Posted in great irish bands, irishness, Irish working Class Culture, Art, poetry on Apr 20th, 2008 3 Comments »
(Photo by Graham Keogh.)
A lot has been written about Jinx Lennon. All positive, and all well-deserved. A true original voice. He’s been the subject of RTE’s Arts Lives, clips from which are available on YouTube here.
From his website biog:
Jinx takes the word singer songwriter,douses it liberally with petrol lights it up and then takes a […]
Posted in great irish bands, irish culture, Irish music on Apr 3rd, 2008 No Comments »
You have to blame trust me I’m a thief for these two back-to-back posts. The link to Jape brought me to Si Schroeder, who I have never heard of before. The following is from his record label page:
Si Schroeder is a six-foot hairy male who makes ‘music’. This ‘music’ generally sounds like classic songs in […]
Posted in great irish bands, irish culture, Irish music on Apr 3rd, 2008 7 Comments »
Taken from Jape’s label website, trustmeiamathief.com, (home to the Redneck Manifesto as well.)
The music of Jape is a breath of fresh air to the smoggy atmosphere of Dublin. The first album “Cosmosphere” which was released last year on the Volta Sounds label showed his experimental side and sense of humor with stoner folk and 8 […]
Posted in great irish bands, irish culture, Irish music on Mar 20th, 2008 2 Comments »
I know very little about Redneck Manifesto, other than they are a five-piece instrumental band who make very clever videos for their music. The members are: Mervyn Craig, Matthew Bolger, Niall Byrne, Richard Egan, and Neil O’Connor. The following is from their myspace site:
The Redneck Manifesto are from Dublin, Ireland.
We have released three full length […]
Posted in Radio, French, great irish bands, Irish music, gigs on Mar 17th, 2008 No Comments »
[ Hangover friendly broadcasting - Photo from Radio Nova Website]
On a balmy night last summer, I had somewhat of a radio epiphany while trying to tune the car radio somewhere near my home. I came across a station I’d never before noticed that was playing a track from that Stuart Staples solo LP from a […]
Posted in great irish bands, irish culture, Irish working Class Culture on Mar 16th, 2008 9 Comments »
There’s an old photograph of Dan that I wish you could-a seen
Of him and the boys posed, standing in St. Stephen’s Green
Ya see, they were a part of the great freedom dream
But they were caught and detained and are locked inside the frame
of the photograph (Shades of a blue orphanage)
It took me a while […]
Posted in great irish bands, Rathmines on Mar 5th, 2008 No Comments »
I am not altogether comfortable with the title of this series of posts. To begin with, I’d consider myself a poor authority to be pronouncing on what constitutes a ‘great’ band. And to finish with, most of the bands or individuals we’ve posted on here have belonged to the ‘beautiful losers’ tradition - commercial […]
Posted in great irish bands, Irish music, Irish social history, Art on Mar 5th, 2008 8 Comments »
The post below on snobbery, art, and Dvorák, got me thinking about an Irish composer who drew heavily from this country´s heritage - namely, Seán Ó Riada.
Born in Adare, Co. Limerick in 1931, Ó Riada studied music under Aloys Fleischmann at UCC, before getting a job in 1952 at Radio Éireann. In 1955 he […]
Posted in great irish bands, aesthetics, Art on Mar 4th, 2008 7 Comments »
There are people out there who do not see the three minute pop song as an art form. They need help. Now, there are thousands of pop songs to choose from, but here´s one that I find particularly wonderful.
The Divine Comedy will be a subject of our Great Irish Bands series soon, but for […]
Posted in great irish bands, Irish music on Feb 25th, 2008 10 Comments »
It may be due to having recently lost my highly influential position as very minor management in the French prune industry but I’m often led to muse on prunes in musical history these days. On the famed ‘Nuggets’ compilation, we were treated to the garage abrasiveness of the Electric Prunes, you’ll all recall. Frank Zappa […]