Irish Fridays

[Lat-Literal]

Thanks J and G for providing my lunch time concert. First the aristocrats with their 'ordinary' reels, and the best version of Carolan's Farewell that I have heard. And then the excellent 'non-Irish' Dan Hicks and his musicians; his two back-up singers and dancers were 'not unlike' Sean Nos dancers in their expert use of a small space to give maximum movement and rhythm.

PS Greetings Lat and good luck.

Thank you Padraig.

That's very kind - and I hope that your health condition is being managed ably for you.

If there is a sudden dark shadow before Mon, I've got to pack my bag immediately and get back to Old Street where they will stick me in an NHS hostel until breakfast time. Otherwise, following hundreds of angles that have been taken, it's a case of them comparing x-rays from Wed and next Mon on next Mon to see if an operation is needed immediately or not for the foreseeable future. They have been great but I'm not generally right enough for London so its simultaneous stresses. It's also £45 a time for travel in each direction and getting in and out of London is like nothing on earth. I don't know how the drivers cope with it. Whatever the case, it is only the left eye and I've got interests in music and radio. I've also had a book in me for a long time that would contribute to medical science and this just reinforces it - it's a very weird new striking of gold - although it isn't wholly in line with the politically correct.

I'm signing off now.

[Globaltruth]

Thank you Padraig.

That's very kind - and I hope that your health condition is being managed ably for you.

If there is a sudden dark shadow before Mon, I've got to pack my bag immediately and get back to Old Street where they will stick me in an NHS hostel until breakfast time. Otherwise, following hundreds of angles that have been taken, it's a case of them comparing x-rays from Wed and next Mon on next Mon to see if an operation is needed immediately or not for the foreseeable future. They have been great but I'm not generally right enough for London so its simultaneous stresses. It's also £45 a time for travel in each direction and getting in and out of London is like nothing on earth. I don't know how the drivers cope with it. Whatever the case, it is only the left eye and I've got interests in music and radio. I've also had a book in me for a long time that would contribute to medical science and this just reinforces it - it's a very weird new striking of gold - although it isn't wholly in line with the politically correct.

I'm signing off now.

All the very best Lat.

[Lat-Literal]

All the very best Lat.

Many thanks.

Just the nine hour London Town day today - and no operation. Schisis confirmed. Ordinarily good news but it is very peculiar shaped and with some fluid so as for future impacts on the retina it all depends which way it blows. Massively stressed but winding down with the milder end trigeminals. Oh what fun. Next check up in eight week's time - unless there is a crisis.

The Pogues - A Pair of Brown Eyes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNtQ5AnRlz8

(Can't recall how many months it has been since I've listened to a Pogues song but they sound as right today as they did then - total time warp, that same strange form of perfection)

[johncorrigan]

Not Irish, but Celtic at least...One of my colleagues was telling me of her trip to the Island of Raasay and her walk to Hallaig and I was sent back to Sorley MacLean and Martyn Bennett, of course, and the great poem of loss of community, where the trees represent those souls no longer there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIbSM_g272w

[Mal]

It being St Patrick's Day ... Sentimental ... atmospheric and nostalgic...

Bax Symphony No.1?

[Padraig]

Bax Symphony No.1?

On a slightly different note, I attended a local Fleadh in Donegal where contestants were attempting to qualify for entry to the Ulster Fleadh in Castlewellan. The competition I heard was for ensembles in different age groups, and my interest was in my three grand nieces/nephew on fiddles and whistles. They were all very good (of course) and all will be going to Castlewellan in July.

This promising group from Cavan has younger members:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxFMsngrkN0

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks, Padraig Cavan is where my maternal grandmother was born - I've never been there, but this might well be the "prompt" I need to sort out a visit. (And that six-year-old lass plays the fiddle better than I ever managed after many more years' lessons than she's ever lived through! The Penny Whistle technique is also much better than anything I've managed , too.)

[Globaltruth]

On a slightly different note, I attended a local Fleadh in Donegal where contestants were attempting to qualify for entry to the Ulster Fleadh in Castlewellan. The competition I heard was for ensembles in different age groups, and my interest was in my three grand nieces/nephew on fiddles and whistles. They were all very good (of course) and all will be going to Castlewellan in July.

This promising group from Cavan has younger members:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxFMsngrkN0

That's great Padraig, thanks. Congrats on your grand nieces/nephew - certainly grand alright...


I'm following JC's lead (you'll rarely go wrong if you do) - here is an even more tenuous link. Features Thomas Bartlett who, as you'll know is the pianist with The Gloaming and was also the driving force in getting them all together, so we owe him a vote of thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXutrGenFXo

[Lat-Literal]

Altan - Bacach Shíl' Andaí:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJfh0So7exI

From 2018's "The Gap of Dreams"

[johncorrigan]

On a slightly different note, I attended a local Fleadh in Donegal where contestants were attempting to qualify for entry to the Ulster Fleadh in Castlewellan. The competition I heard was for ensembles in different age groups, and my interest was in my three grand nieces/nephew on fiddles and whistles. They were all very good (of course) and all will be going to Castlewellan in July.

This promising group from Cavan has younger members:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxFMsngrkN0

That was grand on so many levels, Padraig, whether the banjo playing (don't think I ever saw anyone so young on the instrument)... or the reaction of some of the younger audience members.
Thanks for the Irish Gamelan music, GT...delightful! And delightful too, Altan, still doing the business clearly, Lat.

[johncorrigan]

Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan - Spancil Hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUEwB4ME3I

Happy Irish Friday, when it comes!

[Lat-Literal]

Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan - Spancil Hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iUEwB4ME3I

Happy Irish Friday, when it comes!

That's very interesting.

I don't recall seeing it before.

In the early hours, I caught the last episode of "Too Late to Stop Now - The Van Morrison Story" on BBC 6 Music.

Leo Green is a pretty good presenter and there are some useful interviews.

I am going to listen to all four parts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wlcqr/episodes/player

The music really stands out when it hasn't been heard for a few months. It is often head and shoulders above almost anything else. On the later things with a hymn like flavour, I found myself challenging my own assumption that they could be performed by a gospel choir. Many of them couldn't be translated in that way wholly successfully but curiously they would work wonderfully with such a choir performing something entirely different but complimentary in the background. This says something to me about the jazzier elements especially in regard to the tempo which were there from the outset in his more spiritual output.

"Sweet Thing" transports me into the sixties from the first note with my mother in a bright yellow coat and us both under an umbrella but it is also more organic than that personal memory, like it rises as or from the earth. I realise that the interpretation depends a lot on where one places the attention. Loosely it should go to the vocal. Then all else swirls around it like an intricate breeze - and it is intricate what with its shifting timing and texture. The instrumentation here is nature's alternative to that gospel choir doing its different thing and while it probably isn't summer, it sounds like spring yet equally it could be autumn:

Sweet Thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QzDWIOUnM0

(From one of the best ten albums ever recorded)

[Globaltruth]

good subject for an Irish Friday Lat. An unusual variety of depth and range in his work across the decades.

here is an unashamedly sentimental track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0IFKX7o68

Then there's....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciK2n2MebTU

Just imagine this joyful ditto, or, even better, 'Jackie Wilson Said' delivered with a smile, rather than the attitude of someone grimly at work.
Van M is such a consistently dour performer, to the extent that I find it detracts from his live performances.

[Lat-Literal]

good subject for an Irish Friday Lat. An unusual variety of depth and range in his work across the decades.

here is an unashamedly sentimental track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj0IFKX7o68

Then there's....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciK2n2MebTU

Just imagine this joyful ditto, or, even better, 'Jackie Wilson Said' delivered with a smile, rather than the attitude of someone grimly at work.
Van M is such a consistently dour performer, to the extent that I find it detracts from his live performances.

Those are both fantastic tracks. The first is in my top ten Van songs so that is a second top ten in two posts. I am unapologetically a romantic in the outlook sense. But it also chimes with a line of thinking in me today about my parents and music. In the mid to late seventies, there was a nightly programme on Capital called "Your Mother Wouldn't Like It" although it could have been called "Your Parent Wouldn't Like It". Perhaps it was assumed that fathers then would by definition be further removed from it all. Ostensibly heavy rock, punk when it arrived made the somewhat middle class (though not, I suspect, nearly as middle class outside the South East of England) cockiness of it old before its time. That was Lydon and McLaren's biggest laugh. I had no real knowledge of how the really lucky had family connections across generations in their music - the Scottish, Northumbrian and Irish traditions; brass band and classical music families etc. "Dig The New Breed" was the requirement of the media orientated and that it should be in opposition to what had gone before was de rigeur.

And yet I had come to it all much earlier. While far from unique, it meant that I was unaware of such social and age related forces. The contrast was between what my parents liked and a radio with which a singular relationship seemed more authoritative. As young kids, my friends would talk about their musical preferences and they were fully accepted but on the grounds that their angles were just a part of selective early influences on them. Big brothers mainly, themselves going through a clubbable cultural phase. I think I worked out my parents' musical characters very early. I could see the strengths in some of it. I could see the dross at the other end of the spectrum. And while I accepted that there was a wide range of things that were "mine", it always mattered to me that there were records that I appreciated which were loved by my Mum or my Dad. I knew instinctively which could reach either or both. In fact, when I think about it, there was until my twenties quite a gap between me and those of my age who were in it for generational statement. And when it did all become more congregational, it was as indie which was as much an answer to those people as it was to my parents. It was a bit about style but I've always been about music for music's sake.

I mention these things because it all dilutes. After 2000, I doubt that there were many moments when I walked into my parents' house and said "hey, listen to this, I know you will like it", let alone believe that the reception would be especially whole-hearted. They had moved on and away. But I do recall the day in the last decade when I took in Morrison's "Shenandoah" and it absolutely stopped them in their tracks. We all stood in what had been my old bedroom silent and absolutely bowled over by it. People talk about electric. The atmosphere in those minutes was palpable. A part of that was in my ongoing ability via others to hit their chords even when it seemed there had been a great parting. You mention Van's presentation. A key selling point for me in such circumstances was always along the lines that certain artists were grumpy, unpredictable or difficult. They got it to a degree but that part struck a chord in me more than it did with those who wanted a happy smile in a neat suit. The sort of indie singer who found camaraderie with the audience by swearing at them and slagging them off would have appalled. It took some getting used to myself. But Morrison, Dylan, Scott-Heron, Simone. They wouldn't have been who they were without being them. I could never have been disappointed by seeing such people on an awkward day - as I have with the first three as well as seeing them on great days. All the events had energy.

Bliss:

Van Morrison & The Chieftains - She Moved Through The Fair - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaIG8Mocec

[Padraig]

Altan - Bacach Shíl' Andaí:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJfh0So7exI

From 2018's "The Gap of Dreams"

Great song, Lat. New to me.

I've missed the deadline this week but you'll forgive me when you hear this wonderful Gaelic partnership.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raOhfgsft8I

Edit:
On a language point I feel I have to mention this little fact, given the day that's in it in the Republic of Ireland (The Referendum, you know). When you say 'Hello' in Irish it's 'Dia duit', God be with you. But when you address an expectant mother it's 'Dia daoibh'
(second person plural). I never knew that and I find it quite touching.