just needed a break from it all. When a familiar face walked through the door the relief was palpable, someone else had made it.

The atmosphere – though on the surface subdued - was charged with an underlying manic energy, a need to commemorate, celebrate, to show that life was going on. That would be some small revenge on the bastards who had caused all the heartbreak.

And yet, what an opportunity was missed in those first weeks. That smoldering pit down on Rector Street had galvanized the country. We were all so united; we would have done anything asked of us.

Republican, Democrat, Independent, we all came together as Americans. We would have reduced our dependence on foreign oil, rejuvenated poor neighborhoods, taught classes in disadvantaged schools. You name it - nothing would have been too big, too small either.

But no sacrifice was asked, much less demanded. Instead, 9/11 was used by cheap politicians to get re-elected; patriotism was swept aside by an unrelenting xenophobic nationalism that brooked no dissent. The US was converted into a fortress and the lights were dimmed in the once shining city on the hill. Worst of all, our leaders sought to use the tragedy as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Look at us now, dysfunctional, walled off from each other and the rest of the world. That began when the national will for a positive response was squandered in the aftermath of 9/11.

Though he was finally hunted down, sometimes it seems as though Osama Bin Laden won, for we’ve become a fearful, partisan people, unsure of ourselves, uncertain of our future.

But then I think of Mychal and Richie, their smiles beam across the years and I know that the current national malaise is just a patina that covers the soul of the country – it can be wiped away. It’s not permanent. We have greatness in us yet.
That’s the hard-earned lesson of 9/11 and will always be the message of the priest and the fireman.

George Kimball and The Bells of Hell

2011-08-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

I recently attended George Kimball’s memorial gathering. I’d hardly call it a service, for George bowed his head to Lady Luck alone and then only at the track.

It was a “round up the usual suspects” crowd of Lion’s Head denizens, drinkers with writing problems, hard bitten journalists, with a leavening of the boxing community led by promoter/MC, Lou DiBella, and a host of Boston scribblers who had shared ink and drinks with George during his long sojourn in the land of the Red Sox.

Everyone looked considerably wiser, hair color tended towards the salt and pepper when not albino Irish white; the ladies, lovely as ever, did George proud, dressing to the nines – no one ever accused the deceased of not having an eye for the fair sex.

The speeches were riotous – many drawn from George’s darkly, hilarious letters and emails; all washed down with fine wines and a generous selection of beers.

I gravitated towards the Bells of Hell veterans. A fairly grizzled bunch, none untouched by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; yet each still blessed with a ribald, if somewhat gallows, humor. As tales were traded, I swear the years tumbled away and a caustic innocence descended on the group.

I’ve hung my hat in many the saloon and yet there was nothing quite like The Bells. It was the mix of people, I suppose, and the times.

It’s hard to imagine the 70’s in New York from the vantage point of today’s overpriced Branson on the Hudson. Don’t get me wrong, I still adore Gotham’s very stones and will only be removed feet first.

Scorsese nailed both town and era in Taxi Driver – not just the outlaw chaos of the city in the 70’s, more the dizzying fatalism – bad things were bound to happen and you had better stay a step ahead.

Your saloon was your sitting room; getting there was often an adventure – navigating your way home always so. My direct route from the Bells took me past the doorway where Harvey Keitel had his East Village encounter with Jodie Foster. It was a rare evening I didn’t encounter some scene just as vivid.

Still The Bells was always worth the trip. The characters were diversely gripping, each one’s flaws usually on display. Cliques abounded. For instance, I’m almost certain that Frank McCourt and Lester Bangs never spoke, although they often stood within earshot of each other.

The egalitarian jukebox united us. I first heard Anarchy in the UK explode from between Ellington’s Take the A Train and The Patriot Game by the Clancy’s - regular patrons themselves.

No one had any idea that Frank even entertained a notion about becoming a writer although he regularly made fun of those who did. An inveterate curmudgeon, he loved to prick the bubble of anyone unwise enough to make a pretentious comment in his presence.

When fame did come, no one enjoyed it more than Frank; he literally lit up, though he never lost his sardonic humor.

Lester, on the other hand, was world famous in those years – at least to Rock cognoscenti. He might show up with Joey Ramone or Joe Strummer in tow, although never as trophies. He fully believed that rock stars should shine only on stage, and never condescend to their admirers.

Mr. Bangs had his demons and they sometimes emerged when he drank – but quietly. Towards the end, he was pushing back against the encroaching straightness that he foresaw strangling New York. I shudder to think what he would make of his city today.

Back at the George’s memorial, Kerouac’s pal, David Amram, jazzily rendered Will You Go Lassie Go – a final farewell on the low whistle. David first introduced us to the concept of World Music in the back room of The Bells – “all music mixes, man; it’s players who don’t.”

Then it was time to go. With hugs and handshakes and promises to stay in touch the grizzled Bells battalion bade farewell. And George Kimball’s spirit set off to join Frank, Lester and The Clancy’s in the ghost of a beloved saloon on 13th Street and 6th Avenue.

Vote first - Complain later

2011-08-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Voting has consequences – non-voting has even more!

Some hatfuls of votes in Florida caused George W. Bush to be elected 43rd President of the USA. Ten years later we’re still paying for his decisions to return a hefty US Government surplus to the taxpayer while fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq.

In 2008 Barack Obama seemed to promise so much and, in fairness, he inherited a banjaxed financial system and an economy hemorrhaging jobs. He made some unpopular decisions but, at the least, prevented a new depression.

I can’t even remember who got my vote in 2010. I know I voted because I didn’t want my grandfather’s ghost thundering at me as he did in life, “People died for this right, and you’re throwing it away?”

Regardless, voters changed the balance of power in the House of Representatives by electing a significant number of Tea Party candidates.

“A movement will always trump a political party.” Another of my grandfather’s edicts and how the Tea Party has proved him right. The tail now spastically wags the Republican dog.

A coldly cynical move by Senator McConnell and new Speaker Boehner to co-opt the Tea Party by adopting their “slash and burn” tactics brought the US government to the brink of default and tarnished its credit rating and international standing; this despite the fact that both men wholeheartedly supported all President Bush’s profligate spending.

But that’s democracy for you. Now how about a couple of questions for you, President Obama?

Did you ever hear of the Kennedys? Particularly Joe Sr., Jack and Bobby? They had a dictum – don’t get mad, get even.

If by some unlikely chance they’d suffered your recent negotiation humiliation, they would already have set up campaign offices in each Tea Party represented district. Their field coordinators would be shouting from the rooftops that 401(Ks) are down the toilet because of Republican intransigence; likewise no one should bet the farm on ever receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Ever played poker, Mr. President? If so, how come you casually tossed away the ace of the 14th Amendment by revealing beforehand that you wouldn’t use it in the recent negotiations?

You often remind me of the most popular boy in school – top of the class, great sportsman, all the girls love you. There’s nothing you feel you can’t do - including build bridges between the two political parties.

But that’s not on the cards, Mr. President! Republican politicians hate you. You make them look bad. You saved the banks, the car industry, the very capitalist system. Though they’d never admit it, you even pandered to them with your hated stimulus by giving 40% of it back in tax breaks.

“What’s a guy to do?” You must be saying to Michele over your steamed Broccoli every night.

How about toughening up? Start listening to some real pols – even that pearl-draped vixen, Nancy Pelosi; after all she passed your Health Insurance Reform Bill when you were about to cave on it.

You think Standard &Poor would have downgraded US credit if the Kennedys were running the show? That company would have been gelded back in 2008 for giving their clients AAA ratings on toxic derivatives. You didn’t even slap their wrists. No wonder they don’t respect you!

You’ve got one thing going: the lack of any credible Republican policy. Cutting taxes got us into this mess. Slashing budgets does not create jobs. And as for playing their usual God card? Fuggedabout it! I’ve got Him working full time on the Mets for the next couple of years.

All that aside, no one gets re-elected by saying “things will suck twice as bad if the other guy gets in.”

You still have a chance to fulfill your promise, and deliver a healthy economy and decent unemployment figures by 2016. But you won’t do that by patting backs and offering pious platitudes to people whose main objective is seeing the door hit your posterior on the way out.

Nice guys don’t always finish last but they usually come in second. And that’s not where this country needs you to be in 2012.

A Vast Wasteland and Enya

2011-08-10T04:01:00.000-07:00

I’m in a hotel in Gweedore. Donegal have just come from behind to take a tense game from Kildare.

The pints are flowing but the jet lag has finally nailed me; so I beat it upstairs before I’m dragged out to the celebration in Leo’s Tavern. Enya’s family owns the joint, you never know who might be there and it’s a long road to Wexford tomorrow!

Too dazed to read I switch on the television. Maybe get some word on how the Shakespearian drama is unfolding in DC. Will President Hamlet have stiffened his resolve? Will Lords Boehner and McConnell realize that tea parties can be poisonous affairs?

But, as ever, television is a vast wasteland with a dizzying array of talking heads stating the banal obvious in the few moments their corporate masters are not hawking deodorants, gas-guzzlers and Viagra.

“A vast wasteland” – now where did that phrase come from?

Oh, a little speech given fifty years ago by Newton M. Minow, then chairman of the FCC, when he invited America to “sit down in front of your own television set... keep your eyes glued until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.”

At the time the only choices were the three networks. Yet the speech caused uproar because Minow was suggesting that since CBS, NBC and ABC had been given free and exclusive licenses to use the airwaves they should provide bona fide “public service” programming.

Minow’s reward? Well, Gilligan’s Island named a sinking ship, S.S. Minnow, in his honor; but he also received encouragement from Attorney General, Robert Kennedy.

Both men shared the forlorn notion that television could be harnessed to raise public consciousness on national issues and not merely be a cash cow for three lucky corporations.

The networks kept their powder dry – the feisty Kennedy was already tackling the mob, Jimmy Hoffa and southern racists – the center might not hold.

How right they were. Jack Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson’s family had extensive radio interests giving the new president little desire to interfere with television’s commercial promise.

Minow eventually got the boot and the wasteland expanded in ways neither he nor Kennedy could have imagined.

Before his departure, however, he helped launch a string of non-profit educational television stations currently known as PBS. Unfortunately, even these timid oases of sanity are now under attack for the heinous crime of balanced news reporting.

“Television deals too much with covering controversy, crimes, fires, and not enough with the country’s great issues. Our presidential campaigns are obsessed with the trivial.” Minow trumpeted.

Jeez, he should check out today’s 24/7 cable coverage! Poor guy didn’t even have to deal with the current mania for celebrity, reality shows, or the unmasking of sexual foible.

But it’s the sheer fakery of TV that offends more than anything. I still cringe at the sight of hepped-up talk show audiences, knowing that they’ve been goaded into action by some gofer moments before the camera rolls; while how sad to watch the salty and hilarious off-camera Jay Leno morph into a puppet mouthing inanities that you wouldn’t tolerate from your neighborhood drunk.

As for content – I was once chided by Bill Maher on Politically Incorrect for having the temerity to suggest that congressmen couldn’t be elected unless they were millionaires (he since appears to have seen the light).

No, my job as a “guest liberal” was to attack Maureen Reagan by ripping into the reputation of her Alzheimer’s suffering father. Controversy and boorishness, as ever, is more important than fact on the boob tube.

Could TV have fulfilled its indubitable promise? Could Minow and Bobby have turned things around? We’ll never know – one nut with a gun rendered such speculation academic.

Ah, to hell with jet lag and the rocky road to Wexford! I’m going out to Leo’s. Maybe Enya will be there; I’ll wear yellow shades and tell her I’m Bono, we can hold hands, sip pints and watch TG4 together.

Meagher of the Sword

2011-08-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

He may have been the most famous Irishman of his generation, definitely the most controversial. Born in Waterford in 1823, he disappeared in Montana 43 years later.

Thomas Meagher was a lawyer, journalist, rebel, soldier, political prisoner, and his admirers would like to erect a memorial to him in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.

It’s been a long time coming. His greatest achievement, perhaps, is that by example he persuaded many recently arrived Irish to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War.

In truth, though, Meagher of the Sword, had lived an amazing life before he even set foot in the US. An unlikely revolutionary, his father was a wealthy merchant who sent him to the Jesuit Stoneyhurst College in Lancashire where he picked up an upper-class English accent that often grated on his nationalist admirers.

But could he talk! Throughout his life halls would pack at the mere suggestion of Meagher “speechifying.”

He made common cause with Thomas Davis, John Mitchel and other Young Irelanders who had grown tired of Daniel O’Connell and the system of patronage associated with his Repeal Association.

In their view O’Connell had grown too cozy with the British Whig establishment. During a fiery speech in the midst of the Potato Famine Meagher refused to repudiate the use of physical force to repeal the union between Great Britain and Ireland. Hence, Meagher of the Sword!

After the failed Young Ireland rebellion of 1848, Meagher and his comrades were sentenced to death but later transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania).

Always a man for the grand gesture, he promised the sentencing judge, “My Lord, this is our first offense, but not our last. If you will be easy with us this once, we promise on our word as gentleman to try better next time.”

Blessed with great charisma and romantic flair, he married Katherine Bennett, the daughter of a convicted highwayman soon after arrival “on the other side of the world.”

He eventually escaped to New York City where the Irish greeted him as a hero. He studied law and founded the weekly Irish News – a forerunner of the Echo – along with the radical Citizen with his fellow escapee, John Mitchel.

The comrades split at the outbreak of the Civil War. Mitchell supported the South while Meagher who abhorred slavery declared for the Union imploring his fellow Irishmen to join him in a company of the New York State Militia, later to be called the Fighting 69th.

After some early successes he was promoted to Brigadier General and commissioned to lead the Irish Regiment. At the bloody battle of Antietam things began to go wrong for Meagher. Much of his force was decimated and he was blown off his horse. He was accused of drunkenness, a charge he bitterly denied.

This accusation resurfaced throughout his career, it being noted that he “kept the best table in the Union army.” However, in his defense, he aroused much jealousy for he was a garrulous partisan man who made enemies easily.

After the war, Meagher was appointed Acting Governor of the new Territory of Montana. He campaigned to have Montana achieve statehood but became embroiled in local politics when he freed an Irishman who had been sentenced to death by a group of vigilantes.

On July 1st, 1867, he fell from a steamboat into the Missouri River. His body was never recovered. Controversial to the end it has been suggested that he was pushed by the aforementioned vigilantes, old Confederate foes or even English agents. Then again, perhaps he was just drinking too heavily.

Some feel that despite his brilliance he never achieved his potential. Others count him as one of the great leaders of the Irish Diaspora. Green-Wood Cemetery is commissioning a bronze portrait of him.

To make a donation go to www.green-wood.com/donate For more information, call Green-Wood Cemetery Historian, Jeff Richman, at 718-210-3017. Or just visit peaceful Green-Wood, one of the treasures of New York City, final resting place of so many well known Irish.

Meagher of the Sword stirred great passion in his lifetime. A lightning rod, had he lived he would have changed the course of Irish America.

George Kimball

2011-07-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

George Kimball had a glass eye. Oddly enough, that wasn’t the first thing you noticed when he’d barrel through the door of The Bells of Hell. It was more that the general mirth and sense of anticipation rose a notch or two.

His journalist friends used to guffaw about the day in Fenway Park when an acquaintance asked him to keep an eye on his seat while he hit the bathroom. George popped out the glass eye, placed it on the bench, and said, “Sure.”

He passed away last week. Among the many caps George wore effortlessly was columnist for the Irish Times. He was as at ease in Dublin as in Lawrence, Kansas where he once ran for sheriff against a one-armed establishment figure under the slogan, "Lawrence needs a two-fisted sheriff with an eye on the future!"

I’m sure his spirit is drifting between a host of extinct bars today, including The Bells and The Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village, as well as sports emporiums the like of Fenway and Madison Square Garden.

For George liked to take the pulse of a city after he had sent in his reports to the Boston Herald or the Phoenix on the Red Sox and whatever boxing match he was covering. I don’t know about his baseball reporting but could he cover a fight.

He didn’t just report on the blows struck or the usual surface minutiae; he saw the world in all its hepped-up craziness reflected in the “sweet science.” There wasn’t a boxer of note, and many not of, that he wasn’t on familiar terms with. He appreciated them all – the losers as much the winners.

To George sports was life at hyper-speed, the way he often lived it. And all of the fighters, their managers, trainers, cut-men and gofers were worth ink because they were real, unaware and on the money, no matter how close to penury.

He understood the game of music too, the players, their problems and the pain they would face when they slid from the spotlight. He knew age would catch up with them too.

He loved Paul Simon’s song, The Boxer, for it nailed the New York City of the late 60’s that he loved. He appreciated that the writer and song would mature even as the city shed much of its seedy glamour.

Life, sports, music, books, broads, booze and the big city – they were all one big exciting cocktail to George and his circle.

It was into this milieu that I stumbled back in the 70’s. It was centered on the Lion’s Head with outposts in the Bells, Jimmy Days, and a couple of uptown joints.

George was often down from Boston to cover the Sox or a fight. There were Hamills and McCourts too and an array of other colorful characters. Almost to a man – and the occasional woman – they cast a cold eye on the Vietnam War.

They were inspiring: their casual disdain for Nixon and his ilk was far more devastating than the ideological vitriol abroad in the East Village.

In time they shook their heads about the folly of Iraq. Had the clowns learned nothing? Waterboarding was beneath contempt, for to these hardboiled romantics America was the perennial good guy and didn’t engage in torture.

Bars close, times change and I lost sight of George. Then a couple of years back I ran into him – you guessed it, in a bar though he had quit the sauce. There was no distance; it was as if we’d been carousing the night before at the Bells.

I just wish I’d spent more time with him; there were so much I wanted to know about legends like Stanley Ketchel and Billy Conn, and friends of his like Muhammad Ali and Hunter Thompson.

But more than anything, I had a couple of questions about life. He probably didn’t have the answers, but the time spent in his company would have been, as ever, illuminating, irreverent and unforgettable – just like the man himself.

Social Security Four Years Later

2011-07-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

Four years ago this month I wrote a column concerning Social Security and its essential place in the fabric of US society.

Remember those heady days of July 2007. The Dow had just closed above 14,000, house prices made your head spin, President George Bush was still paying for the Iraq war on the Chinese credit card, and those recently converted deficit hawks, Messrs. Boehner and McConnell, were more interested in slashing their golf handicaps than federal budgets.

Salad days, indeed! And yet this pain-in-the-butt columnist was warning that unless we bump up Social Security benefits “we’ll eventually have an army of senior citizens living on cat food.”

I likened the retiree’s economic security to a four-legged stool made up of family home, pensions, savings and Social Security. Let’s check the wobble factor after the last three years of financial turmoil?

Well, home prices have tanked, many are “underwater,” meaning that more is owed than the property is currently worth.

Pensions? Becoming as obsolete as the typewriter, even the once sacrosanct civil service retirement system is under attack.

Savings? A recent poll suggested that over a third of Americans don’t even have a hundred bucks stashed away for retirement. No wonder Powerball is so popular.

One silver lining: after sinking below 7000 in 2009, the Dow Jones Index is back up in the 12,000’s. Small wonder since profits are at record highs for the 30 big Dow companies, in no small part due to reduced costs from firing employees.

And for those lucky enough to have a 401(k), the average balance at retirement is $98,000 – hardly a king’s ransom if it has to stretch for twenty or more years, especially if it’s dependent on yo-yoing stock prices.

So, where does that leave your regular Joe or Jane contemplating retirement? You guessed it – depending big time on the old SS!

Back when FDR proposed Social Security he was accused by Republicans of ushering in socialism. Call it what you like – you think there’s a reason he’s one of the most revered presidents?

Apart from the monthly stipend paid to qualified participants, Social Security bestows a measure of dignity upon those who have toiled for a lifetime, raised families and have little to show for it. Instead of cutting or curtailing its benefits we need to safeguard and strengthen them.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the fiscal health of Social Security. From 1937 through 2009 it took in $13.8 trillion in payroll taxes and paid out $11.3 trillion in benefits. The balance was “borrowed” to fund other programs. Because of the recent recession the system is now taking in less than it is paying out. Should this situation continue Social Security is likely to go bust sometime around 2037.

In other words we’ve torn up the social contract honored by previous generations. We’ve stopped paying our way and to hell with those coming after.

And yet for mere pennies extra a week we could make Social Security fiscally sound again. Is that so far beyond us?

And for an extra couple of bucks a month we could beef up the system so that seniors might enjoy the more dignified, and less worrisome, lifestyle enjoyed by their peers in other developed nations.

I know! Messrs. Boehner and McConnell say we can’t afford to raise taxes in a time of recession – businesses will be less likely to take on new employees. Tell that to the Fortune 500 – many so awash in cash they’re even buying back their own stock and still not hiring.

Medicare is already being threatened by the Ryan voucher proposal that invites recipients to fend for themselves with private health insurance and medical providers. Moan all you like about big government, try going mano a mano with big business!

There are many reasons for the current deficits – a fee for service medical system that encourages overspending, an ongoing war mentality that leads to bulging defense budgets, and a refusal to pay as we go for the services we demand.

Social Security need not be one of those problems, if we pony up and do the right thing. In fact, for senior citizens it may well be the only solution.

The Big Man

2011-07-06T03:09:00.000-07:00

So the Big Man is gone. Headed off down Thunder Road.

We’ll never see the like of Clarence Clemons again, that’s for certain. He did leave the stage on cue, however, for the scene that he sprung from has just about run its course.

Clarence was the archetypal rock & roll tenor sax player, raised on King Curtis and roadhouse gigs. But he’ll be remembered mainly for his work with Bruce Springsteen.

They both emerged in the late 60’s down the Jersey Shore. What is it about those “dusty little seaside towns” and music?

I’ve played many of them from Maryland up to Maine. Cheap little bars, the jukebox pounding, hot chicks, cold beer and pedal to the metal bands. Asbury Park had more than its share including the Wonder Bar, the Student Prince and the big league Stone Pony.

I once heard Bruce describe their first meeting on a windy, rainy Boardwalk night. He saw a giant black man approaching and discreetly stepped inside the doorway of a boarded up arcade. The figure stopped outside, looked in, reached out his hand and then:

“Sparks flew on E Street when the boy prophets walked it handsome and hot.” Bruce sang, the band hit the downbeat and we all tumbled off into the jumbled magic of The E Street Shuffle.

The E Street Band itself could always spin on whatever dime Springsteen’s genius demanded. There was an empathy akin to love between Clarence and the Boss onstage and the sax player could effortlessly turn the singer’s yearnings into soaring solos that took the songs way beyond where mere words go.

That kind of playing doesn’t spring from rehearsal rooms. It comes from long nights balancing riffs and aspirations with the demands of an audience – something damn nigh impossible for a band nowadays. Gigs are scarcer and musicians don’t have the luxury to stretch and learn to trust each other in a business far more concerned with celebrity than content or accomplishment.

Many of the better versions of Springsteen’s songs never made it to the studio. The poetry of Thunder Road was sacrificed to make Born To Run a cohesive, majestic rock & roll album. Take a listen - Bruce can barely fit the words into the speeded-up tempo. Like many others, I’ll always treasure being there at the birth of this incredible song when he used to moan it above an aching solitary piano,

“The screen door slams
Angelina's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays…”

Yeah, back then Mary was called Angelina. But who cares? Writers change their minds, great bands make that possible, and in the final searing sax solo you became one with the less than lovely woman fretting about not being” that young anymore.”

Rock & Roll has always been a combustible fusion of black rhythms and white working class sensibilities; rock music is its milquetoast middle-class imitation. Kids now attend Rock School. Many of them become great players – they learn all the moves that will serve them well on American Idol.

That’s what rock has become, but the roll has always been about rebelling against parents and the desolation of dead end jobs. It can’t be taught, it’s learned and earned on long nights in sleazy bars from players way cooler than you.

I used to watch Clarence empathizing with Springsteen’s claustrophobic spoken intro to the Animals' It's My Life. It reeked of alienation from his father. Rock & Roll was Bruce’s only escape from their stifling working class home. The Big Man held the door open and helped make the dream possible.

I never met Clarence Anicholas Clemons but one night at the Bottom Line a French poet was so moved at the end of Incident On 57th Street he was unable to stop hollering despite Bruce’s appeal for quiet. Finally the Big Man reached out to Jacques and silenced him with a smile. He understood that music and madness are inextricably linked and on a good night rock & roll makes saints of us all.

So long Big Man. The scene may be coming to an end but there’s always a gig for you somewhere down Thunder Road.

Summer in the City

2011-06-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

“Hot town summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city…”

C’mon, Lovin’ Spoonful, what’s a little sweat between friends? Didn’t you know that when the fabulous leave for the traffic-jammed Hamptons New York becomes a playground for the rest of us?

You don’t need deep pockets either. The subway is safe and efficient – well, compared to other eras. It runs 24/7 and is a veritable living theatre chockfull of character actors who would put Jack Nicholson to shame.

The same goes for walking. And there’s so much to see. A smorgasbord of buildings erected over the last four centuries preen and lean against each other without even a nod to conformity.

On a good day even Mr. Trump’s monstrosities have a certain buffoonish charm. You’d have to wonder, though, if The Donald has ever even noticed the Chrysler or Woolworth in their stately elegance?

After scores of visits to the Metropolitan Museum I still marvel that I’m allowed stand within sniffing distance of Van Gogh’s Starry Night; however, if the sheer profusion of masterpieces becomes too much for you, then surrender yourself to the moody serenity of a Vermeer at the more negotiable Frick Museum.

Want to wear the kids out and still feel good when you hit the saloons unencumbered later? The Museum of Natural History is your man. Go early and saturate them with dinosaurs, pharaohs, whales and fossils, they’ll be crying out for a long peaceful evening of Facebook and video games back at the hotel.

But New York is so much more than Manhattan. Take a walk down the West Side to Battery Park and hop aboard the Staten Island Ferry, doesn’t cost a dime.

Even on the most blistering of days it’s cool out in the harbor where you can still sense what it must have been like to arrive on an emigrant ship. You’ll see the skyline and bridges from a whole different angle while the Statue of Liberty will only gain in the grandeur of its scale and message.

When you land at St. George board the train to Tottenville but get off at a couple of the leafy small towns. After an hour or two of a ramble you’ll understand why so many people from Aaron Burr to Keith Richard made their home in this least lauded of boroughs.

Are beaches your thing? Then like Duke Ellington take the A train to the Republic of Rockaway. They do things their own way out on this wave pounded peninsula and my one fear is that someday they’ll pack up their splendor and secede from the city. Cadge an invitation to Breezy Point, the gated Irish Riviera at the west end. Ask for my brother, chances are you’ll find him holding court at the Blarney Castle.

You want music? The axis has shifted from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Try the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg – this unique club prides itself on showcasing musicians from all continents.

And for an authentic Irish-American saloon, where Jimmy Cagney trumps Colin Farrell and Notre Dame football is preferred to its Kerry equivalent, seek out Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook. Seanchai and The Unity Squad pump their fists for culture in the back room every Saturday night.

Do you have a yen for flowers, exotic and otherwise? Then get thee to the only borough on the mainland, The Bronx! The Botanical Gardens are a thing of rare beauty and if you want to go nose to nose with a gorilla the magnificent zoo is close by.
You don’t have tickets for the Yankees game? Go on up anyway and ask if they’ve got any last minute deals. Chances are you’ll get great seats and at a discount too.

Don’t forget Upper Manhattan – it’s a different country. Stroll through the wildness of Inwood Hill Park before hoofing it down to The Cloisters. You’ll fancy you’ve stepped right back into medieval Europe.

That’s New York City - all you need is a subway card, a sense of adventure and a sensible pair of shoes. See you on the town.

Who'll Be The Last One To Die?

2011-06-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

Who’ll be the last one to die?

How long now since John Kerry, a decorated hero, asked that question in relation to the Vietnam War as it lurched to its unseemly conclusion?

Despite the pundits, the military brass and the politicians who enable our support of a civil war in Afghanistan, the die is cast there too. We won’t be leaving tomorrow but the countdown has begun.

So who’ll be the last American to give up his or her life for another country far outside our sphere of influence and with little or no strategic importance? The place was even too forbidding for Osama Bin Laden; far better set up house for his three wives within spitting distance of the US financed Pakistan Army.

Luckily for us, that unremitting hater of all things American, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, is refusing to let our major thinkers keep us indefinitely enmeshed in Iraq, a country we should never have invaded in the first place.

Pity there’s not an Afghani Muqtada. But that’s hardly on the cards, everyone’s too much on the make, including the corrupt Karzai government and various Taliban allies who offer protection so that roads can be built and those oh-so elusive hearts won.

In the end money too will drive our exit strategy - or rather the lack of it. There was a time we could write blank checks and impose our will on the world; but according to Congressman Paul Ryan we can no longer even afford to cover our seniors’ medical care or the pittance we call social security.

In the meantime, however, we can still pour over a hundred billion a year into Afghanistan and that’s just the military cost. Who even wants to think of the money and lives that have been squandered in Iraq?

Oh, by the way, for those of you who were opposed to bailing out our financial institutions, you ever hear of the Kabul Bank? Well it’s hitting some hard times right now - almost a billion bucks was given out in loans to politically connected shareholders including the president’s brother, Hamid Karzai, already suspected of having a hand in the booming opium trade. It would appear that most of those loans lacked collateral and even documentation.

The government of Afghanistan barely takes in revenues of a billion a year, so it’s highly unlikely they’ll be ponying up; and since we can’t continue propping up the world’s 2nd most corrupt government if their financial system collapses, guess where the buck stops?

And that’s not even taking into account the human dimension. Because we’re fighting a wily resourceful enemy who can melt into the population we continue to kill innocent civilians, often women and children. Even our paid pawn, President Karzai, recently warned that such conduct was unbecoming – of course, he had his hand out at the same time.

So why stay? Bin Laden’s dead and Qaeda prefers beachfront property in Yemen and Somalia.

Many of us came down heavily on President Bush for invading Iraq but we continue to turn a blind eye to President Obama’s endless war in Afghanistan. After all, those horrible Republicans and Tea Partiers would flay him alive if he cut and ran, right?

Perhaps, but when the American Embassy was blown up in Beirut, President Reagan moved the marines out of Lebanon posthaste. No one called him a quitter.

Nor did President Clinton allow us to become enmeshed in Somalia after Black Hawk Down. Those were different days, however, before the National Security cabal committed us to permanent war.

And have all the lives lost and money wasted made us the least bit safer? I think not. Blowing up God-crazed peasants half way around the world does little but line the pockets of corrupt foreign governments and our own military industrial complex.

Together they’ll tease out this endgame until the ultimate question remains - Who’ll be the last one to die?

Punk Rock Meditations

2011-06-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Black 47 played the recent Joey Ramone birthday party at Irving Plaza.

Now lest you think we were kissing the pinky rings of the men in suits, let me explain that Joey was lead singer for the punk rock band, The Ramones. He tragically passed away ten years ago and proceeds from the annual bash go to the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

Back in the 70’s rock music had become so complicated you needed the chops of a Franz Lizt or Django Reinhart to cop a gig. Then came The Ramones – play loud, fast, hard, simple and to hell with the consequences, the same spirit that had inspired Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent a generation earlier.

The Ramones got their start in CBGB’s, a dump on the Bowery. Coincidentally, I happened to be there for their first performance. They weren’t very good, but who was back then? Debbie Harry had trouble singing in tune; Talking Heads were still searching for a sound.

But The Ramones knew exactly what they were after and within three months they were knocking cobwebs off the walls.
CBGB’s is gone but The Ramones legacy lives on, and at Irving Plaza many survivors of the original bands and audiences strutted their stuff. Most everyone looked in decent shape; then again, the lights were low and shades were de rigueur. Black leather for the men, black lace and micro-skirts for the ladies and it was the 70’s all over again.

Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, Rockaway Beach, I Wanna Be Sedated still sounded fresh and immediate. Those Ramones songs have morphed into nostalgic fun-filled anthems, but how strange to think that a hole-in-the wall scene at CBGB’s had such an effect on music and the general culture.

As I took in the scene from the balcony I was struck by how much things had changed. Although the stage was in full view, many people watched the show through the ubiquitous closed circuit TV monitors. The only television I ever saw in CB’s was the one a near naked Wendy Williams of the Plasmatics chain-sawed through.

The audience was lit up by cell phones held aloft to take pictures while many tapped away on keyboards, no doubt updating their Facebook pages – all well and good, but when I watched The Ramones, Television or the Dead Boys back on the Bowery, all I cared about was being blasted by the white heat that each of those bands was creating. I have no need of pictures; those fiery nights are forever stamped on my consciousness.

I left before the final song. I didn’t care to be there when the lights came up. The past is better preserved in darkness and as I strolled down Broadway through the midnight crowds - most of them hooked to iPods like junkies to the needle - I wondered why people choose to block out the distinctive beat of New York City.

Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Dion DiMucci tapped into this perpetual poetry in motion. Then again, those guys were all about the music and taking it to another plane - they didn’t give a damn about celebrity, the modern Holy Grail.

The beat of the city turned them on, that holy rhythm that cares nothing for nobody just pulses on regardless. Walt Whitman identified it first; it’s unique and God given and you wonder why people have such a need to shut it out.

Joey, you were many things to many people. There were times I thought you’d stepped full-blooded out of a comic book. You were always a gentleman to me and I have many memories of you, but the best is seeing you stand alone on a hot, rancid East Village street, long, lean and lanky, soaking in the metronomic music of the streets.

Hopefully, there are kids out there who are just as disgusted with today’s music as you were back in the early 70’s. They’ve seen the light, they know just what they want to do; they’ve just got to find their own dump on the Bowery to do it in!

East Durham Memorial Day Weekend

2011-05-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

“The Summer time is coming
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will you go, lassie, go…”

The lassies will indeed be going, many of the lads too, up to the Irish Alps for Memorial Day Weekend.

East Durham will soon be the dead center of the universe – not to mention Gertie Byrne’s Leeds, a mere stone’s throw down the road.

This will mark my own 18th or 19th consecutive Memorial Weekend spent up there. Pardon the uncertainty but the moment you exit the New York State Thruway you enter an alternate zone where memories and expectations collide and harsh reality doesn’t reassert itself until you fumble for the E-Z pass the following Monday evening.

I sometimes wonder who was the first Irish person to set eyes on the Catskill Mountains, or, more to the point, what Paddy first strode down the dusty lanes around E. Durham? He must have experienced a sense of homecoming.

It doesn’t really look like Ireland up there but the Irish have left their mark. I religiously take a ramble up the back roads beyond The Blackthorne every Memorial Saturday. It’s usually as quiet as the grave; an occasional deer will look up in wonder at the sight of a human.

There’s a wall dividing two small fields long ago constructed by some Clare or Connemara man for I’ve seen its double both on the Burren and around Carna. Overgrown now, wild lilac and dogwood sprouting through its moss, once it was designed to put some manners on the land. The fine fields once hacked from gorse and maple are now almost totally reclaimed by nature.

That’s the way up there. It’s a country for tough, resourceful people who never say die. Take the Handels! The Blackthorne was burnt to the ground last September, but they reopened in late April.

Mountainy men and women have that kind of spirit and they throw open their resorts, motels and hearts to the rest of us for the summer season. And, oh by God, are we ready after long city winters rooting around concrete canyons.

It will be all action up there this coming weekend. Gavin’s, The Shamrock, Erin’s Melody, Weldon House, McKenna’s, McGrath’s and the others will be pulsing, half the people beyond familiar, the others soon to be friends.

Down at the Michael J. Quill Center, Tom McGoldrick has put his usual fine Irish Family Festival together. He’s even persuaded The Whole Shabang to reform for the occasion. Black 47 will have its usual 9pm spot on Saturday night before rushing back to The Blackthorne for a midnight show. They better have the Jameson’s handy!

As ever, though the line up at the E. Durham Festival is stellar, there are no airs or graces and you can rub shoulders with the like of Shilelagh Law, Andy Cooney, The Prodigals, Celtic Cross, Kitty Kelly, Jameson’s Revenge, Brigid’s Cross and a host of others.

I wouldn’t want to omit London’s Bible Code Sundays, Derek Warfield & The Young Wolfe Tones, The Gobshites, Padraig Allen & McLean Avenue and the King of the Catskills, Peter McKiernan, stars in their own right, who won’t make the festival but will rumble the mountains with their powerful joyous din.

There are those who won’t make it. This will be our first Memorial Day without Ginger Handel, housemother to so many musicians. She was always ready for a chat over a cup of tea, a few well-chosen words of advice to lost souls at their wits end, and if none of that worked, then an assurance that an extra dessert or two would not be missed from the pantry.

Yeah, we’ll miss her almost as much as her immediate kin, for she made sure to make us all feel part of a larger family.

The mountains may not be trendy but they’re strong and constant, and their roots run bone deep. If you’re new to the scene, well you won’t be a stranger for long. That’s the way it is up in E. Durham on Memorial Day Weekend.

autism spectrum disorder

2011-05-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

My father always blamed it on an unacknowledged accident at a nuclear plant in Wales. He didn’t make a big deal about it, just occasionally muttered his suspicions into his pint.

He was referring to the upsurge in Down Syndrome births along the Irish coastline in the early 1960’s – my sister, Anne, among them.

All water under the bridge now, both father and daughter have passed on, but I was reminded of his suspicion recently when learning that the incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the US population is now at a rate of 1 in 110.

As some of you know only too well, when you grow up in a house with a special needs child you become sensitive
to anything of that nature; add that to the fact that some years back a friend’s daughter was diagnosed with autism.

Anyway, it’s a rare person nowadays who doesn’t know, or know of, someone with the condition.

My sister’s Down Syndrome changed the whole dynamics of our family life – my mother’s ongoing fear was that Anne would outlive her, then what?

But at least we all understood exactly what had caused her condition: she had been born with one chromosome too many.

While genetics and heritability appear to be the main causes for autism no one really knows the reason for the recent upsurge. Better testing, of course, has added to the numbers. And for a while there was speculation that the rise might be due to childhood inoculation against measles, mumps and rubella, but that seems to have been ruled out, although many still cite it as a possible cause.

Each case is different, ranging all the way from full-blown intellectual disablement to far milder forms often manifesting as behavioral rigidity or difficulty in dealing with social situations.

That being said, the most alarming feature is autism’s rising prevalence, up from 0.6% in the population in the US in 2007 to 0.9% in 2010. Only last week an exhaustive survey from a city in South Korea placed the figure at a staggering 2.6% of all children from 7 to 12.

Many fear that the environment may be suspect for the upsurge, and this at a time when various politicians would like to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Clean air, unfortunately, is not a given, and in our profit driven world this is one agency in need of more financing rather than less.

Some people worry that the food chain might be compromised and pesticides may be to blame.

Could our over-medicated society be at fault? I don’t know but take a look in your bathroom closet - pills for this, tablets for that. Doctors will now routinely write a prescription for Lipitor rather than tell you to wise up and stop eating the greasy foods that are killing you.

Have we in some way, shape or form managed to bring the heartbreak of autism on ourselves?

While every case is indeed different, you see the same strain in each family member’s eyes. Many are overwhelmed by the problems of delivering adequate care and education. At least last year’s Health Care Reform Act will help resolve some of the health insurance issues.

At the moment there is no cure, only treatment that is costly and time consuming; as a society we are in no way prepared for the increasing incidence that shows no sign of abating.

Nonetheless, there are many wonderful people working in the field both trying to identify the causes and dealing with the consequences of the condition. Hats off to them!

For the rest of us it’s time we faced up to the fact that we may share responsibility for this upsurge in autism. The answers may be a long time in coming but for the sake of these children and their families it’s important that we begin to ask the questions.

John Spillane

2011-05-11T05:36:00.000-07:00

There are singers like Liam Clancy who delight in exploring that magical country between the words of songs that often goes unnoticed. Just as there are writers like Nick Drake who can infuse the least amount of words with the most amount of meaning.

It’s a rare singer/songwriter, however, who melds both those gifts. John Spillane is a past master at the art.

I’m sure it doesn’t come easy. Every word and silence in his best songs is pregnant with meaning and defined by a distinctive sense of place. I’d never heard of the Lobby Bar in Cork and yet I can see, and even feel, it as vividly as if I had been a regular.

“There were magic nights in the lobby Bar
With Brendan Ring playing Madame Bonaparte’s
Every note that the piper would play
Would send me away, send me away
Away through the window, away through the rain
Away 'cross the city, away in the air
To a field by a river where the trees are so green
The deepest of green that you've ever seen…”

Then again Spillane’s songs inhabit their own private universe of memory, loss and longing; he finishes the above verse with the gentle advice that,

“You can go any time, you can go any time
‘Cos it’s only in your mind.”

I came upon John’s music through my ongoing search for unique songs to play on Celtic Crush, my SiriusXM show. Now one would think that with the proliferation of CDs nowadays this would be a simple task, but it’s far from the case.

In fact I’m staring guiltily at two daunting towers of unsolicited CDs. And I’m on the artist’s side - I actually delight in finding great new songs and like to think that Celtic Crush is one of the last bastions of originality where good writing is rewarded regardless of commerciality.

Then, in the midst of all the polished mediocrity you’re forced to plough through, you unearth a diamond the like of Spillane. My last discovery had been Shaz Oye, a gay Irish-Nigerian woman from Dublin’s docklands with a voice a cross between Joan Armatrading and Nina Simone.

These two original Irish performers’ only links are talent and a sense of place. Spillane’s is firmly centered in Co. Cork, a hallowed land he claims to be the center of the universe.

I first stumbled upon Spillane on a CD called The Gaelic Hit Factory - a collaboration with the Gaelic poet, Louis De Paor. The track, “Buile Mo Chroí,” The Beat of my Heart, became one of the twenty all time favorites on Celtic Crush.

Close behind it is another spellbinder called “Báisteach” or Rain.

“Do shiúl thar bráid sa tsráid aréir nóscumaliom mar bháisteach
(She) walked past on the street last night as couldn’t-care-less as rain
Comhartha broinne ar a rúitlín clé is lúba airgid ar a riostaí geanmnaí.
A birthmark on her left ankle and silver bracelets on her untouchable wrists.”

Oh man, I wish I’d come up with those lines - in either language! John has the ambition of many great writers – to single out his ordinary world and wrap it in the “cloths of heaven.” And he often succeeds.

His ode to the “Dunnes Store Girl” was a big hit in Ireland and has caused many of us to look a little closer when we visit these temples of commerce for there may be “rebel streets of our dreams” within.

But his song “Passage West” succeeds where others much more celebrated have notably failed – for he captures the reality of modern Ireland and fuses it with the past many of us strain to touch.

“We watched the ferry come and go 
We watched the river ebb and flow 
The tide breathe in, the tide breathe out 
We watched the Passage flowers grow
The ghostly forms of the hungry years 
In sad procession did appear 
With hope and sorrow made their way 
For their passage west to Amerikay”

In subtle ways, this modern man from Cork, John Spillane, touches the soul with the delicate power of a Yeats or Kavanagh.

Bobby Sands MP

2011-05-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

“They came from all over the city, down by subway from Inwood and the Bronx, over the bridges and through the tunnels from Queens and Brooklyn, or by ferry in from Staten Island. They drove or took buses from Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, Pennsylvania.

They came from far and wide to make their views known and their voices heard outside the British consulate on Third Avenue.

They were all part of the tribe, come to protest the imminent death through voluntary starvation of a young chieftain. And make no mistake Bobby Sands was a leader to these people with more moral authority than any trumped up Taoiseach back in Dublin…”

Thirty years ago today Bobby Sands was on the sixty-fifth day of his hunger strike. Many of us were changed by those strange, foreboding days. The tribe never changed, never forgot either nor forgave.

“Not a lace curtain to hang between them, they were the faithful who kept the flame of Irish Republicanism alive in the back rooms of smoky pubs at Sunday evening socials throbbing with the music of accordions, fiddles and banjos.

They were the hard core who gladly forked out crumpled twenty-dollar bills in the hope that one day a united Ireland might become a reality, and not just another pipe dream fueled by chasers of cheap beer and shots of Powers Whiskey.”

I called them the tribe because you always saw the same faces at protests, although they held widely varying views on the nature of their mythic united Ireland.

Accordingly, they were the first to show up outside the British Consulate when Sands went on hunger strike. They could have made it there blindfolded for many had been tramping up and down Third Avenue since the Troubles flared once more in1968.

“They were an odd bunch: serious and cerebral by times, chatty and cliquish at others, but I liked them and admired both their integrity and single-minded devotion to Irish unity. I suppose they reminded me of my grandfather. One in particular even looked like him: white haired, squat and muscular with a face set in granite, conviction cased in steel, all his instincts tuned to the force of his own moral compass.”

My grandfather had raised me in an old barracks of a house in Wexford. I had ingested his version of Irish history and, at an early age, could debate all the old arguments, though I disappointed him with my love for the “turncoat” Mick Collins.

He had been dead some years and I was now living on the Lower East Side, frequenting CBGBS and other temples of the cool. Long before his passing I had distanced myself from the old ideologies and the violence that attended them. Still every now and then in the back of my mind I’d hear his echo, “Every generation must do their part to solve the British problem in the North of Ireland.”

Bobby Sands had his own mantra, “No one can do everything, but everyone has their part to play.”

Both voices had begun to reassert themselves sixty-five days previously when Sands had invoked an ancient Irish tribal right, “when wronged by your more powerful neighbor go starve yourself on his doorstep until the shame causes him to relent.”

But now the minutes were ticking down and Bobby was sinking fast. The Iron Lady, Mrs. Thatcher, would prevail but it would be a hollow Pyrrhic victory, for a new generation had been politicized by Sands’ protest and would hand down its own folk memory.

There would be many dark and dangerous days before the ballot box would finally replace the Armalite but, oddly enough, the first seeds were scattered on poisoned soil thirty years ago.

“Still the tribe never faltered or lost faith. Right to the bitter end, they came in by subway from Inwood and the Bronx, over the bridges and through the tunnels from Queens and Brooklyn, or by ferry in from Staten Island. They drove or took buses from Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, Pennsylvania. And I will never forget them.”

Excerpts from “Green Suede Shoes – An Irish-American Odyssey” published by Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon.

Ryan v Obama - bring back the 90's

2011-04-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

A wise Irishwoman once said, “Get to the heart of the issue, then all your problems will seem a lot simpler.”

Though she gave this advice in relation to a romance gone sour I was reminded of her words when reading the competing budget ideas of Rep. Paul Ryan and President Obama.

Both offer starkly competing visions but buried beneath all the trillions was the simple issue, “What kind of America do you want?”

Why do we never have that discussion? Probably because from the moment our politicians gain office they’re running for re-election and would prefer to deal with the immediate – like raising money.

Be that as it may, the deficit appears to be the main political talking point right now. Where did the damned thing come from in the first place?

Well, President Bush was handed a surplus of $231 billion on Jan 1st, 2000. Uncomfortable with this godsend he decided to reimburse us by giving an across the board tax cut.

To the man’s credit, he did promise to do so during his campaign. So, if you voted for him – suck it up! And if you didn’t vote at all, then what were you thinking? Democracy is not for wimps - it calls for commitment.

I didn’t vote for the man because I’m partial to the idea of a financial cushion. I’ve watched too many unforeseen disasters come rolling down the pike.

But Republicans prefer less government and that’s their right. President Bush, however, compounded matters by invading Iraq and granting a costly prescription drug Medicare benefit.

Trouble really arrived during the financial crisis of 2008 causing Mr. Bush to initiate the costly Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Then, in order to prevent mass unemployment President Obama added his own brick to the hod with his stimulus program. Which roughly puts us where we are now – hocked to the eyebrows to the Chinese Yuppie comrades.

Here’s the deal! If we were to go back to the tax rates of the Clinton Administration we’d reduce the deficit by $800 billion over the next 12 years.

Now I don’t know about you but I was drinking top shelf in Bubba’s days. It’s been all downhill since W and Barry went behind the stick. Clinton’s tax rates might have been a shade higher but I definitely had more shilling rattling around in my pocket.

Putting it baldly, the economy fared considerably better under Clinton’s tax raises than under Bush’s and Obama’s tax cuts.

Of course for a politician to even whisper, “raise taxes” is akin to announcing to your nearest and dearest that you intend hitting the pub with the lads the next ten nights in a row. A veritable invitation to suicide!

Raising taxes alone won’t bring back the Clinton salad days, entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid will need curbing; but hands off Social Security, for mere pennies a week from each of us that great program will run longer than Steve Duggan’s painted greyhound!

The real issue is - do you want a pre-FDR country with little or no social safety net but where you’ll definitely get to keep more of your hard-earned money?

If you’re young, educated and feeling lucky, Paul Ryan’s your man. He’s earnest and affable but doesn’t appear to have much of a grasp of economic history - harsh budgetary cuts in the midst of an anemic recovery is usually a recipe for economic stagnation.

Amazingly, by cutting entitlements while issuing roughly the same amount in tax breaks his plan will make no dent in the deficit but put a lot more people on the street! He ignores the fact that despite all President Bush’s tax cuts the middle class lost ground and the national debt ballooned.

On the other hand, dear President Obama, raising taxes on the rich alone may bring a smile to Rachel Maddow’s lovely face but will barely shave the deficit.

So, “what up?” as the rappers say?

Well, no one likes raising taxes but if we were to get real leadership and the full story, my guess is we’d all pull our weight. Most of us can handle reliving the 90’s, going back to the 20’s is out of the question.

Say It Ain't So, Bob Dylan

2011-04-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Say it ain’t so, Bob Dylan! After all the years of times a changin’ you go off to China and let the yuppie comrades dictate your set list?

Don’t you know that there are hundreds of thousands of us around the world who would gladly pony up a buck or two to enable you to thumb your nose at them? Jeez, if you caught me after a couple of pints I’d kick in a twenty spot myself!

What were you thinking, man? After fifty years of freewheelin’ you throw it all away and for what?

It’s not as if I don’t have experience of the matter. Back in ‘94 when Black 47 was the hottest thing since fried bread certain promoters would request that we not perform our version of Danny Boy as it celebrated the life of a gay Irish construction worker. Such conduct abruptly ended when it became obvious that we would then definitely play the bloody thing.

Likewise during the war we performed selections from our IRAQ CD every night, losing both gigs and fans in the process. No big deal, if you’re going to talk the talk then you better be prepared to walk the walk.

But what were Mao’s children going to do, Bobby? Throw fried rice at you if you slipped in the beautiful, if somewhat innocuous, Blowin’ In The Wind?

The least you could have done was fire off a blistering version of Masters of War, let them yuppie comrades know they should get their butts out of Tibet.

Still, it’s been a long time since you were overtly political. By the mid 60’s you seemed to tire of the whole idea. It begs the question if you were ever really political or were always just an astute weatherman who could tell which way the wind was blowing?

Be that as it may you have written some of the great protest songs whether by accident or design. That’s because you’re a first class poet, albeit a cruel one. You once accused the great Phil Ochs, a bona-fide politico, of being a mere journalist (ouch!).

Water under the bridge now! But you did write With God On Our Side, perhaps the second best protest song. That you were inspired by numero uno, The Patriot Game, is neither here nor there. Dominic Behan was less than thrilled and tried to haul you into court.

That great day never occurred because it was pointed out that both of you had lifted the melody from the traditional Merry Month of May.

Despite these little pinpricks I still consider you one the great artists of the 20th Century – right up there with Joyce and Picasso. And if I hadn’t heard your voice sneering Like a Rolling Stone from a cloth-covered radio I’d still be sculling pints back in Wexford.

The great thing about you, Bobby, is that after 50 years you’re still relevant. Your voice may now sound like Lady Gaga scraping her nails on a rusty cowshed but you’ve always got something to say. It may be thirteen years since you released Time Out Of Mind but there are some of us still blown out of the water by its enduring depth and magic.

Despite having had the good fortune to share managers with you, and be friends with one of your players and your best biographer, you’re still a mystery to me.

All three of these people testify that you’re a master of the mind game who’ll toy endlessly with people’s perceptions; maybe that’s what your bowing down to the comrades is really all about – a further tinkering with the foundations of our admiration?

Most of your acolytes would have pulled the show from principle or pragmatism. But the mystic joker, as ever, didn’t give a damn.

Ah well, it’s good to know you still matter, Bob. I only have one question for you, “How does it feel to be on your own… still the one and only rolling stone?”

Michele Bachmann and Powerball

2011-04-13T06:29:00.000-07:00

I recently sang a couple of songs in Cooper Union at the centennial commemoration for those who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

“You don’t say,” says Your Man up in Pearl River. “We didn’t think you were performing at a Sarah Palin Rally!”

I do have to admit that it was a thrill to stand on the same stage where a rather more stellar Republican, Abraham Lincoln, gave one of his greatest speeches.

Besides, Sarah is auld hat now. Everyone and their granny knows that Michele Bachman is the new inheritor of Margaret Thatcher’s mantle.

But back to the commemoration - I had the unenviable task of following Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers Union. This was akin to going on after the Rev. Ian at a DUP rally in East Belfast.

Brother Roberts is one hell of an orator. He had the audience crying over the 100,000 US miners that have died from work related accidents since 1930, he had them cheering by declaring that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is the best union advocate to come down the pike in decades, and he had them taking to the barricades when he stated that the top 1% in this country who own 35% of the wealth could kiss his union ass.

Hardly, Lincolnesque but effective nonetheless!

Now I don’t blame schoolteachers, cops or firemen for the country’s financial woes; it’s no crime to wish to retire with some kind of financial security.

But the fact is there’s so much anti-union rhetoric currently being spewed out that a certain amount is beginning to stick. If there’s a change in the weather fingers begin pointing at the UAW, while if the Yankees lose a couple of games, it’s likely the fault of the AFT.

All of us, Left, Right and Center, are being manipulated by that top 1%. It’s just that we’re so busy trying to keep our heads above water we don’t have time to stop and think about it.

Consider this! Back in the bellbottom 70’s manufacturing workers were pulling in $15-20 per hour. The recently negotiated UAW contract guarantees new hires $14 per hour. Thirty years of progress!

That great American ineluctable right – or rather assumption – that one can make the middle class is now a mere pipe dream for much of the population.

Many who lost their jobs in the recent financial debacle stand scant chance of regaining their standard of living, for those decent union jobs of 30 years ago have been replaced by low paying service industry positions, if at all. The great factories that I once drove past on Route 80 are now boarded up shells. Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit are graveyard cities, their populations declining by the year.

How did this come about? Well we trusted venal politicians in the pocket of lobbyists employed by the top1% oligarchy. Meanwhile, we allowed ourselves to be divided by a media more interested in selling ads than seeking the truth; and the sad part is - nothing has changed.

Capitalism itself was almost brought down by Wall Street cowboys whose only interest was the bonuses they would receive for their casino-like trading from over-leveraged positions. And now we’re prepared to let their political hacks dilute and shackle the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Hey, but let’s not get carried away, we all have that infinitesimal chance of someday joining the heady 1%, so don’t rock the boat, baby. Lloyd Blankfein from the Bronx was raised in public housing and will receive $19 million this year for steering Goldman Sachs to the brink and then resuscitating it. Who cares that people are raising families on $19,000 per annum?

So to hell with Cecil Roberts and his unions, later for collective bargaining and regulation too! The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire happened100 years ago and it was just a bunch of immigrants anyway. It’s every man for himself now – every woman too. Besides, there’s always Michele Bachmann – and Powerball

Brian Heron

2011-04-07T10:33:00.000-07:00

Brian Heron was a singular man. More like a force of nature, that’s why it was shocking to hear he had passed away recently.

What a character! Grandson of James Connolly, lawyer, revolutionary, musician, organizer, cultural ambassador, founder of Irish arts centers on both coasts - just thinking about him is dizzying.

He had his grandfather’s eyes, though Brian’s were wilder, if less disciplined. Connolly rose up against an empire in an effort to improve the lot of working people. Heron sought to add joy and fulfillment to those same lives, while at the same time resurrecting a dormant ancient Irish spirit. A tall order, perhaps, but Brian gave it his everything.

Another relative of Connolly’s once said, “James might have been a great man but he was always getting people to do things they didn’t want to!”

Brian’s apple didn’t drop far from the tree. I once saw him persuade my brother – a man not known for his left wing sympathies – to hand out flyers for some radical group one freezing night on Seventh Avenue.

He persuaded John Lennon to write songs about the Irish struggle – in particular Sunday Bloody Sunday and Luck of the Irish. Brian, however, was far from impressed with these classics – he had hoped Johnny would create a new form of Rock & Roll Sean Nós.

It was his utter conviction that was so impressive, for Brian, though extremely likeable, never finished charm school.
One evening we acolytes - having fought the good fight at some rally or other – were promised tickets to a John Lennon concert at Madison Square Garden. As usual, we were late and there was no parking; undeterred, Brian drove his old postal van up on the footpath outside the Garden with the words, “Who’s going to tow the US Mail - or ticket it for that matter?”
Sure enough, after enjoying the show from the VIP seats, we found the van untouched and ticketless. Viva La Revolucion!

That van was to play a further role in my life. I was in those years somewhat turbulently involved with a beautiful Irish American Princess from the leafy environs of Westchester. My friends labeled her the IAP, which they less than charitably pronounced Yap!

She was not at all taken with Brian and considered him a bad influence on me. I can’t remember what that night’s particular tiff was about but we had argued until way past dawn when she had stormed off to her good job in mid-town.

Whereupon, as luck would have it, the phone rang - it was Brian urging me to pack my bags for a trip to Kansas City where revolution was in the air and comrades in short supply. Feeling that I needed my space - as we used to say back then - I signed on, wrote a tear-stained letter - that would have done justice to Dr. Zhivago - promising a speedy return, and awaited Brian.

Alas the Left is not known for making trains run on time, much less aging postal vans. Many hours later when I was just about to hop aboard the IAP arrived home from work, suitably penitent and full of affection.

At the sight of Brian and the packed van her mood changed drastically. She informed me that should I depart the locks would be changed forthwith and she would at last be free to bestow her favors on each of my many close friends who had propositioned her behind my back.

With that crushing underhanded blow delivered she sashayed up the front steps of our building in her usual ravishing manner. Brian shook his head sadly; not for the first time had sex bested the revolution. The van pulled off for Kansas City without me.

When I last saw Brian in Tampa we rolled around the floor of the Four Green Fields at the memory.

The last I heard of Brian he was planning a return to Ireland to run for president. That would, indeed, have been a great circle completed.

Rave on, Mr. Heron, you affected so many lives though many still have no notion. What better tribute? Viva La Revolucion!

Aidan and George - Cousins Finally United

2011-03-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

Aidan Ffrench died a few weeks back. In his day he was a well-known figure around County Wexford.

He had a beautiful voice and was lead singer of the Visitors Showband. I wouldn’t say I rocked out to him, as big ballads were his forte; but if Aidan was no rocker he had rock hard credentials. For he was a cousin of George Harrison’s and, in music mad Wexford, this was second only to being related to John F. Kennedy or John XXIII.

Up until the 1920’s Wexford had a bi-weekly shipping connection with Liverpool and George’s grandmother, a Miss Ffrench, apparently availed of it to seek her fortune Merseyside. Had she not, I suppose, there would have been no Beatles.

When the Fab Four struck it big Aidan dropped a line to his cousin offering to forward some tapes. George never replied. Perhaps that’s why I can’t recall Aidan ever tackling a Beatles song, though I’m convinced he could have done a first class version of “Something.”

Ah well, now that they’re both playing in the big orchestra in the sky, no doubt George can give a good excuse for his lack of etiquette.

Whenever I play The Beatles on SiriusXM I always call them “the greatest Irish band.”

This often occasions letters from Anglophiles – a pity about them! For both Lennon and McCartney have deep Irish connections and, with a name like Starkey, it’s hard to imagine that Ringo hasn’t a bit of Paddy in him too.

Indeed many people consider Liverpool to be the “capital of Ireland,” since so many Merseysiders have Irish roots. Not surprising, I suppose since Liverpool is so close to Dublin in both miles and attitude. But the real reason is that the ‘Pool was the main point of embarkation for the US.

Thus, during the Potato Famine most Irish had to travel to Liverpool before taking the boat to America. Many ran out of money or were too ill to go any further, while at the same time the Industrial Revolution was taking hold and there was much need of cheap labor in Lancashire. America’s loss was Liverpool’s gain.

What an amazing band The Beatles were! We sometimes forget that their recording career stretched barely more than seven years. Think of the sheer output and the efficiency of their genius.

They completed their first album in two four-hour sessions and still had time to take the van home and do a late night show at The Cavern. The key to their success, apart from having three top-shelf songwriters, is that they were an amazing live band.
However, they were just another group of young R&B aficionados until they went to Hamburg in 1961. They stayed many months playing six sets a night, seven nights a week; it worked, for on their return they blew everyone away Merseyside.

None of them went to college, in fact only Paul graduated high school, and yet they had something that cannot be taught in a classroom – a total belief in themselves. As John Lennon once put it, “we knew we were the best, everything else was easy.”

Nor could any of them read music – although Paul learned later in life – consequently they didn’t know the rules, but they sure as hell rewrote them. Take a look at the wonderfully innovative chordal structures of their songs.

McCartney recently attributed their success to the fact that they were the first Post-War British generation not to undergo the mandatory two years of national service – “they never got a chance to shape us,” he claimed.

There was a lot of shaping back in Wexford. You were reminded over and over of all the things you couldn’t be, and that failure was inevitable; if you disagreed you were considered “too big for your boots.”

Aidan Ffrench died largely unknown. Had he grown up in Liverpool, could he have become as famous as his cousin? We’ll never know but maybe he’s singing “Something” right now while George’s guitar gently weeps – cousins finally united!

Irish Need Not Apply

2011-03-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

The old country is bleeding. Over one thousand young people are leaving every week. Someone remarked recently, “It’s just one going-away party after another.”

Where are they heading, this best educated Irish generation? Not here – many to EU countries, some to the UK, but mostly to the new land of opportunity, Australia.

Once we would have heard their accents ricocheting around Bainbridge, Woodside and all the various South sides around the country but that’s a thing of the past.

What went wrong? Well, the long and the short of it - we don’t want them in Fortress America.

And so on this St. Patrick’s Day eve it’s time to take stock before we dive into our annual orgy of self-congratulation – some deserved, some not so.

The man reason these young Irish are not coming to the US is that it is almost impossible to do so legally – Irish need not apply. And it is hardly worth their time coming illegally, the few avenues that used to be open towards gaining a green card and eventual citizenship have been closed off. What’s the point in spending a life on the shadowy margins when somewhere else better appreciates the talent on offer?

Irish-America could do with some new blood. I recently stood outside the shell of the old Bunratty Pub on Kingsbridge Avenue and remembered nights when men wild with drink blasted jigs and reels the like of which I’d never heard in Ireland. There wasn’t an Irish face to be seen - nor any outside the Archway where only a couple of decades ago hundreds lined up to dance.

It’s the same story all over this city and the country – old neighborhoods are dying for lack of immigrant youth. Irish need not apply and most of us take it lying down.

A new Taoiseach will go hat in hand to present shamrock at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day but DC wants nothing to do with a fair immigration law. The new Know-Nothings rule the roost – Irish need not apply.

But we must face the fact that many of these young emigrants no longer see the US as the land of opportunity. Now I still stand by the claim that this is the best country in the world. But a country is only as great as the aspirations of its people.

It is indeed time to look in the mirror and examine what these emigrants see - a country at permanent war hemorrhaging its youth and wealth in endless conflicts half way around the world. A society that, instead of strengthening its social safety net, is talking of dismantling it, thus inevitably impoverishing large sections of an aging working and middle-class.

Still, these trends can be reversed – but only if we shake ourselves free from a national lethargy. It’s easy to be cynical, after all 99% of us didn’t cause the recent financial meltdown. But the fact is we didn’t keep an eye on those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on the store for us.

Most of us didn’t want to invade Iraq and, according to polls, would rather be the hell out of Afghanistan. Yet, we allow our leaders to prosecute policies that are driven by outdated 9/11 related strategies.

These are hardly just Irish-American issues but, from both left and right, we’ve always been known for our advocacy and our desire for justice, whether it be Bobby Kennedy or Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley or Pete Hamill. Right now we badly need a comprehensive reform of emigration law no matter how difficult it may be to pass through an increasingly Know-Nothing congress.

We have inherited a country and a proud Irish-American mantle. We have need of new blood, while at the same time there are those undocumented amongst us who would only love to set foot on Irish soil again to visit aging parents.

It’s time our politicians heard that message. Many of them, Democrat and Republican, take our votes for granted. That has to end.

Then perhaps someday we’ll hear those mad flutes and fiddles blasting jigs and reels on Kingsbridge Avenue once again.

Bad Timing and a Ferocious Thirst

2011-03-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

Timing is everything, they say. You may have the goods and the right intentions but, if you’re not in the right place at the right time, forget about it!

Take the case of Major Thinkers – surely one of the most unfortunate band names when it came to critical reviews. However, our song “Avenue B Is The Place To Be” was once all the rage south of14th Street.” Whatever about Lower Manhattan, Belfast circa 1981 was most definitely not the place to be.

On the strength of this anthem we were invited by an Irish record company to tour the country. And so Pierce Turner, Thomas Hamlin, Peter Collins and I hit the green fields of Ireland.

The dates in the South went off riotously enough; it was when we hit the North of Ireland that our timing and luck ran out. Bobby Sands went on hunger strike.

I’m not quite sure what we were thinking but we had already reached Belfast when we discovered that “because of mounting tension” our date was “postponed until further notice.” Derry and Omagh followed suit. But Gloria Hunningford still resolved to host us on her widely watched television show.

Belfast was dark and rainy, and the tension was, indeed, rife. The streets were deserted but the city was not without color, what with each neighborhood bedecked with either Union Jacks or Tricolors.

We taped a performance of our song and both Gloria and her technical crew felt Major Thinkers “were on the edgy side.” How right they were, for a revolution was mounting within the band - our bass player, Peter, had grown tired of Turner and Kirwan forever doing the interviews.

I, somewhat unselfishly, relinquished my chat with the beautiful Gloria - for the chance of doing some sightseeing, aka drinking.

Thus did Mr. Hamlin and I hit the streets. We both had ferocious thirsts and, in an effort to quench them, soon ran out of pounds sterling. However, a number of pubs were accommodating and changed our few dollars – albeit at exorbitant rates. And then we were down to Irish punts and thus did our misfortune begin.

After various bartenders had diplomatically notified us that they could not change “Irish money,” we way cool New Yorkers decided on stealth tactics. At this point we had entered a small pub, well away from the city center. I humbly requested two pints of Guinness.

The barman, a rather charmless individual, was far from friendly; nonetheless, he put time and care into pulling two magnificent Imperials whereupon I produced a nice crisp Ten Punt note.

At the sight of this he curled his thin lips in a most alarming manner before stating in a flat East Belfast accent, “We don’t accept Free State money in here.”

The affable hum of conversation stopped dead and I should have cut my losses but a raging thirst knows no bounds for I foolishly inquired, “So what are you going to do with the two pints?”

He never took his eyes off me as he slowly tipped the two gorgeous Imperials into the sink. The silence now was deafening as I backed towards the door and into the unflappable Mr. Hamlin who had missed this exchange while trying to make sense of some political posters – not of the Republican persuasion.

That may well have been one of the longest walks of my life back to the television studios. Belfast was a maze of speed bumps so every car that passed us had to slow down, leaving us with lurid visions of being kidnapped by the UVF for the heinous crime of attempting to purchase pints of plain with Fenian money.

But we survived and life went on. Bobby Sands MP would die some months later, round about the time Major Thinkers scored an unlikely hit with “Avenue B Is The Place To Be.”

Thirty years have passed and Belfast is a pleasant bustling city despite some sectarian undercurrents. Major Thinkers, alas, are barely a memory.

Many things have changed but bad timing and a ferocious thirst can still get you in a lot of trouble.

Rave On Gene O'Neill

2011-03-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve often felt that O’Neill is to Shakespeare as Van Morrison is to Bob Dylan. Van wears his grumpy soul on his sleeve while the guy from Minnesota will always dazzle us with his poetic, kinetic footwork.

For many of us, though, O’Neill is the man - probably because we recognize so much of ourselves in his writings. His characters almost leap off the stage into our addled heads, there to be measured against the memory of long gone family members. His father and mother figures are not totally identical to grandparents of mine, but all the traits are there – the grandstanding, liquored-up, disappointed males holding centre stage in the kitchen, while the secretive, troubled, fading and regretful women throb with resentment over in the corner.

There were many good evenings in my grandparents’ kitchens but they fade to insignificance when measured against volcanic whiskey midnights when secrets came flushing out never again to be successfully put under lock and key.

O’Neill captured those nights so well, aye, and with them the interred secrets; for he instinctively recognized that all drama springs from family. You may go out into the world, cross oceans and continents, and battle with giants; but, in the end, it’s what you learned at the hearth that enables you to exist in such company, pick yourself up when knocked down, nurse the resentments, reinvent yourself one more time, and come back swinging in the final rounds.

I once had a troubled director squire one of my plays onto the boards. Come to think of it, aren’t most directors troubled in some way or another? Anyway, he had some personal issues, as they say, and was hourly awaiting redemption. Although I’m a great believer in the big R myself, this particular play almost sent him off the deep end, for it mirrored my feeling that 99% of people never escape heredity. It’s as if they’re in quicksand, the more they try to escape the deeper they sink.

I love O’Neill but I don’t always wish to attend his post-mortems. He stirs up memories and forces me to confront issues long buried. And yet, I’m one of his bastard children: perennially at home in saloons, particularly in the witching hours when the booze banishes all inhibitions and we walk with God, sons and daughters of kings and cardinals. I also inherited his sweet sixteenth sense for approaching trouble; though it may not materialize for a score of years I can spot its signs etched deep in the soft faces of boys, though rarely girls.

I see it in my own writing and, even worse, in my life – that desire to break free and be myself without always being yanked back by some rapacious ancestor. O’Neill wrote the book on that curse – hence, the ineffable despair that permeates all his writing.

There’s little irony in Eugene, he’s all passion spiced with regret. In our current age of anorexic irony and humorless comedy, he is an anomaly and perceived as outdated and lumberingly old-fashioned. To hell with such naysayers! O’Neill had little time for fashion or fads, he was always his own man - all thunder and lightning, obsessed with the heroic, but preposterous idea that we’ve been placed here for a reason.

O’Neill didn’t need kings or queens like Shakespeare. They were already present in his family, posturing and striding across grand stages of their own imaginings. By placing them in the glare of the footlights, he peeled back layers of skin and calcification, and showed us ourselves as we really are. In so doing, he lit a way for those of us who have chosen to measure our small selves next to his giant footprints.

Rave on, Gene O’Neill, in the worst moments it’s helpful to know that you suffered more than any of us; in the best, what a thrill to realize that, despite it all, you triumphed.

Party of the people

2011-02-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

One of my grandfather’s is dancing a jig right now while the other murmurs, “the chickens have finally come home to roost."

The demise of Fianna Fail has undoubtedly caught the attention of these two very different gentlemen in whatever zone of Hades they find themselves.

The very mention of Éamon DeValera could send the jiggy one into paroxysms of rage for his people were staunch Home Rulers and later adherents of the Fine Gael Party.

The more thoughtful one had strong Republican sympathies. He tended to vote Fianna Fail but had his reservations about DeValera’s entry into constitutional politics.

Indeed one learned early on to tread carefully on the subject of politics. Both sets of grandparents spoke civilly of each other and yet I can’t remember ever seeing my grandfathers in the same room.

I never mentioned my admiration for James Connolly to my Fine Gael grandfather, for I was fond of him and had no desire to be responsible for his suicide.

My Republican grandfather, a small businessman, had little time for Connolly either declaring him to be “nothing but a little Scottish troublemaker.”

This opinion didn’t take a feather off me for I was at that very fortunate age where one knows it all. To my mind, Fianna Fail was like a great big damp rag lying upon the face of the country. Indeed, I would have voted for Big Tom and The Mainliners had there been a chance of dislodging “the boys” from power.

And, mark you, I lived in the progressive metropolis of Wexford where Brendan Corish, the leader of the Labour Party, on occasion served me pints of cider from behind his brother’s bar. Despite that, there seemed no hope for change – Fianna Fail would always rule the roost - that was that!

Back then being majority party meant control of patronage – post office franchises, county council contracts - good decent honest graft.

That changed in the late-60’s. Even in his early days there was a deep suspicion of Charles Haughey and his mohaired ilk in Wexford. I remember a speech he gave in the Bull Ring where he was heckled unmercifully – the honor of his mother was even called into doubt. The bold Charlie merely smirked as if to say – shout all you want, Yellowbellies, I’m laughing all the way to the bank.

The jiggy grandfather turned purple at the mention of Haughey’s shenanigans; the thoughtful one sorrowfully shook his head; the party of the people had sold its soul to land developers and other gombeen men on steroids.

Money had replaced principle. And as happens in such cases, lesser men took charge and the talent pool shrunk; why recruit brilliant people when you have “the boys” who will vote the party line.

As property speculation ballooned over the last decade Fianna Fail had become so enmeshed with the bankers that when the bubble burst the government foolishly underwrote massive over-leveraged loans.

I’m no admirer of DeValera – I think he nurtured and made a virtue of the small-mindedness and inward thinking that hobbled us for so long; yet, he would never have allowed his party to squander the sovereignty and economic well-being of the Irish people.

This coming election will be both a landmark and an opportunity, for it will mark the final end of Civil War divisions. Irish politics will enter a new era of fluidity. The new government, unfortunately, will have an even bigger mess to clean up than Barack Obama after our own orgy of greed and over-leveraged insanity.

And Fianna Fail? Well, the “boys” are fast jumping from the sinking ship. But it’s the old dog for the hard road.

The party has already shed much of its inept and compromised leadership. Like any seasoned pugilist, it will rope-a-dope and take a considerable shellacking in the election.

But it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it rediscovers its core principles, and one day yet again reclaims its mantle as party of the people.

The Sacrosanct Second

2011-02-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

By the time you finish reading this column at least one person will have been killed by firearms in the US.

What makes you think I’m going to finish it, queries Your Man Up In Pearl River.

Because you notice every little error that my eagle eyed editor, Ray O’Hanlon, and I ever let slip by, says I!

Which reminds me that Ray recently saved my bacon when he noticed that I had bald-facedly declared that Patrick Kavanagh was born in County Cavan. Had that stood, I would never have received another buyback from the beautiful Dympna MacDonald of Castleblayney; not to mention that the ensuing war between Monaghan and Breffni boys could have finally sent Ireland off the deep end.

Since I just diverted your attention another person was probably offed, for roughly 30,000 people die every year in the US from gunfire.

That’s not even counting how many people have new holes in them since you began this column because around 200,000 are wounded by gunshots annually.

Are we nuts to allow this carry-on? I know - the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. And the Eighteenth prevented us from buying booze! So, the auld amendments are not totally infallible.

But let’s take a closer look at the sacrosanct Second!

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This would appear to me that the maintenance of a militia, and not private gun ownership is the point. And if you delve a little deeper into the thoughts of the founding fathers you find that they desired a militia so that they would not have to deal with the danger and cost of maintaining a permanent standing army.

These poor bewigged and powdered patriots must surely be turning in their graves for not only do we have the mother of all armies but maintenance of it costs at least a buck of every four spent in this republic.

Many people would disagree with this tree-hugging, pinko interpretation of the founding fathers’ intentions but I think it safe to say that reasonable men such as Alexander Hamilton and James Madison did not envision a time when any person of sound – or unsound – mind could effortlessly purchase a Glock that could dispense thirty-three bullets in ten seconds or less.

No one is arguing that a hunter should be able to buy and maintain a weapon, though the word up in the Catskills is that Bambi can strut around to his heart’s content after the first couple of weeks of hunting season.

Nor does one wish to limit those who feel that their lives are in danger from possessing the legal means to defend themselves; although as one who lived on Avenue B and 3rd Street – the center of heroin dealing – in New York for ten years, I always felt safer unarmed, there being less chance of me putting a big hole in myself while stumbling home, or having the weapon turned on me.

The sheer power of the NRA and its refusal to countenance virtually every rational form of gun control - including restrictions on owning assault weapons, background checks for gun owners, and registration of firearms – does take ones breath away.

And indeed, if I were President Obama’s political adviser I would tell him to steer well clear of the issue. He has an election to fight in 2012, and may well need to carry some Mid-Western and Mountain States. Far better he wait until his second term to address this national slaughter.

On the other hand, another 60,000 of our citizens will be dead by then, along with 400,000 injured.

The figures are staggering. Surely, there must be some way of calmly and logically debating the rights and wrongs of the matter? After all, men the like of Hamilton and Madison risked their lives to create a republic and provide us with a set of rules with which to govern it.

Surely, there must be some politicians who will risk their seats to question the actual intentions of these giants.

Kerner and Turwin of Where?

2011-02-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

There are not many artists of whom you can say, “I know him better than any man!” But such is the case with Pierce Turner. We grew up in the same small town, wrote songs and joined our first band together, emigrated to the US, and adopted the most difficult-to-enunciate name in showbiz history - Turner & Kirwan of Wexford.

Well, brain surgeons, cops and district attorneys usually made a fair fist of it but most people landed somewhere in the vicinity of Kerner & Turwin of Where?

Though we could sing, write, play, produce and entertain with the best of them, we never gave a moment’s thought to commerciality. In fact, the very concept often drive us to drink – in our case, Southern Comfort, what was good enough for Janis Joplin was fine by us.

We had other failings but I won’t get into them in a god-fearing, family newspaper. They were all incidental anyway - music was everything to us, we lived and breathed it. “Making it” was way down the list, all that mattered was originality and that we didn’t sell out.

What an odd concept “selling out” seems now when practically every musician would give their eye teeth to have a song placed in a toilet paper ad.

Then again, we grew up in a time when rock music was transforming the world, not merely reflecting it. Amazingly, it never occurred to us that things would change.

Pierce himself has barely changed at all since the day he left Wexford to join the Arrows Showband. How would I describe him? Well, think of a cross between Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and the Italian tenor, Mario Lanza, spiced with a pinch of The Beatles and a couple grains of the Holy Family Confraternity Brass Band.

And that description barely does him justice. That’s because he’s an original - such a rarity, nowadays. I can’t remember the last time I heard a song where I couldn’t immediately identify its influences.

That by no means makes current popular music bad – in fact, nothing sounds bad anymore – your Great-Aunt Statia could knock off a decent sounding track. Originality is a whole different ball of wax though.

And Turner’s got that in spades. Listen to his song, Wicklow Hills. I must have played guitar on it five hundred times and I still don’t totally understand its simple brilliance.

In fact, if I hadn’t grown up with the guy and knew the sheer diversity of his influences, I wouldn’t have a clue how to peg him.

But we both came from Wexford, a town where Grand Opera and Rock & Roll fit hand in glove. Where messenger boys whistled Verdi or Gilbert & Sullivan melodies as they pedaled down the Main Street then donned pink socks and drainpipe trousers and jived to Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent tunes at the Town Hall.

It was a time when the BBC and RTE segued effortlessly between Beethoven and the Beatles without either of them having to roll over. Taste was broad, everyone had it in bucketfuls and it all ricocheted around the brains of young musicians, awaiting only a spark.

That spark will sure as hell ignite at Percy’s Tavern, 210 Avenue A and 13th Street in the East Village this Friday evening Feb 4th when Pierce explodes on stage.

Word on the street is that Percy’s is something new in the Irish saloon/restaurant field. Whatever it is, I know it will be well managed because owner, Dubliner Larry Watson, ran the door at Paddy Reilly’s during the Black 47 go-go days.

Anyone who could keep that riotous scene from going through the roof should be organizing the exit from Afghanistan. Instead he’ll be down on Avenue A maintaining order when Pierce hits the boards.

Get there early and nab yourself a table but don’t leave your fancy Rolex next to your French fries for Pierce will likely be kicking up his brogues and dancing on your silverware.

But what’s a Rolex between friends, it will be worth the price of finally seeing something pure and original in an age of knock-offs and hand-me-downs!

Ike Rules

2011-01-18T20:48:00.000-08:00

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The cost of one heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

What tree-hugging, pinko is responsible for this diatribe? Paul Robeson, Bobby Kennedy, Malachy McCourt?

None of these esteemed gentlemen. Such words were uttered by the last great Republican president, Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Much attention has been given of late to Ike’s farewell warning against the influence of the military-industrial complex. The poor man must be twisting in his grave, for the US has become a military-industrial complex.

Cut education, cut social security, cut your granny’s bingo allowance, but don’t even dream of examining a defense budget! Might as well toss the baby Jesus out of the crib before you cut a buck from this sacrosanct military shopping list.

The waste, over-run budgets, out-of-date weaponry is astounding; the money galore seeping from the pentagon to the military suppliers, defense contractors and security firms is common knowledge and yet with a few honorable exceptions our political representatives adopt a hands off attitude.

What kind of madness is this? We don’t have enough money to rebuild roads, bridges, schools, or rail lines, but amazingly we spend more on our military than the countries with the next fifteen largest budgets combined.

Now I’m not talking about the wage or salary of the soldier or sailor, nor of the benefits they receive when they come home – they deserve everything they get and more. What is troubling is the mindset that defense budgets are holy cows to be held in awe but never touched.

Have you ever considered that the US has been at war – or on a war footing – ever since Eisenhower vacated the White House in 1960? We careen internationally from local vendetta to civil conflict often taking sides indiscriminately, usually without any sense of realpolitik.

It was so nice of us to go into Iraq, lose 4,400 US lives, waste billions borrowed from China, with the end result of handing the joint over to Iran. But even before we’re shown the door out of Baghdad, we’ve already shifted most of the troops to another un-winnable war supporting a narco-based, ultra-corrupt Afghani government.

Who is our next bogeyman, Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, Bono? Hey, with oil running out, how about we resurrect the Fenian Brotherhood and invade Canada?

The real problem is that our political culture doesn’t allow us to discuss defense budgets. You have to hand it to these military-industrial dudes - they really run a tight game with bone-deep roots in both political parties, the media, and the national psyche; just as soon as anyone even mentions this madness, out come the flags, and the “hey, commie, why don’t you buzz off to Cuba” chants erupt.

The celebrity warrior culture does us no favors. Now I think General Petraeus is a sound man and an astute tactician; but even he would tell you that his “surge” worked because our former enemies, the Sunni Sons of Iraq, were added to the US employment rolls. Money well spent, I say, even if it never appeared in any budget – defense or otherwise.

His new surge in Afghanistan will work too. The Pashtun clans, AKA Taliban, will melt away – for the time being. Why not, they know we’ll eventually leave, might as well take a paid vacation courtesy of our Pakistani allies, and return when the heat dies down.

But then, General Petraeus is a soldier, unlike President Eisenhower who became a statesman. The general sees only the short-term. Ike looked down the road and saw what we could, and have, become – a nation at permanent war afraid to ask the reasons why.

Dr. Strangelove, what about you?

2011-01-11T20:49:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been out to the Aran Islands - in particular, Inishmaan, one of the most beautiful, if strangest, places on earth? Should you ever suffer a bout of heart-scald, it’s a destination to consider.

I spent a couple of soothing days there once. Now granted, the weather was spectacular – the sun was splitting the rocks and there’s no shortage of boulders on Inishmaan. It did occur to me, however, that there must be long spells of rain and low cloud cover that could drive a man to drink, or worse.

After a day’s exploration capped by an hour or so sitting in Synge’s Seat awaiting inspiration, the auld heart was feeling a good deal better when a ferocious thirst hit me - always the first sign of recovery. And so, wouldn’t you know it, I made my way to the local pub – An Córa.

The scene within verged on the surreal. Six elderly men, in dark suits, white shirts and ties were murdering pints of Guinness while they watched the movie, Dr. Strangelove, on an antiquated 17” black & white television set.

They appeared to be having some difficulty comprehending Stanley Kubrick’s farce about a nutty American general ordering a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, for they were firing questions at a young barman who was attempting to translate the zany dialogue into Irish for their benefit.

After some minutes of this inquisition, the barman lost both patience and cool, “Ah will yez ever shut up and figure it out yourselves. I’ve a pain in me arse explaining this thing to you!”

I often feel the same way when elucidating on the goings on down in Washington, DC to some foreigner; for instance, try getting your head around the recent debates, votes, threats, pay-offs and eventual begrudging ratification of the START Treaty with Russia.

Any kind of agreement that would lead to some form of inspection and verification of 23,000 stray nuclear weapons would, you might think, be a no-brainer, especially for those of us who grew up saying the rosary every night in hopes that the godless commies wouldn’t lay a big one on us in our sleep.

I happened to mention this paranoia while in the Soviet Union years back and got the instant reply, “Why do you think we drink so much vodka, you guys actually used nuclear weapons - twice.”

Actually, I used to feel a lot more secure when the comrades were ruling the roost over there – atheists are less likely to push the button since they don’t expect to be seeing Jesus later in the evening.

I much prefer them to Senators Kyl and DeMint who scare the hell out of me with their concern that signing nuclear treaties over Christmas is somehow sacrilegious. Then again, the prospect of Jim DeMint running for president would have been too farcial for even Kubrik to include in Dr. Strangelove. Such is the world we live in.

But it’s the horse-trading around this START deal that really boggles the mind! In order to secure ratification, poor President Obama, decent man that he is, had to promise to pony up 80 billion bucks for three new nuclear bomb factories and100 billion for new delivery systems. Add that to Michele’s Christmas present and no wonder the deficit is exploding.

I haven’t even mentioned the undisclosed but astronomical cost of a missile defense system to be placed around the perimeters of Russia, with a couple of first class shields around Arizona tossed in to ensure that Senators Kyl and McCain get a decent god-fearing night’s rest.

Apart from the fact that missile defense systems rarely work, do these nuclear warriors really think that the mafia now running Russia has the least interest in blowing up the “West” when all they really want to do is sell us vodka and bootleg Celtic Woman DVDs?

Sometimes I think we’d all be better off out on Inishmaan sculling pints and explaining Doctor Strangelove to them auld fellahs in the suits. It would be a damn sight simpler than figuring out what’s going on in Washington DC.

In Memory of Philo

2011-01-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

He died 25 years ago on January 4th. It's still hard to believe. What a force! What a memory!

He was the most charismatic man I’ve ever met. Even before he “made it,” he cut a figure the length and breadth of Dublin. Phil Lynott was black, beautiful and sported a gurrier accent that could peel the skin off a turnip.

In the early days, Hendrix was his role model but I’m now reminded more of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. Loping down O’Connell Street like some psychedelic Pied Piper, he was usually trailed by a bunch of kids. His white teeth gleamed in a perpetual smile and he winked or bade hello to anyone who caught his eye.

I knew him by repute before I ever laid eyes on him - his small triumphs on the Dublin beat scene were trumpeted in Spotlight Magazine. His humiliations were even more public: Skid Row broke up to get rid of him, then reformed without him.

But nothing could stop Philo – within months he’d mastered the bass and formed Thin Lizzy. Soon thereafter, I met him.

On good weeks Pierce Turner and I would treat ourselves to a curry in the Luna Restaurant on O’Connell Street, a popular hangout for showband heads and rockers. To our delight we were given a table right behind Phil and Eric Bell.

Eric who? Oh, you know him well enough – you listen to guitarists ape his lines on Whiskey in the Jar damn near every time you enter an Irish bar.

I can still recall Phil in the Luna declaiming, “we’re goin’ nowhere in Ireland, man!” He was trying to convince a skeptical Eric that they should decamp for England. They did and the rest is history.

Have you any idea of what it was like to first hear Whiskey in the Jar explode out of car radios and cloth covered transistors? Roll over Amhrán na bhFiann, we’d just found our own national anthem – Eric’s overdriven guitar and Phil’s cathartic voice took that old tune to places we’d never dreamed of.

Even now when I play it on SiriusXM I’m struck by its sheer originality. It always raises my spirits and shoots me back to a time when rock & roll was fresh and adventurous and unaware of itself.

A couple of years later Eric quit the band onstage in an orgy of smashed amps and overdriven dreams. I guess he really hadn’t wanted to go to England.

It took two guitarists to replace him but Lizzy stormed on. Phil used his presence, voice and songwriting chops to propel them far beyond his Crumlin roots. Their concerts were riotous mind-bending affairs, pulsing with life and dicing with controlled chaos. You could almost touch the adrenaline – and it wasn’t always natural.

Those were the days when rockers lived on the jittery edge, forever on the road with a costly album to promote, and another to write and record before they’d even unpacked – everything speeded up in a crashing, burning, collapsing cycle. The highs so high - a pity they couldn’t be bottled. And the lows, well, you don’t want to go there.

Phil was so intense onstage it almost hurt to watch him. He was living his dream and he demanded 120% of those around him – 150% from himself. He knew the difference between poise and posture, and dare any of his band-mates indulge themselves. You could catch his curses and exhortations from the side of the stage – never from the front. Every molecule had to be directed at the audience – they’d paid good money, they deserved a show! It was the Dub working class ethic colliding head on with the rock & roll dream.

The band was not at its best the last time I saw him in NYC. New Wave was all the rage, Graham Parker opened and, to the critics - if not the fans - Lizzy seemed a trifle over-baked. Yet, back in the dressing room Phil was as ever polite, welcoming and delighted to meet someone who “knew him back when.”

It was like being hit with a hammer that Christmas Day in 1985 when the news of his collapse spread, but I didn’t shed a tear. By then I’d learned the hard way that you can’t trade tomorrow’s energy for tonight’s performance.

Still, whenever I hear Whiskey in the Jar, I sit back, close my eyes and relive the sheer exhilaration and Paddy pride of those days when Philo’s Dub accent exploded through car radios and cloth-covered transistors like a tricolor siren.

On Raglan Road

2011-01-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

She was one of the most beautiful women in Dublin; fashion designers sought her out to wear their creations. She could often be seen strolling along Grafton Street or sitting in its more fashionable cafes attended by her many admirers. Intelligent, vivacious, a medical student, the world lay at her feet.

He was eighteen years her senior, a crotchety character at best, often enough a mean drunk. A small farmer he had turned his back on the stony grey soil of Cavan and walked to Dublin with a view to becoming a poet.

He fell hard for Hilda Moriarty the dark haired beauty who loved the poems but not the man. He became a nuisance, showing up uninvited and behaving badly.

She married a dashing young politician and broke the poet’s heart. But his unrequited passion spawned one of the great love songs – Raglan Road.

Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry has aged well; it often captures a lost rural Ireland tinged with violence and mystery. Like the poet himself, this landscape is unruly and unpredictable.

One can imagine the young woman being flattered by the poet’s attention while at the same time embarrassed, and even frightened, by the intensity of his passion. And yet, there is a gentility and acceptance of the price of love in these lines that also give us an idea of Hilda Moriarty’s dangerous allure.

On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might someday rue
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way
And I said “Let grief be a falling leaf
At the dawning of the day.

Kavanagh is often compared unfavorably with Yeats – too parochial, not universal enough – but Yeats never fulfilled his ambition to write the lyrics of a great song. He once said, “Poetry should be as cold and passionate as the dawn.” And perhaps Yeats’ words are too finely calibrated, so that when a composer seeks to do them justice, the end result is off kilter, invariably mawkish and melodramatic.

Kavanagh’s lyrics are more pliable and natural as befits a man used to saving hay. To my ear, most interpretations of Raglan Road are over-sentimental, yet I’m always moved, no matter how limpid the rendering. The song is damn nigh indestructible; still the hint of bitterness that pervades Raglan Road is very rarely explored so the true potential of the piece usually goes unrealized.

The greatest version is by Luke Kelly of the Dubliners who delivers the song in a powerfully stark voice; as befits an acolyte of Ewan McColl who demanded that his students find the inner core of a song and then get out of the way of its message.

Kavanagh gave Kelly the words while both were drinking in The Bailey in 1966. He instructed the young singer to set the verses to the melody of Fáinne Geal an Lae (The Dawning of the Day).

Kelly was awestruck when he matched words and music to discover a masterpiece. It became his signature song, though it has been suggested that it eventually broke his heart for as the Dubliners’ popularity mushroomed their audiences preferred the bawdiness of Seven Drunken Nights to Luke’s sensitive interpretation of Raglan Road.

Tragedy followed Hilda too. Her husband - Fianna Fail minister, Donagh O’Malley - died at an early age leaving her with two children and never achieving the office of Taoiseach as many expected.

She outlived Kavanagh also but never forgot his unrequited unruly love. She sent a wreath of red roses to his funeral. Her beauty had faded by then. But she did not need a mirror to summon up her youth or the fragility of love and life; the poet had already done that for her.

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet
I see her walking now
And away from me so hurriedly
My reason must allow
That I had loved, not as I should
A creature made of clay,
When the angel woos the clay, he’ll lose
His wings at the dawn of day.

New Year's Eve in Olde Tymes Square

2010-12-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Tickets on sale at www.black47.com until 6pm tonight and all day at Connolly’s, 121 W. 45th St., NYC 212-597-5126

What a long strange trip over the last decade or so. We began 2000 with Trouble in the Land – pretty prophetic when all is said and done, and this year we released Bankers and Gangsters - the title says it all.

For Mychal, Richie and the other cherished fans who departed back in 2001; for Strummer, Danno Laursen, Johnny Byrne, Big John Murphy and all those who worked with the band; for the many who have celebrated New Year’s Eve with us over the last 21 years; and, of course, for new friends who’ve come aboard in this decade, thanks to all of you for your support and friendship.

We only perform this song once a year and as far as I know it's only available on the Connolly’s Live in Times Square DVD. But tonight it’s just for you, so feel free to come along and video or audio tape it at midnight.

New Year’s Eve in Olde Tymes Square

It was always that way at the end of the year
We’d end up down in olde Tymes Square
Holdin’ each other while the pints flowed free
That was the way it always would be
But things fell apart one weird September
Before I knew it was the 31st of December
With my arms wrapped around your memory
That old crystal ball came crashin’ down on me

But you will never be forgot
Or ever left behind
And so I raise my glass to you
For the sake of Auld Lang Syne

And even though you’re far away
You’re always close to mind
Your memory still haunts me, dear
For the sake of Auld lang Syne

For Auld Lang Syne, my dear
For Auld Lang Syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of Auld Lang Syne

Remember the night with the frost in your hair
And the sparks in your eyes when you told me you cared
And the cop on the horse laughed when he said
“Motel time, kids, why don’t yez save it for bed?”
But time and a river stopped dead in September
And I’m back in Connolly’s the 31st of December
Dancing with shadows and might have beens
With that old crystal ball crashin’ down on me

But you will never be forgot
Or ever left behind
And so I raise my glass to you
For the sake of Auld Lang Syne

And even though you’re far away
You’re always close to mind
Your memory still haunts me, dear
For the sake of Auld lang Syne

For Auld Lang Syne, my dear
For Auld Lang Syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of Auld Lang Syne...

Christmas and the Irish American Princess (IAP)

2010-12-24T07:04:00.000-08:00

She was my first IAP (Irish-American Princess). Well the first that I lived with at any rate. Tara had somehow made her way down to the Lower East Side from the leafy, lace-curtain environs of Westchester, although she was anything but stuck up.

Back then I had a regular Sunday gig in the less than ritzy Archway up the Bronx and she fit in there like a fist in a glove. Of course, she was quite a looker so that didn’t hurt with the lovesick Paddies. She had beautiful grayish green eyes that would mist over in any kind of conflict or passion; there was much of both in our relationship. The boys said that she could twist me around her little finger. They were right, but oh that twisting could be so sweet.

Things came easy to Tara. She had succeeded at everything she’d turned her hand to. But she wished to become a successful singer, the rock that many have foundered upon. I must have seemed like a good step up the ladder; besides gigs in the Archway and John’s Flynn’s Village Pub, I regularly strutted my stuff at CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. It was to be a match made in purgatory for both of us. Whatever, as they say, I was in need of some stability and moved into her apartment on First Avenue.

I always “just missed” her parents on their visits to the city. That should have set the bells ringing but I guess when you’re in love… Actually, our first major disagreement was over my parents - when I announced I’d be spending Christmas with them in Wexford.

“Our first Christmas together?” She shuddered.

“Well, you can come too.” Although I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of telling the Mammy that we’d be bunking together in the ancestral homestead.

“I couldn’t desert my parents,” she countered as though I was sentencing her whole white-picketed clan to twenty out on Rykers.

“But what about my parents?” And on it went as lovers’ quarrels do until her eyes were so misty and beautiful I feared that her heart might indeed break

Well, I wrote my Mother a particularly tear-stained letter full of half-truths (God rest her soul, I suppose she knows the full story now). I didn’t dare telephone; I wasn’t man enough to bear two loads of womanly angst. In truth though, the part that really hurt was that I would miss the traditional Wexford boys’ night out on Christmas Eve. And so I extracted a promise from Tara that we’d at least tie on a decent substitute.

“No problem,” she said and was good to her word. She was fairly abstemious for those times but when called upon could drink like a fish with little ill effect. We bought a tree, decorated it, and strung flashing lights all around the apartment. I almost felt like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Almost! For around 7pm I slipped on my black leather jacket, she dressed up to the nines and off we strutted up First Avenue to get well and truly shellacked.

God knows how many bars we hit, I certainly don’t; but I was feeling no pain by the time we reached Max’s Kansas City. Why Max’s on Christmas Eve? Well Tara liked to make the scene, besides I knew the doorman and got in free. I was also familiar with the bartender who slid many the shot of watered-down whiskey towards us. And then, through the shroud of smoky darkness, I heard the London accent.

“Roight!” The spiky-haired ghost in black leather wearily exclaimed.

The platinum blonde next to him droned on as junkies do.

“Roight.” Sid Vicious reiterated whenever a response was expected.

I casually whispered his name to Tara.

“Oh my God!” She shrieked as though Jesus had just hopped down off the cross and offered to buy a round.

Sid looked up blearily, whereupon Tara flashed him a smile that would have done justice to Marilyn Monroe on steroids.

“The blonde looks like a piece of all right,” I countered and winked at Nancy Spungen.

“From a bottle!” Tara sniffed just as Sid laboriously hauled himself off his stool and stumbled towards the restrooms; whereupon Ms. Spungen laid her head down on the counter for a wee snooze. We were still awaiting Sid’s return when Tara looked at her watch and gasped. “It’s two minutes to twelve.”

“Expecting to turn into a pumpkin?”

“No,” she moaned, “we won’t get into St. Patrick’s!”

“What for?”

“Midnight mass, of course. What do you think?”

Was she kidding - from Max’s to matins?

When we arrived at the church off Avenue A, I could tell it wasn’t exactly what Ms. Westchester had in mind. For one thing, the priests all wore dark shades and spoke Polish. Still, the place was packed and we reverently stood in the transept beside an ornate candelabra, wax dripping from its many branches.

Perhaps, it was the heat, though it could have been Max’s watery whiskey; for one moment I was swaying, the next I was writhing on the marble floor painfully disengaging myself from a myriad of hot waxy candles. There was immediate uproar with many Eastern European ladies screaming at me, and Tara, no doubt, wishing she was safely home in leafy suburbia.

When I awoke on Christmas morning much of her extensive wardrobe was laying atop me. She was modeling a matronly gray jacket and skirt, the hem inches below her knees, damn near a foot down from its usual height. I leaped from the bed and grabbed my Doc Martens, pink shirt, and black leather tie and jacket. Unlike my dearest, I had long before settled on an outfit appropriate for my first appearance in Westchester.

“You don’t look well, baby,” she laid a cool hand on my brow and cooed, “You’re just burning up.”

I did feel as though one of those monsters from Alien was ready to hop out of my stomach but I had much experience of that condition. “No, it’s okay. I want to do this for you.”

She hemmed and hawed before blurting out the truth, “It’s my mother…she wouldn’t like you.”

“What’s there not to like?”

“Well, your clothes, for one thing. I mean, are you serious?”

And with that, the fight fled from me. I could just picture the whole clan dressed in Kelly green singing Danny Boy around a turf fire - her auld one, no doubt, peering out through her lace curtains.

Tara took me in her arms whispered that I should go back to sleep, and hinted that on her return Santa might provide some x-rated delights. But I wasn’t that easily mollified and delivered one last parting shot as the door closed behind her, “So what am I supposed to do, have Christmas dinner in an Indian restaurant?”

Well, I didn’t fall back asleep and the hangover was of the galloping nature, gaining ground all evening. But the hunger was no joke either and when I eventually sauntered up First Avenue the only places open were of the Indian persuasion. A dusting of snow was coming down as I stormed into The Taj Mahal. The lone customer didn’t even bother to look up from his book; I sat there glaring at him, cursing all cruel-hearted IAPs and wishing I was home with my Mammy in Wexford.

The snow was swirling around First Avenue and I could hear White Christmas playing as I headed back to the apartment. I turned on the blinking Christmas lights and took a couple of fierce slugs of Jameson’s whiskey, turned the Clash up to eleven and rehearsed ever more vicious and vengeful ways of breaking up with Ms. Westchester.

She must have forgotten her keys for, at first, I didn’t hear her knock above Strummer’s bawling. I strode over to the door, more fired up than any Old Testament prophet. She stood there, face flushed from the cold, snow in her hair; she was expecting my fury and accepted it with grace. She smiled gently, her grayish green eyes misting over, and I barely heard her murmur, “I missed you so much.”

She reached up and held a sprig of mistletoe over my head and kissed me as if for the first time. Then she whispered, “Merry Christmas, baby.”

Dear President Obama

2010-12-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

Dear President Obama,

Did you happen to get the gift I sent? I know it’s not very polite to ask and my mother, God rest her soul, is even now fuming up in heaven at my lack of manners.

It’s actually a double whammy – The Quiet American written by Graham Greene, along with a DVD of the movie inspired by the book.

I sent both because I think Michelle might like the movie; it contains “a bit of auld romance,” as they used to say in Ireland, coupled with an important message for you.

What with Wikileaks, though, I’m afraid you’ll discover that I sent the exact same present to President Bush some years back. However, some things never change.

I still think you’re doing a hell of a job on the home front - saving both the car industry and the financial system, along with making sure we can all get health insurance.

Now I don’t know whether you’ve ever read this column but I was very opposed to the war in Iraq. To tell you the truth, I’ve come to feel much the same way about the conflict in Afghanistan? I’d like to know if you honestly think that there’s a prayer of winning in this “graveyard of empire?”

What is “winning” anyway? Keeping in power a government that stole over a million votes in the last presidential elections - whose officials daily loot the treasury and are in cahoots with heroin dealers in the second most corrupt country in the world?

Many of us voted for you on strength of your commitment that troops would be drawn down in 2011 and although there are still murmurings on that score, we now find that for all intents and purposes this goalpost has been arbitrarily shifted to 2014.

Amazingly this ten-year war didn’t even raise a feather during the recent mid-term elections. Since Fox TV didn’t deem it worthy to be an issue politicians of both your party and the party of No followed suit. The tail continues to wag the dog!

And I’m more than aware that “it’s the economy, stupid!” But bad as things are, no one is getting killed over the economy. While in Afghanistan our young men and women are sacrificing their lives over meaningless piles of rubble. We are once again enmeshed in a hostile country fighting with few achievable goals.

I know you’re in a tricky situation and don’t want to be labeled “the man who lost Afghanistan.” Your upcoming presidential rivals would lambast you; but what’s a little shellacking when measured against the lives you could save?

Besides, we’ll be leaving Afghanistan as soon as it has drained us of our blood, money and idealism. Not to mention that instead of making the US safer, we’re actually doing the opposite by allowing our troops to become target practice in another civil war long after Qaeda has shifted its operations to more hospitable countries.

My final breaking point with this war came when Ahmed Zia Massoud, former Vice- President of Afghanistan and brother of Ahmed Shah Massoud, assassinated leader of the Northern Alliance, was discovered with $52 million in his possession while visiting the United Arab Emirates.

That says it all to me - there will be no Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban this time round, far better leave that unprofitable task to the innocent Yanks.

I wish you the best, Mr. President. I think you’re a decent man doing a credible job jump-starting a troubled US economy at a terrible time. But you’re dead wrong in pursuing this hopeless war in Afghanistan and those of us who railed against President Bush in Iraq make hypocrites of ourselves by turning a blind eye to your folly.

Graham Greene warned against this kind of involvement in The Quiet American. Take a read and, for God’s sake, leave a copy of the book or DVD for your successor so we can eventually break this unnecessary cycle of wars and return this country to its rightful position as the shining city on the hill.

Yours in protest, happy Christmas and all the best to you, the Missus and the girls!

Dominic & Brendan Behan

2010-12-16T06:20:00.000-08:00

The two brothers left school at the age of thirteen to become house painters. Both ended up Irish republicans, socialists, playwrights, songwriters, memoirists, troublemakers, drinkers and many other things besides.

Brendan became a world-renowned playwright, though few today have seen his work; he is better known as an Irish boozer who lived life to the scandalous fullest.

Dominic, when recognized at all, is known best for his battle with Bob Dylan over the comparative merits of their songs, The Patriot Game and With God On Our Side.

Brendan’s star has always shone brighter but there is a case to be made that Dominic may now be the more influential.

I first became aware of this when I noticed how many versions of his songs I was playing on my SiriusXM radio show. I was long aware that he had written Patriot Game, arguably the greatest protest song. Take a listen to Liam Clancy’s mesmerizing version from Carnegie Hall in 1962.

Yet, in a testament to his tetchiness, Dominic found fault with the fact that Liam had pragmatically omitted the verse that spoke about killing policemen – small wonder when performing before an Irish-American audience.

Dominic had a reputation for being a mean drunk and could be his own worst enemy; yet one can sympathize with him over Bob Dylan lifting the tone and character of Patriot Game and recasting it as God On Our Side. We, of course, are the winners, for now we have two magnificent songs, where once there was one.

Try telling Dominic that! For years he publicly insulted Dylan with the hope of luring him into court.

But to get back to the brothers Behan, I had always assumed that The Auld Triangle from Brendan’s powerful play, The Quare Fellah, was his own song. But, lo and behold, Dominic wrote it.

The Auld Triangle continues to improve with age – take a listen to recent versions by Swell Season and Dropkick Murphys. Dominic, indeed, etched his songs in granite. His best stand up effortlessly to time and fashion, and are the equal of anything written by the great Ewan McColl, his friend and rival.

Now you may not be overly impressed with some of his other creations, The Merry Ploughboy, Come Out Ye Black & Tans, or Take it Down From the Mast, but I had always assumed these doughty standards predated him.

Still, there are few lyrics that sum up the hardship and casual heroism of the Irish emigrant experience better than McAlpine’s Fusiliers. I would go so far to say that without that song The Pogues, and Paddy Rock in general, would have been far less authentic.

And what of Brendan? Well, if you’ve never read Borstal Boy, you have a treat in store. As a very erudite gentleman once said to me, “after reading that memoir, I felt that I had missed out on an important part of my education.”

I haven’t seen his other great play, The Hostage, since Jim Sheridan directed it at the Irish Arts Center in the 80’s. Likewise, I haven’t heard of a recent production of The Quare Fellah, one of the most damning indictments of capital punishment. I wonder how both plays are standing up to the test of time.

Writers, however, wax and wane in public estimation and it often takes a director from a different generation to discover the play’s original impetus, shake it loose from the accrued calcification, and then reinterpret it in the cool light of modernity. Hopefully, that will happen to Brendan’s work soon.

Meanwhile Dominic’s star continues to ascend. Nightly, around the world, singers raise their voices in testament to his humanity, politics, biting humor, and sheer productivity. The guy wrote more than 450 songs including, it is rumored, the beautiful middle verse of Carrickfergus that begins with “They say of life and it has been written…”

Whatever their current ranking, those Behan boys didn’t do too bad for a couple of Dubs who quit school at thirteen. True, they shamed and offended many Irish people by their outlandish behavior, but in the end they affected the very way we perceive ourselves.

Connolly & the Irish Financial Crisis

2010-12-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

Whenever I think of the current financial crisis in Ireland I’m reminded of James Connolly. The taciturn Irishman born in Scotland rarely came to mind in the giddy, gauche years of the Celtic Tiger except as a vaguely disapproving figure whose economic theories had been shown to be not only wrong but ridiculous.

And yet, the “Irish Rebell” - as the song calls him - is back with a bang.

Connolly has often been misinterpreted; then again, he was a man for many seasons. Though often characterized as a nationalist martyr who was shot in a chair, he was in fact a self-educated union leader and theorist. His overriding fear was that the bosses or cartels would unite internationally to the detriment of the workers of each country.

Though he believed in a fair shake for business owners, he mistrusted human nature when spurred on by the acquisition of profit.

He was quite prescient in foreseeing the current Irish crisis and would have been appalled at its outcome and proposed solution.

Connolly, like many trade unionists of the early 20th Century, had a great love for humanity but was wary of its grasping nature. He agreed with his comrade, Big Jim Larkin, “that the great are only great because we are on our knees.” What worried him was what would happen when we arose and began to look out for number one.

The hunger for profit, rampant consumerism and abandonment of community in modern Ireland would have been his worst nightmare, topped only by the arrival of the international bosses dictating the terms of the country’s survival and very sovereignty.

We can ill afford to tut-tut here in the US for we came within an ace of allowing our own economic system to be destroyed by a rapacious financial community.

The only difference between us is the sheer size and scale of the US economy and, unlike Ireland, our banking system is not so intricately enmeshed in all our economic dealings. Thus, though we still have the stealth bombs of failed real estate loans locked within our system, we’re buying time for our banks, and insurance and mortgage companies to make more money so that they can ultimately swallow their losses. At least, that’s the hype, and perhaps the hope.

The sheer scale of the Irish banking system’s collusion in the creation of a real estate bubble is astounding.

Property prices escalated at a ridiculous rate – shacks in Wexford were being sold for a half-million Euros – and big money flooded the country in the ceaseless drive for profit. As over here, many families only got into the hunt late in the game when prices were already inflated.

When the bubble did burst they were left stranded, along with many speculators; the wise money, of course, saw it coming, took the profit and is now betting on the Euro depreciating. Connolly’s fear has come to pass.

Sean Citizen is left holding the baby and change is on the way. Mighty Fianna Fail will be decimated. No great loss in the grand scheme of things - it had long ago cast off its green cloak of nationalism and populism for the navy pinstripes of speculators and gombeen men.

But, as my granny used to say, “things could be worse, no one got kilt!” Feathers, however, financial and otherwise, have been ruffled. Still, community is back – if only that of suffering. And a great questioning of values has begun.

The Irish will bring their banking system to heel, learn and go on from this. We, on the other hand, will do Wall Street’s bidding and further dilute our recently enacted anemic financial reform bill. The cycle of bubble and bust will continue.

The captains and the kings will call the tune, we the pawns shall dance, and Connolly will shake his baffled and disapproving head.

Runrig and my father

2010-11-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

My father never cared much for rock & roll.

He was a big band man, loved Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, that type of thing. Tango and calypso were also favorites and our house used to swing to those grooves. I daresay they reminded him of the various South American ports that he was so familiar with for he spent much of his life as a merchant marine on the London to Buenos Aires run.

We had a strange family life by most standards, much coming and going, lots of goodbyes and much expectant waiting. But children are adaptable and my father’s tipsy returns inevitably brought gifts.

Yet I was surprised when, on one such occasion, from out of his battered suitcase he handed me an LP, and muttered, “all the highland lads love this band.”

He was working on the oil rigs up in the North Sea by this time and I had left home.

The LP was by a band called Runrig, some of it sung in Scottish Gaelic. I liked the music but neglected to take the LP back to New York and over the years I forgot about the band and its music.

In one of my other gigs I host Celtic Crush for SiriusXM Satellite Radio and often encourage people to send me their favorite CDs.

Thus you could have knocked me over with a feather when a thirty-year compilation of Runrig arrived in the mail. All the memories of my father’s hellos and goodbyes came flooding back. It was like a letter from the past.

I didn’t dare play the CD at first for fear the music wouldn’t hold up. Where had Runrig been, what had they been up to? I hadn’t heard of them since that long ago day back in Wexford.

I could almost smell the old leather of my father’s suitcase, the neatly packed clothes of the sailor, the LP stored safely between them. How strange that a digital disc should bring back such strong memories of an analog era when my parents were both alive.

I need have had no worries about Runrig. The music was powerful, sophisticated, full of longing, it spoke of history and struggle, and as with all good songwriting it swept you away to a time and place of its own evoking.

It was calm and unhurried and yet the passions ran deep. The music had a certainty about itself; although the composers were masters of their craft, they had obviously made a decision early on that they would plough their own furrow, dance to their own different drummer.

The music was not unlike a mixture of Pink Floyd and The Waterboys, but that fails to do it justice for Runrig posses a unique Celtic depth.

The band has managed to infuse modern music with the soul of Scotland - not its more obvious manifestations of pipes and kilts, but the highlands that have seen the displacement of the cotters - the glens and valleys once alive with people now inhabited only by ghosts.

In five magical minutes, their song Empty Glens summonses up the pain of a displaced people; while Abhainn an t-Sluaigh speaks of a visit to London and being almost swept away by a “river of people,” all the while longing for the western islands where a man might breathe.

On their live version of Loch Lomond they’re joined by 50,000 people in Hamden Park. Sound hokey? Not at all, for eighth exhilarating minutes they take you deep into the recesses of the Celtic soul. This excursion never fails to move me - and the listeners, judging by the volume of emails.

My father never used the word - soul. It was too highfalutin and anyway he didn’t believe in such things. Yet when I listen to Runrig I find a connection to him that we often didn’t share when he was alive.

How strange that a Celtic Rock band from the Isle of Skye should furnish that link for as I said, my father never cared much for rock & roll.

Republocrats and Elvis

2010-11-16T20:16:00.000-08:00

Though there were winners and losers in the recent election, one thing for certain, the next two years should be a blast.

Why so? Well, the Republican Party of No will now have to pull a nice plump white rabbit from its magic hat in the form of how to balance the budget and reduce the deficit while cutting everyone’s taxes and not laying a finger on defense spending or entitlements. Rock on!

Not to mention that they want to ditch the Health Insurance Bill which will actually reduce the deficit over the next ten years.

These magicians however need not hold their breath for support from the health insurance industry that, despite the occasional self-righteous squawk, is quite happy to accept the fifty million new customers the government will be consigning to its tender mercies.

Welcome to DC, you Tea-Partying Republicans, you are about to provide a valuable public service; for in your misguided attempts to eviscerate this decent piece of legislation you will actually highlight its many beneficial provisions and banish some of the lies and innuendo created by your corporate and media sponsors.

Your concern for giving a tax break to those clearing a quarter of million a year, however, is really touching especially when matched up against your unwillingness to pony up a couple of hundred bucks a week for the many unemployed who will be cut off from benefits next month.

Now I ask you who’s more likely to put their money back in the economy, a mother of four living on pasta and hope, or the Lexus owner who just might order Yankee season tickets or a Kate Spade pocketbook?

And what about the party of Bobby Kennedy and FDR? If the Democrats’ sole ambition is to become Republican Lite, you’ve hit the jackpot, guys! Few even deign to mention, let alone defend, a health insurance bill that offers broad protection to the consumer.

And how about their other accomplishments that Democrats ran from faster than any of Steve Duggan’s tips out in Belmont - the stimulus that helped avert a depression; and the bailout of banks and the car industry that not only succeeded but will eventually turn a profit for the country?

“Don’t get me started,” as Elvis warned when speaking about Lisa Marie marrying Michael Jackson.

But let’s talk about the real winners - Big Money, in its various permutations and combinations. As if it wasn’t already calling the shots in this republic, the gutting of the Feingold-McCain Act by the recent Supreme Court ruling put it firmly in the driver’s seat. With no legal need to claim credit for the ads that flooded television, the lies and negativity unleashed were positively eye-popping.

The biggest target – Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin! This decent man who bucked Democrats and Republicans alike, in league with the old John McCain – remember him - had the temerity to pass reasonable legislation on campaign donations. Well he may have got the heave ho but we’re the big losers, for Feingold was a true champion of the republic and its citizens.

Some people in the business community feel that the upcoming gridlock will be good for the country; and in the short term they may be right. Company profits are up, cash reserves high, why bother to hire new people when your current overworked employees can carry the load?

Besides, there’s bound to be a couple of scared Democrats who’ll help eviscerate the Finance Reform Bill, especially that pesky little provision that demands that derivative trading be done publicly.

Are you kidding me? The whiz kids down on Wall Street almost pulled off what Lenin and Mao never came close to doing – the destruction of American capitalism – with their unethical and irresponsible creation and trading of stealth bomb derivatives for short term gain.

The president and his party would do well to recall the mid-term elections of 1946. Had Harry Truman buckled under that defeat and dismantled the New Deal, where would we be?

Ah well, where’s my remote, time to check out Rachel Maddow’s hairstyle. The blood sport of politics is about to become interesting again.

Amram and Kerouac

2010-11-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

The Bells of Hell was the best saloon I ever drank in.

“And that’s saying something,” nods your man up in Pearl River.

It was opened by Malachy McCourt, noted raconteur, author, scourge of Bush, Giuliani and anyone with a kind word for conservatism.

Malachy may have been long on charm and good fellowship but he definitely never gained an MBA from Harvard. In fact such were the number of slates, buybacks and general dispensing of free drinks to the needy, it’s a tribute to capitalism that the Bells was able to limp through the swinging 70’s before finally expiring in Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America 80’s.

The joint boasted only three rules: all fisticuffs to be conducted on the sidewalk, fornication and drug use confined to bathrooms and basement; and, most importantly, boring your neighbor was strictly prohibited.

This den of literary iniquity was frequented by journalists, poets, musicians, communists, noblemen, libertarians, urban farmers, refugees from the Bronx, defrocked priests and Christian brothers, an occasional bishop, many the radical nun and a healthy sprinkling of young ladies from the nearby Evangeline Residence, along with hard-bitten nurses from St. Vincent’s emergency room who took the occasional lucky young Irishman under their experienced wing.

Thus you could sit between a Clancy Brother and a Hamill, Lester Bangs and a Tipperary carpenter, a politician in drag and a lady of a certain age looking for a husband but willing to settle for the next best thing. To top it all, money, as I’ve said, was no object.

Many of the clientele dwelt in the uncertain past or the unfocused present, few gave much thought to the future. One visionary, however, jumps to mind. And what a past he’s had, not to mention a future that’s so stuffed with goals and ambitions it would turn a teenager off texting.

David Amram will be celebrating his first 80 years tomorrow night in New York’s Symphony Space.

“Who the hell is he when he’s at home,” mutters your man up in Pearl River.

Well, Mr. Amram was chosen by Leonard Bernstein to be the first composer-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic, he has written over 100 symphonies and choral pieces, mastered an array of instruments exotic and otherwise, but more amazingly, he and his bosom buddy, Jack Kerouac, invented the modern jazz-poetry reading.

And neither of them even wore berets that first night in Greenwich Village back in 1957 when David improvised on French Horn behind the author of On The Road. Then again, David Amram was a fully paid up Karmic member of the Beat Generation himself, along with Ginsberg, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti and Neal Cassady.

But fast forward to the back room of the Bells where Liam Clancy, Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, King Rude, Flying Cloud, Lester Bangs, Mike OBrien & Chris King and a host of others were wont to do their thing.

David never heard a piece of music that he couldn’t add some wonder to. In fact, he may have invented the term World Music; at least he was the first person I ever heard use it and, more to the point, demonstrate that all music is interconnected and will fit together provided you have the pertinent chops and taste.

Take a look at what’s in store tomorrow night. In The Fox Hunt From Cork Meets The Blues From New York, for instance, Joseph Mulvanerty from Black 47 and I will be collaborating with Malachy, John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Amram's Latin/Jazz Ensemble and dancers from the Stella Adler School of Acting.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’ll be diverse musical and lyrical communal explorations conducted by a man who has collaborated with everyone from Dizzy Gillsepie to Johnny Depp, Willie Nelson to Arthur Miller; it will all be filmed and you never know who will show up. That’s the Amram magic.

But more than anything, the evening will serve as a springboard to David’s next 80 years, and I ain’t kidding.

The Bells, the Beats and Bohemian New York City will live for one more evening in Symphony Space. Be there or be square, man!

Election - Where Have You Gone Mister Hamilton...

2010-11-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Has anything changed after yesterday’s election? Probably not, but the current national malaise has come more into perspective.

Answers, as usual, are scarce on the ground, but one question continues to rear its head. Why is it so hard for us to talk to each other?

Of course, it was ever so. Take a swing back through American history and you’ll find it brimming over with political argument spiced by plain old partisan politics.

The Revolutionary period, however, does provide insight into how the country once overcame this divisiveness when a conservative giant insisted on doing the right thing.

Alexander Hamilton’s life reads like a novel - born illegitimately into modest circumstances in the West Indies. A merchant’s clerk, he was sent to New York to further his studies. There he became a street instigator against British rule, aide-de-camp to George Washington and after the war a very rich lawyer; he was blackmailed by a femme fatale, and eventually killed in a duel.

In his spare moments, as first Secretary of the US Treasury, he insisted that all loans made to the revolutionary movement should be honored by the federal government, this, at a time, when the country was financially destitute and weakened by rivalry between states.

There were universal howls of rage against Hamilton’s suggestion but through sheer force of personality, arm-twisting and favor pulling, he succeeded; the country never looked back and the dollar, despite many buffetings, has been the favorite international currency for almost a century.

What would Hamilton think of us today? Everyone is angry about deficits, although many only since the financial crisis or, dare I say it, the election of a Democratic administration.

And yet our deficits are intrinsically bipartisan and caused by a refusal to pay for social services, the prosecution of ongoing foreign wars, and a diminution of the tax base due to the economic downturn.

While there are cyclical and structural reasons for the latter, it would be hard to argue that the current recession was not accelerated by an unregulated financial industry that put profit before public trust.

With the introduction of the recent Finance Reform Bill, there is hope that the financial system of the country is now on a sounder footing. Company profits are high, credit is cheap, if US capitalism works in its normal cyclic manner, the economy should expand leading to a higher tax base and a reduction of the deficit, much as happened in the Clinton years.

That won’t really bring long term relief though if we keep bleeding the country’s wealth with unnecessary foreign wars. Leaving aside any moral issues, we are being held hostage by small, driven nationalist movements half way around the world similar to the way that our revolutionaries bled the British Empire.

It’s time to make whatever dignified departures possible from Iraq and Afghanistan and then really debate the reasons we’re still in Germany, Korea and Japan while those countries have thriving democratic societies and economies.

The real deficit inducer, however, is that we refuse to pay for our social services. In fact, we can’t even have a meaningful discussion about their funding. Apart from a couple of wealthy libertarians and some Yuppies who have yet to feel the cold finger of ill-health, no one I know wants to privatize social security and most people are just dying to get to sixty-five and Medicare so that they can be somewhat shielded from a rapacious health insurance industry.

In fact, everyone I’ve lobbied would gladly sacrifice a couple of bucks extra a week in taxes to ensure that they have a meaningful safety net in their golden years.

So why do we allow blow-dried politicians and smarmy lobbyists to impose their will on us by muddying the debate?

Well we don’t vote in sufficient numbers. We get our news from television sound-bite messiahs who deal in fiction rather than fact. And we’d sooner howl to the heavens rather than grapple with thorny and weighty matters.

One way or another, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of solving any of the above issues until we can engage in sane, substantive and non-partisan discussions.

“Where have you gone, Mister Hamilton, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you…”

BIG FELLAH AND SONS OF ANARCHY

2010-10-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

The response to the Black 47 recording of Big Fellah on Sons of Anarchy has been amazing and has come from all quarters. And yet it sets off the old controversy about the song and its view of Michael Collins.

As stated in The Story Behind Big Fellah (available on Black 47 Facebook page) I adored Collins as a boy and always wanted to write a song about him. I could never capture him through my own eyes, however, and it wasn't until I read those letters in the museum in Clonakilty from young men about to be executed because of Collins' killing that I found the way to do so - through their eyes. It’s an old literary device – show a hero from the perspective of someone not enthralled by him and you can often get a clearer picture of the person. It might have been best to explain that at the time, but hindsight is wonderful – in hindsight - and who was thinking back then.

I suppose it was only natural - because I've written so many semi-autobiographical songs - that people would assume words like "betray the republic like Arthur Griffith and you..." would be definitively my view of the man. In fact, my own feelings are much more ambivalent, and not particularly relevant in the grand scheme of things. However, such hard line sentiments were common to people like my grandfather – although he too loved Collins – and, if one studies the situation around the Treaty, then one can at least understand the Republican stance, if not always embrace it.

Oddly enough, the Civil War was not fought over the Six Counties but over the Oath of Allegiance taken by Collins and Griffith, et al - a fact long obscured in the glare of ensuing events. The Civil War and its aftermath was a bitterly tragic period in Irish history and I grew up with its echoes and repercussions all around. That war wiped out a so many idealistic young people on both sides and in many ways left the country leaderless and lacking in direction. I still hold the view that Ireland would have been a far different place if people like Mick Collins, Liam Mellows, Arthur Griffith, Liam Lynch and Rory O’Connor had survived. They didn’t, however, and the Free State of Ireland became a deflated social and economic backwater under the leadership of W.T. Cosgrove and later, Eamonn DeValera.

I suppose one should always take into account the words one uses, but in truth, I was so excited to have finally captured Collins in song that I let the matter slip, back in those heady days of 1993-94. Such is the way with songs - you use whatever inspiration that comes to mind. Collins, nowadays, has become an unassailable knight in shining armor to so many – probably more so because of Neil Jordan's film than wonderful biographies by Tim Pat Coogan and others. It makes little difference, Mick Collins was a giant, no matter his flaws, and will always be so to me.

All water under the bridge now, I suppose. Still, I'm immensely proud of the song and Black 47's treatment of it; and I believe we've captured the essence of the man. What an odd world though to think that a television show about a renegade band of bikers could summon up the spirit of the Big Fellah so well. My hat is off to Kurt Sutter and all on Sons of Anarchy. They've helped re-introduce a great and very complicated man to a new generation – not necessarily of Irish descent either.

History is never black and white and if I’ve offended some lovers of Collins by use of certain phrases, then so be it, but it was unintentional. Perhaps it’s more important that his legacy – or lack thereof – is being re-examined. Unfortunately, Collins great promise ended up in tragedy, as did the lives of three other great people whom I admire, Charles Stewart Parnell, Countess Markievicz and James Connolly. But what inspiration we can all draw from them.

One other small note – the opening “sean-nós” piece, before the guitars on Big Fellah, is not traditional as some have ascribed it. The piece contains some lines from the poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire or Lament for Art O'Leary written by his wife Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (Black haired Eileen O’Connell) after O’Leary’s shooting in the late 18th Century. I wrote the music and the amazing Mary Martello sang it. If you like drama, tragedy, humanity and a woman’s struggle with desolation, then this powerful, evocative lament is for you.

Now if we could only get EMI Records to make Big Fellah – and the rest of the Home of the Brave CD – accessible to the public, what a small triumph that would be. And then people wonder why the music industry has collapsed!

The unavailability of the EMI recording of Big Fellah is a miniscule tragedy next to that of Collins, no doubt, but one that greatly hinders a progressive working band that continues to plough its own furrow.

No Bloody Buybacks

2010-10-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

“If the Democratic Party is not prepared to protect the rights of its natural constituents then it should step aside and let others take over the task.” So said Connie The Commie in my local saloon on a recent evening.

“Ah now, that’s going a bit too far, wouldn’t you think,” replied Franklin Roosevelt, known thus because he’d vote Democrat if Lindsay Lohan threw her hat in the ring.

“The Democratic Party has only one ambition and that’s to become Republican Lite.” Connie sneered and stared reassuringly into his foaming pint of plain.

“Here we go again,” said the Irish bartender who swore I’d never get another buyback if I mentioned his name since the whole of Country Yonkers reads the Echo.

“Didn’t we save this country from going down the tubes after Bush and his bullyboys ran it into the ground.”

“Yeah, but how come you’re not shouting that from the rooftops? Afraid you’ll upset the lobbyists or those clowns on Fox TV?”

“You know the problem around here?” The Irish bartender snorted. We listened in rapt attention since he owed us all a buyback. “We don’t get any Republicans because youse run them all out with your anti-war this and your stimulus that. And as for lobbyists, they might add a bit of tone to the establishment and I bet they’d settle their slates on time.”

With that he turned on his heel and switched on Fox TV. He hadn’t really been himself since losing a packet when Tipperary whipped Kilkenny in the All Ireland.

Connie the Commie raised his eyebrows to the good god in heaven, however he made no objection since he’d only recently been 86ed for duking it out with a cowboy from Tuscon over illegal immigrants.

“What really bothers me,” he said sotto voce, “is that the old, the poor, the sick, and the last few screeds of the middle class are caput if their rights are not stood up for.”

“But most of them are voting Republican anyway, if the polls are correct,” I interjected for devilment.

“That’s because they’re all watching Snooki on The Jersey Shore and that traitorous narrowback, Hannity, up there,” Roosevelt sneered at the TV, then nodded at the barman. “And what’s the matter with him anyway?”

“He’s always in bad form once the GAA season ends.” I tried to make a case for my countryman.

“He should follow the Jets.” Connie said. “A working man’s team!”

The barman’s eyes narrowed. “If I were going to follow a crowd of grown men chasing an oval ball, it would be an Irish rugby team, not a pack of sissies in helmets and padded spandex.”

The room froze, all that could be heard was the traitorous narrowback on Fox ripping into the poor president who everyone agreed had his hands full putting up with a wife and two growing daughters.

“If it hadn’t been for that bloody stimulus.” Roosevelt moaned.

“The goddamn stimulus worked.” Connie roared. “We’d be above 11% unemployment without it; there’d be cops, teachers, nurses and firemen by the thousands on the bread lines.”

“Yeah, but you don’t get reelected by telling people that things would suck twice as bad if the other crowd were in.”

Some tourists popped their heads in the door and gazed at us as though we were a pack of Orangutans up the Bronx Zoo.

“So what are you going to do?” Connie screeched in a manner not unlike Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. “Elect these bloody Tea Partiers?”

The tourists beat a hasty retreat.

““Out, out, the whole bloody crowd of yez!” The barman pointed at the door. “My nerves can’t take another two weeks of this electioneering! And to top it all not one of yez had a kind word to say for poor Henry Shefflin laid flat on his back by a Tipperary Stonethrower.”

“What the hell’s he talking about?” Connie murmured as we shuffled out on to the street.

“He’s still upset about the hurling final,” I muttered.

“No bloody buyback.” Roosevelt moaned. “You know something, that bartender takes life way too seriously.”

DENNEHY

2010-10-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

His face always stood out. It was so Irish. It had that weather-beaten, lived in look even when he was a younger man. Back then you usually caught him doing walk-ons for such shows as Kojak or Dynasty. But, no matter the role, it was hard to ignore Brian Dennehy.

He worked hard and his roles got better, for he possessed that certain something that helped him stand out in the wasteland of television. Even when he wasn’t the star or the hero you found yourself plugging for him.

No one ever accused him of being pretty but he inspired a lot of guys to give acting a shot – if Dennehy can do it, why not me?

I wasn’t surprised to find he was born in Bridgeport. He didn’t stay long but the city left its mark on him. Home of P.T. Barnum, Bridgeport was one rowdy burgh in the 70’s when I first hit it. Areas of it were rougher then than even Belfast or the Lower East Side, it’s great to see the old industrial city on the Sound resurrect itself and come roaring back.

Dennehy, on the other hand, never went anywhere. It seems like he’s always been with us. Perennial tough guy on the silver screen or the idiot box, he took on the greatest challenge in American theatre, the interpretation of Eugene O’Neill.

Why is O’Neill so difficult – simply because he’s the Man. Shakespeare is more facile, poetic, and has all the gifts that every writer aspires to, but when it comes to dealing with the sheer terror and joy of living, Irish Gene O’Neill wrote the book. And Brian Dennehy wades through it with a primal force informed by a rare sensitivity and an unstinting love for the characters he inhabits.

Barely more than a boy I stumbled into a production of A Touch of the Poet starring Jason Robards. I was floored by the intensity and truth of this great actor’s performance. I never thought anyone could match it until I saw Dennehy - and Gabriel Byrne - take O’Neill in other, but no less thrilling, directions.

That’s the magic of theatre, isn’t it? You can be obsessed with a titan like O’Neill, think you know it all, and then some actor comes along, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and opens your eyes to shadows and depths that you were breezily unaware of.

Unfortunately, Robards won’t be around to raise a glass on October 18th at Rosie O’Grady’s. But Gabriel Byrne will salute Dennehy when he receives the Eugene O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish American Writers and Artists. It will be a banner night, for Albany’s William Kennedy - perhaps the greatest living American novelist - will make the presentation.

A note of disclosure, I must admit that I’m connected to this IAW&A posse. We set out less than two years ago to “highlight, energize and encourage Irish Americans working in the arts.”

There have been some notable successes including a fundraiser at Connolly’s in March for victims of the Haitian earthquake that netted over $100,000.

In general the organization is populist with a progressive slant, but looking around the table at board meetings in a midtown law office I see many shades of political opinion. And on Oct. 18th we might even provide a Tea Party table; however, we would seat Malachy McCourt at its head for balance and, no doubt, a “robust exchange of opinions.”

Seriously though, our goal is to help promote Irish American writers, musicians, actors and all other artists no matter what their politics, and to that end we’ll be honoring ex-Marine, hard man and O’Neill explorer, Brian Dennehy.

As ever our events are lively, informal and open to the public. You can rub shoulders with the famous, shake hands with various devils or just sit at the open bar and take the whole thing in. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Eugene O’Neill was born in a hotel room a couple of blocks from Rosie’s. It’s hard to imagine that his ghost won’t be present in some corner gruffly approving of Brian Dennehy, a man who has not only carried on his spirit but helped reinvigorate it.

For information go to www.i-am-wa.org or call 212-213-1166.

Blackthorne Reunion & Benefit

2010-10-05T19:33:00.000-07:00

The buyback is a sacred gesture in most saloons in the greater New York area. Only question is – do you strike gold on the third or fourth drink?

“Now you’re talkin’!” Whoops your man up in Pearl River. “Steer clear of them bloody politics and stick to the things that matter!”

Good old Pearl River, sure isn’t it only a hop, skip and a jump up to East Durham.

“What have buybacks and E. Durham to do with the price of turnips or each other?” Queries your man. “Sure even me granny knows that up the mountains buybacks are as common as rain in Cultimagh?”

My point exactly and that’s why we’re having a Blackthorne Reunion up in East Durham on the weekend of October 22nd.”

As many of you know the Blackthorne dining room/bar/office building burned to the ground on September 18th. Luckily no one was hurt and the rooms and remainder of the resort were untouched by fire. With their legendary hard working, no-use-crying-over-spilt-milk mentality, the Handel family converted the large pavilion out by the swimming pool into a functioning dining room/bar and the resort has remained open.

As happens, though, the old building was under insured. Regardless, a new dining hall/bar/office will rise atop the old site and be ready for the 2011season.

In the meantime, some of us feel that the Blackthorne deserves a very special buyback of its own.

And so we’ve chosen one of the most beautiful weekends of the year to fill the resort, and give the Handels a boost in their time of trouble. The leaves will still be beautiful, the mountains ablaze with color, the bar bustling, the haunted cottage open and no doubt that accursed rooster will still be crowing at six in the morning.

It will be a time for those who have enjoyed this unique and friendly resort down the years to renew acquaintances and cherish old friends – I’ve heard that people from afar as California, Florida and Illinois will be flying in for the event.

What history and memories the Blackthorne has for many of us, and indeed for other generations, stretching back to the days when it was Mullans. Marriages were made, honeymoons spent, aye and many an elbow raised in good company.

For the Blackthorne and the whole E. Durham area are part and parcel of Irish-American history. Some even call that neck of the woods the 33rd county. With that in mind, we’re encouraging people to bring along pictures and mementoes of Mullans and the Thorne so that these items can be included in the decoration of the new building. Keep the spirit alive!

Many musicians will be dropping by to do a set, including Black 47 – you don’t need an invite just let us know you’re coming and we’ll make room for you. Suffice it to say that there’ll be music heard like never before as jam sessions and musical mixes & matches will be the theme of the weekend.

I’ll even toss in a reading from Rockin’ the Bronx, and I’d be surprised if Pat Floody and his cohorts are not knocking out the old beloved tunes by the bar.

And if there’s a resort where you’re more used to hanging your hat, all well and good – East Durham can use the business – feel free to drop by our event for a drink and buy one of the specially designed Phoenix From The Flames T-shirts.

On a personal note, with the exception of Connolly’s and Paddy Reilly’s, no establishment has supported and nourished Black 47 more than the Blackthorne. In an ever-changing world, come Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends, I always know where my green suede shoes will be.

For hardy veterans or those who’ve never been up the mountains before, there’ll be off-season room rates. But even more to the point there’ll be memories to rekindle and we can all help ensure that the Blackthorne rises from the ashes and goes on to create good old days for coming generations.

The Great Mistake

2010-09-24T05:48:00.000-07:00

There was a pub in Wexford that wives called the “honey pot” – for once in the door husbands were reluctant to leave.

Such may well prove to be the case with Iraq but with combat operations finally over, let us examine this dismal chapter of American history before the inevitable tide of revisionism rolls in.

Can there be any doubt now that the invasion was a grievous mistake, one whose price will be paid for generations to come? And why do I mention revisionism? Surely, that comes much later – as in Vietnam when it took decades to soften the image of US helicopters lifting off roofs during the fall of Saigon.

But already we have “the surge.” Yet, despite how well the 30,000 US troops performed, they would have made little difference if 100,000 Sons of Iraq had not already been placed on the US payroll.

Money well spent. I say, as it saved American lives; though one could argue that this federal handout could have been better used for Americans ravaged by an economic downturn partly caused by huge government borrowing to finance the Iraq adventure.

But let us stick to cold figures. Over 4400 Americans died for a neo-conservative notion that if we created a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq we could change that region’s balance of power. These think-tank boys were only slightly off the mark. We dismantled a horrid secular dictatorship that had been a bulwark against the mullahs in Iran and handed them a theocratic democracy on a plate. Well we did shake up the status quo, there’s no denying that.

But at what a cost! 35,000 Americans were seriously injured – not counting perhaps 100,000 more afflicted with post-traumatic stress.

Over two million Iraqis have fled the country; while millions more were displaced because of sectarian violence unleashed as a result of the invasion.

At least one hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed – though the figure is more likely two or even three times higher.

The infrastructure of the country was destroyed – open sewers are common, electricity is rarely guaranteed for more than four hours daily despite billions of US aid. Of course, much of this “stimulus” has gone to the coffers of various security firms and civilian providers who “won” no-bid contracts. And that’s before the remains trickled down to corrupt Iraqi officials.

There is a democracy, however, although six months after the last election a government has yet to be formed. Not surprising, since if the Allawi led Sunni coalition is not included, then the insurgency is likely to flare up again. Yet who can blame the Shite parties for wanting their day in the sun after a century of Sunni dominance? What a nest of hornets we stirred up.

And what of us? We were never asked to pay for this war – it was charged to the Chinese credit card that we’re still paying interest on. Most of us were never asked to do anything but wave flags and spout jingoistic sound bites. Most shameful of all, the bodies of our fallen were smuggled in at night so that our delicate sensibilities might not be offended.

The really sad part is that the idealism and blood of a generation inspired by 9/11 has been wasted in the sands of Fallujah and the alleyways of Sadr City.

Could the invasion have been stopped – certainly, had there even been a remote possibility of a draft; or if Hilary Clinton and Colin Powell had acted with their hearts rather than their heads. In such an unlikely scenario one or the other might well be president.

We have planted bitter seeds. The fruit will be with us a long time in the shape of huge deficits, a distrust of government, and thousands of young veterans with broken bodies and damaged spirits returning to a country and economy unable or unwilling to provide for them.

The only upside is that we can learn from this colossal mistake and resolve never again to embark on any more such foreign adventures or wars of choice.

Mother and Son

2010-09-10T19:11:00.000-07:00

I often watch PBS Newshour. It’s unadorned news followed by comments from a conservative and progressive of the non-braying genre.

Once a week the show pauses and, in silence, pictures of those in the armed forces killed overseas are shown. It’s a sobering couple of minutes as you stare at young faces, read their names, rank, ages and the small towns from whence they came.

To those of us from whom no sacrifice has been demanded it brings home the real cost of our ongoing wars. Women like Eileen Daly don’t need reminders. They live the loss 24 hours of every day.

Some of you may know Eileen. She’s first generation Irish. Her mother Bridie Keating Daly hails from Ballylanders, Co. Limerick, her father Dan was from Cahirciveen in the Kingdom of Kerry. They lived on Heath Avenue in St. John’s Parish, The Bronx before moving to Rockaway where Eileen attended Stella Maris High School while living on 114th Street.

She married Ron Kubik and moved down the Jersey Shore. She’s a sister of Chief Dan Daly, NYFD, of 9/11 fame and Dennis, a Green Beret injured in the Vietnam War.

Eileen raised three children as a single mother on a nurse’s pay. The youngest Sergeant Ronald Kubik, Company D, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment was killed while on active duty in Logar Province, Afghanistan on April 23rd. He was 21 years of age.

Run a search on this stellar young man – he’s all over the Internet, and rightly so. But although she would demur, you can easily tell from whom the son got his character, for Eileen is one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever spoken to.

Although her family has deep roots in the military, Eileen didn’t want her son to enlist at such an early age; in fact she has little time for recruiters who entice high school students with well-rehearsed sales pitches. That being said, once Ronnie joined up she gave him unqualified support in his tours of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sgt. Kubik was an achiever who discovered a thirst for life and adventure at an early age. On the Honor Roll at Manasquan High School he was a varsity running back, wrestled, acted, wrote a column for the paper - you name it, Ronnie did it.

The guy even played guitar in a metal band, A Void Within. In fact he sported a mohawk and when cautioned about it brought a case to the Manasquan Board of Education and won – felt it was important to protect every kid’s right of self-expression.

I finally had to stop Eileen dead and ask the question many of you are wondering, “How do you do it, girl, how do you go on?”

“I had to make a choice – for life or…”

She didn’t finish. And then it came pouring out. For the first months she was paralyzed by grief. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move - and this from a nurse who could put in four straight 12-hour shifts at Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood.

But she had family and friends – the backbone of Irish-American life. Her brother Dennis who faced his own problems after Vietnam told her “if the current is pulling you down, you have to swim.”

Chief Daly, in his practical kindly way, suggested she set her alarm and go back to the gym. While her friend, Mary McCloskey told her to put on her sneakers and come walking with the girls. Eventually she made the decision to live and, one step at a time, that urge to carry on and turn the pain into something worthwhile returned

She did it for herself but, more than anything, she did it for her son. ”I know Ronnie is watching and I want him to be proud of me.”

This is a story that’s being played out all across the country in homes and barracks. Most of us are insulated from it.
Ronnie Kubik was a great American who asked not what his country could do for him. Eileeen Daly is no less a hero for choosing life in the midst of pain.

We, as citizens in a participatory democracy, must remain eternally vigilant that such sacrifices are absolutely necessary. Stay strong, Eileen.

Horslips

2010-09-07T17:28:00.000-07:00

I have always been wary of describing Black 47’s music as Celtic Rock especially since Horslips and Fairport Convention wrote the book on that genre forty years ago.

On another occasion I’ll deal with the tragic magic of Fairport but their album, Liege & Lief, will add luster to any collection.

My connections to the roots of Horlips go back to the churning ‘70’s Wexford Rock scene. Christy Moore’s brilliant guitarist Declan Sinnott – amazingly, I introduced him to his first minor chords – informed me that he had joined a Dublin outfit that played “revved up jigs and reels.”

As often happened with the mercurial Deckie, as we then knew him, he stayed barely long enough to leave an indelible mark on the band. But the Horslips legend had begun.

Not only did they create their own particular myth, they were at their best when dealing with legends and concepts - from The Táin to Book of Invasions, and now they’re exploring Rotha Mór an tSaoil.

It was this latter project that caused my path to once more cross with Jim Lockhart and Barry Devlin. They were recently over to film a four part series for TG4 based around Rotha Mór an tSaoil or The Big Wheel of Life - the autobiography of Micí Mac Gabhann who left Donegal and trekked across the US in the late 19th Century to find gold in the Yukon.

Ambitious as ever, Jim and Barry are using the book as an analogy for Horslips’ own musical travels - and travails - from Ireland to a fabled America. What a blast then to introduce them to Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx, the dead center of Irish-American music in the latter decades of the 20th century.

Horslips recently reformed but despite a hiatus of almost 30 years band members have never stopped searching for connection. That quest has been their strength. They’ve always been fascinated by the American experience particularly pertaining to Irish immigration.

Jim and Barry are also two of the funniest and most self-deprecating characters in rock & roll. Not surprisingly, a gleeful sense of irony has always permeated their work and kept it from veering towards the precious or lugubrious.

We almost rolled around 204th Street as they recalled the horror of having a soon to be monster Van Halen open for them at New York’s Palladium. When I confessed that Pierce Turner and I were mightily ill after hijacking the champagne they’d abandoned in their dressing room, Barry wryly noted, “at least some good came from that bloody night.”

I hear echoes of Horslips in so much of today’s Irish-American music. Bands who may never have heard Dearg Doom or King of the Fairies casually stroll through arrangements where once Horslips kicked down doors by injecting Les Paul power into Irish Trad.

“It was the times.” Jim casually explained. “Everyone was into fusion - we were inventing it as we went along.”

And what a job they did. Listening to the haunting introduction to Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore I was transported back to a coldwater flat in Rathmines where I listened to that recording while making the decision to get the hell out of Ireland.

Marvel at the power of Dearg Doom as Eamonn Carr and Johnny Fean respectfully put the boot into Sean O’Riada. Or listen to Charles O’Connor nail a Scots-Gaelic weaving song to a Rocksteady beat on the mesmerizing An Bratach Bán. Horslips been there and done that!

It’s their fearless melding of old and new – along with a willingness to fall on their faces – that has always kept Horslips a step ahead.

And one recent summer’s evening I was lucky enough to be given a chance to add infinitesimally to the Horslips legend when Jim and Barry joined Black 47 onstage for a frenetic version of their classic Wrath of the Rain.

The Great Wheel of Life has done many the spin since Deckie Sinnott first told me about these guys back in Wexford. In an age where banal retreads are the norm, it was pure pleasure to help a couple of originals knock the dust off the ceiling for what will surely be a riveting television series.

These Are My Mountains

2010-08-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Almost without noticing it Labor Day Weekend is on us again. I always console myself by noting that September is invariably a beautiful month but who am I kidding? My summer plays out between Memorial Day and Labor Day and I spend both those weekends in County East Durham.

I can’t pretend that I’m not a booster of the Irish Catskills, though hailing from South Wexford - where the wild Atlantic hits the quarrelsome Irish Sea - I tend to gravitate towards the coastline.

Perhaps that’s why I identified with Bruce Springsteen’s early albums. Those dusty little seaside towns he salutes on Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Suffle were familiar turf for someone who played every pub and marquee from Courtown to Tramore.

The mountains were more an acquired taste, in fact my first summer spent up in Leeds could as well have been in Katmandu such was the craic at the Irish Center – then owned by Gerry O’Shea, now in the capable hands of impresario Gertie Byrne’s family.

Despite the ongoing bacchanal I did gather that people came up from the city to banish their misfortunes and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to do so. Many things have changed but the sense of homeliness and community spiced by good value has endured.

Talk about a land that time forgot – you can stroll into any resort in the region, run into people you haven’t seen in 10 years and it’s as if you’d only bid them farewell the previous dawn.

Time moves at a different pace in the Irish Alps and whatever is troubling you melts away and seems somehow less threatening. Maybe it’s the realization that those mountains will be there a long time after you’ve kicked the bucket so you better make the most of the brief time that’s granted you.

There’s a certain coltishness in the air on Memorial Day Weekend. Tom McGoldrick’s festival at the Michael J. Quill Cultural Center is rocking all evening, Gavin’s, Furlongs, The Shamrock and the Blackthorne are throbbing through the night and the summer stretches ahead of you endless as Derek Jeter’s optimism.

Labor Day Weekend has more to do with the old Gaelic feast of Samhain. Already some of the leaves are turning and there’s a lovely chill in the air at nights but, even so, there’s also a chance for one last blast, one final kicking up of the heels before the responsibilities of the fall descend upon you.

East Durham reminds me of the old Ireland where all ages gathered together – not today’s fractured country where a pounding techno beat rattles the glasses in the younger lounges while kids wouldn’t be caught dead in the quieter pubs.

In East Durham it’s still a glorious mix. The seventy-year old gentleman thinks nothing of sweeping the beautiful college sophomore around the dance- floor. His legs may ache the next day, but what the hell, the night is forever young in the mountains especially when the Jameson’s is flowing.

And when I stroll into the Blackthorne bar on Friday evening, Pat Floody will be knocking sparks out of his accordion as if he were still playing in the El Dorado Showband back in Drogheda in the ‘50’s. The mountains do that to you – everyone relives their youth for one last fleeting summer weekend.

Pat’s always been a chap at heart and he cuts through the Catskills like Yeats’ Fiddler of Dooney making the merry dance like a wave of the sea. Check out his myspace page – it won’t be long ‘til he’s twittering.

There are definitely more fashionable – and more expensive – places to go but a piece of the old Ireland is alive and kicking in the Catskills. Come on up this weekend, we’ll be dancing and carousing long after Snooki has passed out down the Shore.

East Durham has got all the musical bases covered from Andy Cooney to Black 47, King Peter McKiernan to Prince Tommy Flynn. There are rooms to suit every pocket, camping sites galore and a spare spud in every pot for the unexpected guest.

It’s magic up in the mountains on Labor Day Weekend, it’s time you kicked up your heels again.

For Kevin Wherever You Are - 40 Shades of Blue

2010-08-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Kevin passed away last month. By the time Billy Roche, the playwright, wrote I’d already heard it twice over the Wexford-Manhattan bush telegraph. Still Billy had an important piece of news, a bleeding ulcer had finally knackered our old mate. It could have been worse.
Kevin was the inspiration for one of Black 47’s most popular songs – Forty Shades of Blue (For Kevin wherever you are). The sub-title captured him best, for with Kev you never knew.
In a certain way he summed up Ireland’s mass emigration of the 70’s and 80’s – remember, “Last one leaving, turn out the lights!” A generation took the ferry to England or the 747 to the US out of economic necessity or sheer boredom.
Kevin would have been just another Wexford cut-up if it hadn’t been for the ever-present twinkle in his eyes and his considerable grace under pressure. He was the “oldest” of a set of twins - the outgoing one and protector - while his brother was shyer and introverted.
In working-class Wexford where skinheads ruled you had to be tough and Kevin was, but he preferred to use his innate charm.
He came from a large, very respectable and loving family in an age when children did a lot of their own raising. At the Christian Brothers where 40 plus classes were not unusual, boys with little interest in book learning were routinely overlooked; small wonder that Kevin dropped out early on.
Before he was 20 he was well known around the pubs of Wexford for he was a killer darts player. Tall, gangly and handsome he cut quite a figure in the discos too where he threw shapes that left Rod and Jagger in the ha’penny place.
But Wexford was nowhere so one Saturday night the twins took the boat train to London. I had lost track of them by the time disaster struck – one night Kevin returned to their “squat” to find his brother’s body. The kid just couldn’t take the slurs anymore.
You could have knocked me down with a feather the night on St. Mark’s Place when I heard my name roared out in a Wexford accent. You guessed it - Kevin - in the company of a beautiful young wife, an American student he’d met in London.
Being married to Kev must have been akin to living in the teeth of a storm, every time our paths crossed he had a new job or was talking up a new scheme, but the old hurt from London was never far from the surface.
And then Kevin was single again, drinking and spiraling downwards. I’d hear of his dart-shark exploits – he’d play badly, entice some Irish wannabe into a game, “almost lose” three or four times while doubling the bet on each game. Led to a number of beatings, one of them bad.
But there were good times too, like the day on St. Mark’s I saw him striding westwards; when I inquired whereto, he breezily declared, “The Holland Tunnel, man, I’m hitching to San Diego.”
He had six bucks to his name; I spotted him a twenty. Three weeks later, a letter arrived with the twenty enclosed. Kev was on a roll – living the high life down by the Mexican border.
He came back skint and, one nasty winter after a cab struck him, he took to living in the Spring Street Subway station. My brother and I intervened - his sister sent the plane ticket.
I often wonder if we did the right thing. Returning broke to Wexford can’t have been easy after the buzz of New York, but chances are he wouldn’t have made it through that winter. Besides, by all accounts, he eventually pulled himself together back home.
Kevin may be an extreme case but he is emblematic of so many young Irish of the 70’s – bright and talented, spewed out undereducated with little option but to emigrate. Coming of age now, he’d likely be a director of marketing at some start-up, for when he set his mind to it the man could sell pints to Arthur Guinness.
As Roche the playwright wrote, “Kevin lived the life.” He sure did and now I’ll never have to wonder where he is.

Brooklyn and Enniscorthy

2010-08-10T19:45:00.000-07:00

One upon a time I was in a teenage band. The drummer, not fancying our prospects, got married and moved to his wife’s hometown fourteen miles up the Slaney River. A rather laconic type, when next I met him he growled uncharacteristically, “You think Wexford is bad, it’s got nothin’ on Enniscorthy.”
I wonder if he’s read Colm Toibín’s wonderful novel, Brooklyn. It opened the eyes of this Wexford man – opened the heart too for I’m haunted by its heroine.
This is hardly surprising since Toibín, like Australian Thomas Keneally, is that rarity: a male novelist who brings women to life on the page.
Though I’ve long admired his writing, I picked up Brooklyn because it’s situated in two very disparate areas I’m familiar with – the borough of the title and Colm’s hometown of Enniscorthy. Oddly enough, I have more affinity for the former though I grew up a figurative stone’s throw from the latter whose inhabitants we called “scalders.”
Back then Enniscorthy seemed never less than gloomy and claustrophobic, perhaps because it doesn’t gaze out onto the sea as Wexford does. I suppose I just didn’t understand the place.
I do now. For Toibín casts light into the dark corners of this small Irish town in the 1950’s, allowing us to experience both a womb-like familiarity along with the class-consciousness and innate nosiness that paralyze such places.
Colm’s genius is that he contrasts this brooding parochialism with the turmoil of immigrant Brooklyn where cultures collide indiscriminately and the recently arrived are forced to shed whole layers of identity in order to fit into a complex and self-assured new world.
And then there is Eilis Lacey, the book’s central character. I know her. Well, not specifically but she’s a dead ringer for the older sisters of a number of my childhood friends, though instead of returning from New York City, these ladies took the boat train from Paddington for their fortnight’s holidays home from London.
Nurses or secretaries with money to burn, they were glamorous in their Cricklewood fashions as they shattered hearts in Wexford pubs and hotel dancehalls. But after a couple of Babychams, you could almost touch the longing in them to be what they once were but could never be again.
You’re on Eilis’ side from the first page of Brooklyn and you’re still there at the bittersweet ending. For like the sisters of my friends, she is loyal, lovely, and brave and will ultimately do the right thing, even if it means hurting herself and others.
In some ways, this is a tale of two cities, for Enniscorthy is a metropolis when you’ve never been anywhere else - while in Brooklyn the best of times and the worst are always close to hand.
As you might imagine, there’s a love interest in both locations and they couldn’t be more different. Each is viewed unsparingly through the prism of class-consciousness. One promises a rise in stature, reassuring but ultimately suffocating; while the other is “beneath” Eilis, and yet in such a union she might one day reach beyond herself.
I wonder do we root for her because we feel she could “do better?” Or perhaps the book leads us to question some of the choices we ourselves have made?
In real life Eilis would probably be a grandmother now, either living in one of those McBungalows that bruise the stalwart Wexford countryside, or presiding over a large, fractious Italian-Irish family in Long Island.
During the final pages she must make her choice and your heart is in your mouth for her.
I’ll never look at Enniscorthy in quite the same way again. The town seems brighter to me now, the gloom is gone and with it the claustrophobia; even the Slaney jigs to a different beat as it rushes under the new bridge on its way to Wexford and the sea.
Or have I changed and am seeing the old town through different eyes. Who knows? Great books do that to you.

A New Ireland

2010-08-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

I was in Ireland for six days recently. It rained so hard I half expected Noah to come floating by on his ark. However, on the fourth day I awoke in the Talbot Hotel to gaze out across a sun-drenched Wexford Harbor that I thought existed only in memory.
A hotel room in your hometown - the emigrant’s comeuppance when parents have passed on and the house is gone.
Ah well, I have to admit that I’ve felt more at home on recent visits. The casual arrogance of the Celtic Tiger era is so over you begin to wonder was it just your imagination; until friends assure you that it was indeed real but generational – those who had experienced Ireland “in the rare old times” knew the score, while those who came of age in the last fifteen years were finally seeing the flip side of the coin.
There’s a rage sweeping the country, somewhat similar to what we feel towards Wall Street and our own political establishment but much more focused.
How many of us even know the names of the politicians who deregulated the US financial industry or the identities of the gamblers and bankers who almost brought the whole economic system crashing down around our ears?
But Ireland is a small country where no one is more than a couple of people removed from the “captains and the kings.” It also has a very vibrant, in-your-face press with a keen nose for scandal, and a coiled contempt for those who have “lost the run of themselves.”
It was open season on Sean Fitzpatrick, former chairman of the once highflying, but now nationalized, Anglo-Irish Bank, and rightly so. And yet you had to wonder at the ferocity of the hunt, for the world will always be well stocked with snake-oil salesmen.
It begs the question though: how did so many people suspend judgment on Fitzpatrick and his ilk? What happened to good old Irish common sense?
Many of us over here have loved and lost in various US stock market and property bubbles? But the sheer amount of borrowing and speculation in Ireland is staggering. Shacks were selling for over half a million Euros. Did they really believe that property and stock values would always appreciate?
My own memories of Ireland are of a people deathly afraid to go into any kind of debt. My father’s visit to a bank manager to negotiate a small overdraft was an unhappy day; while I could never bring myself to ask my grandfather to explain “bailiff,” such was the dread he invested in that muttered word.
Obviously, the psyche of the country changed radically over a couple of decades.
Still, even though Ireland’s immediate economic situation may be worse than ours, their citizens are better prepared to weather it. The most leveraged of the big banks have been nationalized, while all financial institutions are “encouraged” to show leniency when faced with unpaid mortgages and foreclosures.
Meanwhile those who have lost their jobs are cushioned by a substantial safety net; university education is free and health-care is guaranteed by the state.
For the most part, Irish rage is self-directed. Though there is much bluster against Fitzpatrick and the rest of “the boys,” you get the distinct impression that the nation is aware it turned away from native values and is now grudgingly prepared to pay the price.
Sure, you hear Sarah Palin equivalents on call-in radio shows but no one is misguided enough to vote for them. There’s bitterness in the air but it smacks of “never again,” rather than let’s hold hands and jump off a cliff together.
People are disgusted with politicians but rather than “throw out all de bums,” they’re fiercely determined not to elect anyone even worse.
You can feel a political realignment coming though it’s anyone’s guess what form it will take. One thing for certain, it will reflect old values rather than the beg-borrow-and-spend notions of the last fifteen years.

Mother and Child Reunion

2010-07-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve been writing a play about Dr. Noel Browne, the controversial Minister for Health who brought down the Irish government back in 1951.
A strange subject, you might say, and hardly relevant. Oddly enough, the era is redolent with familiar catch cries such as “socialized medicine,” “powerful health lobbies,” and “separation of church and state.”
Ireland, to some degree, has come to terms with these issues but it’s a rare day they don’t make the news in this country.
However, let’s skip such thorny issues and deal with a more mercurial subject – playwriting; and, in particular, how do you write a play?
It’s a question that arises frequently, for it’s a rare person who doesn’t think they’ve got at least one play in them. And they’re probably right.
“Sure isn’t it all about words?”
Actually it’s more about cutting words and retaining only as many as will allow the actors to tell the story. That story, however, better be universal and deal in some substantive manner with the complexities of the human condition.
One more small item - you’ve got to furnish your actors with distinct and meaningful characters that stay true to the subject matter and times of the play.
So some sixty years later how am I supposed to portray Noel Browne and his era? Well, there are many books on the subject, and contemporaries of the good doctor still living. Yet you can read and ingest information until the cows come home but in the end you must be able to state the “spine” of any play in one active sentence.
In this case, “Noel Browne brought down the Irish government because his family suffered from Tuberculosis.” In essence, he was haunted by their deaths and vowed to eradicate a blight on the nation long accepted by church and state.
There are other resources one can turn to. Images are always helpful in coming to terms with time and place. Black and white photos from 1951 can instantly place you back amongst characters in belted overcoats, felt hats, and Brylcreamed “short back and sides.” Clothes indeed make the man – not to mention the woman.
But family is your trump card when it comes to playwriting. My mother, like many women of the time, had a great affection and respect for Noel Browne despite the invective hurled at him by political, religious and medical establishments.
He was handsome, of course, despite his own battles with tuberculosis, and a courtly man with impeccable manners. But their loyalty to him ran much deeper – he cared about the women of Ireland and was outraged by their second-class status in society. But most importantly, he was determined to reduce the shockingly high infant mortality rate.
There was so little money in Ireland back then; some of my more senior immigrant readers will knowingly nod their heads when recalling just how hard it was for small farmers to eke out a subsistence living. How fathers held on to farms to the bitter end reducing older sons to poverty while younger brothers and their sisters were forced to emigrate.
Such was the case with my own father, working long hours for my grandfather, a cattle dealer – never sure just how much he’d be doled out at the end of the week.
Noel Browne must have seemed like a savior to my mother. His Mother and Child Scheme promised free maternity care for all mothers and free healthcare for all children up to the age of sixteen, regardless of income.
It was not to be – the church and medical profession resented Browne’s encroachment on their territory; they opposed the scheme, it was withdrawn and Noel Browne resigned.
The books I’ve read on the subject are valuable in providing the facts of the matter; but the pictures of the protagonists in their belted coats or ecclesiastical finery, combined with the memory of a woman whose life could have been made so much easier, sustain me every day I face a blank page.
You do have your own play within you and similar resources to bring it to life. Get started now. You have all sorts of memories lying dormant and colorful characters only awaiting the call to strut across your stage.

Nancy of the Smiling Eyes

2010-07-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

I am always amazed at the lack of commitment of liberals, left-wingers, commies or whatever you call them nowadays.
You know the scene: a group of people are discussing current affairs when into their midst barges Paddy MacGasbag gorged to the eyebrows on the half-truths, innuendoes and general balderdash spouted on confrontational talk-radio and television.
Whereupon, this apostle of Know-Nothingness proclaims, “Government sucks and the liar in the White House is wasting my taxes on bailouts. Guy ain’t even born in this country!”
Instead of lacerating this Limbaugh wannabe with a litany on the lines of, “Pardon me, Pádraig, but much the same was said about Alexander Hamilton. However government will eventually keep your sorry butt off the street with a guaranteed social security check, and I don’t give a fiddler’s if the President hails from Ballydehob, the dude just soaked 20 billion out of BP and guaranteed every child in this country proper health care.”
Alas, rarely is such a riposte offered – usually an embarrassed silence descends as sundry liberals, left-wingers or plain old commies shuffle off with their tails between their legs.
Nancy Benedict-Murphy would have stood her ground. She’d have been a good deal more polite and factual, but Mister MacGasbag would think twice before ever again making such a grand entrance.
Then again Nancy never backed off from any challenge be it the crippling effects of Parkinson’s Disease, or her ongoing fight for the rights of the poor and disadvantaged.
She passed away last month but this community activist and union organizer will long be remembered the length and breadth of Connecticut and further afield too.
I have particular reason to be grateful to Nancy. Back in the glory days of the Bush imperium when the country allowed itself to be steamrolled into the Iraq War, Nancy would roll her wheelchair up to the stage at various Black 47 concerts.
We had written some songs – mostly from the troops’ point of view - about the waste of lives and energy caused by this unnecessary foreign adventure. The barstool patriots were outraged and not shy about venting their feelings. Liberals, left-wingers and commies, for the most part, chose the high ground and waited for better weather.
Not Nancy of the smiling eyes. Wherever the battle was, you could be sure she was in the thick of it. Though the Parkinson’s may have taken its toll, it never dimmed those eyes and their commitment to support the causes dear to her heart.
To my regret I knew little about the others aspects of her life – her intense love of nature and her delight in her gardens in the Connecticut countryside – but I could tell from those eyes that she had a wicked sense of humor and an inner peace despite the physical hardships visited upon her.
There are two powerful strands in the American character – the rugged individualist and the lover of community. The country suffers when these are out of whack, usually the case whenever the patriot game is shamelessly manipulated by politicians, or when greed is glorified as the be all and end all.
Nancy was a person truly in balance. She believed implicitly in the rights of the individual but, like James Connolly and Bobby Kennedy, she also felt that democracy was more than just about having a vote – it implies the right to economic and social justice, and above all that everyone is entitled to decent and affordable health care.
Many feel likewise but not everyone takes the time and trouble to ensure that the less fortunate get a hand up the first rungs of the ladder of opportunity. That was Nancy’s mission and she went about it with such dignity.
And how she inspired those around her – particularly the many idealistic young women who seek to make our society a more equal and compassionate place. They will be her ongoing testament as they introduce the Paddy MacGasbags of the world to logic – and manners.
As for me, I’ll always have the memory of that woman in the wheelchair edging up to the front of the stage back in those unsettling days when it was considered unpatriotic to raise your voice about the misdirection of the country.
But most of all, I’ll remember Nancy’s eyes and the sheer joy they gave to all those lucky enough to have known her.

At last an apology

2010-07-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

They finally apologized. You had to wonder why it took so bloody long? After all the years of stonewalling the young prime minister stood up and, with grace and humility, admitted the obvious - that the murdered in Derry on Bloody Sunday had been guilty of nothing more than exercising their basic right to protest a shameful sectarian government.
“When England remembers and Ireland forgets,” my grandfather used to murmur, “that’s when the problems up North will be settled.”
Cameron’s statement was a momentous event, though in many ways bittersweet, for the grainy images of the murdered summoned up not only that horrible day in 1972 but the tumultuous years that followed.
Oddly enough, a line from Scripture came to mind, “If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” I had first noticed it on a cassette tape of sermons by Rev. Ian Paisley – and had pirated the preacher’s voice for an instrumental coda to Black 47’s Fanatic Heart.
How strange to think that this bigot has been a backdrop to so much of my life. And yet he is now a conciliatory force; indeed, many are nostalgic for the days when he and Martin McGuinness, a one-time leader of the Provisional IRA, jointly led a power sharing government.
Who would have even imagined such a coupling on January 30, 1972? But things do change, if glacially. Yeats, as ever, nailed it: “peace comes dropping slow.”
The British had so many opportunities to initiate a just settlement in the North of Ireland. What held their hand?
Was it that empire must never be proved wrong? Having changed the ground rules in 1921 and set up an artificial statelet, did they feel they would lose face by admitting that they had sacrificed a half million nationalists to the jack-booted mercies of their unionist masters?
Those innocent people back in Derry were protesting a cesspool of gerrymandered sectarianism - easy enough to forget now. When the smoke cleared that day the non-violent Northern Ireland civil rights movement had been swept aside. Terrible things would be done in the next sixteen years. Thousands died or were maimed.
It need not have happened had Prime Minister Ted Heath the moral courage to state the obvious. But better late than never and this apology may provide mortar to bind the bricks of the new foundation laid at the signing of the Peace Settlement of 1998.
Many Irish-American activists have backed off since then. Some were fatigued, others confident that those on the ground in the North finally had a democratic framework to work within. I was never less than amazed at their commitment down all those violent years.
They were often laughed at and despised by media and establishment but what matter – they had seen the grainy images from 1972 and resolved that a better Ireland could be created where freedom and justice went hand in hand.
They had few victories and many defeats - the death of Bobby Sands MP and the deportation of Joe Doherty spring to mind – but there was little despair, just a stubborn resolve to keep eyes on the prize.
It was often sad to see old comrades turn on each other after the Peace Settlement – of course it’s always easier be unified on what you’re against than what you’re for. Movements – and, indeed, life itself – tend to balance on an uneasy fulcrum of pragmatism and idealism. Perhaps this apology will help heal some wounds and enable old comrades to explore friendship again.
One way or the other, on June 15, 2010, Britain finally remembered. Given time Ireland will forget and that new foundation will strengthen and hold.

January 2001 - Plastic People

2010-06-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Milan Hlavsa died last week. Milan who? You might ask. Well, he was from
Czechoslovakia - and no he wasn't related to Gerty. He was bass player and writer for the band
Pulnoc and the founder member of the the legendary Plastic People of the Universe. It might sound
a corny name now - redolent of the 60's. But make no mistake about it, Milan was the ultimate rock & roll
rebel. He even went to jail for his right to make music! For his troubles, he lost his right to make a living
and was under constant pressure from the Stalinist Czech authorities. Now line up your idea of the
rockin' rebel, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison, Joe Strummer, Ronan Keating?......Forget about it!

I had heard of the Plastic People in the 80's. There was a strong contingent of Czechs and Poles in
the East Village but I never imagined I would ever get to play with them. But fate has strange ways
about her. Hammy, Fred and I had played the downtown scene with the poet,
Copernicus, since God knows when. We were amongst a loose association of musicians who would
get up on stage and perform free form music behind his various rants. Sometimes, when we hit our stride and
the substance mix was kind, such music could be majestic, on other occasions it was ragged to the
extreme.

Nonetheless, it came to pass that Copernicus organized a tour of the
Germanys, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania and other parts of the USSR which ended up in
Moscow on July 4th , 1989. He contacted various dissident groups in these countries and somehow or other got
visas, etc together.

Fred didn't make the trip but Hammy, Dave Conrad, Mike Fazio (two other
Black 47 alumni) and I set out with the Poet. As you might imagine, the adventures were mighty but
eventually we hit the sacred soil of Czechoslovakia and got promptly lost. It was the middle of the
night, out in the wilds of the country, pitch black (the comrades didn't believe in lighting the roads), no
legible signs and we're thirsty as all hell and looking for Prague when, lo and behold, we came upon
what looked like a 17th century inn. Aha, where there's inns, there's liquor! The scene inside was like something
out of the Van Gogh painting of the Potato Eaters. An old crone dominating a wooden table laden
down with black beer bottles surrounded by some simian-like rubes. No notice was taken of us until I produced
that universal passport to earthly paradise, the great American ten-spot. This had a magical effect.
The crone was instantly in my arms offering herself and all the customers but we settled for some cases
of beer and the reassurance that, yes, we were on the right road to Praha (Prague).

When we finally made the wondrous city of Prague around dawn we were
informed that the location of our gig had been changed from a boys club to the Ice Hockey Stadium
and that we would be the headliners with the newly formed Pulnoc (containing the remains of the
Plastics). The promoters also casually observed that this would be the first unofficial concert, that
we would be challenging the Stalinist Government and that all the freaks in Czechoslovakia would be
there to support us.

Whatever! We were well used to the bullshit of promoters. But this was
our first time dealing with the obduracy, commitment and sheer dogged spirituality of the Czech
dissident movement. The next day we arrived at the equivalent of Madison Square Garden in the
middle of downtown Prague and realised that these guys weren't kidding. 13,000 people were gathered inside
and as many surrounded the stadium. But, ominously, the top tiers were occupied by the Czech Militia with
guns drawn and pointed at the stage. I naively inquired of Ivo Pospisil (one of the organizers)
whether we might be in any danger - to which he replied with that Central European swagger and
broken English - "no probalem, bastards vill not kill us all!" With that stolid reassurance, we played before the best
audience of my life - so appreciative, so altogether, so happy that their American brothers were there
to support them. The Gods smiled on us (the substances too) and we played a blinder. Follow that, I
thought as we left the stage.

Then I watched Pulnoc and my jaw dropped. The music was dense,
dissonant, melodic, strident, totally unselfconscious and oddly romantic. It was like The Velvet
Underground meets Schonberg on acid. I didn't understand a word of it but I knew everything they were saying.
It was the soul of Czechoslovakia being hammered off the anvil of pure unfettered rock & roll. And
yet it had none of the ridiculous characteristics that rock music has come to personify. No preening, no
attitude, just pure idealized music uncontaminated by any false excess; and yet, it was as excessive,
in itself, as a volcano. I had to get on stage with these guys. I couldn't let this moment pass me by. So,
with a pint of Armenian Brandy in me, (at least that's what they said it was) I took over one of the mikes
and added my own howling harmonies. I was sure they would throw me off but instead they just smiled
and welcomed me. It may have been the only time I saw any of them smiling.

I couldn't get enough of these guys and after the show we got in serious
conversation. I was also fascinated by their accents. There was something so familiar about them.
And then it hit me - they all sounded like Lou Reed. In fact, they had all learned their English from
Velvet Underground records, so there was a lot of valkin' on the vild side vith sveet Jane. I told them

I was a big fan of the playwright Vaclav Havel and they offered to take me to his apartment. Just
like that? But Tony (the lead singer) was a theatre designer and said it would be no problem. So, off we
went. Milan, Tony, their wives or girlfriends and yours truly. Everyone knew them. It was their town.
Still, occasionally, we would be stopped by the militia and our papers demanded. This was a constant
irritant to them. But to me it was no different than the streets of the North.

Being a thirsty lot, they suggested we stop in a bar. Now this place was like something out of Dracula movie.
It must have been there for four or five hundred years. It was amazing. At any moment, you expected Mario Lanza
to come trotting out and sing The Student Prince.

We were having a great old time. Czech beer is magnificent. But after
about an hour a hush came over the crowd, a television set was turned on and I'm expecting to see
some dark Czech masterpiece. But to my horror, it's a special broadcast from MTV Out pops Michael Jackson,
Duran Duran and whatever else drivel that was popular in 1989. There was a glow in the eyes of the
watchers. I looked nervously at Milan and Tony. Were these two great musicians actually being
taken in by this shite? To this day I don't know. Perhaps, MTV was banned (for once, the comrades might
have got something right) and this was Pulnoc's dazed and silent protest.

I often think of that night. We never got to see Havel. We lingered too long in that wonderful pub
talking about life and music that was far divorced from reality as I then knew it (oh by the way, they did turn
off the tv after an hour or so). The Berlin Wall came down some months later
and Czechoslovakia and all the other soviet satellites have been transformed into modern western
democracies. And what of Milan, Tony, Pulnoc and the Plastics? I don't know. Pulnoc got a deal
with Arista Records and were dropped almost instantly - I guess, they weren't radio friendly. Look for their
magnificent cd, City of Hysteria. I'm sure you can get Plastic People's songs to download.

I often wonder about Milan and Tony. They weren't essentially political
people but they personified the soul of Czechoslovakia in a way that I've never seen another group of
musicians do. They refused to give up their right to play music the way they heard it and thus
confronted the power of Stalinist Communism and its banality of evil. How then did they face up to the terrible
deluge of advertising, fast buck entrepreneurs, MTV and the awful evil of banality that permeates
our modern western life? Hopefully, Milan didn't die disillusioned and kept on fighting to the end. And if
you ever read this, Tony, I'm still trying to keep that promise I made to you. Milan Hlavsa died last
week - a true rock & roll rebel.

Larry Kirwan

This is a short extract from Vaclav Havel's lengthy and incisive observations on the Plastics written in 1984:

"I have often wondered about the remarkable "trick" the Plastics used to achieve their unsettling magic.
It can't be explained simply by their unusual combination of instruments (that unnerving buzz of viola and violin
is typical of their music). Nor is it merely the god-given originality of Milan Hlavsa's musical talent. Nor the
long years of working together that created and shaped the group's style, as a whole that is greater than the sum
of the musical parts brought by each member.....they are unique, and faithful to themselves, and if their music
speaks to young people today more than ever, it's because they've refused to make concessions to taste, because they
have remained themselves, still expressing, after all those years, feelings and experiences which are now felt and
expressed generally."

Big Government vs Big Business

2010-06-23T04:49:00.000-07:00

So you’re sick of big government and want to throw out all “dah bums?” Well just be careful you don’t turf the baby out with the bathwater.
There are megalomaniacs galore sniffing the wind and only dying to run against Washington. Question is, what’s their plan when they and their lobbyists get elected, and will it be good for you – or the country?
Shock tactics to reduce the deficit could send the economy hurtling into a depression. The time for such measures was in the mid years of the Bush administration when property and stock values were booming. Of course, few of the current guardians of fiscal probity gave much thought to deficits when rushing to an unnecessary war in Iraq or squandering the Clinton surplus.
“Big” government did not get us into the current financial crisis nor cause the Gulf oil spill. Loosening of regulation, at the behest of “big” business, did – which begs the question: which of these “bigs” do you trust more?
Ever hear about the Irish Famine of 1781-83? Probably not – since the British Government of the time banned the export of surplus crops from Ireland thereby ameliorating the suffering.
In a somewhat similar situation in 1845, however, mercantile forces argued that another such ban would damage the British economy.
A pity about that, because active government intervention could have prevented a million or more Irish dying during the great Potato Famine even as bounteous harvests of wheat and corn were exported.
Now there’s no denying that government regulations can impede commerce –but what’s the alternative? In 1933, during the height of the Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act was passed to save the country from the speculative excesses of the banks.
Over sixty years later, President Clinton, to his much later chagrin, took the advice of Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and other Wall Streeters, and allowed vital parts of that bill to be scrapped – leading to the recent financial crisis.
Mr. Rubin and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Fed were convinced that the markets would regulate themselves - that the financial masters of the universe would walk away from excess profit rather than risk destroying the whole economic system.
That sentiment and $2.25 will get either of those gentlemen on the subway should their corporate limos ever break down.
Most anti-Washington phobia stems from a fear that government is unresponsive and inefficient. But big government is akin to Mother Teresa when compared to big business where profit is the only bottom-line.
The truth is we need both biggies - one to make the bucks, the other to ensure that the rest of us don’t get trampled in the stampede. For when the tough get going, the going most certaintly gets tough.
Government has been forced to bail out many the tough guy of late, with notable success. Most of the big casino culture banks are making money hand over fist again, not to mention that the Treasury has been repaid – with interest.
I’m no apologist for the American motor industry but the government bailout did prevent the collapse of Michigan and neighboring states. 18 months later Ford, GM and Chrysler have either repaid their loans or are close to doing so, all at a decent profit to the Treasury.
The one remaining black eye is the still unregulated insurance giant, AIG, to whom President Bush was forced to fork out over a hundred billion. But given time and a rejuvenated economy even this gigantic slot merchant may refund the house.
We’re coming through a huge crisis, most of it caused by unregulated greed. It’s galling that we were forced to bail out any of these business behemoths, but with stock markets plunging and employment lines lengthening, what was the alternative? Government was the last bulwark and it did its job when business failed us.
Perhaps some stimulus money was spent unwisely, although thousands of teachers, cops, and other civil servants whose jobs were saved would disagree.
The boom times will not return soon, perhaps just as well, for in our roller-coaster economy boom is invariably followed by bust.
So turn off your televisions - there are no simple solutions, particularly from blustery sound-biting commentators whose real job is to fill the spaces between ads for BP and Viagra. And when the new megalomaniacs come soliciting your vote, ask them what they’re for – not what their lobbyists are against.

Bloomsday

2010-06-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

“I got laid on James Joyce’s grave
I was hoping his genius would rub off on me
But all I got was a kick in the head
From the caretaker who discovered me
The Swiss lady jumped up in alarm
Put her clothes on instantly
I got laid on James Joyce’s grave
I’ve never been the same, Lord have mercy on me…”
Oh well, each of us comes to Joyce in their own peculiar way. I can’t even remember my own introduction. The Christian Brothers wouldn’t stray within an ass’s roar of him though they often quoted Yeats and other Anglo-Irish literati.
And yet, Sunny Jim is the true Irish writer. Yeats may light our way with his blinding insights; Joyce merrily heaves us into a Saragossa Sea of fetid uproarious humanity, forcing us to confront not only who we are but who we might wish to be.
And so every June 16th we celebrate Bloomsday – because on this date in 1904 James Joyce met Norah Barnacle, the woman who “made a man of him.”
Joyce was a debonair penniless student, Norah a Galway girl, sure of herself and her sexuality. Soon after they eloped to Europe to live a peripatetic life brimful of poverty, debt, illness, tragedy, love, obsession, innovation, brilliance and eventual international recognition. In so doing, they changed the very way we think of ourselves.
Make no mistake, without Norah there would have been no Molly Bloom, and without Molly’s earthy lucidity Ulysses might be just another dazzling academic exercise.
Molly Bloom is way too much woman for most men and yet, ladies, before you go wasting your life on some pompous, insensate male, let him first read you aloud her final Ulysses soliloquy. If he gets through a couple of pages without fainting you may have a keeper; more than likely, though, he’ll hightail it to the pub, where you may expect to find him in the wintry days that afflict every marriage.
Joyce himself was hardly the easiest to live with. Sensitive and brittle, there was still the cut of a Roy Keane about him. Despite every conceivable hardship he never lost faith in his own genius.
He was a fine tenor; indeed Norah often lamented that he didn’t pursue the concert stage rather than bury himself in “them auld books.” What a break that he ignored her.
Yet he studied Norah’s every move, probed her innermost thoughts and desires, and in Molly Bloom delivered a portrait of a woman, unnerving as it is insightful.
Joyce’s character was probably shaped by the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell - a great man torn apart by lesser mortals. In that cataclysmic event the sensitive and highly intelligent boy experienced first hand a perfect national storm of jealousy, xenophobia, sexual repression, and meanness as much a part of the Irish national psyche as our legendary generosity. Joyce battled these traits for the rest of his life; his triumphs and failures are easily measured in his books.
Perhaps his greatest gift was to teach us that if words sound right, then they probably are; with that he shook off the dust of Victorian intellectualism allowing the English language to breathe again and give voice to modern consciousness.
Everyone should read him for he’s at once chatty and profound, spiritual yet steeped in life’s larval minutiae. But for God’s sake, don’t try reading Ulysses cover to cover, just dive in - you’ll soon find your own level.
Publicly, I always read the Gerty McDowell’s section on Sandymount Strand.
Maybe someday I’ll aspire to Molly herself, but why bother when Aedín Moloney will bring her startlingly to life outside Ulysses on Stone Street today. She may be the best Molly I’ve ever heard.
Pete Hamill’s rendering of The Dead is another seasonal delight. Joyce wrote this meditation on marriage when he was scarcely twenty-five. With the passing of time and old friends, Pete’s interpretation deepens and grows ever more thoughtful. That’s the genius of Joyce; yearly, we discover new layers of humanity in the writing and ourselves.
And as midnight approaches and Molly’s earthy shadow slips away, I’ll hum these lines on the passing of another Bloomsday.
“Don’t go, Molly, don’t go darlin’ we can make it if we try
Don’t disappear back into him, don’t say goodbye…”

Memorial Weekend in E. Durham

2010-06-10T05:45:00.000-07:00

The little falls are a quarter of a mile from the Blackthorn, almost within hearing range of the outlying camping sites. Yet few visit this secluded spot where the gurgling river splashes down into a pool before streaming on towards the main road.
I’ve been walking for more than an hour on a muggy Memorial Saturday afternoon - killing time until Black 47 plays at the East Durham Irish Festival.
I bathe my feet in the frigid water and study the sunbeams sparkling through the dancing, foaming waves. It’s been a long time since I’ve gazed at anything – who has time for it anymore? Life is always a bustle; if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
My grandfather seemed to be always staring, either lost in thought or actively pondering the shape and size of some church or statue; then again he was monumental sculptor, as he called himself, or a headstone maker as others more prosaically described him.
But there’s something that won’t let me be. I’ve been trying to ignore it now for over an hour but it sits like a turnip in my breast pocket, far more nagging and compulsive than any addiction - my bloody blackberry!
Why did I bring it with me at all? It’s a hot holiday Saturday – who in their right mind would be calling or emailing me? And even if they were, how important could it be?
There was a time I used to exult in being ensconced in the silence of the Catskills. From Friday afternoon to Monday night, no one could track me down.
I spent one of my first summers in America at the Leeds Irish Center - lost to the outside world. The O’Sheas from Kerry presided over this isolated domain. Not a man to take guff from anyone, old Gerry - a former pugilist - had once stretched an off-duty state trooper who was throwing his weight around.
The O’Sheas loved the mountains as did so many immigrant Irish who spent their vacations up there. Although the countryside was wilder and more wooded, I think it was the unhurried pace of life that reminded them of the rural Ireland that they would never return to.
Those hardy people had no blackberries or iPhones but they had deep plangent memories that they could summon for those who took the time to listen. They didn’t have to be instantly abreast of the latest news or rumor, they didn’t blog, they didn’t tweet; instead they listened attentively then carefully sifted the chaff from the wheat. They valued substance and didn’t double-task; when you talked to them you had their undivided attention.
Can we say the same for ourselves – forever checking texts, emails and phone messages, and to what end? Does 99% of it matter a tinker’s curse in the long run? Many of us boast thousands of friends but they only add to the loneliness when you’ve need of an arm around your shoulders?
And our children, will they ever stare at anything beyond a television screen, a computer or a cell phone? Will they ever predict the weather as our parents did by looking at the evening sky or sniffing the morning wind?
Will they ever take the time to gaze at the sunlight streaking across the frigid water of a Catskill pond? Will they store the memory of such a moment without the aid of a digital camera or cell phone?
Does it make any difference? They will inherit their world regardless.
And yet, I think it does matter because my grandfather once told me that, as a boy, he saw Charles Stewart Parnell being heckled in Carlow town during the bitter by-election of 1891. And I can summon the memory of the frock-coated, “uncrowned king” as if I’d been there, because I saw his image reflected in an old man’s eyes and felt his hurt and pain as he strove to comprehend how Parnell could sacrifice Home Rule for the love of a married woman.
Then the turnip in my breast pocket intrudes with a cheery digital tune and I’m summoned back to my blackberry present by some infinitesimal problem that I need never have been troubled with; and when I look back at the dancing waves the sunlight doesn’t sparkle as brightly anymore.
But it hardly matters for I had taken the time to gaze and that moment of magic next to a Catskill pond will remain with me forever.

When You're Strange

2010-06-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Did anyone watch When You’re Strange, the recent documentary about The Doors, on PBS?
An odd question, you might think, especially from someone who rarely watches television, particularly anything to do with rock music.
I’m not even sure why I took the time except that the pre-publicity promised the show would consist mostly of previously unseen footage of the band.
As it turned out every musician I canvassed had tuned in, and all - from pub performer to superstar - agreed it was riveting.
What the creators of When You’re Strange managed to do was place the audience in the midst of the band - both onstage and off - thereby allowing the non-musician to experience the hyper-charged blood, sweat, laughs, tears, drama and boredom of a great band during its rise and eventual demise.
And what a great band The Doors were. One has become used to - and even fatigued with - the polished intensity of the various FM staples such as Light My Fire, Love Her Madly, and LA Woman. But to hear these songs, along with the chilling Riders of the Storm and The End, live and under challenging stage and technical conditions, was a revelation.
And the players! Robbie Krieger will never be ranked with Hendrix, Clapton or Rory but his style takes one’s breath away – a dizzying original melange of finger-picking blues, flamenco, power chords and electric slide.
Drummer John Densmore's jazz influences are more obvious live and yet with all his fluidity he anchored the band much as Keith Moon did The Who.
I’ve had some dealings with Ray Manzarek and found him to be gracious and kind, but what a keyboard player, always willing to stretch and, more importantly, take chances without apparent fear of falling on his face.
But then that’s what the Doors were all about – living on a tightrope like some tipsy ballerina, forever graceful but mere millimeters away from disaster. Not a bass player in sight, none missed either. Jim Morrison's voice filled that aural space with a naked intensity that’s only been hinted at since.
It’s hard to watch rock musicians nowadays without a sense that we’ve seen it all before – even Jagger seems a parody of himself. And then you marvel at this unedited footage of the young Morrison prowling the stage, oftentimes wearing around cops and security, the eyes of his band-mates tracking him, unsure of his next move, charismatic, dangerous and unaware of the chaos he leaves in his wake.
However the documentary also shows the flip side of this life - the drudgery and fatigue of traveling, the sense that little is within your control, and in Morrison's case, the sheer fright when it dawns on him that he may spend years in a Southern jail as a showcase example of Nixon’s new law and order America.
Were drugs and drink involved in the Doors story? Of course, and in accelerated abandon - in fact you get to see Morrison’s handsomeness wilt before your eyes. Raging alcoholism is never pretty.
And yet you can tell that creativity was the be-all and end-all for these four musicians. In fact, Morrison’s alcoholism may have stemmed from the feeling that his poetry was being overlooked in the tidal wave of vacuous celebrity that surrounded him.
But not by Francis Ford Coppola. Was there any other song but The End that could have summed up the American Vietnam experience in Apocalypse Now?
Norman Mailer spent a thousand pages seeking union with the criminal mind of Gary Gilmore in Executioner’s Song. He would have been better employed listening to The Doors. In seven spine-tingling minutes the band had already mined that vein, so much so that it’s a rare person who will not glance uneasily over their shoulder while listening alone to Riders of the Storm.
Despite all the optimism and dynamism in our country, there’s a darkness at the heart of America; Jim Morrison mainlined directly into its main artery. It’s hard to imagine him growing old gracefully, even growing old at all. He was a man of his time – a particular moment when authoritarianism was on the verge of collapse even as creativity peaked.
The genius of When You’re Strange is that it not only exposes us to the raw nerve of human imagination, it allows us an unruly and thoroughly unedited glimpse of what might have been.

Yoga and the common man - or woman!

2010-06-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried yoga?
“Dear God in heaven,” says your man up in Pearl River. “What’s he on about now? The clergy are not going to stand for this!”
Not to worry. I’m well in with the nuns. One informed me recently that the whole convent thinks I’m “right gas.”
If that’s not enough, I’m a nephew of a Columban father who spent most of his life in the “Far East.” Did I ever tell you about the speech he gave at my sister’s wedding?
Back then the priest’s oration usually lasted a good 10 minutes - and you with the tongue hanging out for want of a drink.
Well, Father Jim slowly rose to his feet, raised his glass (he was more than partial to a drop of the other). Silence descended on the Talbot Hotel as, at a glacial speed, he addressed the bride and groom. “You will meet many mountains in life. Don’t climb all of them, walk around a few.”
With that, he took a big slug out of his Jameson’s, slid back down into his chair and blew a series of intricate smoke rings across the table
“Best bloody sermon I ever heard.” My atheist father punctured the pregnant silence.
But I digress. Very gingerly now, bend over and see if you can touch your toes. If you can’t, yoga’s your man.
I got turned on to it by my ex-partner in crime, Pierce Turner, still a hard-core devotee. Back in the Turner & Kirwan of Wexford days, at the height of our 20 minute dizzying deconstruction of The Foggy Dew, Pierce would jam a piece of cardboard into the keys of his Moog Synthesizer thereby looping a thunderous, electronic caterwauling; he would then kick off his biker boots, and do a headstand against the stage wall, the occasional toe protruding through a holey sock. I’m tellin’ you, boy, those were the days when rockers feared neither critics nor gravity!
I’m a much more hit and miss yoga practitioner myself: two or three times a week and for no more than 30 minutes a shot. Nor am I a big one for chanting OM or staring at the cracks in the wall, although a minute or two of banishing various misfortunes through meditation is not to be sneered at.
Basically yoga is all about having a good stretch – much in the way a dog or cat does after a nap. And you don’t see too many overweight, undersexed, neurotic dogs or cats making the rounds, do you?
I’ve a friend who swears that if everyone did the exercise known as the Sun Salutation, we could cut national health costs by 10%. He has a point. I’ve never known a regular sun saluter to have any kind of back problem.
Toss in the Shoulder Stand; for some reason this asana activates the thyroid gland which seems to lessen the craving for food – kind of like being on a diet without dieting.
Having any trouble in the sex department?
“Oh now, there he goes,” nods Pearl River. “My mother reads this paper and she doesn’t want to be confronted with this class of nonsense.”
Are you kidding me? As soon as you’ve snuck off to Flemings for a pint she’ll be locked into the Cobra Pose like there was no tomorrow. Have a go yourself, won’t cost you a penny and you can dose the greyhound with your unused Viagra.
All joking aside, yoga – like everything else – provides different strokes for different folks; and it’s never too late to start. My only warning is hasten slowly – you’ve got the rest of your life, and overdoing it or competing with anyone else – or yourself – can lead to strained muscles and aching joints.
You don’t like attending classes? Not my cup of tea either, but I usually enjoy them when I’m there.
Not to worry - there are hundreds of books on the subject – my favorite is the most basic: Richard Hittleman’s Yoga – 28 Day Exercise Plan. Take four months rather than four weeks and it will restore pep to your step. Or ask a friend to show you the ropes: you’ll be surprised at how many can twist their ankles around the backs of their necks - they just don’t let on.
And while you’re at it, say a prayer for Fr. Jim, and watch out for those mountains. They’re as steep as ever, so make sure you walk around a couple.

Jeffrey Ladd

2010-05-31T15:49:00.001-07:00

Jeffrey Ladd passed away some days ago. He was a member of Black 47 back in the chaotic first year of the band. Officially, I suppose he sang back up vocals but oftentimes he would double my voice. I met him in 1979 through our drummer, Thomas Hamlin and our associate member, guitarist Mike Fazio. He was part of the Queens connection when the Major Thinkers were blasting through the CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City scene.

He became “roadie” for the Copernicus “orchestra” and I have a memory of him at a performance in the old Tier 3 in Tribeca getting his foot broken during a particularly fractious and rowdy gig. That was Jeffrey, always in the thick of things, ensuring that there be at least some infinitesimal control on the chaos. He later became a vocalist/keyboardist with Copernicus.

I have another memory of him with Black 47 in Sunnyside when a fight broke out in a very narrow and hostile bar. We had just finished a set, so I moved backwards to avoid the fray. Not Jeffrey – he stood before the equipment, impressively making sure the fisticuffs did not spill over to the stage. It was only later I found out that he was an ice-hockey goalkeeper.

He was lead vocalist in a number of bands including The Baby Flies and Life With The Lions. A fine singer in the Ian Curtis/Peter Murphy mould, he was one of those creative, sensitive people for whom the brutality of the business end of rock music often proves too much. They enter it with a sense of idealism that often turns to disillusion. Jeff Ladd, though, never lost his sense of humor.

A beautiful person – never less than kind and caring – he was particularly loved by women as he always took the time to listen and identify with individual pain. He certainly knew enough about the subject. He’d had some hard times of late but had pulled his world together; then life played its cruelest joke.

He was a comrade and a friend, someone you could always turn to. He will be deeply missed by the Black 47 family and by the many who loved him for himself and his undoubted talent.

Culchie Memories

2010-05-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Did you ever go to the County Clare when you were nearly twenty-one

With a crowd of swingin’ culchies in the back of a Volkswagen van

Quarts of lukewarm cider seepin’ out the door

And your flutered face flattened against the mucky German floor

And did you score a peroxide brasser all the way down from Dublin

And get your arse thrown out of the sweetest pub in Doolin

And did you take that gurrier princess to the edge of the Cliffs of Moher

And argue with her over nothin’ then try to talk things over

While you added copiously to the roarin’ black Atlantic

In a manner that was quite distinctly far from bein’ Christ-like

And did you kiss that vestal virgin from sweet Ballymun

‘Til her lips were bruised and she cried out, “oh, sweet divine Jesus, do it again”

Oh Clare, oh Clare, oh sweet Lisdoonvarna

Is this just another yarn or a

Memory set in aspic of the deepest blue

Or something that a culchie prince was always preordained to do?

Drill, Baby, Drill!!

2010-05-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

“Why do the weak men have all the poetry?” One of Thomas Keneally’s characters inquired during his play, Transport, at the Irish Arts Center recently.
William Butler Yeats might answer, “(because) the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Both writers could be referring to the fact that in modern politics sloganeering has replaced honest and substantive discussion.
Slogans are hardly new; it’s a rare social, religious or political movement that hasn’t employed a humdinger to rally the troops. But what might have merely echoed across a barricade in times past can now virally infect the culture within moments.
My first memory of an election turned on its ear by a catchphrase was “Where’s The Beef?” back in 1984 when Walter Mondale destroyed Gary Hart by posing this inanity. It mattered little that Hart had many good ideas and would have proved a better candidate against Ronald Reagan.
Come to think of it that’s when “No New Taxes” hit the jackpot. Mondale stated that if elected he’d be forced to raise taxes in order to balance the budget.
Honesty, as every modern politician knows, does not pay. Mondale was trounced that November while Reagan stuck by his slogan and continued to amass huge deficits.
And now we have a new catch-cry: “No More Bailouts.”
Of course, there will be bailouts – what are you going to do should credit freeze again and the economic system starts tumbling into the Hudson? The only question is – who’ll pay for the bloody things?
Instead of shaving profits from the major banks and creating a reserve of 50 billion dollars as proposed, our legislators chose to delete that safety net from the Financial-Regulation Bill. After all, who wants their opponent yelling, “you’re in favor of bailouts” come November’s election?
It’s not so much that we disagree on how the country should be run, it’s that we can’t sit down and hammer out a consensus. Take the presidency of George W. Bush.
Elected on a platform of compassionate conservatism, he inherited a solid surplus that would have continued to increase as things stood.
However, in his generosity, he gave each of us a tax rebate thereby effectively torpedoing the surplus. His goal, of course, was to “starve government,” but I don’t remember any kind of substantive debate on the matter, and given the current fiscal debacle, this was an appallingly shortsighted decision.
Sloganeering is eating away at our democracy. One might as well watch The Simpsons as a political debate – at least Homer occasionally voices some homespun wisdom. Meanwhile, most politician spout a series of clichés prepared by their handlers, designed only to prevent the loss of votes.
Take the issue of the role of government in a democratic society. Are you kidding me? What government? Everyone is running against Washington – even the Nationals’ shortstop. Yet we all look to the Feds in a crisis – it’s just that we refuse to define what we wish government to do and – more importantly - how to pay for it.
Why? Well, participatory democracy is often painful and difficult – far easier mouth a few slogans and blame someone else.
At least, “Drill, Baby, Drill” is out the window for the foreseeable future in light of the BP disaster down in Louisiana; but isn’t it really time we had a full-bore discussion on energy. With the world economy expanding again, does anyone seriously doubt that a gallon of gas won’t hit $5 in the coming years?
Things were just hunky-dory as long as we were the only gas-guzzlers but now China and India want in. I know it’s downright heresy – and a nightmare to many - but wouldn’t it be better to promote conservation now by slapping a tax on gas that would concurrently reduce the deficit?
Or should we just wait for the oil companies to up the price as soon as demand rises. Come to think of it, oil itself will run out in thirty or so years, shouldn’t we have shifted to Plan B yesterday?
We blew the chance of a lifetime on Sept. 11, 2001 when we were all ready to sacrifice for the common good. It won’t be as easy now. We’re fatigued from fighting two wars, betrayed by political, financial and religious leaders, drowning in an ocean of cultural banality while new and vacuous slogans divert us from substantive action.
It’s time we looked beyond the smoke and mirrors. It’s time we talked to each other again.

Phil Lynott

2010-05-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

He was the most charismatic man I’ve ever met. Even before he “made it,” he cut a figure the length and breadth of Dublin. Phil Lynott was black, beautiful and sported a gurrier accent that could peel the skin off a turnip.
In the early days, Hendrix was his role model but I’m now reminded more of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. Loping down O’Connell Street like some psychedelic Pied Piper, he was usually trailed by a bunch of kids. His white teeth gleamed in a perpetual smile and he winked or bade hello to anyone who caught his eye.
I knew him by repute before I ever laid eyes on him - his small triumphs on the Dublin beat scene were trumpeted in Spotlight Magazine. His humiliations were even more public: Skid Row broke up to get rid of him, then reformed without him.
But nothing could stop Philo – within months he’d mastered the bass and formed Thin Lizzy. Soon thereafter, I met him.
On good weeks Pierce Turner and I would treat ourselves to a curry in the Luna Restaurant on O’Connell Street, a popular hangout for showband heads and rockers. To our delight we were given a table right behind Phil and Eric Bell.
Eric who? Oh, you know him well enough – you listen to guitarists ape his lines on Whiskey in the Jar damn near every time you enter an Irish bar.
I can still recall Phil in the Luna declaiming, “we’re goin’ nowhere in Ireland, man!” He was trying to convince a skeptical Eric that they should decamp for England. They did and the rest is history.
Have you any idea of what it was like to first hear Whiskey in the Jar explode out of car radios and cloth covered transistors? Roll over Amhrán na bhFiann, we’d just found our own national anthem – Eric’s overdriven guitar and Phil’s cathartic voice took that old tune to places we’d never dreamed of.
Even now when I play it on SiriusXM I’m struck by its sheer originality. It always raises my spirits and shoots me back to a time when rock & roll was fresh and adventurous and unaware of itself.
A couple of years later Eric quit the band onstage in an orgy of smashed amps and overdriven dreams. I guess he really hadn’t wanted to go to England.
It took two guitarists to replace him but Lizzy stormed on. Phil used his presence, voice and songwriting chops to propel them far beyond his Crumlin roots. Their concerts were riotous mind-bending affairs, pulsing with life and dicing with controlled chaos. You could almost touch the adrenaline – and it wasn’t always natural.
Those were the days when rockers lived on the jittery edge, forever on the road with a costly album to promote, and another to write and record before they’d even unpacked – everything speeded up in a crashing, burning, collapsing cycle. The highs so high - a pity they couldn’t be bottled. And the lows, well, you don’t want to go there.
Phil was so intense onstage it almost hurt to watch him. He was living his dream and he demanded 120% of those around him – 150% from himself. He knew the difference between poise and posture, and dare any of his band-mates indulge themselves. You could catch his curses and exhortations from the side of the stage – never from the front. Every molecule had to be directed at the audience – they’d paid good money, they deserved a show! It was the Dub working class ethic colliding head on with the rock & roll dream.
The band was not at its best the last time I saw him in NYC. New Wave was all the rage, Graham Parker opened and, to the critics - if not the fans - Lizzy seemed a trifle overbaked. Yet, back in the dressing room Phil was as ever polite, welcoming and delighted to meet someone who “knew him back when.”
It was like being hit with a hammer that Christmas Day in 1985 when the news of his collapse spread, but I didn’t shed a tear. By then I’d learned the hard way that you can’t trade tomorrow’s energy for tonight’s performance.
Still, whenever I hear Whiskey in the Jar, I sit back, close my eyes and relive the sheer exhilaration and Paddy pride of those days when Philo’s Dub accent exploded through car radios and cloth-covered transistors like a tricolor siren.

Brooklyn Girls

2010-04-28T05:33:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn girls just break your heart
Then they watch you fall apart with their incredible eyes
Moistened by the goodbyes
'Til I forget all I ever learned about those crazy Brooklyn girls…

They were all beautiful, as I remember them, friendly too, and they asked YOU to dance.
The first time at Tomorrow’s Lounge on 86th Street – I thought it might have been a prank. Back in those days you could ask a dozen Irish girls before one might trip the light fantastic with you.
I remember very politely inquiring of a young lady in Wexford’s Parish Hall if she’d care to dance. Without missing a beat she replied, “Certainly, if you could find me a partner.”
Moving to Brooklyn was like finding the Promised Land. Not only was I a musician but Irish too and just off the boat, a rare commodity. Pierce Turner and I ended up there by accident – story of our lives. We needed a place to stay, an acquaintance had a room to spare and so we took the Double R train to Bay Ridge – wherever that was.
Eventually, we nailed down three nights a week at Tomorrows, a piano bar, frequented by cops, firemen, transit workers and others of a certain respectability in need of a drink.
And there we met the Brooklyn girls. A couple of them strayed in and found that we were dab hands at imitating Simon & Garfunkel - and with accents too. These lovelies spread the word and their sisters arrived in droves; within months we were the talk of the town – or at least Bay Ridge.
I just couldn’t get over how beautiful they all were – it’s not that ladies in Ireland didn’t have their looks, it was just the sheer variety of those Brooklyn girls. Now I see the melting pot at work, back then I thought I’d won the lottery.
It was the best of times and the worst of times. The Vietnam War was inching to a close, but even though it was the ‘70’s, the ‘60s were still in full flower on 86th Street. Brooklyn’s own Pete Hamill wrote for the New York Post. Different days, indeed! I remember how he brought the war home by describing the carnage in New York if hit by the same tonnage of bombs dropped that day on Hanoi.
He singled out Prospect Park. Never been there? Forget about the Sheep Meadow, Propect is a well-kept Brooklyn secret. And make sure you don’t miss the Botanical Gardens, particularly when the cherry trees are blooming; even better, stroll hand in hand under an eiderdown of pink blossoms with a Brooklyn girl.
‘Twas in Bay Ridge that I was first introduced to the glories of Italian food. To this day I’ve never had chicken cacciatore the beatings of Lentos, a dimly lit family restaurant on Ovington Avenue.
And talk about a variety of bars – from saloons like the Three Jolly Pigeons down around Senator Street up to swanky rock clubs like Bananafish Park, and did Poverty’s Pub really allow you to drink all the beer you could handle over two hours for three bucks? A privilege often abused, I fear – my brother once heroically downed 19 beers. Never made it to the 20, however.
Have you ever lay in the sands of Coney Island, ate oysters in Sheepshead Bay, drank vodka with wanna-be gangsters and Soviet veterans in Brighton Beach? There’s a whole different world out in that borough and I’m just scratching at the surface.
If there’s a nicer walk in the city than Shore Road, let me know. But most of all, I wonder if the Verrazano still “hang like a string of pearls in the night” and did those Brooklyn girls marry and move out to Staten Island?
I don’t know. Vietnam ended and everyone swore there’d be no more unnecessary foreign adventures. We moved on too. CBGB’s was opening and you could get an apartment for a buck and a half a month in the East Village (eat your heart out).
Those Brooklyn girls probably have daughters now every bit as beautiful as they were in that wonderful year. Do they still ask immigrant boys to dance? Maybe they even smooch to the song written about their mothers.

Now I'm on the sidewalk, night lights up your room
Go down to the Narrows, watch the immigrant moon
Beam down on Staten Island with its unforgiving sheen
And I'd give everything not to hemorrhage all of your dreams

Brooklyn girls just break your heart…

Immigration

2010-04-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

Brace yourself, Bridget. It’s time we dealt with the thorny subject of illegal immigration.
“Undocumented” is a more compassionate adjective but those who oppose any leniency will have no truck with it; besides when I jumped ship here myself, I was aware of the illegality of my actions. With time and assistance I was able to gain a legal foothold then follow the long and winding road to citizenship.
I have a deep sympathy for those currently in this dreaded limbo for I never got a chance to say goodbye to the grandfather that raised me - returning to Ireland during his final days would have jeopardized my status.
Regardless, it’s now or never for immigration reform! Democrats will lose seats in November and Republicans have no intention of grasping this particular nettle.
The once magisterial Senator John McCain has fled the field. There’s nothing quite like a right wing primary challenge to bring this immigration maverick to heel.
However, by bucking the zealots in his own party and co-sponsoring a comprehensive bill on immigration reform, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham may be the most courageous politician to come down the pike of late.
Oddly enough, this controversial proposal could provide part of the solution to our fiscal crisis for there may be as many as ten million people operating outside the taxation system - a huge loss of both state and federal revenue.
Perhaps it’s time to bring them in from the cold? This would, no doubt, cause great concern to those who believe that amnesty is not only unethical but also sends a wrong message. But let’s face it - the current system is just not working.
The proposed Schumer-Graham Bill provides no mere slap on the wrist; it would require the undocumented to not only admit they broke the law but pay fines and back taxes. That would provide a huge revenue bonanza that could go to reducing the national debt.
In addition, all candidates would have to pass background checks and gain a working knowledge of English before being allowed to work toward lawful permanent residence.
Schumer-Graham also proposes that prospective candidates engage in meaningful community service. Think of the positive energy that might unleash nationwide.
For those concerned with security, the bill makes clear that gang members, smugglers, terrorists and those who have committed felonies since arriving need not apply. Added to this, all citizens and legal immigrants would be issued an ID card with embedded biometric information that would make future illegal entry even harder.
Would new unqualified people seek to come here after the present ones gain legal status? Of course, but that will always be the case when there is great economic imbalance between nations. Still, the new security measures will turn a flood into a trickle.
This country was built by immigrants - legal and illegal! It’s time to unleash the potential of those living in the shadows. They’re not going back so let’s harness their capabilities. Most are young, energetic and eager to work their way up the economic ladder.
The “fortress America” attitude fostered in the wake of 9/11 is not only damaging our national psyche but our pocketbooks. What madness to educate the best and brightest of foreign students then send them home rather than utilizing their talents.
Immigrants were at the forefront of the high tech boom until post-9/11 paranoia damned up much of their flow. Schumer-Graham would grant green cards to all immigrants who receive advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math.
At the other end of the scale, there are many jobs in the agricultural, food and restaurant industries that Americans will not work at and must be filled.
This proposed law will be a bitter pill for many, but what are the alternatives? Let’s have a positive and meaningful national debate on the subject – not the politically-charged donnybrooks of the past. Sure, Schumer-Graham is radical, dramatic and divisive, but so was the founding of the country.
The US has always been seen as a shining city on the hill. It’s time to switch the lights full on again or at least light the penny candles of compromise and pass a watered-down, or alternative, bill that will give a stake in the country to those who can contribute.
Then many in our own community can finally go home, visit their loved ones and legally return to the lives they have created here.
But it’s now or never. You think April is the cruelest month, you ain’t seen nothing like November.

MacGowan, Satellite and Songwriting

2010-04-18T19:29:00.000-07:00

“Kirwan,” the old showband head addressed me. “There are only two types of music, good and bad. Now step aside!”
With that he belted into “Down By The Riverside,” and soon had the dance floor “black” with delighted jivers and quicksteppers who had been ominously absent during my previous pop meanderings.
The head’s judgment may still stand but what would he think of today’s polished mediocrity? For with the advent of computer software even your Aunt Gerty can “make a record.”
Not everyone, however, is a songwriter. That breed appears to come in two types: volcanic talents like Van Morrison or Brill Building types who master their craft after years of trial and error.
In one of my other gigs I host Celtic Crush for SiriusXM. This entails a lot of listening – more like scratching around for diamonds in piles of polished dust. One thing you learn quickly on Satellite Radio - every song must be distinctive; with over 100 competing music channels, not to mention the lurking appeal of Howard Stern, each number must capture and hold the listener’s attention or else it’s “c u l8r.”
Originality, unfortunately, is a rarity and though you may long for it like a cat in a tripe shop, you’re more often forced to settle for a dollop of emotion chiseled into some decent lyrics and arresting melodies.
Shane McGowan still stands out for his ability to encapsulate the Irish soul – a rare diamond, indeed; and yet, I often rue the effect he’s had on Irish-American songwriting. While aping the man’s phrasing and subject matter can work on stage before a boozed-up audience, more often than not it comes off as parody in the recording studio.
Far better that Shane’s musical disciples mine his original sources - Brendan Behan, Irish showbands, London punk and Tipperary Trad. Channeling these through the prism of a unique creativity McGowan gave us The Pogues.
Shane would be the first to note that there are still vast virgin tracts of the Irish Folk Tradition to draw from. Time to get cracking, Shaneheads! You have the chops - all you’re lacking is the material and that divine spark of originality necessary to ignite it.
Which brings me to Yellow Moon. You might wonder what’s the connection between the Neville Brothers from New Orleans and anything remotely Irish? Oddly enough, quite a bit!
Yellow Moon has long been one of my favorite albums but I hadn’t listened to it since the 90’s. Was I afraid it wouldn’t stand up – or perhaps I didn’t want to mess with the memory of sharing a stage with them some years back?
Neville is a very popular name in my neck of the woods. Were the Brothers descended from long-ago Wexford emigrants or, as some of you are probably muttering, had their slave masters hailed from the Model County?
Perhaps, both! When Black 47 first played Tipitinas in New Orleans’12th Ward we were treated like royalty by the city’s music lovers and local Irish-Americans.
At the end of our “meet and greet” line stood a dozen or so of what I took to be African-Americans. Each one, however, exulted in trumpeting Irish surnames like Murphy and Doyle. They told me that their forefathers had come to Crescent City in the 1860’s to dig the canals and married “locally.”
Yellow Moon not only stood up - it floored me all over again. Each song was a gem, from the title track to My Blood, from Rosa Parks to A Change Is Gonna Come. It’s the story of a people rooted in one of the world’s great musical melting pots. And, sure enough, beneath Daniel Lanois’ incandescent production, one can glimpse sparks of the Celt.
Listen to Aaron Neville update Sean-Nós on Bob Dylan’s With God On Our Side – itself lifted from Dominic Behan’s Patriot Game - and you feel the ineffable pain of all the world’s dispossessed reclaiming their dignity.
Like much great art, Yellow Moon is timeless and self-reflecting. By flirting with perfection this album allows us to reflect on what we were when we first heard it, while revealing what we have become down the years in between.
It’s a diamond that still sparkles; pulsing with raw humanity it helps us differentiate between genius, and the curse of mediocrity and parody. That’s no small thing in an age of polished dust.

Sandy Denny

2010-04-13T14:20:00.001-07:00

A hush often falls on conversation when the name, Sandy Denny, arises. It’s usually accompanied by sighs and a gentle shaking of the head. The initial pain at her passing almost 32 years ago has eased, but many of her admirers still experience a deep sense of loss.

What is it about Alexandra Elene Maclean Denny? And why does she touch us still? I really don’t know, but even as I write this I’m filled with a sense of gentle melancholia. It definitely had something to do with her voice. Even as a very young woman, that instrument ached with experience.

How could she have written a masterpiece like “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” as a teenager? And to compound matters, it was rumored to be her first composition. During an interview with Richard Thompson for Celtic Crush, I asked him if this was true. He replied that to the best of his knowledge it was and, at any rate, she’d had the song when he first met her.

Fairport Convention are merely a footnote now in rock history but there was a time in the late 6o’s/early 70’s when their influence was huge and their star shone brightly. There wasn’t a woman singer at the time that did not look up to Ms. Denny. Sandy, herself, was racked by insecurity. She longed for mainstream success but was unsure about, among other things, her appearance. Add to that a shyness and an uncertainty about celebrity.

Despite these doubts she was electric performer who devoured light. When she was onstage it was hard to take your eyes off her, notwithstanding the fact that she was always accompanied by stellar and equally charismatic musicians, the like of Richard Thompson and her husband, Trevor Lucas. I guess it was her intensity. The song was everything to her and she effortlessly channeled the times and the ghosts of the people she sang about.

Take a listen to Banks of the Nile with her band Fotheringay. I still delight in the perfection of the song’s arrangement; and then that voice – laying bare the story of a girl who dresses as a soldier to find her lover in England’s army fighting Napoleon in Egypt.

Or lose yourself in the longing and regret of No End where she mourns for the idealism of an artist she loved and admired. Now that he’s forsaken his craft – and her – what’s left? Well, actually, a lot! That ineffable feeling we’ve all experienced at being let down, but were never quite able to put into words.

Sandy died from a brain hemorrhage after a fall down a stairs in 1978. At the end of our interview, I asked Richard Thompson to describe Sandy. After praising her originality, voice and craft, he halted for a moment then continued in his very understated English way, “she was a woman of considerable appetites.”

Lucky for us, I suppose, for her songs, though delicate, throb with life, loss and pain. She was the best and we’re lucky to have been touched by her considerable talents, spirit and soul.