New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label Dubliners (musical group). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dubliners (musical group). Show all posts
Granted, I mention Luke Kelly fairly often here at this pro bono publication. Pedantry suits me, and I'm grimly determined that readers know who he was and what he stood for.
Entirely coincidental to the yearly arrival of St. Patrick's Day, the missus has been watching an Irish television series called "Striking Out."
Set in Dublin and Wicklow, it's a soap-opera about lawyers and their role in a political scandal connected to the real-world Irish property bust ten years ago, and the reason I bring it up is apart from the performers' accents, scenic drone panoramas of the local landscape and occasional pint of Guinness, there is little to set this drama apart from one situated in London, New York City or Shanghai.
I'm not necessarily objecting to any of this. After all, modernity. While my memories of Ireland 34 years ago are missing mobile phones, specialty coffee carry-out cups and nattily attired Eurofessionals, it is unreasonable to expect the planet to stop spinning while we revert to rural thatched Irish stereotypes of the sort embraced by people who don't actually live there, celebrating their St. Patrick's Days with green beer and car bombs.
Or by me, while reading this excellent account of Luke Kelly's political grounding and its musical context. This hero of mine died 35 years ago, and his country has changed quite a lot since then.
What hasn't changed is the power of ideas, or the way music can express them -- and I submit to you that this is why Luke still matters.
Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist.
... In this earliest phase of his musical development, he saw his socialism and his growing love for folk music to be inextricably linked. “The music of the left-wing,” he thought, “was romantic and rejuvenating.” As his talent grew Luke took to spending his weekend touring Irish pubs with the Connolly Association selling its newspaper The Irish Democrat. As one of its leading members Sean Redmond would recall to Des Geraghty, “the drill was quite simple. He would go up to the stage or music stand, sing a few songs, then announce that he was here selling the Connolly Association’s newspaper and he expected everyone to buy one.”
But by 1962 the paths of politics and music were beginning to diverge. Seeing great potential in his intellect and application, George Thompson arranged for Luke Kelly to go to university in Prague to further his political development. Availing of this opportunity would almost certainly have meant giving up his musical career—so a choice had to be made. Although still committed to socialist politics, Luke had by this time caught the folk music bug. He turned down the chance to study in Prague and packed his bags for a trip elsewhere, returning to his native Dublin as it was beginning to sway with the winds of the 1960s.
Granted, I mention Luke Kelly fairly often here at this pro bono publication. Pedantry suits me, and I'm grimly determined that readers know who he was and what he stood for.
Entirely coincidental to the yearly arrival of St. Patrick's Day, the missus has been watching an Irish television series called "Striking Out."
Set in Dublin and Wicklow, it's a soap-opera about lawyers and their role in a political scandal connected to the real-world Irish property bust ten years ago, and the reason I bring it up is apart from the performers' accents, scenic drone panoramas of the local landscape and occasional pint of Guinness, there is little to set this drama apart from one situated in London, New York City or Shanghai.
I'm not necessarily objecting to any of this. After all, modernity. While my memories of Ireland 30 years ago are missing mobile phones, specialty coffee carry-out cups and nattily attired Eurofessionals, it is unreasonable to expect the planet to stop spinning while we revert to rural thatched Irish stereotypes of the sort embraced by people who don't actually live there, celebrating their St. Patrick's Days with green beer and car bombs.
Or by me, while reading this excellent account of Luke Kelly's political grounding and its musical context. This hero of mine died 34 years ago, and his country has changed quite a lot since then.
What hasn't changed is the power of ideas, or the way music can express them -- and I submit to you that this is why Luke still matters.
Luke Kelly was Ireland’s best-known folk singer — he was also a lifelong socialist.
... In this earliest phase of his musical development, he saw his socialism and his growing love for folk music to be inextricably linked. “The music of the left-wing,” he thought, “was romantic and rejuvenating.” As his talent grew Luke took to spending his weekend touring Irish pubs with the Connolly Association selling its newspaper The Irish Democrat. As one of its leading members Sean Redmond would recall to Des Geraghty, “the drill was quite simple. He would go up to the stage or music stand, sing a few songs, then announce that he was here selling the Connolly Association’s newspaper and he expected everyone to buy one.”
But by 1962 the paths of politics and music were beginning to diverge. Seeing great potential in his intellect and application, George Thompson arranged for Luke Kelly to go to university in Prague to further his political development. Availing of this opportunity would almost certainly have meant giving up his musical career—so a choice had to be made. Although still committed to socialist politics, Luke had by this time caught the folk music bug. He turned down the chance to study in Prague and packed his bags for a trip elsewhere, returning to his native Dublin as it was beginning to sway with the winds of the 1960s.
... I've been cast into another Dubliners vortex, something that happens once a year like clockwork, and sometimes more often.
There were eleven primary members of The Dubliners over a period of 50 years (1962- 2012), with various other musicians plugging holes when necessary.
When this documentary was filmed circa 1994, three decades into their run, founding members Luke Kelly and Ciarán Bourke were long dead, though Sean Cannon and Eamonn Campbell were excellent players, too, and in my estimation, this period probably was the peak of the post-Kelly period.
The film itself is part travelogue, part concert. It's a German production and takes place almost entirely in Germany, testifying to the popularity of the band in northern Europe and Scandinavia. From the 1980s forward, while The Dubliners remained beloved in the group's native Ireland, tours of Europe were an annual ritual.
Ronnie Drew mentions this in the documentary, noting that The Dubliners were the first Irish "folk" band (not all of its members agree with the use of the term) to gain a following in places like Germany.
There are many good insights here, as well as songs both well known and obscure. If you are a fan of music in the universal sense, it's a good way to use two hours of your day.
In which three fascinating Anglo-Irish topics collide amid my frequent references to the adjective "elegiac."
It's the mid-1970s lineup of the Irish folk band The Dubliners, performing on a throwback British television show called The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, depicting a fictional working men's club -- a form of private pub with ale and stronger drink, in addition to indoor recreation (snooker, darts), or a haven for what Americans would refer to as blue collar workers.
The WMC’s original purpose was to provide the Victorian working man with a controlled environment in which to socialise and drink. Over time it has morphed into a lingering bastion for traditional community activities. It provides an affordable way for local people to meet, enjoy live entertainment and play games (in The Telegraph, below).
I've written about The Dubliners many times. During the band's most fabled and productive period in the 1960s and early 70s, it was the Rolling Stones of traditional Irish music.
The American roots magazine Dirty Linen, contrasting the Dubliners and the Clancy brothers who emerged around the same time, wrote: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fistfights."
Jim McCann performed only briefly with The Dubliners, whose best known members were Luke Kelly and Ronnie Drew, but McCann committed to vinyl the definitive version of Carrickfergus, and he sings it here. For me, it produces goosebumps.
I think the frozen/mushy pea jokes are funny, and to hear an Irishman (McCann) pronounce the word "shunters" sublime.
Wheeltappers and shunters are railway workers. They were commonly employed by steam railways in Britain and elsewhere, but still are found both on British railways and in Eastern Europe.
The name of the programme thus echoes that of the many social clubs set up by railway workers in the 19th century, many of which are still in existence (known as British Rail Staff Association clubs), even if they no longer have a direct connection to the railways.
Working men's clubs still operate, though they're fast becoming archaic.
Last orders for the Working Men's Club? by Hannah Marshall (The Telegraph)
The number of working men's clubs in the country have halved in the last 30 years. Hannah Marshall investigates why these great British institutions are worth saving.
Off Barking Road in London's East Ham, just past the shops that always have their shutters down, a square, concrete building sits within a sprawling housing estate. Go inside this inconspicuous space on any Friday, Saturday or Sunday and you’ll be met by an unexpected sight: families of several generations grouped around tables —grandparents, parents, children, cousins, nieces, nephews — enjoying live music and socialising. Follow through to the sports room and a group of young local men will have congregated to play pool or darts and watch the football on the TV. This is the East Ham Working Men’s Club and it’s a place where everybody knows your name.
The Dubliners completed a 50th anniversary tour in 2012 and called it quits. The band's last surviving original member, banjoist Barney McKenna, died before the celebratory concerts even were finished. Far-off 1977 was the final year for The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club television series, and much like fraternal orders in the US, recent decades have not been kind to the prospect of the continued existence of working men's clubs.
Speaking personally, while it isn't a direct analogy with working men's clubs, my wife's cousin belongs to a private club in Plymouth, for centuries the Royal Navy's main port city. Most of the members are from working class family backgrounds as stevedores, shipyard employees, bricklayers and construction workers.
The first time we went there in 2009, there was no real ale, but by 2013, the pendulum had taken a swing. The Fort had a cask-conditioned bitter from Skinner's in Cornwall (Betty Stogs, perhaps), and it was delicious.
To be sure, if I'd have found myself in a working men's club in Sheffield or Newcastle at the age of 17, with cask ale and an Irish band playing, I wouldn't have understood any of it.
Now I do, and that's why we all fantasize about time travel. It's making me salivate just writing these words, and there's not a hand-pumped bitter in sight.
As an entity and institution, The Dubliners lasted a half-century, finally disbanding in 2012 after the banjoist and last original band member Barney McKenna died. Lineups changed, and the entertainment value never wavered, but in musical and cultural contexts, the salad days were 1962 - 1984.
Campbell came along at precisely the midpoint of the band's existence, stuck around until the end of the line, then went right back out on the road with a spin-of called The Dublin Legends.
Apparently it was Campbell's idea to have The Dubliners perform "The Irish Rover" with The Pogues in 1987. For this alone, he belongs in the Irish Music Hall of Fame, if there is such a thing.
Following is as loving a remembrance as any of us would hope to have written in his or her memory.
For the uninitiated, the Gaelic word “craic” (crack) means the quality of life, the warmness of conviviality, discourse and entertainment – often, though by no means exclusively, as applicable to pub culture.
In the 50-year history of The Dubliners, there were eleven band members, not counting fill-ins here and there. Five of them as yet are living, and the youngest of them is 73. Time waits for no one, but it was one hell of a ride.
Eamonn Campbell died last week and it's bloody sad. It's not just sad because he was a genius guitar player, distinguished record producer and arranger, merchant of craic, and generous guy loved by everyone - literally, it was also because he could connect with people.
"If you met Eamonn, you'd never forget him," his friends reminisced.
In these depressing culturally bereft times, where people favour headphones to conversations, avoid eye contact and try desperately not to engage with each other, Eamonn was a big shock of white-haired charisma and quintessential Irishness who will never be replaced.
"We are heartbroken," said his band, The Dublin Legends (consisting of Sean Cannon, Gerry O'Connor and Paul Watchorn) in a statement.
The Wolfe Tones claimed there was "no better guitar player anywhere". The Pogues called him a "lovely man" - while footballer Paul McGrath wrote "there will be a good session in heaven tonight". Dutch and German newspapers reported his death at the tender age of 70. The list goes on.
Every old man's pub I went into after news of his death hit, I heard punters retell stories of encounters with him as The Dubliners played in his honour in the background.
"I have a few anecdotes for you," one fella winked at me, "but I'm not telling you."
"He was larger than life and he joined a band of characters who were all larger than life - so he fit right in. Those fellas brought joy to Irish people during dark times," Nicky Black, who drinks in Grogan's on South William Street, recalled.
Then Tommy Smith, a co-owner of Grogan's, came out from behind the bar to hold both my hands declaring: "Ah no they don't make people like that any more. Eamonn and Luke, Barney and Ronnie. They used to come in here at various stages in the 45 years I've been here," he reminisced.
"They were great times. They brought the besotted fans over from Europe."
I can be such a fan boy, though first, something about furniture.
My CD Collection.
It is huge, numbering in the thousands, and like an invasive species of plant life, it threatened to take over all of my book shelves -- leaving no room for hundreds of books. Something had to happen, and so of course I continued to procrastinate, until finally the missus evicted my home office (that's me) from the home library. It (I) was moved to empty space in the rear of the house, and the CDs followed. Now there is proper shelving for them, and an ongoing wintertime project to label, file and shelve all the discs, whether in vinyl sleeves, paper envelopes or jewel cases.
I have become a research librarian, by turns dating and filing ... and listening to music I didn't remember even having. Tactile. Very tactile.
Houndmouth and some love from "World Cafe's" David Dye.
I'll continue to "sing" the praises of our hometown musicians made good, but you needn't take it from me.
“What gets me with Houndmouth is how well this band looks back in time musically. But ‘Little Neon Limelight’ isn’t just about a retro sound; it’s also about songs, two amazing lead voices and equally impressive harmonies.”
Give me just a little more time, and I'll have Houndmouth fully politicized. It's always been my goal, you know.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2016.
As I wrote on Facebook upon reading the news:
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a piece of crap, and unworthy of my time to comment ... and 2016 inductees Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Chicago are three of my favorite bands ever. Today I'll observe a moratorium on RRHOF vilification, then it's back to the usual derision.
Arguably, given N.W.A.'s pervasive cultural and musical influences, the group's recognition dwarfs all the rest of it, but lest we forget, the RRHOF is a marketing tool. It isn't supposed to make sense, and the most interesting aspect of the induction of my three personal favorites is whether their legendary personnel issues will play any part in the festivities.
... The original quartet and septet lineups, respectively, of Cheap Trick and Chicago are being inducted, while the Deep Purple roster will encompass the group's first three lineups, including three teams of singers and bass players. Some of the intriguing reunion possibilities for the ceremony include Chicago with singer/bassist Peter Cetera for the first time since 1985 and with drummer Danny Seraphine since 1990, Cheap Trick with estranged drummer Bun E. Carlos, and Deep Purple with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who's been gone since 1993.
The Chicago camp already has contradicted itself on Cetera's possible return (and ignored Seraphine). The singer is playing cute. Bun E. told Rolling Stone that he'd been invited and would behave, although financial squabbles have been friendship killers for him. The finest observation of all was made by drummer Ian Paice of Deep Purple, the group's only remaining original member.
"If some people are inducted together, it could end in a punch-up."
RIP, Jon Lord ...
... and Terry Kath. What's not to love about a guy who writes a song about his dog?
Gary Richrath’s death.
Never once before REO Speedwagon's 1977 live album You Get What You Play For was I a fan of the band, and my interest lasted only a short time afterward. This said, it was the preferred soundtrack to my debauchery the summer preceding my senior year in high school.
At some point around this time, my gang saw the band at an LRS $1.02 concert in Louisville, performing the set list as recorded on the live album. It was only months before REO's next release made them superstars.
The dollar-two show was noteworthy for my varsity baseball jersey getting stained with flying blood when a fight broke out up front, but what floored me completely was Gary Richrath, for not only was he extraordinarily skilled at playing his instrument. In addition, he simply had the guitar superstar look down to a science. Richrath was an Adonis. He had the hair, the moves and the swagger. He could choke that neck, too.
I was tall, gangly, socially inept, prone to self-loathing and not at all the air guitar hero type. Here was this short, handsome, curly-haired dude commanding the auditorium. Surely Richrath got the girls. Whatever the vagaries of timing, it hit me hard and was tantamount to a man crush.
Time passed. Lots of time. REO became a huge 1980s-era arena band specializing in power ballads, and I lost interest. Apparently so did Richrath, who departed before the decade's end and disappeared. He returned for the obligatory "Behind the Music" interviews, then vanished again.
REO was a distant memory, and then my friend Jay burned a copy of the live album for me. I hadn't heard it in decades, and the memories stirred. In late 2014, I took to the Internet in search of Richrath. It had been 20 years since the VH1 documentary. Where was he now?
Granted, we're all subject to the ravages of the decades ... and yet what I saw on YouTube was unfathomable. Richrath wasn't recognizable in recent videos, as performing with bar bands in Peoria (he'd returned home to help care for his mother) and in a first-time-in-ages onstage reunion with REO. Bloated and all jowls, he also seemed to have lost his chops.
He died suddenly in September, and the news plunged me into mourning -- not for a fellow I never met, but for my own lost youth. That's the way it always plays out, doesn't it? The notion of rock stardom is nonsensical in the main. At the same time, I appreciate the rock star helping me through a difficult summer.
The Dubliners.
My father liked big bands and the music of the swing era, and I was introduced to the genre very early. When I began exploring music on my own, thanks to the LPs at the public library, my search took me far beyond Glenn Miller, to the roots of jazz (New Orleans, Chicago and Harlem), and later outward in all directions.
During the 6th grade, my friends began pulling me away from the music heard at home. Early favorites were the Beatles, Steppenwolf and Black Sabbath. Ever since then, when the topic of "favorite bands) arises, the default reply has been phrased in the pop/rock idiom: The Who, Manic Street Preachers, Def Leppard, et al.
Finally at the belated age of 55, it occurs to me how ridiculously narrow a viewpoint this is.
When all is spun and done, surely Duke Ellington ranks up there with Oasis, U2 and the Smiths. So does Bix Beiderbecke.
And so does the Irish “folk” group called The Dubliners (1962-2012). In fact, I need not preface my preference for Ellington, Beiderbecke and The Dubliners with “jazz” or “folk” or any other specific modifiers. Each represents an aggregate musical output through working careers. Each has brought me great pleasure. They're all part of a huge, wonderful melting pot.
My parents took me to see Duke Ellington perform in Louisville in 1971, but I never once caught The Dubliners playing live. The band constantly toured Europe, and on several occasions our paths were a few weeks from crossing, but a show never came to pass. The earliest and probably best Dubliners lineup was finished before my first trip to Europe started, and yet I’ve always enjoyed the many different configurations that followed.
Moreover, the band’s ethos of a half-century is one worth emulating. Players came and went, and all of the living former members remained family, and performed together from time to time.
Cheap Trick, Deep Purple and Chicago: Take note of this refreshing, mature attitude. Meanwhile, here are The Dubliners in their rare old times, with the classic lineup and Luke Kelly on vocals:
In December, 1983, the gravely ill Luke Kelly appeared for the last time with the Dubliners, in a performance shown on Irish television. Kelly died of a brain tumor in January, 1984. The group continued to work until 2012, when it disbanded after the last surviving original member passed away.
The lovely song itself, with opening lines that seem to presage the singer's imminent departure, is a composite of several "night visiting" songs -- not from Ireland, but Scotland. Turns out Kelly's grandmother was a MacDonald. Truly, we never know where the music will take us.
For the past week, I've been listening to Dubliners songs, watching the group's performances and absorbing documentaries. I know already that in years to come, this song -- this performance of it -- will remind me of Christmas in the year 2015. Ultimately, we all must away.
If you'll excuse me now, I seem to have gotten something in my eye.
On the Dubliners, of whom I remain a tremendous fan these many years later ...
The American roots magazine Dirty Linen, contrasting the Dubliners and the Clancy brothers who emerged around the same time, wrote: "Whereas the Clancys were well-scrubbed returned Yanks from rural Tipperary, decked out in matching white Aran sweaters, the Dubliners were hard-drinking backstreet Dublin scrappers with unkempt hair and bushy beards, whose gigs seemed to happen by accident between fistfights."
As an entity and institution, the Dubliners lasted a half-century, finally disbanding in 2012 after the banjoist and last original band member Barney McKenna died. Lineups changed, and the entertainment value never wavered, but in musical and cultural contexts, the salad days were 1962 - 1984.
During the first two decades of the band's existence, Ronnie Drew and Luke Kelly were its Lennon/McCartney or Jagger/Richards -- not in a songwriting sense, as the group performed the songs of others, but in terms of central focus.
Drew died in 2008, and the Irish Times explained his unique contribution to the Dubliners in its eulogy. Thirty years after Kelly's premature death, the Irish Postpublished a remembrance,explaining the significance of the phrase I've chosen to title this posting.
A balladeer, musician and political activist, Kelly’s ability to sing ‘his heart out’ with ‘perfect diction’ in the words of Bono and the late Ronnie Drew bear testimony to the gift of his irreplaceable voice to stir and move the most hardened of souls with song and sentiment ...
... Luke often sang of the poor, the oppressed, the worker, the lover or the rebel – the realities of his own life and upbringing enlivened and gave weight to his songs and the emotional way in which he sang them. And his own childhood and youth was anything but privileged.
In this clip, Kelly sings one of his signature songs.
The documentary embedded and linked in this post was produced in 1999, but I only became aware of it earlier in the week. It is highly recommended.
Until this evening, I wasn't aware that Barney McKenna had died. He passed away just before the Dubliners embarked on a 50th anniversary tour; the band "will do their best to honour all the concert dates for the rest of the year." McKenna was the last surviving original member of the Dubliners.
This mid-seventies edition of the Dubliners was without its departed founder Ronnie Drew, who would later return to the fold, and Ciarán Bourke, who had been crippled by an aneurysm. But this is the beloved singer Luke Kelly's personal version, anyway. Ewan MacColl wrote the song, and a cover by the Pogues is better known to younger listeners.
This morning in New Albany, I'm singing "Dirty Old Town" along with Luke.
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