PRE-ORDER THE NEW BLACK 47 ALBUM 'BANKERS AND GANGSTERS' AND LARRY KIRWAN'S NOVEL 'ROCKIN' THE BRONX'
Go to www.black47.com to pre-order these items and receive them well ahead of their respective release dates on March 2nd and Feb. 23rd.
Bankers & Gangsters t-shirt available the first week of February.
Both Bankers and Gangsters and Rockin' The Bronx will be available pre-release at the following events:
Feb. 11 Larry Kirwan reading at Ireland House, NYU 212-998-3950 for reservations
Feb. 13 Black 47 at Connolly's, 121 W. 45th St. NYC
Feb. 19 Black 47 at The Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ
Feb. 20 Black 47 at Connolly's
Feb. 26 Black 47 at The Half-Door, Hartford CT and at a 7pm reading by Larry kirwan at the Mark Twain House, 860-247-0998
Feb. 27 Black 47 at Connolly's
Mar. 8 Larry Kirwan reading at Barnes & Nobel, 97 Warren St., NYC 212-587-3185
Mar. 10 Larry Kirwan reading at Book Revue, Huntington, Long Island, 631-271-1442
Monday, 25 January 2010
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Belfast Celtic in East Baghdad
I first met Mike Shinners in Kansas City. Black 47 was on tour with two days to travel from Denver to Chicago. I received an email from him suggesting a stop in KC.
“Sure,” said I. “Just get us a gig.”
I thought no more about it. But, lo and behold, not only did he set us up in the Hurricane, a great club downtown, he also handled publicity and much else.
I should have guessed that he was in the military. Everything was taken care of in a very precise and low-key manner.
The next email he wrote was from Iraq. Not alone was he in the military but a Lt. Colonel in the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. It was a long dispatch but, as ever, perfectly detailed and replete with certain theories that he and his unit were putting into effect in East Baghdad and a nearby rural area.
He felt that the cities of Belfast and Glasgow, while sharing much culturally, differed in that one was far less stable over the last half-century. This, he was sure, had something to do with Belfast Celtic Football Club being forced to opt out of the NIFA back in the '50s; whereas, Glasgow's Catholics could always compete with Protestant-dominated Rangers on a literally level playing field on any given Saturday. This contact, he rationalized, enabled both sides to interact more fully within the fields of business and politics during the rest of the week.
Belfast's Catholics enjoyed no such demonstration of respect; hence, its Protestants lost an opportunity to recognize the humanity of, and the common ground they shared with, their Catholic neighbors.
Mike is a student of soccer – the beautiful game – and along with his military comrades he believes that sports is a human right, an essential service as important as electricity and sewage. They feel that a culture lacking such service is not intrinsically stable, and unstable cultures breed insurgency and violence.
They have been aided in their mission by London based group FC Unity and the Kick for Nick Foundation, a CT based organization set up by the family of Pvt. Nick Madaras to give out soccer balls, as a way of breaking down cultural barriers.
All are convinced that on-field competition can sow seeds of unity in the soccer mad, but highly sectarian and ethnically mixed communities, of Iraq. Get Shia, Sunni, Christian, Turkemen, and Kurdish children kicking a ball around a pitch and they’ll ultimate learn to respect each other.
Obviously this man who was part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's parachute assault into Northern Iraq back in 2003 - followed by operations in and around Kirkuk – knows whereof he speaks.
The question goes a-begging however: how many Irish people are now even aware of the Mighty Belfast Celtic? And is Mike correct in his theory? If the tragedy of St. Stephen’s Day, 1949, had been averted – or should I say prevented – might Belfast have escaped the disaster of the last half-century?
On that day Celtic and Linfield, their traditional rivals, were playing their annual Boxing Day game in Windsor Park in Unionist dominated South Belfast. Celtic were leading 1-0 up until the final minutes when Linfield equalized.
Immediately hordes of Linfield supporters broke onto the pitch and attacked the Celtic players. Many were bruised, some seriously beaten and Jimmy Jones, their star center forward, was thrown over a parapet, kicked repeatedly and had his leg broken. Oddly enough, he and five other teammates were from a Unionist background.
The RUC made only token efforts to protect the players. Soon after Celtic withdrew from the NIFA, figuring that it could not protect its players. Eventually, Celtic Park, aka Paradise, was sold to developers.
Mike recently returned to Fort Bragg. I purposely waited to write this until I was sure he was safely home. These days, you never know.
His hope is that the kids of East Baghdad will get a government that will protect their freedoms, opportunities, and human rights, while giving them an opportunity to compete in the beautiful game.
He’s still a mad Irish music, soccer enthusing, fan as eager to discuss the WolfeTones and Dropkick Murphys as Inter-Milan and Manchester United.
I couldn’t help wondering if things might have been different if those Linfield supporters had not been allowed to run amok back on Dec. 26th, 1949. Would Belfast have had a different fate if the Mighty Celtic had been there to help hold back the red tide of sectarian violence that followed?
Thanks for the thought, Lt. Col. Mike. Welcome home.
“Sure,” said I. “Just get us a gig.”
I thought no more about it. But, lo and behold, not only did he set us up in the Hurricane, a great club downtown, he also handled publicity and much else.
I should have guessed that he was in the military. Everything was taken care of in a very precise and low-key manner.
The next email he wrote was from Iraq. Not alone was he in the military but a Lt. Colonel in the 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division. It was a long dispatch but, as ever, perfectly detailed and replete with certain theories that he and his unit were putting into effect in East Baghdad and a nearby rural area.
He felt that the cities of Belfast and Glasgow, while sharing much culturally, differed in that one was far less stable over the last half-century. This, he was sure, had something to do with Belfast Celtic Football Club being forced to opt out of the NIFA back in the '50s; whereas, Glasgow's Catholics could always compete with Protestant-dominated Rangers on a literally level playing field on any given Saturday. This contact, he rationalized, enabled both sides to interact more fully within the fields of business and politics during the rest of the week.
Belfast's Catholics enjoyed no such demonstration of respect; hence, its Protestants lost an opportunity to recognize the humanity of, and the common ground they shared with, their Catholic neighbors.
Mike is a student of soccer – the beautiful game – and along with his military comrades he believes that sports is a human right, an essential service as important as electricity and sewage. They feel that a culture lacking such service is not intrinsically stable, and unstable cultures breed insurgency and violence.
They have been aided in their mission by London based group FC Unity and the Kick for Nick Foundation, a CT based organization set up by the family of Pvt. Nick Madaras to give out soccer balls, as a way of breaking down cultural barriers.
All are convinced that on-field competition can sow seeds of unity in the soccer mad, but highly sectarian and ethnically mixed communities, of Iraq. Get Shia, Sunni, Christian, Turkemen, and Kurdish children kicking a ball around a pitch and they’ll ultimate learn to respect each other.
Obviously this man who was part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's parachute assault into Northern Iraq back in 2003 - followed by operations in and around Kirkuk – knows whereof he speaks.
The question goes a-begging however: how many Irish people are now even aware of the Mighty Belfast Celtic? And is Mike correct in his theory? If the tragedy of St. Stephen’s Day, 1949, had been averted – or should I say prevented – might Belfast have escaped the disaster of the last half-century?
On that day Celtic and Linfield, their traditional rivals, were playing their annual Boxing Day game in Windsor Park in Unionist dominated South Belfast. Celtic were leading 1-0 up until the final minutes when Linfield equalized.
Immediately hordes of Linfield supporters broke onto the pitch and attacked the Celtic players. Many were bruised, some seriously beaten and Jimmy Jones, their star center forward, was thrown over a parapet, kicked repeatedly and had his leg broken. Oddly enough, he and five other teammates were from a Unionist background.
The RUC made only token efforts to protect the players. Soon after Celtic withdrew from the NIFA, figuring that it could not protect its players. Eventually, Celtic Park, aka Paradise, was sold to developers.
Mike recently returned to Fort Bragg. I purposely waited to write this until I was sure he was safely home. These days, you never know.
His hope is that the kids of East Baghdad will get a government that will protect their freedoms, opportunities, and human rights, while giving them an opportunity to compete in the beautiful game.
He’s still a mad Irish music, soccer enthusing, fan as eager to discuss the WolfeTones and Dropkick Murphys as Inter-Milan and Manchester United.
I couldn’t help wondering if things might have been different if those Linfield supporters had not been allowed to run amok back on Dec. 26th, 1949. Would Belfast have had a different fate if the Mighty Celtic had been there to help hold back the red tide of sectarian violence that followed?
Thanks for the thought, Lt. Col. Mike. Welcome home.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Powerball
I began writing this column back in the salad day when the Dow was rocketing towards fourteen grand and property values were going through the ceiling. But even then
I could smell trouble brewing for the middle and working classes.
“What’s he on about now?” Mutters yer man up in Pearl River. “Health insurance? The price of turnips? For God’s sake, not Iraq again!”
No, indeed, my first column was about pensions, social security, and the dependence of 401(ks) on the financial markets.
“Oh, me bloody stomach! This is the last thing I want to be thinking about on a Wednesday evening with the tea poured and the spuds and cabbage going cold in front of me.”
I merely mention this troubling matter because (a) no one else ever does, and (b) it’s time we stopped burying our heads like ostriches and came up with some manner of an alternative before we’re all on the Bowery.
Now kindly note that I did not broach the subject while the stock market was lower than a skirt in a convent.
I might also add that barring a Tsunami hitting Manhattan or even worse - Steve Duggan having a bad run out in Belmont - I believe the Dow will continue to appreciate, if only because corporate profits will keep rising due to all the layoffs.
Nonetheless, with a dysfunctional education system, ongoing nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Eileen Murphy’s addiction to boy bands, you don’t have to be Charlie Haughey to predict rocky times ahead.
So, what’s your solution?” Demands yer man up in Pearl River as he shunts the spuds and cabbage into the microwave.
“The Post Office!” Says I.
“Have you totally lost the run of yourself? Sure isn’t that the place where you queue up for hours to buy a couple of stamps, and God help you if you ever want to send a few screeds of used clothes back to Ireland where the children are running around naked in the rain?”
“The self-same establishment,” I agree. “But hold your horses, I’m actually referring to the old Irish Post Office Savings Account and the wonders of compound interest! I mean, what would be so wrong if Barack, Rahm, Nancy, Harry and the other commies down in DC were to set up a system of national savings bonds paying a rate of 2 or even 3% PA to be redeemed when – or rather if - you hit the big 70!
“Why not 62?” Replies Pearl River. “Isn’t that the age you get your first whack at Social Security?”
Well to quote Malachy McCourt, “62 – Mar yeah! The way things are going we’ll all be working ‘til we’re 90 - if we’re lucky!”
Now I know well that the current rate of interest being paid by bankers and gangsters is negligible, but 2 or even 3% will eventually be less than the Chinese are charging us to restore Fallujah and Kabul. So, at least, we won’t have to keep going hat in hand to those sons of er…Mao!
Compound interest may not sound very sexy but it’s like a Cavan man - safe, sound, and still bringing home the bacon when fancy Jackeens and Yellowbellies alike have long gone on the dole. Compared to the stock market of the last decade it’s akin to Viagra – dust off your Christian Brothers compound interest tables, if you don’t believe me.
Besides compound interest can guarantee you a sound night’s sleep and you won’t be biting your fingernails every time you steal a glance at the Dow.
“That bloody microwave!” Roars yer man up in Pearl River. “The mouth is burned off of me! Heats the damned spuds too much on the inside.”
How right he is. The market is equally untrustworthy - a bit too much like Belmont when it comes to supplementing the paltry Social Security check.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be promoting pipe dreams - the financial industry would curl up and die before allowing such a scheme to pass Congress, for what fees could they extract from compound interest? It would be just you and your sexy little Post Office Saving Book.
Still and all, someone better come up with a long term solution because the Bowery is full of condos now and the owners don’t want you lying around on their pavement guzzling your bottles of Irish Rose.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Says yer man up in Pearl River. “Didn’t this guy never of Powerball?”
I could smell trouble brewing for the middle and working classes.
“What’s he on about now?” Mutters yer man up in Pearl River. “Health insurance? The price of turnips? For God’s sake, not Iraq again!”
No, indeed, my first column was about pensions, social security, and the dependence of 401(ks) on the financial markets.
“Oh, me bloody stomach! This is the last thing I want to be thinking about on a Wednesday evening with the tea poured and the spuds and cabbage going cold in front of me.”
I merely mention this troubling matter because (a) no one else ever does, and (b) it’s time we stopped burying our heads like ostriches and came up with some manner of an alternative before we’re all on the Bowery.
Now kindly note that I did not broach the subject while the stock market was lower than a skirt in a convent.
I might also add that barring a Tsunami hitting Manhattan or even worse - Steve Duggan having a bad run out in Belmont - I believe the Dow will continue to appreciate, if only because corporate profits will keep rising due to all the layoffs.
Nonetheless, with a dysfunctional education system, ongoing nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Eileen Murphy’s addiction to boy bands, you don’t have to be Charlie Haughey to predict rocky times ahead.
So, what’s your solution?” Demands yer man up in Pearl River as he shunts the spuds and cabbage into the microwave.
“The Post Office!” Says I.
“Have you totally lost the run of yourself? Sure isn’t that the place where you queue up for hours to buy a couple of stamps, and God help you if you ever want to send a few screeds of used clothes back to Ireland where the children are running around naked in the rain?”
“The self-same establishment,” I agree. “But hold your horses, I’m actually referring to the old Irish Post Office Savings Account and the wonders of compound interest! I mean, what would be so wrong if Barack, Rahm, Nancy, Harry and the other commies down in DC were to set up a system of national savings bonds paying a rate of 2 or even 3% PA to be redeemed when – or rather if - you hit the big 70!
“Why not 62?” Replies Pearl River. “Isn’t that the age you get your first whack at Social Security?”
Well to quote Malachy McCourt, “62 – Mar yeah! The way things are going we’ll all be working ‘til we’re 90 - if we’re lucky!”
Now I know well that the current rate of interest being paid by bankers and gangsters is negligible, but 2 or even 3% will eventually be less than the Chinese are charging us to restore Fallujah and Kabul. So, at least, we won’t have to keep going hat in hand to those sons of er…Mao!
Compound interest may not sound very sexy but it’s like a Cavan man - safe, sound, and still bringing home the bacon when fancy Jackeens and Yellowbellies alike have long gone on the dole. Compared to the stock market of the last decade it’s akin to Viagra – dust off your Christian Brothers compound interest tables, if you don’t believe me.
Besides compound interest can guarantee you a sound night’s sleep and you won’t be biting your fingernails every time you steal a glance at the Dow.
“That bloody microwave!” Roars yer man up in Pearl River. “The mouth is burned off of me! Heats the damned spuds too much on the inside.”
How right he is. The market is equally untrustworthy - a bit too much like Belmont when it comes to supplementing the paltry Social Security check.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be promoting pipe dreams - the financial industry would curl up and die before allowing such a scheme to pass Congress, for what fees could they extract from compound interest? It would be just you and your sexy little Post Office Saving Book.
Still and all, someone better come up with a long term solution because the Bowery is full of condos now and the owners don’t want you lying around on their pavement guzzling your bottles of Irish Rose.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Says yer man up in Pearl River. “Didn’t this guy never of Powerball?”
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Apocalypse Now
I watched Apocalypse Now recently. It stood the test of time. If anything, this epic of cinematic poetry was all too relevant.
Like any great poem it contained heightened moments of insight - even exaggeration - yet the spine was always clear: we did not belong in Vietnam. Line by line Coppola’s ode to dislocation, dementia and destruction highlighted our effect on Vietnam and, unfortunately, Vietnam’s lack of effect on us.
One of the most incongruous images is the blown-out wall of an old French cathedral etched against the tropical sky. Who blew it up – Christian American B-52’s or Marxist atheist Vietcong? It hardly matters.
This image, strangely, brought to mind the shattered gothic wall that remained standing in the pit after the collapse of the Trades on 9/11.
For me Apocalypse Now is always twinned with Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. I’ve never seen the movie version, though I’m told it’s very good. There’s little need for it, however, as Greene’s graphic story unreels like a film, chilling in its warning of what happens when cultures and moralities clash, and prophetic in its vision of the effect of intrusive do-gooders on ancient societies.
The jungles have all but swallowed up the hulks of armored vehicles and unexploded bombs, the last vestiges of our influence in Vietnam. Still, all is not lost; the marines of commerce are already stealthily infiltrating Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a lot easier - and more profitable - to peddle cell phones and hamburgers than to prop up corrupt governments.
And what effect did Vietnam, Greene or Coppola have on the DC politicians and West Point generals who dictate American foreign policy? Very little, it would appear.
It’s been one war after another, some justified, the rest as unnecessary as Vietnam. The DC pols and military brass have adapted though. They figured out that demobilizing legions of damaged draftees back into the heartland wasn’t such a good idea.
Better off isolate the whole thing – get a volunteer army to bear the brunt of the fighting; hey, they joined up - it’s their war.
And get someone else to pay for it – preferably, the next generation. Don’t raise taxes – does anyone doubt that these foreign adventures would be over by Monday if we had to pony up for them.
Each war is different but our enemies are bolstered by two principles – patriotism and ideology/religion. In Vietnam, it was the desire of the Vietnamese people to finally end colonialism and unite the country; there was Marxism at play too but as ever Karl’s theories take a back seat to nationalism.
Let’s not even deal with the disaster of Iraq – just declare victory and get the hell out. Shell has nailed down the big petroleum fields around Basra, and the Kurds will eventually deliver oil rich Kirkuk. Shiite nationalists will deal with any remnants of Al Qaeda. What’s there to hang around for?
But the rocky slopes of Afghanistan are a whole different ballgame. Again we’re dealing with nationalism, but it’s less a nationwide deal, more like – I’ll run my valley, you run yours.
These Sunni Pashtun tribesmen want no truck with foreign ideology. They already outlasted the Soviet Army. They’ve got God on their side, and we don’t.
Will General McChrystal’s surge work? Sure, it will – for as long as we can afford it. Our old allies the Mujahadeen know to wait. They’ll bleed our last dollar spent supporting our military and the vast infrastructure of private security and aid firms we employ. Hamid Karzai and his posse will take the rest.
Getting involved in other people’s civil wars is never a good idea. When the smoke and money has cleared, a coalition of warlords will take on the Taliban, much the same as happened when the Soviets cut their losses and went home.
Oddly enough, we seem to have no Graham Greene or Francis Ford Coppola to chronicle the present state of our affairs. Such talents, no doubt, now aspire to the new cultural apotheosis – the reality show.
A pity about that, since we have need of them to make sense of the tragic reality the politicians and generals have created in god forbidding places we have no business lingering.
Like any great poem it contained heightened moments of insight - even exaggeration - yet the spine was always clear: we did not belong in Vietnam. Line by line Coppola’s ode to dislocation, dementia and destruction highlighted our effect on Vietnam and, unfortunately, Vietnam’s lack of effect on us.
One of the most incongruous images is the blown-out wall of an old French cathedral etched against the tropical sky. Who blew it up – Christian American B-52’s or Marxist atheist Vietcong? It hardly matters.
This image, strangely, brought to mind the shattered gothic wall that remained standing in the pit after the collapse of the Trades on 9/11.
For me Apocalypse Now is always twinned with Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet American. I’ve never seen the movie version, though I’m told it’s very good. There’s little need for it, however, as Greene’s graphic story unreels like a film, chilling in its warning of what happens when cultures and moralities clash, and prophetic in its vision of the effect of intrusive do-gooders on ancient societies.
The jungles have all but swallowed up the hulks of armored vehicles and unexploded bombs, the last vestiges of our influence in Vietnam. Still, all is not lost; the marines of commerce are already stealthily infiltrating Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a lot easier - and more profitable - to peddle cell phones and hamburgers than to prop up corrupt governments.
And what effect did Vietnam, Greene or Coppola have on the DC politicians and West Point generals who dictate American foreign policy? Very little, it would appear.
It’s been one war after another, some justified, the rest as unnecessary as Vietnam. The DC pols and military brass have adapted though. They figured out that demobilizing legions of damaged draftees back into the heartland wasn’t such a good idea.
Better off isolate the whole thing – get a volunteer army to bear the brunt of the fighting; hey, they joined up - it’s their war.
And get someone else to pay for it – preferably, the next generation. Don’t raise taxes – does anyone doubt that these foreign adventures would be over by Monday if we had to pony up for them.
Each war is different but our enemies are bolstered by two principles – patriotism and ideology/religion. In Vietnam, it was the desire of the Vietnamese people to finally end colonialism and unite the country; there was Marxism at play too but as ever Karl’s theories take a back seat to nationalism.
Let’s not even deal with the disaster of Iraq – just declare victory and get the hell out. Shell has nailed down the big petroleum fields around Basra, and the Kurds will eventually deliver oil rich Kirkuk. Shiite nationalists will deal with any remnants of Al Qaeda. What’s there to hang around for?
But the rocky slopes of Afghanistan are a whole different ballgame. Again we’re dealing with nationalism, but it’s less a nationwide deal, more like – I’ll run my valley, you run yours.
These Sunni Pashtun tribesmen want no truck with foreign ideology. They already outlasted the Soviet Army. They’ve got God on their side, and we don’t.
Will General McChrystal’s surge work? Sure, it will – for as long as we can afford it. Our old allies the Mujahadeen know to wait. They’ll bleed our last dollar spent supporting our military and the vast infrastructure of private security and aid firms we employ. Hamid Karzai and his posse will take the rest.
Getting involved in other people’s civil wars is never a good idea. When the smoke and money has cleared, a coalition of warlords will take on the Taliban, much the same as happened when the Soviets cut their losses and went home.
Oddly enough, we seem to have no Graham Greene or Francis Ford Coppola to chronicle the present state of our affairs. Such talents, no doubt, now aspire to the new cultural apotheosis – the reality show.
A pity about that, since we have need of them to make sense of the tragic reality the politicians and generals have created in god forbidding places we have no business lingering.
Friday, 1 January 2010
New Year's Eve
What a long decade. We began it with Trouble in the Land – pretty prophetic when all is said and done and now we’re about to release Bankers and Gangsters. For Mychal, Richie and the other cherished fans who departed back in 2001; for Strummer, Danno Laursen and those who worked with us; for the many who have celebrated New Year’s Eve with us over the last 20 years; and, of course, for new friends who’ve joined the family in this decade, thanks to all of you for your support and friendship. This song is only available on the Connolly’s Live in Times Square DVD. But tonight it’s just for you…
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
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
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Top 100 Songs on Celtic Crush
Top 100 Songs played on Celtic Crush as voted by listeners Oct. '09
Catch Celtic Crush is a three hour show on SiriusXM Satellite Radio hosted by Larry Kirwan every Saturday morning at 7AM ET, with a reairing at 11PM ET Tuesday nights on The Spectrum, Ch. 18 Sirius/Ch. 45 XM
1 Northwest Passage – Stan Rogers
2 Lisdoonvarna – Christy Moore
3 Kilkelly – Moloney/Keane/O’Connell
4 The Galway Girl – Steve Earle
5 Raglan Road – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
6 Say You Love Me – Sharon Shannon/Dessie O’Halloran
7 Sing All Our Cares Away – Damien Dempsey
8 Wacko King Hacko – Peatbog Faeries
9 The Big Fellah – Black 47
10 Empty Glens – Runrig
11 Green Fields of France – The Furey Brothers & Davy Arthur
12 Birches – Bill Morrissey
13 Ora Se Do Bheath Abhaile – Sinead O’Connor
14 The Band Played Waltzing Matilda – Liam Clancy
15 Life’s Like That, Isn’t It – Larry Kirwan
16 Menez – Alan Stivell
17 Wedding Reel – Lunasa
18 Whistles The Wind – Flogging Molly
19 Whiskey in the Jar – Thin Lizzy
20 Fields of Athenry – Paddy Reilly
21 Funky Ceili – Black 47
22 Fairy Tale of New York – The Pogues
23 Arthur McBride & The Sergeant – Paul Brady
24 Beeswing – Richard Thompson
25(T) Buile Mo Chroi – John Spillane and Louis De Paor
25(T) Dirty Old Town – The Pogues
27 Travelling People – Turner & Kirwan of Wexford
28 Scarlet Begonias – Wake The Dead
29 Ocean and a Rock – Lisa Hannigan
30 Fairy Tale of New York – Christy Moore
31(T) The Rocky Road To Dublin – The Dubliners
31(T) Downpressor Man – Sinead O’Connor
33 One Starry Night – Davy Spillane
34 Into The Mystic – Van Morrison
35 First Light of the Day – Paddy A Go Go
36 James Connolly - Black 47
37 Matty Groves – Fairport Convention
38 Fishermen’s Blues – The Waterboy
39 Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
40 Shipping Up To Boston – Dropkick Murphys
41 Star of the County Down – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
42 Fanatic Heart – Black 47
43 N 17 – The Saw Doctors
44 Home For a Rest – Spirit of the West
45 Johnny, I Hardly Knew You
46 One – Johnny Cash
47 Patriot Game – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
48 Black Velvet Band – Dropkick Murphys
49 Laid – James
50 Delirium Tremens – Christy Moore
51 Aisling Gheal – Seamus Heaney/Liam Og O’Flynn
52 Never Any Good With Money – Martin Simpson
53 Sweet Sixteen – The Furey Brothers/Davy Arthur
54 Here Comes The Night – Them
55 Wild Rover – Dropkick Murphys
56 Emerald – Voodoo Loons
57 Amazing Grace – Flatfoot 56
58 Kilroy Was Here – Larry Kirwan
59 I Was Watching You – Rosanne Cash
60 Rainy Night in Soho – The Pogues
61 Halelujiah – Jeff Buckley
62 Sunshine Serenade – The Mighty Stef
63 Downtown Baghdad Blues – Black 47
64 Tobacco Island – Flogging Molly
65 Release – Afro-Celt
66 Hard Times in Old England – Billy Bragg
67 The Parting Glass – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
68 Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway – Finbar & Eddie Furey
69 If I Should Fall From Grace – The Pogues
70 Welcome To The Cabaret - Christy Moore
71 Nobody’s Baby Now – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
72 All Around My Hat – Steeleye Span
73 Wexford – Pecker Dunne
74 1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Richard Thompson
75 Rocky Takes a Lover – Bell X1
76 Baisteach – John Spillane & Louis De Paor
77 Muirsheen Durkin – Johnny McEvoy
78 Man You Don’t Meet Every Day – Sharon Kaye
79 Livin’ in America – Black 47
80 Lord Offaly – David McWilliams
81 Rock on Rockall – The Wolfe Tones
82 Si Do Mhamo – Hothouse Flowers
83 Zombie – Dolores Riordan
84 Street of Dreams – The Oysterband
85 Ride On – Christy Moore
86 Love Is Teasing – The Chieftains
87 It Makes No Difference – The Band
88 Leaving of Liverpool – Gaelic Storm
89 The West Coast of Clare – Planxty
90 Pipe Solo – The Bothy Band
91 The Musical Priest – Cora Smyth
92 Sleepy Maggie – Ashley MacIsaacs
93 Mingulay Boat Song – The Makem and Spain Brothers
94 The Battle of Aughrim – The Chieftains
95 Wicklow Hills – Pierce Turner
96 Caledonia – Dougie Maclean
97 Carrickfergus – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
98 The Blue Idol – Altan
99 On a Sea of Fleur De Lis – Solas
100 Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses – U2
Catch Celtic Crush every Saturday morning at 7AM ET, with a reairing at 11PM ET Tuesday nights.
Catch Celtic Crush is a three hour show on SiriusXM Satellite Radio hosted by Larry Kirwan every Saturday morning at 7AM ET, with a reairing at 11PM ET Tuesday nights on The Spectrum, Ch. 18 Sirius/Ch. 45 XM
1 Northwest Passage – Stan Rogers
2 Lisdoonvarna – Christy Moore
3 Kilkelly – Moloney/Keane/O’Connell
4 The Galway Girl – Steve Earle
5 Raglan Road – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
6 Say You Love Me – Sharon Shannon/Dessie O’Halloran
7 Sing All Our Cares Away – Damien Dempsey
8 Wacko King Hacko – Peatbog Faeries
9 The Big Fellah – Black 47
10 Empty Glens – Runrig
11 Green Fields of France – The Furey Brothers & Davy Arthur
12 Birches – Bill Morrissey
13 Ora Se Do Bheath Abhaile – Sinead O’Connor
14 The Band Played Waltzing Matilda – Liam Clancy
15 Life’s Like That, Isn’t It – Larry Kirwan
16 Menez – Alan Stivell
17 Wedding Reel – Lunasa
18 Whistles The Wind – Flogging Molly
19 Whiskey in the Jar – Thin Lizzy
20 Fields of Athenry – Paddy Reilly
21 Funky Ceili – Black 47
22 Fairy Tale of New York – The Pogues
23 Arthur McBride & The Sergeant – Paul Brady
24 Beeswing – Richard Thompson
25(T) Buile Mo Chroi – John Spillane and Louis De Paor
25(T) Dirty Old Town – The Pogues
27 Travelling People – Turner & Kirwan of Wexford
28 Scarlet Begonias – Wake The Dead
29 Ocean and a Rock – Lisa Hannigan
30 Fairy Tale of New York – Christy Moore
31(T) The Rocky Road To Dublin – The Dubliners
31(T) Downpressor Man – Sinead O’Connor
33 One Starry Night – Davy Spillane
34 Into The Mystic – Van Morrison
35 First Light of the Day – Paddy A Go Go
36 James Connolly - Black 47
37 Matty Groves – Fairport Convention
38 Fishermen’s Blues – The Waterboy
39 Thousands Are Sailing – The Pogues
40 Shipping Up To Boston – Dropkick Murphys
41 Star of the County Down – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
42 Fanatic Heart – Black 47
43 N 17 – The Saw Doctors
44 Home For a Rest – Spirit of the West
45 Johnny, I Hardly Knew You
46 One – Johnny Cash
47 Patriot Game – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
48 Black Velvet Band – Dropkick Murphys
49 Laid – James
50 Delirium Tremens – Christy Moore
51 Aisling Gheal – Seamus Heaney/Liam Og O’Flynn
52 Never Any Good With Money – Martin Simpson
53 Sweet Sixteen – The Furey Brothers/Davy Arthur
54 Here Comes The Night – Them
55 Wild Rover – Dropkick Murphys
56 Emerald – Voodoo Loons
57 Amazing Grace – Flatfoot 56
58 Kilroy Was Here – Larry Kirwan
59 I Was Watching You – Rosanne Cash
60 Rainy Night in Soho – The Pogues
61 Halelujiah – Jeff Buckley
62 Sunshine Serenade – The Mighty Stef
63 Downtown Baghdad Blues – Black 47
64 Tobacco Island – Flogging Molly
65 Release – Afro-Celt
66 Hard Times in Old England – Billy Bragg
67 The Parting Glass – The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
68 Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway – Finbar & Eddie Furey
69 If I Should Fall From Grace – The Pogues
70 Welcome To The Cabaret - Christy Moore
71 Nobody’s Baby Now – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
72 All Around My Hat – Steeleye Span
73 Wexford – Pecker Dunne
74 1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Richard Thompson
75 Rocky Takes a Lover – Bell X1
76 Baisteach – John Spillane & Louis De Paor
77 Muirsheen Durkin – Johnny McEvoy
78 Man You Don’t Meet Every Day – Sharon Kaye
79 Livin’ in America – Black 47
80 Lord Offaly – David McWilliams
81 Rock on Rockall – The Wolfe Tones
82 Si Do Mhamo – Hothouse Flowers
83 Zombie – Dolores Riordan
84 Street of Dreams – The Oysterband
85 Ride On – Christy Moore
86 Love Is Teasing – The Chieftains
87 It Makes No Difference – The Band
88 Leaving of Liverpool – Gaelic Storm
89 The West Coast of Clare – Planxty
90 Pipe Solo – The Bothy Band
91 The Musical Priest – Cora Smyth
92 Sleepy Maggie – Ashley MacIsaacs
93 Mingulay Boat Song – The Makem and Spain Brothers
94 The Battle of Aughrim – The Chieftains
95 Wicklow Hills – Pierce Turner
96 Caledonia – Dougie Maclean
97 Carrickfergus – Van Morrison & The Chieftains
98 The Blue Idol – Altan
99 On a Sea of Fleur De Lis – Solas
100 Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses – U2
Catch Celtic Crush every Saturday morning at 7AM ET, with a reairing at 11PM ET Tuesday nights.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Irish Soul
Notes from a lecture/performance given at Princeton University, Dec. 4th, 2009
The soul of a nation courses through its poetry and music. You can also catch glimpses of it peeping out through the pages of history and occasionally through the ideals of its political movements.
Yeats referred obliquely to it as the “fanatic heart;” while Patrick Kavanagh saw it in much earthier terms as a spirit that emanated from his stony little fields, infecting the country people, causing them to break their religious and social strictures, and get into all manner of mischief.
Sean O’Riada recognized it in the traditional music of Ireland. He grabbed this force by the scruff of the neck and dragged it screaming into the 20th Century where many of us have injected varying degrees of it into modern songs and sounds.
It was back in Wexford where I grew up that I first became aware of this distinctive spirit that for want of anything better I’ll call “Irish soul.” Wexford town was very old, Ptolemy had noted it on his maps, Henry II did penance in Selskar Abbey for the murder of Thomas a’Beckett, while Cromwell and his army of bigots gained entrance through the West Gate and slaughtered both laity and clergy. After the insurrection of 1798 its citizens declared the liberated area a Free French Republic; even the Uncrowned King, Charles Stewart Parnell, was arrested for preaching sedition in the local Imperial Hotel - where later I would perform in punk ensembles. The very stones of the old town oozed history.
And yet, as often happens, the inhabitants of Wexford, for the most part, went about their daily business with little thought of history or politics. In fact many of them seemed to be almost in denial of the past; or was that studied nonchalance a cloak worn to ward off the addictive appeal of past grievances? That seemed to be the case for many citizens of the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles of the last 40 years - keep the bloody thing isolated up North and, for God’s sake, don’t let it spill over the border – a nearly impossible task give that the Troubles themselves were fomented by fanatic hearts full to the brim of simmering Irish soul.
My father and his side of the family wanted nothing whatsoever to do with this “madness.” My granduncle had joined the British Army and was killed on the Western Front in 1916. My grandfather was a well-to-do cattle dealer whose business activities were curtailed by DeValera’s Economic War of the 1930’s. Meanwhile, my father - a merchant marine - would only sail with British shipping companies. Like many Wexford people, he was thoroughly convinced that Irish history was a disaster, radical politics was for eejits, and any form of traditional music or the native language could be summed up in two dismissive words – “Auld Irish!” Indeed, in his later years, he had a sneaking admiration for the Iron Lady herself, Mrs. Thatcher – the very antithesis of Irish soul.
But I hailed from a mixed family, as my maternal grandfather who raised me not only believed in the power of the Irish soul, he felt that it should be cherished and nourished and that it behooved each generation of Irish people to help bring about a solution of the British problem in the North of Ireland.
He was a stonecutter whose father had escaped the worst of the famine years of 1845-1847 by gaining employment on the construction of one of the great Anglo-Irish houses. But this great-grandfather of mine had heard the moans of the famine victims dying in ditches and he made my grandfather promise that these people should never be forgotten. My Grandfather made no bones about his wish that I should carry on that tradition. Hence, when we set out to form a band that would hopefully be infused by Irish soul, and deal with things political, we chose the name Black 47.
I was awash in all my grandfather’s accounts of Irish history. This knowledge rarely came from books though like many self-educated men of that period he had amassed his own library. He had seen the great men of his day visit Wexford and give speeches: James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Eamonn DeValera and Michael Collins. He passed on eyewitness accounts of these icons and seemed to rate them by their measure of Irish soul. Thus, Big Jim Larkin was a mighty man, but James Connolly a troublemaker; Mick Collins a marvel (though he would later turn against him) and DeValera, principled though with little heart.
But he didn’t just stop at the political. Like, the poet, Kavanagh, my grandfather recognized that the very land, the mountains, the lakes and the valleys were a repository of the Irish soul, but that such soul was often unpredictable and could cause grief. As we drove around County Wexford on Sunday afternoons, there wasn’t a fairy rath or lucky tree, a holy well or a sacred hill that he didn’t recognize and tip his cap to. And in each of the old people’s houses that we visited, we’d meet likeminded people who dated the banishment of ghosts and such things to the introduction of the electric light. And as the evenings grew darker they would sit by the light of the fire allowing these spirits a chance to dance out of the shadows and mingle with them again as they had in the time of oil lamps and candles.
My grandfather had much time for the tinkers or traveling people, as they’re now known. No one knew where these people came from – had they been pushed off the land by Cromwell’s soldiers or taken to the roads during the famine years? It didn’t matter; he recognized the soul within them and felt that they were closest to the old hidden Ireland. They would arrive at his stone yard, the women in colored shawls, the men with their pockets stuffed full of five, ten and twenty pound notes. They were poor people who mostly lived in caravans by the side of the road but when one died, they did not stint. They would come from all over the county and beyond, and order great ornate headstones and statues, then pay on the spot. He once told me that they alone “recognized the majesty of death and one could learn much from them.”
I learned something from them too but it had more to do with life. Because of their itinerant nature, they had not been coated with the same stifling lacquer of Victorian conformity that smothered the rest of the country. They still retained the old links to the Irish soul and wore those links on their sleeve, though most of us settled Irish never had the eyes to see them.
I was thirteen or fourteen at the time and mad for the Beatles and other forms of pop music. And yet I was having trouble reconciling I Want to Hold Your Hand to the complexities of puberty and sexual awakening. Then one day coming from school I happened upon a large group of tinkers in the very narrow confines of John’s Gate Street. They rarely appeared in numbers unless celebrating weddings or funerals. Even then they were wary of outsiders and would have sent me packing; however, one of them had begun to sing. He was obviously someone of stature for their total attention was focused upon him. He sat on the ground outside Kielty’s Pub, a large bottle of Guinness balanced between his legs. He could have been an old-looking forty or a young looking sixty, and he had hair the color of dirty snow. Thin and hawk-faced, his eyes closed, he sang about a woman, by name of Molly Bán (bawn being the Gaelic for white, or of fair complexion). The song concerned jealousy, pain and loss, and Molly Bán’s love for two men, one of whom she leaves for the other. There was a raging, if contained, sexuality in the lyrics and delivery that I’d never heard before, and I learned from this probably illiterate man that soul will always trump literateness and convention crumbles before the fanatic heart.
The song stayed with me and I recently added a counter-melody and some words to help it on its way in a new century; hopefully I’ve retained the soul that gave it birth.
One Starry Night
One starry night as I lay sleepin’
One starry night as I lay in bed
Dreamed I heard wagon wheels a’creakin’
When I awoke, love, found you had fled
I’ll search the highways, likewise the byways
I’ll search the boreens, the camping places too
I will inquire of all our people
Have they tide or tidings or sign of you
For it’s many the mile, love, with you I’ve traveled
Many the hour, love, with you I’ve spent
Dreamed you were my love forever
But now I find, love, you were only lent
I’ll go across the seas to England
To London or to Birmingham
And in some public house I’ll find you
Lamenting your lost love back home
I’m drunk today, I’m seldom sober
A handsome rover from town to town
When I am dead, my story ended
Molly Bán a stórín, come lay me down
One starry night as I lay sleepin’
One starry night as I lay in bed
Dreamed I heard wagon wheels a’creakin’
Now that you’re gone, love, I might as well be dead
I eventually left my grandfather and his Irish soul behind and emigrated to Greenwich Village in the 1970’s. In fact I would imagine I’m one of the few people here who remembers Professor Sean Wilentz as a gangling clerk in his father’s bookstore on 8th Street. He and I frequented The Bells of Hell, a saloon of some notoriety on 13th Street and Sixth Avenue. This haven of lost souls was owned by a lovable rascal, bon vivant, liberal shock-jock, and writer, Malachy McCourt. It was full of gangling book store clerks, revolutionaries, failed priests and Christian Brothers, communists with drinking problems, musicians, hardened newspapermen, dope dealers, music critics, card sharps, refugees from respectability, bankrupt bookies and an ever-changing coterie of young ladies from the nearby Evangeline Residence.
I was a member of Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, the house band of this roiling, rollicking establishment. One of the trade-offs for the weekend residency in the back room was that you were required to play a lot of benefits. These were usually for Leftist causes; the Right drank in the Bells, but were often circumspect about their various leanings. Thus we played for Vietnam Vets against the War, Legalization of Marijuana, Gay Rights, British Coalminers, any organization hostile to Mrs. Thatcher, and the full spectrum of the movement for change in the North of Ireland. It was at these latter events that I caught my first glimpses of the Irish soul on American soil. Oh, I’d seen green beer and plastic shamrocks on Saint Patrick’s Day, yet that all seemed little more than skin deep. But at these functions and in similar situations in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx I was brought face to face with a hidden Irish-America where ancient scores still had need of settling. I was transported straight back to my grandfather’s house where what was called Republicanism went beyond mere politics – it was more akin to a religion. What I saw in the back rooms of New York City saloons had crossed the Atlantic within emigrant hearts and predated republicanism. In fact, it went way back beyond Cromwell and even Red Hugh O’Donnell. When I first came in contact with it, this force was diffuse and directionless. Then in 1980 it galvanized outside the British Consulate on Third Avenue.
Reading from Green Suede Shoes, Bobby Sands chapter, page 167
Black 47 has a T-shirt whose emblem is a heart ripped through by barbed wire. We call it the Fanatic Heart. It speaks to me of what often happens when the Irish soul is touched by sectarianism or inflexible ideology. Though I often employ the Irish soul when writing for Black 47, I’m ever mindful that it is a powerful, primal and often indiscriminate force that is particularly potent when combined with rock & roll and alcohol. You can use it to make a point but never to preach or, god forbid, control. For you have no idea what seed it has planted in people long after the bar is closed or the iPod switched off. “Did that play of mine send out certain men the English Shot? Did words of mine put too great a strain on that woman's reeling brain?” Almost a hundred years ago, Yeats worried about his own employment of the fanatic heart; and even the least of his acolytes would do well to heed his warning.
Still, the Irish soul is our heritage and we’re fools if we don’t use it. There are times though when it has need of a spark. I can relate to and write about anything stretching back to the 1840’s for I had a grandfather whose father spoke to him of such times, so I can, at least, metaphorically touch them. I can even find my way back to Wexford’s rebellion of 1798 because I grew up on its streets and can still hear whispers of it in the old stones. I had a boyhood hero, however, Red Hugh O’Donnell. Much as I empathized with him, I was unable to find the key to unlock his particular psyche. What could I begin to know of a man who blazed across Ireland in the late 16th Century?
He was the young prince of Tirconaill or Donegal, as we now know it. Kidnapped by the English when 15, he was held hostage in Dublin Castle to prevent his clan and relatives from rebelling. He escaped during a snowstorm on Christmas night, 1592 and instead of heading north towards Donegal he headed south into the Wicklow Mountains where he suffered frostbite and lost a number of toes. When he finally made it back to Donegal, he put to the sword many relatives and friends who had collaborated with the English. Joining forces with Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, they drove the English before them. However, they were defeated at the Battle of Kinsale on Christmas Eve, 1601; whereupon Red Hugh set sail for the court of King Philip in Spain to seek an army. One can imagine the wild young Prince of Donegal adrift amidst the intrigue of the sophisticated Spanish court. To add to his problems he was constantly under threat from Queen Elizabeth who had dispatched agents to poison him.
I could sense the wild Irish soul of Red Hugh but couldn’t touch it until I became interested in Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance and enemy of the Taliban. He and other Afghani leaders shared many qualities with Red Hugh - religious fundamentalists, paranoid and egotistical, at war with invading modern armies, pawns of great empires, their semi-feudal times coming to an end.
This is a song about Red Hugh O’Donnell on his last night at the court of King Philip, but it could just as well be about Ahmad Shah Massoud on the night before he was assassinated by agents of Osama Bin Laden.
RED HUGH
Another sleepless night
On a foreign shore
Candle flickers by my bed
Locks bolt my door
I drink too much wine
But it gives my brain relief
Stops the meanderings
That root me from my sleep
I stare out at the night
From a sweat-soaked bed
The Queen lays plots in London
But she won’t have my head
The candle gutters
The smell sweeps me back
To the icy fields of Kinsale
The bodies burning black
Fire and lightning protect Tirconaill
Fire and brimstone rain down on London
They’ll long remember Red Hugh O’Donnell
I could not join that battle
I gave orders from my horse
Wicklow snows had withered
The toes inside my boots
Still a fever of anxiety
Racks my bones
All my friends dead
On Kinsale’s icy roads
Oh were I back in Ulster
I’d dive in Swilly’s foam
Her crystal waters
Would soothe my soul
Dispatches from O’Neill
He grows old and cautious
Our allies are deserting
My blade would rip their stomachs
If Philip won’t help
I’ll return alone
O’Neill longs for an armistice
What profit in a peace
With a queen who’ll break her word
I swear to God
That bitch will taste my sword
I’ll drag her red wig from her head
Pull out her poisoned tongue
I must get back to Ulster
The candle is dead
There’s footsteps at my door
They halt
I’m tormented by that whore
Who waits at court in London
For word of my demise
Her agents hunt me everywhere
But I will not be taken
By any of her men
My head will not grace London’s spike
I’ll fight her to the end
Tonight I sup with James Blake
An honest man is he
He’s promised me three ships of war
We’ll sweep Lizzie from her throne
I will take my place
High King of the Irish
Defender of my Faith
With O’Neill as my adviser
O’Byrne at my side
I’ll rule with justice
But now the dawn is breaking
On this foreign shore
I will arise and say my prayers
Tomorrow I’ll go home
Fire and lightning protect Tirconaill
Fire and brimstone rain down on London
They’ll long remember Red Hugh O’Donnell
One of the problems in employing this Irish soul is that it cares nothing for expediency. Hitch a ride on its tail and you’d better be prepared for stormy weather. Pragmatism is not one of its strongest suits and it cares little for the fact that you may wish to make a living from your art. This demon knows only one way, and that’s forward! Follow your Irish soul and you will toss feathers, lose friends and end up tilting at as many windmills as real enemies.
Perhaps it was because I had prior experience in the murky world of Irish politics but it never occurred to me that we were going into Iraq over “weapons of mass destruction.” War was inevitable - the die had already been cast. 9/11 was the perfect smoke screen. And so Black 47 opposed that war long before the first rocket was fired. People would say, “Listen, American bands aren’t coming out and risking anything, why should an Irish band do so?” And we would reply, “We are an American band. We live in this country and vote here. It would be unpatriotic not to oppose a war of choice.”
And so we did at every gig until your stomach would churn going onstage and you’d be thinking, “Maybe tonight we’ll give it a break. Maybe tonight we’ll just do songs of drinking and dancing, loving and leaving, and forget about the bloody politics, just have a good time.” And then your stomach would feel better and you’d blast out the party songs and everything would be hunky dory. But then something would start to nag at you and pull you this way and that, and before you knew it, you had lashed out the opening chords of Downtown Baghdad Blues and every barstool patriot was looking up from their drinks and glowering at you. But you didn’t give a goddamn because it wasn’t just you speaking. It was that crazy Irish soul nipping at you and worrying you and saying, “To hell with your drinking and dancing, let’s hear about real life and American kids in Baghdad and Irish kids in Belfast, and before you knew it your fanatic heart was ratcheting way up past 160 and pumping out of your chest, and you didn’t care what the wannabe marines thought about you because you knew the real marines in Ramadi and Fallujah, and Kabul and Kandahar, were listening to your songs and hearing their own stories and grooving along with them and that was all that counted.
And that’s how this finishes – with a song from Black 47’s last album, IRAQ, about an Irish-American kid from the Mid-West who loves old movies. He’s stationed in Baghdad and his job is to drive an armored vehicle through hostile Sadr City. He becomes obsessed with the murals and pictures of Moqtada (Mookie) Al Sadr, leader of the militant Shiite religious party. Whenever the young soldier looks at Mookie, he sees Orson Wells with a beard. And as the danger thickens, he can feel his fanatic heart beginning to beat faster, and that crazy Irish soul that he inherited from dispossessed 19th Century immigrants is alive and focused and ready to kick arse any old day of the week in downtown Baghdad.
SADR CITY
I’m going down to Sadr City
Ain’t expectin’ much of a good time
I’m goin’ down to Sadr City
Check out the scene of the crime
Only one thing on my mind, babe
Gotta get out of this joint alive
Hey, Mookie run the show there
That man ain’t big on gettin’ high
Hey, Mookie run the show there
Ain’t exactly a down home kind of guy
Don’t go in for drinkin’ or dancin’ much
Got God on his mind, big time
Hey, I wish I was back in the Green Zone
Where the whiskey’s runnin’ free
Instead of sittin’ in a Hummer
With the Mahdi shootin’ at me
Oh, Sadr City,
Hillbilly armor protectin’ me
If I gotta be in this sweat-box
Least you can do is look out for me
Hey, I wish I was back in the US
Where the ladies look divine
Instead of checkin’ out burkas
47s in their linin’
Oh, Sadr City,
I wish you would let me be
Hey, Mister Mookie, man,
Someday you’re gonna be the death of me
I’m going down to Sadr City
Ain’t expectin’ much of a good time
I’m goin’ down to Sadr City, babe
Check out the scene of the crime
I came over to liberate your ass
Now all I want to do is get out of here alive
The soul of a nation courses through its poetry and music. You can also catch glimpses of it peeping out through the pages of history and occasionally through the ideals of its political movements.
Yeats referred obliquely to it as the “fanatic heart;” while Patrick Kavanagh saw it in much earthier terms as a spirit that emanated from his stony little fields, infecting the country people, causing them to break their religious and social strictures, and get into all manner of mischief.
Sean O’Riada recognized it in the traditional music of Ireland. He grabbed this force by the scruff of the neck and dragged it screaming into the 20th Century where many of us have injected varying degrees of it into modern songs and sounds.
It was back in Wexford where I grew up that I first became aware of this distinctive spirit that for want of anything better I’ll call “Irish soul.” Wexford town was very old, Ptolemy had noted it on his maps, Henry II did penance in Selskar Abbey for the murder of Thomas a’Beckett, while Cromwell and his army of bigots gained entrance through the West Gate and slaughtered both laity and clergy. After the insurrection of 1798 its citizens declared the liberated area a Free French Republic; even the Uncrowned King, Charles Stewart Parnell, was arrested for preaching sedition in the local Imperial Hotel - where later I would perform in punk ensembles. The very stones of the old town oozed history.
And yet, as often happens, the inhabitants of Wexford, for the most part, went about their daily business with little thought of history or politics. In fact many of them seemed to be almost in denial of the past; or was that studied nonchalance a cloak worn to ward off the addictive appeal of past grievances? That seemed to be the case for many citizens of the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles of the last 40 years - keep the bloody thing isolated up North and, for God’s sake, don’t let it spill over the border – a nearly impossible task give that the Troubles themselves were fomented by fanatic hearts full to the brim of simmering Irish soul.
My father and his side of the family wanted nothing whatsoever to do with this “madness.” My granduncle had joined the British Army and was killed on the Western Front in 1916. My grandfather was a well-to-do cattle dealer whose business activities were curtailed by DeValera’s Economic War of the 1930’s. Meanwhile, my father - a merchant marine - would only sail with British shipping companies. Like many Wexford people, he was thoroughly convinced that Irish history was a disaster, radical politics was for eejits, and any form of traditional music or the native language could be summed up in two dismissive words – “Auld Irish!” Indeed, in his later years, he had a sneaking admiration for the Iron Lady herself, Mrs. Thatcher – the very antithesis of Irish soul.
But I hailed from a mixed family, as my maternal grandfather who raised me not only believed in the power of the Irish soul, he felt that it should be cherished and nourished and that it behooved each generation of Irish people to help bring about a solution of the British problem in the North of Ireland.
He was a stonecutter whose father had escaped the worst of the famine years of 1845-1847 by gaining employment on the construction of one of the great Anglo-Irish houses. But this great-grandfather of mine had heard the moans of the famine victims dying in ditches and he made my grandfather promise that these people should never be forgotten. My Grandfather made no bones about his wish that I should carry on that tradition. Hence, when we set out to form a band that would hopefully be infused by Irish soul, and deal with things political, we chose the name Black 47.
I was awash in all my grandfather’s accounts of Irish history. This knowledge rarely came from books though like many self-educated men of that period he had amassed his own library. He had seen the great men of his day visit Wexford and give speeches: James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Eamonn DeValera and Michael Collins. He passed on eyewitness accounts of these icons and seemed to rate them by their measure of Irish soul. Thus, Big Jim Larkin was a mighty man, but James Connolly a troublemaker; Mick Collins a marvel (though he would later turn against him) and DeValera, principled though with little heart.
But he didn’t just stop at the political. Like, the poet, Kavanagh, my grandfather recognized that the very land, the mountains, the lakes and the valleys were a repository of the Irish soul, but that such soul was often unpredictable and could cause grief. As we drove around County Wexford on Sunday afternoons, there wasn’t a fairy rath or lucky tree, a holy well or a sacred hill that he didn’t recognize and tip his cap to. And in each of the old people’s houses that we visited, we’d meet likeminded people who dated the banishment of ghosts and such things to the introduction of the electric light. And as the evenings grew darker they would sit by the light of the fire allowing these spirits a chance to dance out of the shadows and mingle with them again as they had in the time of oil lamps and candles.
My grandfather had much time for the tinkers or traveling people, as they’re now known. No one knew where these people came from – had they been pushed off the land by Cromwell’s soldiers or taken to the roads during the famine years? It didn’t matter; he recognized the soul within them and felt that they were closest to the old hidden Ireland. They would arrive at his stone yard, the women in colored shawls, the men with their pockets stuffed full of five, ten and twenty pound notes. They were poor people who mostly lived in caravans by the side of the road but when one died, they did not stint. They would come from all over the county and beyond, and order great ornate headstones and statues, then pay on the spot. He once told me that they alone “recognized the majesty of death and one could learn much from them.”
I learned something from them too but it had more to do with life. Because of their itinerant nature, they had not been coated with the same stifling lacquer of Victorian conformity that smothered the rest of the country. They still retained the old links to the Irish soul and wore those links on their sleeve, though most of us settled Irish never had the eyes to see them.
I was thirteen or fourteen at the time and mad for the Beatles and other forms of pop music. And yet I was having trouble reconciling I Want to Hold Your Hand to the complexities of puberty and sexual awakening. Then one day coming from school I happened upon a large group of tinkers in the very narrow confines of John’s Gate Street. They rarely appeared in numbers unless celebrating weddings or funerals. Even then they were wary of outsiders and would have sent me packing; however, one of them had begun to sing. He was obviously someone of stature for their total attention was focused upon him. He sat on the ground outside Kielty’s Pub, a large bottle of Guinness balanced between his legs. He could have been an old-looking forty or a young looking sixty, and he had hair the color of dirty snow. Thin and hawk-faced, his eyes closed, he sang about a woman, by name of Molly Bán (bawn being the Gaelic for white, or of fair complexion). The song concerned jealousy, pain and loss, and Molly Bán’s love for two men, one of whom she leaves for the other. There was a raging, if contained, sexuality in the lyrics and delivery that I’d never heard before, and I learned from this probably illiterate man that soul will always trump literateness and convention crumbles before the fanatic heart.
The song stayed with me and I recently added a counter-melody and some words to help it on its way in a new century; hopefully I’ve retained the soul that gave it birth.
One Starry Night
One starry night as I lay sleepin’
One starry night as I lay in bed
Dreamed I heard wagon wheels a’creakin’
When I awoke, love, found you had fled
I’ll search the highways, likewise the byways
I’ll search the boreens, the camping places too
I will inquire of all our people
Have they tide or tidings or sign of you
For it’s many the mile, love, with you I’ve traveled
Many the hour, love, with you I’ve spent
Dreamed you were my love forever
But now I find, love, you were only lent
I’ll go across the seas to England
To London or to Birmingham
And in some public house I’ll find you
Lamenting your lost love back home
I’m drunk today, I’m seldom sober
A handsome rover from town to town
When I am dead, my story ended
Molly Bán a stórín, come lay me down
One starry night as I lay sleepin’
One starry night as I lay in bed
Dreamed I heard wagon wheels a’creakin’
Now that you’re gone, love, I might as well be dead
I eventually left my grandfather and his Irish soul behind and emigrated to Greenwich Village in the 1970’s. In fact I would imagine I’m one of the few people here who remembers Professor Sean Wilentz as a gangling clerk in his father’s bookstore on 8th Street. He and I frequented The Bells of Hell, a saloon of some notoriety on 13th Street and Sixth Avenue. This haven of lost souls was owned by a lovable rascal, bon vivant, liberal shock-jock, and writer, Malachy McCourt. It was full of gangling book store clerks, revolutionaries, failed priests and Christian Brothers, communists with drinking problems, musicians, hardened newspapermen, dope dealers, music critics, card sharps, refugees from respectability, bankrupt bookies and an ever-changing coterie of young ladies from the nearby Evangeline Residence.
I was a member of Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, the house band of this roiling, rollicking establishment. One of the trade-offs for the weekend residency in the back room was that you were required to play a lot of benefits. These were usually for Leftist causes; the Right drank in the Bells, but were often circumspect about their various leanings. Thus we played for Vietnam Vets against the War, Legalization of Marijuana, Gay Rights, British Coalminers, any organization hostile to Mrs. Thatcher, and the full spectrum of the movement for change in the North of Ireland. It was at these latter events that I caught my first glimpses of the Irish soul on American soil. Oh, I’d seen green beer and plastic shamrocks on Saint Patrick’s Day, yet that all seemed little more than skin deep. But at these functions and in similar situations in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx I was brought face to face with a hidden Irish-America where ancient scores still had need of settling. I was transported straight back to my grandfather’s house where what was called Republicanism went beyond mere politics – it was more akin to a religion. What I saw in the back rooms of New York City saloons had crossed the Atlantic within emigrant hearts and predated republicanism. In fact, it went way back beyond Cromwell and even Red Hugh O’Donnell. When I first came in contact with it, this force was diffuse and directionless. Then in 1980 it galvanized outside the British Consulate on Third Avenue.
Reading from Green Suede Shoes, Bobby Sands chapter, page 167
Black 47 has a T-shirt whose emblem is a heart ripped through by barbed wire. We call it the Fanatic Heart. It speaks to me of what often happens when the Irish soul is touched by sectarianism or inflexible ideology. Though I often employ the Irish soul when writing for Black 47, I’m ever mindful that it is a powerful, primal and often indiscriminate force that is particularly potent when combined with rock & roll and alcohol. You can use it to make a point but never to preach or, god forbid, control. For you have no idea what seed it has planted in people long after the bar is closed or the iPod switched off. “Did that play of mine send out certain men the English Shot? Did words of mine put too great a strain on that woman's reeling brain?” Almost a hundred years ago, Yeats worried about his own employment of the fanatic heart; and even the least of his acolytes would do well to heed his warning.
Still, the Irish soul is our heritage and we’re fools if we don’t use it. There are times though when it has need of a spark. I can relate to and write about anything stretching back to the 1840’s for I had a grandfather whose father spoke to him of such times, so I can, at least, metaphorically touch them. I can even find my way back to Wexford’s rebellion of 1798 because I grew up on its streets and can still hear whispers of it in the old stones. I had a boyhood hero, however, Red Hugh O’Donnell. Much as I empathized with him, I was unable to find the key to unlock his particular psyche. What could I begin to know of a man who blazed across Ireland in the late 16th Century?
He was the young prince of Tirconaill or Donegal, as we now know it. Kidnapped by the English when 15, he was held hostage in Dublin Castle to prevent his clan and relatives from rebelling. He escaped during a snowstorm on Christmas night, 1592 and instead of heading north towards Donegal he headed south into the Wicklow Mountains where he suffered frostbite and lost a number of toes. When he finally made it back to Donegal, he put to the sword many relatives and friends who had collaborated with the English. Joining forces with Hugh O’Neill, Prince of Tyrone, they drove the English before them. However, they were defeated at the Battle of Kinsale on Christmas Eve, 1601; whereupon Red Hugh set sail for the court of King Philip in Spain to seek an army. One can imagine the wild young Prince of Donegal adrift amidst the intrigue of the sophisticated Spanish court. To add to his problems he was constantly under threat from Queen Elizabeth who had dispatched agents to poison him.
I could sense the wild Irish soul of Red Hugh but couldn’t touch it until I became interested in Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance and enemy of the Taliban. He and other Afghani leaders shared many qualities with Red Hugh - religious fundamentalists, paranoid and egotistical, at war with invading modern armies, pawns of great empires, their semi-feudal times coming to an end.
This is a song about Red Hugh O’Donnell on his last night at the court of King Philip, but it could just as well be about Ahmad Shah Massoud on the night before he was assassinated by agents of Osama Bin Laden.
RED HUGH
Another sleepless night
On a foreign shore
Candle flickers by my bed
Locks bolt my door
I drink too much wine
But it gives my brain relief
Stops the meanderings
That root me from my sleep
I stare out at the night
From a sweat-soaked bed
The Queen lays plots in London
But she won’t have my head
The candle gutters
The smell sweeps me back
To the icy fields of Kinsale
The bodies burning black
Fire and lightning protect Tirconaill
Fire and brimstone rain down on London
They’ll long remember Red Hugh O’Donnell
I could not join that battle
I gave orders from my horse
Wicklow snows had withered
The toes inside my boots
Still a fever of anxiety
Racks my bones
All my friends dead
On Kinsale’s icy roads
Oh were I back in Ulster
I’d dive in Swilly’s foam
Her crystal waters
Would soothe my soul
Dispatches from O’Neill
He grows old and cautious
Our allies are deserting
My blade would rip their stomachs
If Philip won’t help
I’ll return alone
O’Neill longs for an armistice
What profit in a peace
With a queen who’ll break her word
I swear to God
That bitch will taste my sword
I’ll drag her red wig from her head
Pull out her poisoned tongue
I must get back to Ulster
The candle is dead
There’s footsteps at my door
They halt
I’m tormented by that whore
Who waits at court in London
For word of my demise
Her agents hunt me everywhere
But I will not be taken
By any of her men
My head will not grace London’s spike
I’ll fight her to the end
Tonight I sup with James Blake
An honest man is he
He’s promised me three ships of war
We’ll sweep Lizzie from her throne
I will take my place
High King of the Irish
Defender of my Faith
With O’Neill as my adviser
O’Byrne at my side
I’ll rule with justice
But now the dawn is breaking
On this foreign shore
I will arise and say my prayers
Tomorrow I’ll go home
Fire and lightning protect Tirconaill
Fire and brimstone rain down on London
They’ll long remember Red Hugh O’Donnell
One of the problems in employing this Irish soul is that it cares nothing for expediency. Hitch a ride on its tail and you’d better be prepared for stormy weather. Pragmatism is not one of its strongest suits and it cares little for the fact that you may wish to make a living from your art. This demon knows only one way, and that’s forward! Follow your Irish soul and you will toss feathers, lose friends and end up tilting at as many windmills as real enemies.
Perhaps it was because I had prior experience in the murky world of Irish politics but it never occurred to me that we were going into Iraq over “weapons of mass destruction.” War was inevitable - the die had already been cast. 9/11 was the perfect smoke screen. And so Black 47 opposed that war long before the first rocket was fired. People would say, “Listen, American bands aren’t coming out and risking anything, why should an Irish band do so?” And we would reply, “We are an American band. We live in this country and vote here. It would be unpatriotic not to oppose a war of choice.”
And so we did at every gig until your stomach would churn going onstage and you’d be thinking, “Maybe tonight we’ll give it a break. Maybe tonight we’ll just do songs of drinking and dancing, loving and leaving, and forget about the bloody politics, just have a good time.” And then your stomach would feel better and you’d blast out the party songs and everything would be hunky dory. But then something would start to nag at you and pull you this way and that, and before you knew it, you had lashed out the opening chords of Downtown Baghdad Blues and every barstool patriot was looking up from their drinks and glowering at you. But you didn’t give a goddamn because it wasn’t just you speaking. It was that crazy Irish soul nipping at you and worrying you and saying, “To hell with your drinking and dancing, let’s hear about real life and American kids in Baghdad and Irish kids in Belfast, and before you knew it your fanatic heart was ratcheting way up past 160 and pumping out of your chest, and you didn’t care what the wannabe marines thought about you because you knew the real marines in Ramadi and Fallujah, and Kabul and Kandahar, were listening to your songs and hearing their own stories and grooving along with them and that was all that counted.
And that’s how this finishes – with a song from Black 47’s last album, IRAQ, about an Irish-American kid from the Mid-West who loves old movies. He’s stationed in Baghdad and his job is to drive an armored vehicle through hostile Sadr City. He becomes obsessed with the murals and pictures of Moqtada (Mookie) Al Sadr, leader of the militant Shiite religious party. Whenever the young soldier looks at Mookie, he sees Orson Wells with a beard. And as the danger thickens, he can feel his fanatic heart beginning to beat faster, and that crazy Irish soul that he inherited from dispossessed 19th Century immigrants is alive and focused and ready to kick arse any old day of the week in downtown Baghdad.
SADR CITY
I’m going down to Sadr City
Ain’t expectin’ much of a good time
I’m goin’ down to Sadr City
Check out the scene of the crime
Only one thing on my mind, babe
Gotta get out of this joint alive
Hey, Mookie run the show there
That man ain’t big on gettin’ high
Hey, Mookie run the show there
Ain’t exactly a down home kind of guy
Don’t go in for drinkin’ or dancin’ much
Got God on his mind, big time
Hey, I wish I was back in the Green Zone
Where the whiskey’s runnin’ free
Instead of sittin’ in a Hummer
With the Mahdi shootin’ at me
Oh, Sadr City,
Hillbilly armor protectin’ me
If I gotta be in this sweat-box
Least you can do is look out for me
Hey, I wish I was back in the US
Where the ladies look divine
Instead of checkin’ out burkas
47s in their linin’
Oh, Sadr City,
I wish you would let me be
Hey, Mister Mookie, man,
Someday you’re gonna be the death of me
I’m going down to Sadr City
Ain’t expectin’ much of a good time
I’m goin’ down to Sadr City, babe
Check out the scene of the crime
I came over to liberate your ass
Now all I want to do is get out of here alive
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