Henry VIII & Donald Trump in a time of pause...

Feel like your life is on pause right now? It’s a stressful, anxious time – fearful too, especially if you wake at 3am with little hope of sleep.

I don’t have a cure but I do have a suggestion – a good book or two or three.

I’m reading two at the moment – wildly different but both engrossing. One, I’d been waiting for a long time, and the other I came upon by accident, more or less.

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel was worth the wait. If by chance you haven’t read the first two books of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, I envy you.

Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies were mesmerizing accounts of commoner Cromwell’s rise through the perfidious court of Henry VIII.

It’s hardly letting the cat out of the bag to reveal that we witness his comeuppance in the final book. 

It’s a rare person, indeed, who fared well in Henry’s narcissistic presence – the parallels with the present White House are startling.

Henry is better spoken than our current president and more interesting, perhaps because in his autocracy the Tudor king need only lie to himself.

Whatever your political persuasion you will find yourself rereading paragraphs both for the power of the prose and the sheer thrill of comparison.

You’ll emerge from an hour or so of this book steeped in the fascinating lore and the machinations of Henry’s world; alas when you switch on Fox or CNN you will be catapulted back into a comparable litany of delusion without the buffer of history for protection.

Ask Again, Yes: A Novel by Mary Beth Keane is on more familiar ground – the Irish-American family – but it is no less gripping. 

From the first page you’re enmeshed in the net of this finely honed story and instantly rooting for the well-drawn characters even as you sense their flaws and fear for them.

Then just when you believe you’ve arrived at the core of this interlocking drama of the Gleeson and Stanhope families another twist is introduced and you’re once again skating on dramatic thin ice.

For me this is a story of heredity and what happens to the good and bad we Irish bring with us when dropped into the far larger pool of Irish America. Mary Beth Keane suggests various possibilities all of which are believable - many riveting.

Although as different as chalk and cheese she sometimes reminds me of Edith Wharton, one of my favorite writers. Each has the capacity of ensnaring you within a couple of paragraphs.

Might I suggest any collection of Ms. Wharton’s short stories for these difficult times? You’ll meet a cast of characters well suited to these troubled times. 

I’d recommend Age of Innocence, perhaps her best known novel, but while I love the two women characters May Welland and Countess Ellen Olenska, I’m always disappointed with Newland Archer’s practical but bloodless decision in the final chapter. But then who knows what that says about myself?

I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls three times now and I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s a terrific story of the Spanish Civil War. It’s also about the power of idealism and the willingness to sacrifice oneself for a greater cause.

Hemingway’s genius is that you never fully understand protagonist Robert Jordan or why he persists on his mission. In some circles Hemingway has fallen from favor because of his macho reputation, and yet there’s a tender, if fragile, romance at the heart of this book that is very compelling.

Two slim books from the backwaters of different continents will have you in stitches – An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) by Flann O’Brien and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole; they will also provide limitless stories and quotes with which you can regale your friends when the pubs finally reopen.

And if plays be your thing read the exquisite Girl From The North Country, the collaboration between Conor McPherson and Bob Dylan.

And for fans of Nobel Prizewinner Bobby, listen to his aural treatise on the Kennedy Assassination, Murder Most Foul. At 17 minutes it will either put you soundly asleep on some dark night of the soul or confirm that he is the greatest living artist. Your call!

Wexford Quare Fellahs and the Price of Bullocks

Toddy Kirwan was a quare fellah back in Wexford, a town that boasted many such characters.

He was a first cousin of my grandfather, Lar Kirwan, a renowned cattle dealer. Lar was reputed to be capable of estimating the weight of any sized bullock to the nearest pound.

Toddy was a cattle dealer too but no one ever made such a boast about his bullock-estimating capabilities.

My grandfather was very successful in his chosen field and owned two big farms full of bullocks fattening up before being shipped to the slaughterhouses of England; while Toddy resided with his two sisters in Carrigeen in the heart of Wexford town. 

Both men drank at The Wren’s Nest on Wexford Quay in the cordial company of others engaged in the cattle trade.

My grandfather was a severe man who rarely loosened up before his first glass of Powers. 

Toddy, on the other hand, though quiet and kindly, never seemed to let his hair down – or what was left of it. Perhaps, my grandfather’s success and bullock-estimating ability cowed him. It’s hard to tell. 

Back in those simple times I hadn’t as yet delved into Freud or Jung – or as my grandfather would have called them, Fraud and Junk. 

Apart from estimating the weight of bullocks and the form of racehorses my grandfather was not greatly interested in the subconscious.

Between the jigs and the reels Toddy got into some manner of financial scrape – a not unheard of occurrence in the boisterous world of cattle dealing.

I never heard a figure mentioned, but the affair had something to do with a miscommunication with my grandfather. 

It was all very mysterious but my grandfather, a man of few words, was heard to comment, “You might as well be talking to the bloody wall!” 

There was rash mention of solicitors and a day in court to sort matters out.

Then drama! Toddy’s elder sister announced that her beloved brother had disappeared. He had last been seen on the boat train to Rosslare Harbour on his way to London.

There was much headshaking at my grandfather’s house that led to his cryptic question, “What the hell is that fellah going to do in London?”

The years passed but matters did not rest. There was occasional word of Toddy sightings around Cricklewood, and eventually a rumor that he had met his Waterloo over a game of cards.

Then very late one stormy night a carouser while heading up Summer Hill had the wits frightened out of him by Toddy’s ghost flitting across the road between St. Peter’s College and the Bishop’s residence.

And soon thereafter a motorist nearly crashed into the Bishop’s ornate gates when Toddy’s ghostly head peered out from a crack in the wall.

A priest from St. Peter’s blessed the haunted wall and we were all warned to give up the drink and choose another route home after midnight. 

Then one day out of the blue Toddy resurrected in the flesh on Wexford’s Main Street. Women fainted, hard chaws fell to their knees, even John Wilson’s placid dray horse neighed in terror at the sight of this walking cadaver.

But it was merely the bould Toddy jauntily heading down to the Wren’s Nest for his first glass of Powers in years. 

It is one of the regrets of my life that I wasn’t present for the reunion of these cattle-dealing first cousins. But I was in the kitchen when my grandfather proclaimed, “He’s made a holy show of us! Sure wouldn’t I have forgiven him the bloody money if he’d asked!”

It would appear that Toddy, rather than face his day in court, had hatched a plot whereby he retired to his room and never stepped out except for an occasional stroll up nearby Summer Hill in the dead of the night.

I met Toddy soon after and he greeted me in his usual affable manner, but not a word about his lengthy disappearance.

When I inquired of my father – another man of few words - why Toddy had re-emerged he merely shrugged, “He probably got a pain in his arse staring at the same four walls day in day out.”

That’s Wexford for you, a town of masterful understatement and a cast of characters to beat the band.

Bob Marley, Ska, Skinheads and Sir Charles Comer

I always instinctively knew how to play Reggae. Part of that, no doubt, came from listening to my father’s Calypso and Tango records. 

But Wexford also had a very informed music scene, probably because so many locals spent time working in London; whatever was happening over in the “big smoke” was soon rocking our pubs and dancehalls.

Thus did Ska - Reggae’s forebear - gain a foothold with Wexford’s aggressive Skinhead community.

This puzzled me since Skinners weren’t known for their love of Black people; yet they would have died for Prince Buster, the Jamaican King of Ska.

However, I was to discover later that Wexford’s affinity for Reggae and Ska ran much deeper, Ireland being a major source of Jamaica’s DNA. 

That came about through the longstanding rivalry between England and Spain. The English, in their magnanimity, offered freedom to certain Irish slaves and indentured servants if they would move from Barbados to Jamaica and protect the island from an expected invasion.

The Spanish invasion never materialized but Irish and Africans intermarried leading to the lilt of Jamaican patois and the music of this beautiful but troubled island.

Fast forward to New York in the 1970’s. The era tends to get a bad rap nowadays because of the crime rate, but for young musicians the city was a paradise. 

You could live for practically nothing down in the East Village. And that’s where Pierce Turner and I ended up among poets, painters, musicians, and the general dispossessed.

Philip Glass, then a taxi driver, lived upstairs from us for a time and we could hear him rehearse his meisterwork, Einstein on the Beach.

We also used to trek uptown to attend the Schaefer Music Festival in Central Park. Before shows we often dropped into The Irish Pavilion on E. 57^th Street where manager Joe Ruane would always buy us a round in his ongoing efforts to support Irish musicians.

‘Twas there we met Sir Charles Comer, Publicity Manager for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records.

Charlie – one of life’s great characters - had come over from Liverpool as a “go-fer” for The Beatles and worked his way up to knighthood in the adrenalized world of Rock & Roll publicity where he also represented Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Chieftains.

Charlie loved Turner & Kirwan of Wexford and was thrilled that we not only knew the names of his clients on Island Records but would also go to their New York shows.

Thus did we attend Bob Marley and The Wailers first concert in New York City. This event changed my life and a decade later I experimented with Reggae by way of such Black 47 standards as Fire of Freedom and Johnny Comes a Courtin’.

It was a hot steamy New York summer night. A thick haze of marijuana hung in the air as Turner and I worked our way up to the stage. 

The audience was mostly Jamaican with a generous sprinkling of music cognescenti attracted by the paltry $3 admission.

What a bargain to see Bob Marley at his prime. Even now I marvel that his music is still so fresh and vibrant though he long ago achieved universal legendary acclaim.

The Wailers were one of the great live bands: their earthy groove shook Central Park, and I-Three, the backing singers led by Marley’s wife Rita heightened the expectation with their hummed harmonies.

Then Bob seemed to float out from the wings. He began with the exhortation to “Lively Up Yourself “and well over 10,000 people proceeded to do just that.

Sometimes he played a golden Gibson Les Paul, more often than not he danced himself into a chanted trance, and we joined him there for the next two hours. 

At one point he descended from this ethereal high to sing “No Woman No Cry”, and you felt like you were back in the Jamaica of his youth eating “oatmeal porridge in a government yard in Trenchtown.”

Pierce and I eventually floated back to the Irish Pavilion, our lives forever changed by this Rastaman wizard. 

Joe Ruane bought us another round and, along with Sir Charles Comer, we toasted Bob Marley and how he had reunited the African and Irish diasporas on a magical evening in the New York City of the unruly 1970’s.

Celtic Crush Top 100 Songs 2020

Does music influence society or does society influence music?

If you take a look at the Top 20 charts from the 1950’s you might think that Doo-Wop and early Rock & Roll swept all before them; yet Miles Davis captured a moody, dissenting streak that has little to do with the popular image of those placid Eisenhower years.

In Ireland Bridie Gallagher and various Céilí bands were the standard fare as people were forced to emigrate in droves, but musicians were already kicking aside their music stands and forming showbands.

I’ve been hosting and producing Celtic Crush, a three-hour music/talk show on SiriusXM for 14 years now. The show is heard all over the US and Canada, and became international with the advent of the SiriusXM App.

I play roughly 40 songs a show in sets of three and talk about them from a historical, political and social point of view, but as the commentary is improvised the kitchen sink is often tossed in the mix. 

Every couple of years I take the pulse of the audience by inviting them to vote for their favorite Celtic songs.

Broadly speaking these songs come from the music of the 8 Celtic nations and their various diasporas. 

In essence I favor the song not the singer. I’m always on the lookout for what I call future classics - songs from unknowns or singers/groups with niche appeal that I can bring to a broader audience.

This year the audience submitted roughly 250 songs as their listening favorites. 

Given our fractious times I had expected that Celtic Punk songs – of which there are many adherents - would be favored.

Instead, the Top 10 songs tended towards the beautiful and reflective, the lesser known, and often the most melancholic.

In fact I would imagine the #1 song - When You Become Stardust Too by Shay Healy is rarely heard except on Celtic Crush.

It’s a wonderfully optimistic reflection on life and the hereafter and seems to have struck a deeply personal chord with listeners.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was a tie for #2 between two other very reflective tunes.

I devoted a column to Eva Cassidy recently and this is her year on Celtic Crush as four of her songs placed in the Top 100. Fields of Gold her interpretation of Sting’s classic is #2.

Perhaps the biggest surprise at joint #2 is Aisling Gheal from The Poet & The Piper, the mighty collaboration between Seamus Heaney and Liam O’Flynn.

The melody summonses up the devastation of the Irish people during the Penal Laws era but it’s also informed by an untrammeled hope for better days. 

Lest you think the show is funereal #4 and #5 are the irrepressible Whiskey in the Jar by Thin Lizzy and the celebratory Whole of the Moon by The Waterboys. Rounding off the Top 5 is the only overtly political song to make the Top 20 this year, the militant James Connolly by Black 47.

Of interest to New Yorkers, Pat McGuire’s You’re So Beautiful is at #7 and master fiddler Tony DeMarco enters for the first time at #9 with The Best Years of My life.

The perennially popular Pogues score at #11 and #13 with Fairy Tale of New York and Rainy Night in Soho while Van Morrison’s top song this year is Tupelo Honey at #16.

What does all this suggest – perhaps a desire to block out the raucous lies and exaggeration of political discourse with songs that have a deep human resonance and an innate beauty. 

Since two of the three most popular songs are new entries you’d have to say that there’s also a desire for change.

Change would appear to come slowly, however, for I’ve been playing the top three songs for years. 

I wonder what all this says about the state of our society and the coming elections? 

It’s hard to say, but given our original question - Does music influence society or does society influence music? This year I’d have to go with the latter.

To receive the Top 100 write me at blk47@aol.com or visit Christopher Carroll’s Fans of Celtic Crush at Facebook. Celtic Crush can be heard on Sunday mornings at 9amET on The Loft, Ch. 710, SiriusXM with repeats on Tuesday 9pm and Wednesday Midnight.

Wexford's Deep Sea Sailors

Isn’t it odd how the character of towns can change? 

My hometown of Wexford is a case in point. Known originally as Menapia on Ptolemy’s 3^rd Century maps, the Vikings didn’t even arrive until 6 centuries later and change the name to Weis-fjord.

Being the closest town to Britain and mainland Europe it was conquered so often Monty Python and his merry band probably came roaring up the Slaney with divilment on their minds but got stuck in one of the many pubs that used to line the quayside.

For Wexford was always a busy port and its young men sailed the world over.

A majority of these came from The Faythe on the south side of town.

It was there that one side of my family, the Morans, originated. The most renowned was Capt. James Moran, a skipper of one of the old three-mast vessels.

He was my grandmother’s father and sailed often to Odessa in the Black Sea bringing back God knows what. 

Alas on one such expedition he encountered a violent storm off the coast of Cornwall, his ship the City of Bristol went down and all hands were lost.

His two sons, Matthew and John also became merchant marines as did my father. There’s definitely salt water in my blood.

However, Wexford’s young men no longer go down to the sea, as Herman Melville put it Moby Dick.

Certainly many still work on the ferries from Rosslare to Fishguard in Wales or even further afield to Le Harve in France but I never hear of a “deep sea” Wexford sailor anymore.

These men usually sailed off for six months at a time to various parts of the world, be it on tankers out of the Persian Gulf or on the London to Buenos Aires run, to name two routes my father worked on.

After such long voyages the companies would usually give their thirsty mariners a couple of months leave at home.

Did the young men grow tired of such a life, or did wives and girlfriends refuse to put up with such a routine?

As a boy I loved to go with my father to one of the pubs frequented by these deep-sea sailors.

It would usually be in the early afternoon. Two or three of them would already be sequestered at the bar smoking and, more often than not, studying horse and dog racing form.

They would barely acknowledge each other while enjoying their first pint or glass of whiskey, but eventually someone would throw out a question.

“What was the name of that bar in Sydney I met you in, Jem?”

My father’s brow would furrow in concentration before he might reply, “Jaysus, John, it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t for the life of me remember.”

Then some other salt would interject, “There was one night I ran into the two of yez three sheets to the wind in the Rusty Anchor, was that the one?”

Then the floodgates would open and as I sipped my Fanta Orange they’d order up a second round, and a succession of exotic locales would be rattled off, as they wondered if that gorgeous waitress still worked in Sammy’s Bar in Valetta, Malta? Or if Kevin Connors still ran the boarding house on Geary Street in San Francisco, or had Tom Rossiter chucked in the Cunard Line for a job on the oil rigs up off Aberdeen?

Wexford seems like a lesser place without these independent men who took a little piece of the old town with them on their travels and brought back new ideas and the ways of the world upon their return.

Most have passed on now but about 10 years ago I saw one of them sitting on a bench by Wexford quayside. He was old and weatherworn, but still alert and staring out across the harbor.

I could tell he was thinking of his seafaring days for he had a twinkle in his eye, and I fancied he was reminiscing about the gorgeous waitress he had dallied with in Sammy’s Bar in Valetta.

Knowing the type of men these Wexford sailors were - I bet she had fond memories of him too.

Irish Hunger Memorial

Have you ever been to the Irish Hunger Memorial down on Vesey Street?  It can be a lonely place – not that it’s without visitors – although judging by the Babel of languages few Irish attend during my visits.

Since I often walk down Hudson River Park I tend to feel guilty if I don’t make the pilgrimage. 

Perhaps that’s because my grandfather Thomas Hughes spoke so often about the awful year of 1847 and how his own father had witnessed An Gorta Mór.

I often wonder about the loneliness factor. At first I thought it was due to the profusion of native Irish plants that grow within the walls of the Memorial. 

Grasses, rushes, weeds, heather, and wild flowers transport you back to the fields, ditches, hills and dales of an Irish childhood. Even in the heat of dog days you can almost sense a cool Irish rain falling.

There was a time I wondered if the remains of the nearby World Trade Center provoked the loneliness. But the cool glow of the Freedom Tower seems to have soothed many of the ghosts who roamed that area.

I think it’s the view of the gently flowing Hudson that causes the turmoil. How different everything must have looked to the Famine Irish as they came ashore in the 1840’s. 

Docks, slums, tenements, saloons, ship chandlers and all the businesses of a 19^th Century port lined the banks of their Hudson. 

How many destitute Irish must have stared at this mighty river with the aching realization that they would never see home again.

Perhaps that’s the particular uaigneas that I channel no matter what time of year I visit the memorial.

It’s a foreign feeling in many ways for I’ve never felt lonely in New York City. 

But then I came by choice – on a raggle taggle adventure with a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket - and never had the desire to move home permanently.

I have been lonely in other cities, in particular Buenos Aires. Back in 2000 I was down there touring with Black 47 and had decided to stay on a few days after the band’s departure. 

The jacaranda trees were in full bloom, and in those days I was entranced by the experimental Tango music of Astor Piazzolla, and the poetry of Federico García Lorca. 

But after an afternoon spent exploring the boulevards and cafes of this cosmopolitan city an existential aloneness swept over me; I knew it would only deepen as the night wore on. 

On an impulse I hailed a cab to the airport, changed my ticket and departed with the band.

How easy that was to do in retrospect. But there was no such recourse for the hundreds of thousands of Famine Irish who piled into New York sick, diseased, hungry, and desperate for any kind of work.

They were despised and hated by the Know Nothings, and feared by many decent New Yorkers because of the diseases they carried from their ravaged country.

How did these rural people  - many of them native Irish speakers - even find work as they grappled with the demands and customs of a city beyond their imagination?

I once heard Pete Hamill remark that an average Famine immigrant saw more people in his/her first hour on South Street than they had their whole lives in Ireland.

Women had it a little easier. There was always need for barely paid scullery maids and washerwomen in the big houses uptown. 

Some men cracked and took to the shebeens, but most persevered and within two or three generations the Famine Irish had moved up in society.

Despite all their sacrifices it’s indisputable that New York is now yearly becoming less of an Irish town – notice the lack of Irish saloons in the five boroughs.

With immigration policies becoming even more restrictive, is the loneliness I experience in the Hunger Memorial less a memory and more a portent of times to come when an Irish accent will be a rarity behind the stick of a New York City bar?

And so it juts out over the Hudson, a memorial to a desperate people who overcame tragedy and discrimination. 

How strange to think that the descendants of those who stayed behind will never get the chance to follow in their footsteps.

Eva Cassidy

Songs become synonymous with their first great interpreter or with the writer who chiseled out a gem from a stray idea.

Take Over The Rainbow by Harold Arlen and Yip Hapburg. Your first instinct is, “Oh yeah, the Judy Garland song.” And you’d be right, she nailed it as Dorothy in Wizard of Oz.”

Fields of Gold is less well known. Recorded by Sting in 1993 it shimmers with beauty and regret.

It’s hard to imagine anyone improving on Sting’s heartfelt but understated delivery. After all he wrote it and knows whereof he speaks.

And then along came Irish-American Eva Cassidy.

I first caught word of her in musician circles. I never saw her live nor heard or on the radio - just murmurs about her talent in dressing rooms back in the early 90’s.

And then as happens with musicians the murmurs ceased. Every locality has such a talent. You watch a golden-boy or girl blow away an audience, then 20 years pass and they’re doing the same wondrous thing in the same club, but their golden aura is now streaked with grey.

This could have happened to Bruce Springsteen at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park – bad breaks, lazy managers, messed-up record companies, drugs and drink have waylaid so many great talents. And without Lady Luck forget about success.

About five years ago while trawling for songs for Celtic Crush - my weekly show on SiriusXM - I remembered the conversation I’d had about Eva Cassidy in a DC dressing room.

Within seconds I was listening to her version of Over The Rainbow on iTunes. I played it three times so stunned was I by her power and sensitivity.

An inner core of sadness and reflection informed her voice but it was also hard to ignore Eva’s sense of optimism and fragile beauty.

In an odd way she reminded me of Padraig Pearse’s words: 

 “The beauty of the world hath made me sad,

This beauty that will pass…”

Eva had taken a song that Ms. Garland had immortalized with her vast unique talent, and transformed it into a churning, though poignant, elegy.

I pressed on and found her version of Fields of Gold. Later on I was to learn that Sting cried when he first heard Eva’s version. As well he might. To discover something new about your own song through someone else’s interpretation is a rare gift.

The fields of barley that Sting first wrote about now glowed in a more golden sunlight, while the west wind that coursed through them had veered east in Eva’s telling bringing with it a cool hint of mortality.

After luxuriating in more of her music I looked up her biography. Imagine the shock to find out she had died almost 20 years earlier. But that she’d become a huge success internationally partly due to Irish radio host, Terry Wogan playing her on his BBC show.

I introduced her to Celtic Crush without fanfare, often placing her in the middle of a three-song set.

I wanted to see how people would react to the “live” Eva; death so often casts an odd afterglow on a performer’s reputation.

The vast majority of my listeners around the US and Canada had never heard of her but they connected almost instantly with the diamond-hard, ethereal quality of her voice. 

She is now one of the most popular singers on Celtic Crush and I never play her without closing my eyes and allowing myself to be swept away by the experience.

She’s also a fabulous guitarist. I often try to block out her voice – no easy thing - and revel in her chord choices and fingerings.

Most of the tracks you’ll hear from her were recorded live at Blues Alley, a small DC club. Many too are from 1996, the last year of her life, when she realized the cancer would not be beaten.

And yet there’s not a hint of self-pity in her voice, just the usual enigmatic beauty powered by a rare spirituality.

When next you need to believe there’s something more to life than mere banal existence, give Eva a listen - you won’t be disappointed.