INTERVIEW WITH POGUE | WALKER ROADER JAMES FEARNLEY

After a couple of interviews with fellow Walker Roaders Ted Hutt and Marc Orrell, our man in NYC, Ray Ball, finally gets round to the main inspiration for the band, James Fearnley. There at the very beginning, on the  4th October 1982 in Kings Cross – James is best known from his days in The Pogues. However, he has had a long and varied musical adventure including as guitarist for the Nipple Erectors (the Punk band fronted and founded by Shane MacGowan), the critically acclaimed Low and Sweet Orchestra, and Cranky George (with brothers –  screen writer Kieran and award winning actor Dermot Mulroney) before forming The Walker Roaders and releasing their self-titled #1 Celtic-Punk debut album. 

So I may not be easily starstruck. Through the course of writing here and being part of music in general I’ve been able to make contact with some pretty amazing people.

However, I just got off the phone with James Fearnley, accordion player for the Pogues.

I’m still a little bit dazed.

As with anyone I talk to, I try to leave the card blank to sign by them-what is important to them is important to me as part of the Celtic music community and to share with you.

James got his start playing piano, I think about 10 he said, and he was a choir singer. I think I caught him off guard, when I said he played as I imagine Jerry Lee Lewis would sound on an accordion. I think he was amused by that, but I think understood what I was trying to say.

Somewhere in there we got to talking about his first accordion playing. I think he said that Shane had brought the instrument up in a laundry basket. I don’t think the point of it ever was to be the best accordion player, but to flesh out some of Shane’s songs. He had heard traditional playing in pubs etc, but sufficed that he couldn’t play like that.

We talked for a while about the Pogues years, and I made a point to ask how they ever kept that many people together whether in the studio or live. He just said there was a core group that just practised and practised, until the mayhem of that big lineup was gone.

At one point I asked James about the tune ‘London Girl’. In no small part because it’s got one of the fiercest accordion parts I’ve ever heard. If you haven’t paid close attention to it, trust me and do it. It’s insane that when I talked to Marc, I asked him if he’d ever learned the part and laughed in agreement that it’s really just a ridiculously intense and speed of light part. All James had to say about it was that when he was in the studio doing overdubs, someone came and put a note on the booth that said “Go Cajun”. I imagine the next take he just went wild and came to one of those moments after that was “holy hell, what did I just do?”.

Interestingly enough that was the only remark he made about certain styles of playing. The accordion player from a group I gig with, references styles that half the time (and sorry Tom) I don’t even know, much less understand. But, I enthusiastically at one point mentioned that the Pogues were the godfathers of Celtic-Punk.

He immediately disagreed and said to them they had just taken apart what the Dubliners and reassembled it just a little differently. He continued that he thought a lot of punk was like that. Taking things apart and putting them back together, just differently. He cited the Dropkick Murphys as very Punk, with the truly loud roaring guitars that sound, especially on their early records, in my opinion sounding like a mashup of the Buzzcocks melody and Washington hardcore intensity.

He talked a great deal about his band mates in the Pogues. We both especially paid attention to Phil Chevron’s “Thousands are Sailing” as a brilliant piece, may Phil rest in peace. Evidently-I had no idea of this-Cait had never played bass before. But then on the other side of that coin, neither had Paul Simonon from The Clash. Paul’s heavily Jamaican influenced lines are some of the most iconic in rock history. I suppose what I can take from that is you don’t have to have virtuosic abilities. It seems like the Pogues all learned and honed their instruments and just practised. And practised more.

The Walker Roaders were a street gang when James Fearnley was a kid growing up in Manchester who would slit your thumb with a knife if they came across you and felt like it.

It’s hard, if not impossible to capture all the Pogues years, but I brought it into the present with how the Walker Roaders came to be, his friendship with Ted Hutt over time and how Marc joined in. I think he must have found it refreshing to be able to write lyrics, but cited Shane’s prowess on the matter.

I asked, and I think I’ve asked the three Walker Roaders I’ve talked to, if there was anything more on that front. I told James that the album was something I think we all needed but didn’t know we needed. He had a good laugh at that.

From what I can tell, Ted, Marc and James don’t sit still long, there’s always a project on. But I think all three wanted to do more on that front.

Whatever comes on that front, or any of his projects, James was a pleasure to talk to and had a wealth of stories to share.

I can’t wait to see what comes next out of everyone, and I hope you all had a great and safe St. Patrick’s Day.

Buy The Walker Riders  Stream or Download

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Our enormous thanks to Ray Ball. He has already featured on these pages as the driving force behind The Fighting 69th and his new band Ravenswalk from Buffalo. One of the most prolific and diverse artists in the Celtic-Punk scene we are proud to have Raymond on board our team. Writer, artist, musician he is a credit to the American-Irish community and you can find a wealth of his material available at his Bandcamp  or the Ravenswalk site.

You can read Ray’s other interviews with James band mates in the Walker Roaders here. First founder member of Flogging Molly and now a legendary and very popular producer Ted Hutt and ex-Dropkick Murphys guitarist Marc Orrell.

ALBUM REVIEW: DANNY DIATRIBE- ‘Tales From The Down And Outs’ (2019)

Irish rap vagabond Danny Diatribe from Derry City releases his outstanding third album just a couple of weeks before his debut London gig celebrating the 10th anniversary of the London Celtic Punks. 

Intelligent conscious shit from a drunken Irish perspective!

In the last couple of years I have seen Boston-Irish rapper Slaine play and also went to the House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ 20th anniversary tour so I’m not exactly a stranger to the rap and Hip-Hop scene but at the same time I am definitely no expert! Saying that though I don’t believe you do need to know the ins and out of a music genre for it to appeal to you. For it to strike a chord and make you feel something for it. I had that feeling when I first heard Danny’s last album Elevation Illustrations. An album packed with catchy rap anthems that included a song that is still among my most played in the last three years since, the absolutely amazing ‘Paddy’s Cure’ with Manchester Irish rapper D’Lyfa Reilly.

Danny was born Danny Lynch in Derry city in the occupied north of Ireland but emigrated to Manchester as a young ‘un a few years back and it is this background that colours Danny’s work. Describing himself as ‘Hip-Hop, James Joyce style’ Tales From The Down And Outs is loosely based on Joyce’s most famous novel Dubliners. Danny may not have been the first celtic-rapper (see our article The Top Seven Celtic Hip-Hop Artists And Bands here) but he is one of only a small handful waving the tricolour here in England! He has spent the intervening years performing among the thriving Manchester music scene being a regular in Hip-Hop circles and has collaborated with some of the biggest and best names in UK and Irish Hip-Hop. Since Elevation Illustrations Danny has kept busy with a constant supply of recordings and videos (made by himself) and the ambitious plan to record this album which has taken a couple of years from beginning to end. 

Tales From The Down And Outs is a concept album detailing the lives of working class characters based in and around the places where he has lived and still lives in Manchester and Derry. All the songs were written and produced by Danny Diatribe and DJ Cutterz, from the Taste The Diff’rence crew, who collaborated with Danny on the album.

Tales From The Down And Outs begins with a short foreboding intro before the title track comes along and ‘Tales From The Down And Outs’ is accompanied by a fantastic video showing Danny moving through life. The tune is slow and unhurried and Danny’s strong accent shines through.

The most standout thing about Danny is the videos that come with the songs. On Elevation Illustrations the whole album was accompanied by professionally shot and produced videos and he’s slowly working his way through this album too. On ‘Jimmy’s Bets’ it tells of the sad tale of a loser who suffers from what my Ma use to call the ‘Irish disease’, gambling.

On ‘Maggie’ Danny tells of the harmless, except to herself, auld crazy women that inhabit the streets where we live and we pass by in the street. Danny adds story to her life giving her a soul.

“Oh Maggie Oh Maggie Oh Maggie Oh maggie, God will never take you and the devil canny stand you, she’ll go to the grave cold bitter and defiant, the flames of hell wont make her bat an eyelid.”

It’s on ‘Maggie’ that you first get a real sense of why people say rappers are the modern day equivalent of the ancient Irish seanchaí (shan-a-key) who held the key to all Irish folklore, myth, and legend. They were the traditional storytellers and the custodians of history for centuries in Ireland.

The album is packed with soundbites from the likes of Monty Python, The Three Stooges, Noam Chomsky and many more I am sure I have missed. On ‘Compliments To The Chef’ and ‘Seven Oaks’ the tone is lighter thanks in part to the soulful tunes but still the dark underbelly of society comes through. On ‘Hangover On Repeat’ Danny revisits a subject close to his, and many immigrant Irish, that of alcohol abuse but told with more than a wee Irish twinkle in the eye.

Coming up towards the end of the album and ‘Miss Robinson’ and ‘Mrs Robinson’ are two tracks with a similar feel, with the film of the same name getting sound checked throughout them. Great soulful tunes combined with his usual gritty lyricism that leads us onto the final track ‘Pressure Creates Diamonds’. The song features the amazingly beautiful voice of fellow Manc rapper El Ay and I would recommend checking out the video as well. In fact get a cup of tea and a packet of biscuits and settle down to check the whole of Danny’s You Tube channel.

There is great news for London folk, and even further afield, and that is that Danny Diatribe is coming down South to perform for the very first time. Obviously it’s the combination of rude locals, expensive pints and sunny weather that has lured him down to London (it sure aint the money that’s for sure!) to play a special show in the east end of London for the London Celtic Punks 10th anniversary. When we set out on this road a decade ago we wanted to have as diverse gigs as possible and this could just about be the most diverse gig we have ever put on as performing alongside Danny will be the northern Celtic-Punk power house band The Silk Road, who are also making their London debut, and an auld mucker of ours Comrade X who will kick things off with a set of Woody Guthrie inspired Oi! tracks. The important date for your diary is Saturday 4th May at The Beehive in Bow. Literally the epi-centre of Cockney London! You can buy tickets in advance here for just a fiver and check the Facebook event here for any fresh news as it comes out.

So what to say about Tales From The Down And Outs? Well first off I doubt it’s going to make me a bigger fan of Hip-Hop than I already am but that’s hardly the point. Some albums just stand out and it’s Danny’s re-telling of stories from his life of a gritty existence on the war torn streets of Derry city to the grim post industrial working class streets of Manchester that make this album really special. Celtic-Punk as a genre is obsessed with working class life and culture and Danny has taken the ideas behind that, the good , the bad and the ugly, and brought them forward to today. Where as the heart of Celtic-Punk is naturally tapped in the past Danny Diatribe is here and now. If you cannot make the gig then buy the album and proudly boast to your friends that you’ve got your finger on the pulse of underground Irish immigrant Hip-Hop!

(listen to Tales From The Down And Outs on the Bandcamp player below)

Buy Tales From The Down and Outs FromDannyDiatribe 

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CLASSIC ALBUM REVIEW: EWAN MacCOLL and DOMINIC BEHAN- ‘Streets of Song. Childhood Memories of City Streets from Glasgow, Salford and Dublin’ (1959)

Scottish folksinger Ewan MacColl and Irish singer Dominic Behan delve into their childhoods to present the songs and chants of working-class neighborhoods in Dublin, Glasgow, and Salford. Unaccompanied—in keeping with tradition—the 100 songs include rhymes, ditties, counting games, skipping-rope pieces, jibes, taunts, oaths, street ballads, seasonal songs and insults. In between selections, Ewan and Dominic provide context by explaining the circumstances in which the songs were performed.

A fascinating real piece of working class history performed by two legendary figures who have featured on these pages many times. Some listeners may recognize songs from their own childhood their are certainly more than a few I recognise from my younger days on the streets and playgrounds of South Yorkshire. Both Dominic and Ewan spent their lives preserving and archiving music from days past and now almost sixty years later we can present this remarkable album to you. It comes as a free download so feel free to take a copy and enjoy and if you wish follow the link below to get the accompanying booklet that came with the album.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ewan MacColl- January 1915-October 1989

For nearly 60 years, Ewan MacColl, an activist and left-wing socialist, expressed his views as a playwright, social activist, songwriter and performer. During the course of his lifetime he composed a body of work that ranks among the best in the folk genre. He was born was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, Broughton, Salford, Lancashire, the son of a Lowland Scots father and a Gaelic-speaking mother. Both parents had an extensive repertoire of Scots folk songs and ballads, and a large part of MacColl’s tremendous repertory was learned from them. After leaving school at the age of 14, he spent the next 10 years working odd jobs between periods of unemployment and one day out busking, he was noticed by a BBC director and given his first radio broadcast in a programme called Music of the Streets. Soon MacColl began to devote an increasing amount of his time writing programmes for the BBC, including his first group of Folklore broadcasts. Included among his many folk music activities have been the collecting of folk songs for the BBC archives and in addition to being one of these island’s leading folk singers Ewan MacColl’s fame lives on in the songs that he both saved from extinction and those he wrote including ‘Dirty Old Town’, ‘Freeborn Man’ and his Grammy Award-winning song ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’, a hit single for Roberta Flack in 1971, which he wrote for his longtime collaborator and life partner, Peggy Seeger. After many years of poor health (in 1979 he suffered the first of many heart attacks), MacColl died on 22 October 1989, in London, after complications following heart surgery

Dominic Behan- October 1928-August 1989

Dominic Behan was born in Dublin, Ireland, having a traditional Irish fiddler as a father and a folksinger as a mother. Born into a family of committed republicans, it was no surprise that even at the age of six he joined Na Fianna h-Eireann (republican Boy Scouts) and by sixteen was an active fighter for the IRA. His activities on behalf of his political convictions resulted in his being imprisoned, in Dublin and in London, four times between 1951 and 1954. Following in the footsteps of his uncle, the noted rebel song-writer Peadar Kearney (who wrote the Irish national anthem) he penned a number of rebel ballads, including the well-known ‘Patriot Game’. During the 60’s and 70’s he wrote almost twenty plays for British TV as well as writing several books though it was as a songwriter that he excelled and had more than 450 songs published during his lifetime. Dominic had well publicised spats with both Liam Clancy and Bob Dylan over use of his songs where lyrics were changed or omitted. He took the view that his work was written to make some form of social, historical or political statement and should either be used as an entire piece of work or not at all. Dominic died at home in Glasgow, aged 60, on 3 August 1989.

Streets Of Song sleeve notes by Kenneth S. Goldstein

Childhood memories of City Streets from Glasgow, Salford and Dublin. The Oral Lore of Children

In listening to this recording, one will find three distinct types of oral children’s lore. First there are the items which have little or no restrictions of national boundary. Some of the pieces recited and sung in this recording are known throughout the English-speaking world, originating, perhaps, in the British Isles and spreading out from there to all of the many countries culturally and linguistically affected by the British and their far-flung empire. Who, in the English-speaking world, for example, has not heard one or another version of the singing-game The Farmer Wants a Wife (heard in a Dublin Irish version on this recording), or Poor Mary Sat A-Weeping (from Salford on this recording). You may know these pieces by other names, and in forms differing quite radically from those presented on this recording, but it will require little imagination or insight to realise the relationship of the versions you know to those presented here.

A second category of pieces found in this recording are those which appear to have strictly national boundaries, being known either only in the British Isles or, perhaps, only in a single country or national group. Such pieces are frequently related to festivals or events which are purely national in character and incidence, or are so dependent upon purely national events or references as to make them almost meaningless outside of the national boundary of the country in which, they may be found. Such pieces include the holiday song Christmas is Coming (item number 67, from Dublin, but known throughout the British Isles), and the Scottish jibe, Wha saw the tattle howkers (item number 62, from Glasgow, but known in other parts of Scotland) among numerous others.

The third category consists of those pieces of a purely local nature, existing almost exclusively in a single community, town or county, but rarely found elsewhere. The reasons for such limitation of tradition are similar to those given for the second category mentioned above, but with considerably more localised references or language. Such piece include Up The Mucky Mountains (item number 64) and Jessie Stockton (item number 68), both from Salford, and Cheer up, Russell Street (item number 56) from Dublin. Into this last category must also go those pieces which are the creative efforts of a moment, in use for only a short period of time, and fading into the world of lost traditions almost before they were born. Occasionally such-pieces fall into the collector’s lap, but the collector (at best, just an accident in time, in such instances) has no way of sorting out these pieces from those which are more than just mere ephemera.

The record contains an even 100 pieces of diverse examples of children’s lore. Here will be found game songs, nonsense rhymes and ditties, counting games, ball-bouncing games and rhymes, skipping-rope pieces, jibes, taunts, oaths, street ballads, seasonal songs, and insults. What is the origin of these pieces? For most of them we cannot even begin to speculate on the question of origins.

Some few can be pinpointed to historical occurrences and personages King Henry, King Henry (item number 12), tells of the affairs of love of a well-remembered English monarch. Others are the breakdown of older traditional ballads and tales; I know a woman, she lives in the woods (item number 23), obviously derives from the ballad The Cruel Mother (Child 20). Some like items 4, 56 and 59, are children’s parodies of recent creations, including music hall and popular songs. Most of the pieces are created out of happenings and sights of everyday life. Because of the universality of their subject matter they might arise anywhere or at almost any time so it is an impossible task to do much more than guess at their origins.

First, we are introduced to the cultural milieu with which we are dealing. Poverty, a proud working-class inheritance, slum conditions, and the everyday, mundane things and occurrences affecting the individuals concerned. Next, we are presented with the oral products of that environment, set off against a train of thought concerning those products, not of the children living, playing and reciting those pieces of lore, but of two adult bearers of this urban tradition whose sensitivity to the setting is expressed in terms of mature afterthought. The opportunity presented by this recording to study the whys and wherefores of urban childhood traditions is the next best thing to working in the field with the children themselves.

One fascinating problem suggested by working with children’s lore, and, even more specifically, with the lore of working-class children, is the question of class boundaries of such lore. Of this question, Dominic Behan has written:

“It can — so far as kids are concerned — be made only by children who own so little other rights to amusement that they must sing and make up songs about themselves and the places they inhabit; tenement house schools, neighbours, and, most and biggest of all, their playground — the streets. Maybe this is not quite true, maybe other classes of folks’ children make up other classes of songs. All I can say is if they do, I have never heard them.”

So much for the songs: what of the games? Are they ‘class’ bound? Do they belong to certain people or are they the property of all? Once again, I don’t know. Once again I will guess, and say all.

The challenge has been issued. It is the duty of folklorists, sociologists, and psychologists to take it up and answer the question. An attempt to do so from a library chair will prove futile; the data are insufficient and largely undocumented in most of the existing works on children’s lore. By utilizing the existing tools of each discipline we can expect to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. We are fortunate in dealing with children’s lore, to be working in an area which appears to have no beginning or end in time, and while some scholars have bemoaned the dying of oral tradition (such claims have been made for the past century, though I for one prefer to think of traditions changing and evolving rather than dying), none will be so rash as to deny the very vital nature of children’s songs and games. There is no question of the existence of sufficient material for study.

DOWNLOAD STREETS OF SONG (not available in the UK- Sorry!) PRESS HERE!

DOWNLOAD THE 8-PAGE INSERT BOOKLET HERE!

Great article on the Life And Work Of Dominic Behan here

 with thanks to Zero G Sound- if you want music like this to light up your life then go find them here.

THE LONDON CELTIC PUNKS ‘STEPPIN’ STONES’ CLASSIC ALBUM REVIEW SERIES

You can find our Steppin’ Stones page here with the full list of albums to choose from.

(if any links are broken please leave a comment and we’ll do our best to try and fix it)

THE UNHOLY TRINITY- SHANE MacGOWAN, MARK E. SMITH AND NICK CAVE

We were saddened to hear about the death of Mark E.Smith grumpy front man of the influential Manchester post-punk band The Fall. So seems an apt time to remember the time, back in February 1989, that the British music paper the NME sent two of its journalists, James Brown and Sean O’Hagan, to the boozer with three of music’s wisest (and wildest) men- Shane MacGowan, Mark E.Smith and Nick Cave… and gave them all £10 each to have a drink!

It’s not often that we mere mortals find out what the personalities of our heroes are but in this interview we can almost see them lapping it up in the lounge bar down the Montague. Nick Cave keeps his cool and his answers short and sweet, maybe down to him being the only sober one there perhaps (he had just spent seven weeks in rehab), while Shane (“… done some Ecstasy and had drunk a bottle of whisky on the way down”) is the amiable drinking companion we would always assume he would be dipping in and out and taking the piss in between bouts of seriousness. Finally Mark, at times abusive and hostile and others friendly and warm. His views were certainly militant but maybe not in the way many would like them to be but no denying the influence he had inspiring a generation of musicians from Sonic Youth to The Pixies and beyond. I had the pleasure of meeting him once in a pub in Sheffield around 1988 and he was as sound as you could expect a music hero to be when you’re a awed teenager. With more than thirty album’s and more band members than you could ever possibly keep up with The Fall didn’t make it easy to follow them but there were always Mark E.Smith steering them and always around but no more now. He will be missed.

“a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique, one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn.

FEBRUARY 25th 1989. NME TALKS TO

“So the NME thinks we’re the last three heroes of rock’n’roll, do they?” laughs Nick Cave. “Smarmy fuckers,” adds Shane McGowan, “what they actually mean is that we’re the three biggest brain damaged cases in rock’n’roll.”

“Apart from Nick”, jabs Mark Smith, “Nick’s cleaned up.”
“yeah”, drawls Cave, “my brains restored itself.”

A bottle’s throw from Millwall FC, The Montague Arms, a mock Gothic fun pub for morbid tourists, plays host to a bizarre summit meeting. Amidst stuffed horses’ heads, skeletons on bicycles and mocked up corpses, three of contemporary music’s most infamous individuals are gathered at the NME’s request.

Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, Mark E.Smith of the Fall and Nick Cave all share an outsider’s attitude that informs their respective musical output. Both championed and castigated for their obsessiveness and extremism, this unholy trio are dogged by reputations that precede them.

That they agreed to such a meeting is surprising. What ensues is inspired and insane by turns. The fractured and, often fractious, conversation sprawls between the amiable and the aggressive- Presley to Nietzsche, songwriting to psychology, football to fanatics.

In an afternoon of sheer psychotic hellishness, Cave plays the diplomat to Smith’s bursts of contentious rhetoric whilst MacGowan transmits his thoughts from his own singular, rarefied wavelength.

WHAT REALLY WENT ON THERE ? WE ONLY HAVE THIS EXCERPT

NME Do you think it’s accurate to describe the three of you as outsiders?
NC “I think we have all tended to create some kind of area where we can work without particularly having to worry about what’s fashionable.”
MES “Yes, fair enough. But I think there’s a lot of differences in this trio here. Nick was very rock’n’roll to me but he’s turned his back on it which was cool. Shane’s more, I dunno. To me the Pogues are the good bits from the Irish showband scene, like the Indians. You had that feel, probably lost that now. Your work’s good though.”
SM “Fuck it man. Who wants to work in a place where there’s all these people looking at you ?”
MES “Are you talking about your gigs ? You should stop doing them, then.”
SM “Can’t afford to.”
MES “Fuck it, you could fight not to if you don’t like it.”
SM “…and leave the rest of them in the lurch ?”
MES “Nah, the rest of your band will always complain about not working. If you’re paying them a wage tell them to stay at home and behave themselves.”
SM “It’s a democracy our band.”
MES “Why aren’t they here with you then ?”
SM “Cos the NME didn’t want to interview them.”
MES ‘Cos nobody’d recognise them.”
SM “That’s it ! They want to interview us because we’ve got distinctive characteristics. They just want to interview three high-brow loonies.”
MES “In that case you should have brought your mate Joe Strummer along.”
SM “I said high-brow loonies.”

HITS AND MYTHS

NME You must be aware that, consciously or otherwise, you’ve each created a particular myth that has arisen, in part, from your songs.
SM “Nobody created my mythology, I certainly didn’t.”
NC “No, you (the press) created it.”

SM “The media has a lot to answer for, you’re all a bunch of bastards however friendly you are.”
NC “Let’s not talk about the media. Why the hell are you talking about mythologies ? That tends to suggest it’s somehow unreal.”
SM “It seems to me that in your songs, Nick, you’re doing a Jung-style trip of examining your shadow, all the dark things you don’t want to be. A lot of your songs are like trips into the subconscious and are therefore nightmarish.”
NC “Possibly.”
SM “You’re exploring the world through the subconscious. I’ve done that on occasions for various reasons, whether it be illness or self abuse, or whatever. Once things start to look grotesque I don’t write them or sing them. I couldn’t write them the way you do, I couldn’t-making nightmares into living daylight…”
NC “I think you do a pretty good job of it in some of your songs.”
SM “The minute it gets dark I shoot back, retreat. I haven;’t always but I do now ‘cos…”
MES “Don’t give too much away Shane, don’t tell them. Hold a bit back.”
SM “I haven’t told them anything yet.”

NME “How do each of you approach the actual mechanics of songwriting ?”
MES “When you ask that you induce fear in a songwriter. I just go blank.”
NC “It’s not a cut and dried process.”
SM “For a start I’ve got to be out of my head to write. For a lot of the time it’s automatic writing. ‘Rainy day in Soho’ was automatic.”
MES “Its gotta be subconscious and off the wall. He says he’s got to be out of his head, and a lot of the time I have too. Sometimes, I just wake up and do it. It’s one of the hardest questions you ever get asked. For instance, you sometimes hear things that would make a great idea for a song but you never carry them out.”
SM “I do. Like the “Turkish Song of the Damned” was a Kraut trying to tell me something and I misheard him. He said, “Have you heard ‘The Turkish Song’ by the Damned”. Then I woke up.
MES “My German song’s better than your yours, I bet. This is like one of those night-time discussions on Channel 4.”
NC “I write songs in batches then record them and then can’t write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not look obviously inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another.”
SM “You haven’t been back to the swamps for a while, have you ?”
NC “The swamps ? Heh,heh. I’ve written a novel about that.”
MES “Nick thinks a novel’s two pages long. Very novel, heh, heh.”
NC “What’s it called ?”
MES “It’s called ‘It’ll Be Ready in Another Five Years’. You should write more aggressive songs, Nick, you’re getting too slow.”
NC “I haven’t sat down and thought about the mood before I wrote them.”
MES “I find your work almost English Lit oriented, like Beckett, things crop up again and again.”
NC “And your songs are very deceptive Mark, in the way they’re sung. They might appear at times like streams of consciousness but that’s deceptive.”
MES “One thing that eally annoys me is that stream of consciousness thing. I wouldn’t let on to it normally, but it annoys the shit out of me. I put a lot of hard sweat into them, I think about them. They have an inner logic to me so I don’t really care who understands them or not. I see writing and singing as two very different things. My attitude is if you can’t deliver it like a garage band, fuck it. That’s one thing that’s never been explored, delivering complex things in a very straightforward rock’n’roll way. My old excuse is if I’d wanted to be a poet, I’d have been a poet.”
SM “And starved.”
MES “I can write, boy, I can write. That’s what I do. People like you sit around moaning about the state of pop music…The trouble is it’s too bloody easy for people, that’s why music is in the sorry state it is. Any idiot, actors mainly, can go in there, sing a chord, bang on a machine…I’m not objecting to that but when people get at me for trying to say something in a rock’n’roll mode it’s as if I’m a freak.”
SM “All this talk about the state of music, rock’n’roll, Irish music, soul, funk.”
MES “Salsa.”
SM “Its been proved by Acid House that anyone can make a record.”
MES “We’re not thick, we all know that.”
SM “Look, I’m talking about the implications of Acid House”
MES “There’s nothing new in Acid House for me, pal. I’ve been using that process for years. Bloody years. It might be new for you but don’t assume it’s new for anyone else, because you’re fucking wrong, pal.
SM “What the fuck are you talking about ? Have you made an Acid House record ?
MES “It’s the same process, right. Have you had some sort of bloody revelation about Acid House ?”
SM “Hah ! It’s obvious if you listen they put Eastern melodies over it, bits of this and that…”
MES “That’s what music should always have been like.”
SM “It always was.”
MES “Why haven’t you been doing it for years then pal ?”
NC “I think they have been doing it. I’ve heard zithers and so on. Eastern stuff and Turkish stuff.”
MES “We had jazz arrangements in ’82 when the rest of those tossers were playing cocktail lounge music and fucking pseudo new wave, so don’t talk to me about it because I know what I’m talking about pal.”
SM “Fucking hell, what’s he on about ?”

CONTAINER DRIVERS

MES “The trouble with the music biz is that its become so bourgeois. A middle class executive business like the police force.”
SM “A middle class executive police force ? You must be mad ! They’re stormtroopers nowadays, thicker than they ever were.”
MES “Can we drop the cop talk ? It’s the same with everything else, like lurries…” SM “Lurries ? What are lurries ?”
MES “Lurries. Containers that deliver your fucking food to your fucking house, alright ?”
SM “Lorries ! Yeah right.”
MES “The drivers are paid the lowest wages because everyone wants to sit in the office and be a ponce. You can’t just go into a hotel and write your name, you’ve got to fuck around on a bloody computer. Nobody wants to work anymore.”
SM “Oh God ! You make me wanna puke sometimes, you do. Of course nobody wants to work. Who in their right mind wants to work ?”
MES “Alright, alright, that’s obvious, the sky’s fucking blue. Soccer’s the same. None of the fuckers want to hit the ball in the back of the net. They’re all too fucking muscley. And thick. Running up and down the field like bloody morons. The England team are all bloody minor executives who can’t kick the ball in the back of the net, can’t do the bloody job they’re hired to do. I do loads of gigs, that’s my job to play loads of gigs, I’m not an executive, I don’t mind playing in front of a load of sweaty people.”

NME “Do you two still enjoy playing live ?”
NC “I don’t know if I do. The first Kilburn show was a nightmare.”
MES “What’s new with The Bad Seeds ?”
NC “I used to hate playing live totally, just the whole physical exhaustion was too much for me.”
MES “Bleeding workshy Australian. Australians never do any work.”
NC “The last tour, going on stage was a release.”
MES “Sexually ?”
NC “As my life gets more constipated and cramped going on stage I’m able to purge myself in some way.”
MES “A bowel release.”
NC “I feel more relaxed.”
MES “With Mick Harvey behnd you with the vaseline.”
NC “Put a muzzle on this guy.”
SM “The gigs I enjoy are the ones where I am so angry and paranoid, and I hate the audience so much, that I put everything into it to feed off the aggressive side of it. I don’t actually hate the fans but when I’m feeling angry, pissed off and full of hate, it’s a good gig for me.”
NC “An audience is the perfect thing to unleash that hate and venom on. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you hate everyone in the audience but when you’ve got a so-called adoring mass in front of you, it’s a perfect target for that kind of disgust. Sometimes you find yourself in a position where you’re venting your disgust on an audience and a lot of them keep coming back because they actually like that aspect. In a way that diffuses the feeling and you don’t get the same release.”
MES “You gotta reassess your audience, make sure they aren’t just coming to throw ashtrays at your head for fun. Shane says he goes on full of twist, you’ve got to. If you don’t you’re fucking fucked, that’s whats wrong with a lot of acts these days, they do fucking yoga before and go on all fucking relaxed. I’ve been with Fad Gadget and he was doing incense and headstands. The English soccer players could do with a lot of twist, they should be put in a room and made to go round in circles, and told “if you don’t do a good gig tonight then you’re not getting paid.”

NME “Shane, you obviously don’t enjoy playing live anymore, is that through being on the road too much ?”
SM “I feel like I’ve spent the last five years of my life on the road. It hasn’t affected my songs but it has probably affected everything else about me. Obviously, the more you travel, the wilder the things that keep happening to you, the more likely it is that complete strangers will knock on your hotel room door.”
MES “Nick and I don’t related to that ‘cos the people who come up to us either hate our guts or wouldn’t really want to be alone in a room with us. You’re a very amiable guy, Shane.”
NC “I’m not sure what you’re talking about here but the way people related to me in the dressing rooms and so on was incredibly aggressive. They know every record and they seem to think they should nudge me or bump into me as they go past.It was this incredible performance that used to amuse me. I think we share something in common on that level ‘cos, like, in the early days, people were drawn towards us like they’d be drawn towards a car smash…”
SM “I read about the fan mail that Freddie Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies gets-real sicko stuff, loads of letters from genuine corpse freaks and child killer types. It frightens him shitless. That sorta thing freaks me out.”
NC “There is a definite relationship between that fanaticism and the fact that, as a performer, you expose more of yourself, of the undercurrents of your personality. Most rock personalities subdue that or chose not to explore it.”

“It’s rare when a group comes along that has any real soul to them.” (Cave)

HEROES AND VILLAINS

NME “Mark, of the three of you, would you admit to being the professional cynic ?”

MES “No, cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I’ve got time for people, I’m good mannered. I usually find that when you are down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn’t even talk to me.”
SM “You are nobody.”
MES “Fuck off. It’s bloody true. Neither would you, Nick.”
NC “Bullshit! That’s bullshit I take offence at that.”
MES “I’m not levelling anything at you. People, in general, don’t like being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic ‘cos you’re reasonable.”
SM “You’re no reasonable though. You’re a rude bastard. That’s fair enough.”
SO’H “Ok I’m cynical. But I’m not defensive. I’m slightly paranoid which is healthy.”
NME “Slightly?”
MES “Listen, Sean, do you walk around London embracing everybody? If I was in the bleeding gutter you wouldn’t piss on me.
SO’H “I would.”
NC “Your reaction is becoming very defensive, Mark.”
MES “You’re a failed psychiatrist.”
NC “I’ve analysed you, alright-defensive paranoid with delusions of grandeur.”
MES “I’ve had discussions like this all the time in pubs. I end up beaten half to death on the floor. I try to be civil and people assume I’m attacking them.”
SM “You attack people all the time. In the press.”
MES “I used to. It became too routine so I gave it up. Nietzsche said ‘Embrace your enemies’. You two aren’t my enemies so I won’t embrace you.
SM “Read a lot of Nietzsche, have you?”
MES “All his stuff. I can’t quote him. I’m not into him anymore, gave up three years ago. He taught me a lot, though. We’re not all born public school boys like you.”
SM “I’m not a born public school boy.”
MES “Do you like Brendan Behan, he’s good.”
SM “Yeah, he’s not a fascist maniac posing as a philosopher.”
MES “If we’re gonna talk philosophy, that’s a load of crap ! The Nazis adopted his creed and distorted it, they misquoted him all the time.”
SM “‘The Will to Power’? Try re-interpreting that statement. You can’t. It says what it says.”
MES “He wasn’t a Nazi-you’re only saying that because some polytechnic fucking lecturer told you he was.”
SM “I’m saying it ‘cos I read two of his books where he dismissed the weak, the ugly, the radically impure, Christianity, Socrates, Plato. He was anti anyone who hadn’t a strong body, perfect features…”
MES “That’s the coffee table analysis. He was the most anti-German pro-Semitic person…”
SM “His books were full of hate.”
MES “You’ve just said you’re full of hate when you go onstage.”
SM “I don’t go around saying Socrates was a cunt, Jesus Christ was an idiot, do I ?”
MES “Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all of them Socialists and Communists- second rate Christianity. It’s alright for you Catholics. I was brought up with Irish Catholics. Some of my best friends are Irish Catholics.”
SM “listen to him.”
MES “Hitler was a Catholic vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker. The way you’re talking about Nietzsche is that anyone who’s a non-smoker, non-drinker is a Nazi. That’s the level of your debate, pal. You don’t know fuck all about Nietzsche, pal.”
SM “You’re anti-socialist, too, aren’t you ?”
MES “Yeah. I’m an extreme anti-socialist. You don’t live on a housing estate where there’s been socialism for thirty years and they keep saying it’s gonna get better all the time and it never does. Thirty fucking years of it getting worse and worse. You obviously haven’t experienced that, living in London.”
SM “What’s the alternative ?”
MES “I don’t have to worry about that. I’m an adult. I’m working class, me. I come from a generation that fucking created this nation pal. You lot, you just sit around and talk about socialism, you’re the bloody problem. Eighty percent of this country are white trash, working class. How come they don’t vote Labour? ‘Cos the Labour Party are a fucking disgrace, that’s why. Engels- he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history. I suppose you blame all Ireland’s problems on the British. All the problems of the world are down to Britain. That’s what you think, why don’t you say it? You can’t tell me anything about oppression ‘cos, I’ll tell you something pal, if you’d been part of Germany, you’d have been liquidated. If you were part of Russia, you wouldn’t even exist. Don’t tell me about oppression, my parents and grand-parents were exploited to the hilt. Sent to wars, they had gangrene in their teeth. My grandfather was at Dunkirk and all you can see is Margaret Thatcher on my face when, actually, She’s on Nick’s face. Isn’t she Nick ? Come on Nick, help me out. Basically, I like to discuss things right down the line and I don’t agree with anybody…”

KING INC

NME “This is getting a bit out of order, can we talk about something less acrimonious. Heroes ?

SM “You’re into Presley, Nick.”
MES “A lot of Presley’s good stuff was overlooked. Like the NME viewpoint that he died when he came out of the army. I think the opposite, his best stuff came after the army.”
SM “That figures. He was a pile of shit when he came out of the army compared to before he went in. His mother died when he was in the army. That was one of the causes. Anyway, he did some good stuff in the late ’60′s after the army- ‘Kentucky Rain’, ‘Suspicious Minds’, ‘In the Ghetto’ as opposed to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, ‘That’s alright Mama’. I suppose that’s all shit to you , is it ?”
MES “I’m not saying that but everybody writes the later stuff off…”
SM “Who ever writes off Elvis ?”
MES “Look, pal, Elvis was the king, right? To me, Elvis were king. He was only the king ‘cos he sustained it. You probably think he’s some kind of criminal ‘cos he went in the army for a few years. You’re insinuating that I’m pro-army and if you have anything to say on that score, say it now, pal and I’ll fucking argue right through you !”
SM “What ! He’s off again.”
MES “I’m into Mersey Beat at the minute- The Searchers. I respect Dylan. The only good thing I’ve heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison.”

NME “You seem to prefer older music, is there nothing contemporary that appeals ?”

NC “It’s rare when a group comes along that has any real soul to them. Rock’n’Roll history isn’t long enough. There’s three or four blues people that I like after filtering through loads of blues. There’s about three gospel bands, a handful of country ones. I have to draw on the….what are you laughing at, Mark ?”
MES “Oh nothing, heh heh, I’m really into John Lee Hooker myself. He’s great solo without a band. His bands are crap. I was always into more experimental bands- Can, Faust. I won’t say German ‘cos Shane’ll have an epileptic fit. I think Nick’s more traditional and I respect that but, I’m into things like Stockhausen, The United States of America and Gene Vincent and rockabilly. That’s my influences. And I always preferred Lou Reed to the Velvet Underground.”

NME “What do you think of the blanket critical approval of Morrissey ?”

MES “Morrissey’s another Paddy! A South Manchester Paddy. Shane’s got more to say than Morrissey.”
SM “I think you guys are encouraging Mark to be like this. You journalists love it.”
MES “Of course they do. That’s the NME policy, they love a good argument. Don’t you lads ?”

Things fall apart. The unholy trinity climb on the pubstage. MacGowan on drums, Smith on guitar and Cave on the organ. A jam of sorts ensues- The Velvets meets Hammer Horror with a hint of Acid House. Totally wired. Summit mental.

(Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan and Kylie Minogue sing Bob Dylan’s ‘Death Is Not The End’)

What became of them after the tape finished we can only guess but I doubt they just got up and went their separate ways! These days its hard to imagine any publication with any influence doing something like this but we learn a lot about all three gents and though acerbic and argumentative Mark E.Smith certainly gets his point of view over and is heard. Gone before his time but he lived his life hard and wild and is one of a small bunch of working class musicians of which we can truly say that when they pass we will never see their like again.

MARK E.SMITH- 5 MARCH 1957 – 24 JANUARY 2018

ALBUM REVIEW: THE LUCKY PISTOLS- ‘Where The Orioles Fly’ (2017)

FREE DOWNLOAD

To put it as simply as we possibly can The Lucky Pistols are an Irish folk punk band based out of Baltimore, Maryland. There.

Back in the year 1816 only 6,000 Irish people immigrated to America but within just two short years tragedy and an deliberate attempt to wipe out an entire race this number would double and would sadly continue to grow for the foreseeable future.  The greatest spike in the number of Irish who immigrated to America came during 1845-1853 the time of The Great Hunger which completely devastated Ireland.  In 1846, 92,484 immigrated and by 1850 that number had grown to 206,041. By the end of 1854 over two million had immigrated to America, astonishingly this was over one quarter of the population of Ireland. These were the lucky ones with the dead left by the roadside at home and many more dying on what became known as ‘Coffin Ships’ on the long torturous journey to what they hoped was a better life. It was during this dramatic exodus that Baltimore experienced it’s boom in its Irish population with close to 70,000 arriving in the city in the 1850’s and 60’s. Those who arrived in Baltimore settled in the southwestern part of the city with the men working for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and the women finding work usually as domestics. The work was hard and dirty and dangerous but as employment opportunities were scarce and these Irish immigrants were mainly farmers so due to their lack of skilled labour, they faced a great deal of discrimination and were viewed as inferior people. They lived in tiny crowded and subdivided homes. Unable to afford better housing they were still better off than if they had stayed in Ireland and despite the low wages they were still were five times more than the eight pence a day that a farmer back home earned.

Baltimore became the third most common point of entry for European immigrants, behind New York and Boston.  In 1867, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad entered into a partnership with the North German Lloy Stemship Line to build immigration piers at Locust Point.  The ships landing at Locust Point would drop off German, Irish and English immigrants.  From there, immigrants could immediately go and work for the railroad or board a train and continue westward. The Irish experience in Baltimore was not a happy one but one of hardship and challenge.

Their children are The Lucky Pistols.

The Lucky Pistols left to right: Tony Graham- Bass, Backup Vocals * Sean Suttell- Guitar, Mandolin, Harmonica, Lead Vocals * Jay D’Annunzio- Drums (joined after release of the album. Drummer on the album is Matt Toronto) Victoria Renee Grier- Fiddle (Joined after release of the album)

The roots of The Lucky Pistols rather surprisingly begin in the German town of Heidelberg in a band called The Cold Shots. Pistols and good mates Sean and Tony spent five years ago playing Irish folk punk supporting many great Irish punk bands like Paddy And The Rats and The Mahones. As is the way with many immigrants the lure of home became too great and on the break up of The Cold Shots Sean and Tony moved back to the United States in 2013. After a short break Sean began playing solo gigs on the Irish pub scene in Baltimore and Annapolis and it wasn’t long before the Bhoys got the bug and decided to give it another shot and have been trying out their style of Irish folk punk on the east coast ever since.

Where The Orioles Fly is The Lucky Pistols debut album and to their absolute credit have made it available a free download so regardless of what you are about to read you ought to download it straight away. After all who is to say our opinion is worth anything anyway? The album begins with ‘Songs Of Ireland’ and straight from the off its fast paced acoustic Irish folk-punk. Yeah my favourite! I get off on this stuff I really do. A tale of drinking with mates and belting out Irish songs is, I am sure, familiar to many of you. My own brother when he was younger and hadn’t embraced his Irish roots as much as some in the family (ahem…) still knew the words to the entire Irish emigrant songbook. Catchy as hell and that north American celtic-punk sound that definitely has crossover appeal in that it is basically folk music for punks.  I love the harmonica and it is sadly underused in celtic-punk but used to great effect in ‘Girl At The Gallows’. Two songs in and you get a feel for what The Lucky Pistols are about and it’s good. The album’s title song, ‘Where The Orioles Fly’, rolls in next and the oriole is the official state bird of Maryland and the name of the local major league baseball team and tells of Sean and his journey home from across the sea.

Sean’s voice leads the band along and is the more stronger for it. The songs tell stories in that Irish tradition and also in the tradition of Ireland a few drinking songs wouldn’t go amiss and more importantly those warning of the perils of the demon drink and ‘Moonshine (Howlin’ At The Moon)’ is the first here. Country influence especially strong here but not of Nashville but of working men and women far away from rhinestones and glamour. There follows a group of songs with much in common. ‘Downtrodden’, ‘Back In The Harbour’, ‘Walls Of Misery’ all tell of the various struggles of those at the bottom of the ladder. Sad to say not everyone is a “king in the US of A”.

It’s not all doom though as ‘Regrets Are A Waste Of Time’ tells of dusting yourself off when life drags you through the dirt. Great sentiments and not many know the truth of that as much as the Irish do. The music so far has been fast and flowing steady but what I have been waiting for has been a kick-arse ballad and finally I am rewarded with the wait with the penultimate song ‘Drink With You’. Every celtic-punk album needs one and as it the way they usually revolve around a drink or two and The Lucky Pistols don’t buck the trend. Mind you I wouldn’t say its completely a ballad but it still rolls along beautifully and you can class it as the album’s epic. Where The Orioles Fly ends with the classic Irish standard ‘God Save Ireland’ and a song that is very rarely covered which is a shame as both the words and the tune I’ve always thought would make it the perfect song to ‘punk’ right up. Written back in 1867 it was the unofficial Irish national anthem up to the 1920’s and tells the story of three Irishmen executed in Manchester, England for their part in the ambush of a Police transport. The ambush achieved it’s goal of the release of two of their comrades but a shot fired at the lock of the van inadvertently caused the death of the police guard. In the ensuing weeks many local Irish were rounded up and eventually three men were sentenced to death. Despite none of them having fired the fatal shot Michael Larkin, William Phillip Allen, and Michael O’Brien were put to death and became known as the Manchester Martyrs. The songs lyrics were released the day before their execution on 23rd November 1867.

“Climbed they up the rugged stair, rang their voices out in prayer,
Then with England’s fatal cord around them cast,
Close beside the gallows tree kissed like brothers lovingly,
True to home and faith and freedom to the last”

The Lucky Pistols turn in an utterly fantastic version what is without a doubt the highlight of the album. Fast and catchy and thigh slappingly brilliant. A song that is built to last and no better tribute to those people mentioned at the beginning of this article. Sean the vocalist and songwriter of the band takes his inspiration from his Irish nannie (like a true Irish grandson!) and Maryland has a rich Irish culture which is celebrated throughout the year. Throughout the USA Irish culture is holding firm against globalisation and ‘mono-culture’ and bands like The Lucky Pistols play more than their fair share in aiding that. That their music speaks to the grandchildren of those brave Irish souls who settled in Baltimore many years ago is undeniable but their feisty mix of acoustic folk-punk laded with plenty of Irish ‘oompf’ with gather many friends of the Irish around the hearth too.

(you can download for free this fantastic album but if you can spare a dime or enough for a Guinness even then follow the link but listen first here)

Download Where The Orioles Fly

FromTheBand

Contact The Lucky Pistols

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NEW SINGLE AND VIDEO FROM JOSHUA McCLURG FROM NAYMEDICI

I had wondered after not hearing from them for a bit but sad to say that Manchester-Irish celtic-punk band Naymedici are no more. Now that name probably means more to our Irish readers than anyone else as at the height of their popularity they upsticks and moved across the sea (wrong way surely?!?!) to a lovely beachside cottage near Clonakilty on the coast of West Cork. Described as

“the bastard child of The Pogues and Gogol Bordello”

in one review, and Scots writer Irvine Welsh said they were ‘f***ing on it!’ which is probably one of the best reviews anyone could ever get! They played all over Ireland and Britain and were regular’s on the festival circuit too and even did undertook a tour of Europe, playing in cities such as Berlin and Prague among others. They released a few singles during this time, including ‘Paddy McGee’, ‘Koo Koo The Bird Girl’, ‘Whack Fol The Diddle’ and ‘Men and Women’ and were featured on BBC 6 Music, E4, MTV UK, MTV Europe and MTV International. Not bad for a DIY Band with no management!

Well three years ago the band went on their different ways and Josh the bands singer moved back to Manchester and began his next project The Lucky 15’s, an Irish Party Band, with a great bunch of talented musicians I knew from various other bands in Manchester. It was during this time that Joshua began writing material for a solo album, You Can’t Take It With You, set for release next month.

So here’s a wee taster with the video for ‘If You’re Gone’ the first single release from Joshua McClurg’s debut album, ‘You Can’t Take It With You’.

One cold winter’s evening I sat by the stairs,

In the doorway I huddled while the cruel millionaires

Turned up all their noses as I held out my cup

Hard to keep your chin up when your down on your luck

So I felt in my pockets, had nothing to show

And I thought back to the old days how quickly they’d go

When I first held you close and you promised the world

And I saw my true love through my darling young girl

If you’re gone, don’t leave me falling

The night it is cold now

The leaves are falling

And we were young then

Still had our dreams babe

But now I’m alone

I’ve still got me dreams

I’ve still got me dreams

Well these horses and whores, cruel mistresses all

And I gambled my money and I gambled my home

And for all my sins I was condemned to roam

With nowt but the clothes on my rowdy-dow-dow

And life it is hard and gets harder each day,

Haven’t eaten since 8 and it’s started to rain

But I swear by the Christ’s blood that flows through me veins

That I never will whistle that old tune again

Well I’ve made some mistakes and I’ve not been too good

And my life’s in the gutter with the rats and the mud

And it’s thicker than wine and it’s colder than blood

Yes it’s hard to look up when your down on your luck

If’re gone, don’t leave me falling

The night it is cold now

The leaves are falling

And we were young then

Still had our dreams babe

But now I’m alone

I’ve still got me dreams

They can’t take me dreams

Now it may not be the raucous celtic-gypsy-Irish folk we were use to with Naymedici but even better there’s an unmistakable Poguesy air to it from the land of ‘Dirty Old Town’. The piano, backing vocals and marvellous lyrics straight remind me of If I Should Fall From Grace With God era Shane. If you like this then you can pre-order Joshua’s album from his Bandcamp page below and keep an eye out for a review coming to these pages soon.

Contact Joshua McClurg

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DANNY DIATRIBE AND D’LYFA REILLY REPPIN IRISH IMMIGRANT HIP-HOP

Irish immigrant hip-hop from Derry born Danny Diatribe and Manchester Irish rapper D’Lyfa Reilly showing the Irish in England are still here and we’re still fighting!

took a drop of the pure to keep my heart from sinking, that’s the Paddy’s Cure

Diatribe, drowning in the infinite, fiat currency and copy written birth certificates, born to war with devils, my spirit never settles, Irish blood it flows with the rage of a thousand rebels, I walk disheveled, drunken through the city streets, Let bottles of whiskey sleep, I disappear for 50 weeks, the drifter speaks, abandoned factories and textiles, I roll with vagabonds that bear the scars of exile, lost in the wilderness, natural born survivor, set your mind on fire, keep it living in the cypher, our rhymes are wiser, we spit the light of hope, struggle till the end till colours blend in out kaleidoscope, I’ve got my iris soaked in paragraphs of knowledge, smash your flashing boxes that have kept your brains in bondage, don’t be astonished, the people pay us homage, discussing economics, educated alcoholics.

We face the world with the freedom of a bird, speech slurred, drop of the pure to calm my nerves, The Paddy’s Cure for the worst that we observed, the devils thirst, drinking till the curse has been reversed.

Living the life of the modern day, urban seanchaí, herdsman with the words on my tongue aren’t lacklustre, got the same heart as the rebels in Ulster, in Leinster, in Connaught, in Munster, did I mumble? I must-a, cos I swear down you aint listening to my pissed up wisdom, two fingers to the system, a backwards piece of my mind what you’ll find inside this ting, set distance between me and you, cos between me and you you’re a cunt, and you can’t critique this alcoholic, physique. Belly of the beast, drinking devil juice with diatribe, Irish lions pride, saliva cyanide, rhyming right inside, sharp like a pain in my side, the bane of my life, Rome wasn’t built in a day and Hadrian’s wall wasn’t built in a night, so me and worries just pass like ships that sail in the night, I’m elevating the grind I drown my sorrow say hello to a hollow tomorrow

We face the world with the freedom of a bird, speech slurred, drop of the pure to calm my nerves. The Paddy’s Cure for the worst that we observed, the devils thirst, drinking till the curse has been reversed.

Bright lights of the city blinding, find them in the shadows rhyming, drunk off the wine their buying sliding through their stomach lining, the Irish traveled tides to find them, pints to keep the light from dying, in the cities of the world residing, drinking to stop the demons rising drinking to stop the demons rising drinking to stop the demons rising and you’ll find them….

(A behind the scenes look at the making of the Paddy’s Cure video shot in Manchester)

GET A FREE DOWNLOAD

HERE

Click on the ‘More’ button and scroll down to the ‘Download’ button.

Contact Danny Diatribe

Danny Lynch better known as Danny Diatribe hails from Derry City but is now based in Manchester. He has released a couple of fantastic album’s including Elevation Illustrations which is reviewed here and you can hear below on the Bandcamp player.

Danny has a new album, Tales From the Down and Outs: The Irish Art of Story Telling, almost ready for delivery and is looking for help finding a Euro and North American release so if you can help one of own please get in touch with Danny at one of the links below.

Facebook  Bandcamp  Soundcloud  YouTube  Google+  Twitter

Contact D’lfa Reilly  

Creating his own mark in the hip hop scene, D’Lyfa Reilly is a modern day urban Seanchaí (storyteller) from Manchester. Other than being a dab hand at picking a pun ridden alias, he has been perfecting his art of relaying tales untainted by sugar-coated commercialism. D’Lyfa Reilly is a real gem, an emerald if you will.

Facebook  Soundcloud  Bandcamp  YouTube

(Danny Diatribe joins House of Pain on their UK tour. This documentary was shot at the Manchester show at the O2 Ritz in June 2017. Behind the scenes footage of Danny’s soundcheck, backstage and performing ‘Jimmys Bets’, ‘Paddys Cure’ and House of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’ live)

THE LONDON CELTIC PUNKS GUIDE TO LIFE- HOW TO PRONOUNCE ‘CELTIC’

Today is our birthday. The 30492 – London Celtic Punks blog was born today on the 7th July, 2014 . It’s been an enjoyable slog I must say and it’s been an pleasure to meet so many like minded people. There is plenty more to come from us and we just hope that we can continue to introduce you to good music and good craic for many years to come. 

One thing that we have been asked more than any other is how is the word ‘Celtic’ pronounced. For us over here in England it seems pretty natural but I can see how it can be a bit confusing if you are from overseas. During the so-called Celtic Twilight period in the late 1800s and early 1900s both hard c (‘Keltic’) and soft c (‘Seltic’) were used. The word Celt is derived from Keltoi, which is the name the Greeks gave the ‘barbarian’ tribes along the Danube and Rhone rivers. The Romans borrowed the Greek name, but spelled it ‘Celtae’, and the word entered French in the form ‘Celtes’, from which the English derived Celt. In French the soft c pronunciation is standard for ‘Celtique’, following standard French pronunciation rules. The Irish (‘Ceilteach’) and Breton’s (‘kelt’-ethnicity and ‘keltiek’- language) both use a hard c sound. Modern Breton also has a word ‘Keltia’, meaning the Celtic world.

Dewsbury Celtic

The Celtic Twilight period was also around the time when many sporting organisations were springing up with the name Celtic in them. Most were based outside of Ireland and were formed either by first or second generation Irish immigrants. The most obvious being of course Glasgow Celtic in 1888 but their are many other great examples. Dewsbury Celtic Rugby League Football Club (1879) are the oldest Irish sporting organisation outside Ireland. Formed in 1879 when the Irish escaping post-famine poverty and hunger arrived in Yorkshire to work as labourers and in the local mills. They settled in the Irish ghetto of Westtown and formed a rugby club which soon after changed to being a football club before changing again shortly after and returning to rugby. They began life as Dewsbury Shamrocks and changed their name in around 1910 to Celtic. The club today are based in Irish National League Club in Dewsbury and play in the National Division of the Rugby League Conference. The club field a dozen or more youth teams and are doing an absolutely amazing job of keeping alive the ‘Celtic’ spirit and traditions in West Yorkshire.

As more and more Irish flooded into England and Scotland football teams like our very own (1888) and Stalybridge Celtic (1909) or Farsley Celtic (1908) in the north of England were established and then later in America the Boston Celtics Basketball Club (1946). These are all referred to with the soft c pronunciation and the modern convention is to keep the soft c pronunciation to refer only to sports teams.

The use of the hard c version in cultural matters indicated, until recently, that the user was somewhat knowledgeable in these matters. This has changed since Riverdance, Titanic, etc., and also the use of the term ‘Celtic Tiger’ to refer to the improved economy of Ireland and Scotland. Personally I would use the hard k when talking about Celtic culture, language or traditions except when talking about sporting clubs but to be honest both can be ‘korrect’!!

ALBUM REVIEW: DANNY DIATRIBE- ‘Elevation Illustrations’ (2016)

Elevation Illustrations is the second album release from Danny Diatribe aka Irish rapper Danny Lynch originally from Derry City but based in Manchester.

Now first things first. What I know about hip-hop you could write on the back of a postage stamp to be honest but I do like music of the Irish diaspora and I do own the House Of Pain discography and that has made me the most qualified out of all the London Celtic Punks reviewers to take on the new Danny Diatribe album for you! Danny was born Danny Lynch in Derry city in the occupied north of Ireland but emigrated to Manchester as a young ‘un ten years back. Danny may not be the first celtic-rapper (see our article The Top Seven Celtic Hip-Hop Artists And Bands here) but he is one of only a small handful waving the tricolour in England!

Elevation Illustrations is Danny’s follow up album to 2013’s Information Age and though musically a hundred miles away from what I usually listen to I found myself getting proper into it… so i did! With a whole host of guest artists appearing Elevation Illustrations is like a who’s-who of the Manchester rap scene but is most definitely Danny’s work. Kicking off with ‘Towards Balance’ which was released as a single from the album.

Followed by ‘Encounter Philosophical’ and another great video goes with the song this time filmed in Reykjavik, Iceland. In fact one of the things most impressive things about Danny Diatribe is the quality videos that accompany pretty much all of Danny’s songs. ‘Magum Opus’ features Conor McGregor giving out on what is the Irish way while ‘Roses’ features Wile Man. The nightmare of alcoholism is the feature of ‘Ten Green Bottles’

“Emerge from buried history, i never speak in novel tones,
Never do I grovel thrones, I hobble down the cobble stones,
Sunken in the drunkin groans, my thoughts are dim lit alleyways,
Drown my screaming ego, I escape from my reality.Fall into the gutter on theses doom stilts,
Calls for help turns into a spludder as the room tilts,
This is the life for me, cos there is no life for me,
I drown the fuckin sight i see”

and more nightmarish visions follow in title song ‘Elevation Illustrations’ featuring Herrotics and Misc Jockey. ‘South Manchester’ is a gritty slowed down diatribe on an area of Manchester that goes from the footballer-belt right up to the inner-city. ‘Boneshakers’ features Dubbul O and ‘The Vagabond of Babylon’ features Danny in the video wandering round his native Derry.

‘Paddys Cure’ follows and begins with a blast of the Dubliners and is as good a song about Irish emigration as you’ll hear. The song is featuring fellow Manchester Irish rapper D’Lyfa Reilly and the pride and the sadness of leaving Ireland and being Irish is clear.

‘The Void’ features Tony Skank, ‘Bun The System’ features Bill Sykes, Black Josh & Cheech and we’re coming to the end of the album and the last two songs sum up the album perfectly. ‘The Fractal Mind Of Diatribe’ is an extended rant giving Danny’s main philosophies on life.

“I’m Danny Diatribe, chillin on a manny vibe,
The chillin Irish guy that keeps it lit just like a fire fly,
Got more juice than 5alive, but never on the flyer I
Think promoters sleep they’re counting sheep and rapid eye
movement, showing improvement, I’ve been rhyming for a decade,
from mind to pen to tongue my lungs expand under my chest plate,
the Derry native gets creative with his intake
breath controls the central role for meditating stressed states
rippin the microphone cos its the dopest thing i know
gathering up my thoughts and then express it in a flow
I’m academic when i said it and it shows
I kick enlightened poems if you don’t know well now ye know,
but some dont comprehend so they need to be told again
the universe extends every time i hold a pen
don’t follow trends but ye can catch me at the bar with cats
spittin raps till another celebrity star collapse
off the beaten track, only reaching those that’s seeking facts,
leave that heathen chat, your teeth’s in that and what you speak is wack,
no-one believes in your mc-ing get your reason back,
im a seasoned cat, your a cell inside a semen sack,
must be fuckin dreamin, black Irish and we’re up north
the catechism causes craniums to contort,
futuristic, my target market’s unborn,
I speak the celtic flow that makes you want more,

cause an uproar”

The song ends with the great line

“so thanks for listenin, grab a tin with me next of kin,
grippin them and sippin them up on a roof in Withington”

and finally ‘Elevation Illustrations’ comes to an end with ‘Astral Journey’ featuring Legion and the curtain comes down.

The album was produced by Pro P who has been tipped as one of the top 10 UK hip hop producers to look out for in 2016 by the highly influential web site UKHH.COM. Fourteen tracks that nicely bring up both The Clash and Public Enemy in describing Irish immigrant life while raging on the attacks on our civil liberties, Palestine, imperialism, the working class and the gritty side of Manchester life. All are in his cross-hairs and the execution is pure brilliant. Backed by a varied and excellent sets of beats from trip-hop to jungle, to electronica and back again Danny has delivered something that takes the idea of celtic-punk and brings it much much closer to modern culture than we could ever do. Sharp tongued and finely distilled Danny Diatribe is set for important things. Buy the album and tell your friends you got your finger on the pulse of underground Irish immigrant hip hop. You will sound cool as anything!

(you can listen to  by pressing play on the Bandcamp player below before you buy. Go on it’s only a fiver!)

Buy The Album

FromDanny

Contact Danny Diatribe

Facebook  Bandcamp  Soundcloud  YouTube  Google+  Twitter

Interesting story regards the old fashioned gent on the album cover. It is not as originally thought Danny pre-beard but his Great-Grandad James Lynch in 1890. He was a protestant that converted to Catholicism to marry and had to be sneaked into church on the quiet. Both him and his brother played football for Ireland and he was given an award by the Royal Humane Society for saving a drowning woman’s life by jumping in the water, punching her unconscious, swimming back to shore with her and resuscitating her on land!

ALBUM REVIEW: ‘JOY OF LIVING: A TRIBUTE TO EWAN MacCOLL’ (2016)

Fearless and uncompromising Ewan MacColl’s influence is still felt far beyond the folk world. We owe him a lot… more than we can ever imagine.

Regular readers of the London Celtic Punks blog will all know how much we like Ewan MacColl and we have regularly featured him within these pages. Though long gone Ewan’s massive volume of work lives on and only the other day were we raving about the Irish-American celtic-punk band 1916 and their amazing version of another Ewan song (sadly not featured here) ‘Hot Asphalt’. Ewan’s songs were uplifting whether proclaiming love or war or peace. He wrote about things that would now be forgotten about and has kept their memory alive. He gave birth to a folk revival that continues to this day, many years after his passing, that remains in great health. The songs he wrote and championed are still being played and explored and adapted and still being made great. Ewan MacColl’s musical legacy is, to put it simply, just out of this world. We owe him a lot… more than we can ever imagine.

Ewan was the Salford born son of Scotish parents. A Gaelic-speaking mother and Lowland father from whom he inherited more than a hundred songs and ballads. He worked as a garage hand, builders’ labourer, journalist, radio scriptwriter, actor and dramatist. After the end of World War II Ewan wrote and broadcast extensively in Britain about folk music. He was general editor of the BBC folk-music series, ‘Ballads and Blues’, and frequently took part in radio and television shows for the BBC.

His folk song publications included ‘Personal Choice’, a pocket book edition of Scots folk songs and ballads, and ‘The Shuttle and the Cage’, the first published collection of British industrial folk songs. Eventually he was ousted from the BBC due to his socialist beliefs. He wrote many songs that have become folk (and celtic-punk standards) the most famous of course being ‘Dirty Old Town’ popularised by The Dubliners and then The Pogues. It is wrongly assumed to be about Dublin but it is in fact about his home town of Salford in Manchester. He is also famous for writing one of the greatest ever love songs ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ which he wrote for his second wife, the influential American folk singer, Peggy Seeger. He was also the father of Kirsty MacColl who of course guested on The Pogues enormous Christmas hit ‘Fairytale Of New York’. After many years of poor health Ewan died on 22 October 1989 but it can be safely said of him that his songs and influence will live on forever. Comparable only to Woody Guthrie in more than one way.

This fantastic double album marks 100 years since Ewan MacColl’s birth and the album has been produced by two of Ewan’s sons, Calum and Neill, and features a wonderful bunch of diverse artists from right across folk, rock, pop and celtic music. Disc one begins with, for me, one of the stand out tracks with Damien Dempsey singing ‘Schooldays Over’. The only song here we have heard before nevertheless it is more than welcome. Made famous by the late great Luke Kelly’s version with The Dubliners Damien is no stranger to Ewan’s work and does him truly proud.

This is followed by a track from one of the most influential figures in folk music today, Martin Carthy and is the first of several and several individual contributions by the Waterson-Carthy family. He performs the unlikely tale of a fish delivery man in ‘I’m Champion At Keeping ‘Em Rolling’. The Unthanks may sound like a rock band but are in fact two sisters (Unthank is their great surname) who perform a gentle lullaby ‘Cannily, Cannily’. Tracks from legends old and new follow from Seth Lakeman and Marry Waterson and Bombay Bicycle Club are up next, BBC famously include one of MacColl’s grandchildren, Jamie. They contribute a moving version of ‘The Young Birds’, a song written back in 1961 to commemorate a tragic plane crash that killed 34 London children of whom some were known to MacColl’s oldest son, Hamish. Another artist we are familiar with here is Dick Gaughan who contributes ‘Jamie Foyers’. Dick is an influential Scottish musician, singer, and songwriter who was a founding member of the famous celtic band Boys Of The Lough. Martin’s daughter Eliza Carthy, ‘Thirty-Foot Trailer’ and Chaim Tannenbaum, ‘My Old Man’, are up next before honorary Irishman Steve Earle presents a new take on a song that needs no introduction ‘Dirty Old Town’, except to say that it does sound like the spirit(s) of Shane MacGowan were present at its recording.

The first discs last song is from Jarvis Cocker and the erstwhile Pulp front man gives us a amazingly beautiful whispered version of  ‘The Battle Is Done With’. I am sure it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but its great to hear something that just isn’t a straight cover of Ewan’s work.

Disc two begins with the most famous of Ewan’s compositions and Paul Buchanan vocalist of 80/90’s Glasgow indie band The Blue Nile croons beautifully through the ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’. Ewan wrote the song for Peggy Seeger and it became an international smash hit in 1972 sung by Roberta Flack. On hearing this version it made me wonder how Shane MacGowan would have mastered it. Paul Brady will be a name known to many and his version of ‘Freeborn Man’ shows Paul to have lost none of his talent in a career that spans right across modern day Irish folk music. Another travellers song follows and Norma Waterson provides us with a fauntless rendition of the gypsy’s plight in ‘The Moving On Song’. Karine Polwart’s version of ‘The Terror Time’ is again beautiful, and Martin Simpson, The Father’s Song, is up next before the ultimate Irish living folk legend, and former band mate of Paul Brady in Planxty, Christy Moore appears with ‘The Companeros’. Again yer man has lost nothing and its a stunning version. Now there’s one name missing from this album so far and he’s up next. It must be written into law that Billy Bragg must appear on any folk compilation and whatever you think of him he gives us a really nice but angry copy of ‘Kilroy Was Here’ which strips Billy back to those early days when he was at his best. Folk siblings Rufus and Martha Wainwright play the magnificent ‘Sweet Thames, Flow Softly’. A small gentle snapshot of life before Kathryn Williams, ‘Alone’, and David Gray brings the whole project to an end with one of Ewan’s best but sadly little known songs, and album title, The Joy of Living.

As you may expect traditionalists might not appreciate some of the versions here but this enhances, rather than detracts and all the various strands of Ewan’s political and musical life is represented here. This double album does not pretend to be the ‘be-all-and-end-all’ as with an artist with such a massive repertoire it would be impossible to please everyone but it does provide a gateway. Collections like this serve only one purpose. That is to steer listeners away from the modern day versions to the original source and with Ewan their is plenty to catch up on. We have included some links at the bottom where readers can find more information and free downloads so I hope you take the opportunity to. It is impossible to calculate the range and influence of this remarkable singer and song-writer but we can rest assured his memory lives and this album is a great testament to him.

“My function is not to reassure people. I want to make them uncomfortable. To send them out of the place arguing and talking”

Disc 1
1. Damien Dempsey – Schooldays Over
2. Martin Carthy – I’m Champion At Keeping ‘Em Rolling
3. The Unthanks – Cannily, Cannily
4. Seth Lakeman – The Shoals of Herring
5. Marry Waterson – The Exile Song
6. Bombay Bicycle Club – The Young Birds
7. Dick Gaughan – Jamie Foyers
8. Eliza Carthy – Thirty-Foot Trailer
9. Chaim Tannenbaum – My Old Man
10. Steve Earle – Dirty Old Town
11. Jarvis Cocker – The Battle Is Done With

Disc 2
1. Paul Buchanan – The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
2. Paul Brady – Freeborn Man
3. Norma Waterson  – Moving On Song
4. Karine Polwart – The Terror Time
5. Martin Simpson – The Father’s Song
6. Christy Moore – The Companeros
7. Billy Bragg – Kilroy Was Here
8. Rufus & Martha Wainwright – Sweet Thames, Flow Softly
9. Kathryn Williams – Alone
10. David Gray – The Joy of Living

Buy The Album

Here   CookingVinylRecords  Amazon

Official Ewan MacColl Sites

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For more on Ewan MacColl the internet is awash with sites but trust us and head straight to the official sites but also to Wikipedia as well as this tribute from the Working Class Movement Library here. You can listen to some of his music for free here on LastFm.

We have a regular series ‘Classic Album Reviews’ where we feature records from the past that have had influence far beyond their years. Ewan (of course!!), Leadbelly and several compilations have featured so far and all come with links to free downloads. You can check out the full series here.

(Just to prove Ewan’s work lives on here’s the aforementioned 1916 from New York with their recent  version of the classic Ewan song ‘Hot Asphalt’)

PUT THE KETTLE ON. HAVE A BREW. WE’RE HOME- FC UNITED

heartfelt congratulations to our footballing comrades FOOTBALL CLUB OF MANCHESTER or better known of course as FC UNITED. Ten years after Malcolm Glazer completed his unwanted hostile takeover of Manchester United, FC United have risen from nowhere to the brink of the Football League. The supporter owned club is truly a part of its community and is an inspiration to us all. Modern Football is shit but their are glimpses every now and then of a better world…

by Jonathan Allsop

I reckon Odysseus had it relatively easy. Okay it took the Greek ruler and hero of Homer’s Odyssey ten years to return to his Ithaca home following the Trojan war, battling various cannibals, witches, ghosts and six headed monsters along the way. But it pales a little compared to the story of FC United of Manchester’s ten year journey home. Ten long years it’s taken us but on Friday 29th May 2015 the Northern Premier League champions welcomed the Portugese champions Benfica to the opening of Broadhurst Park, our very own Ithaca. What an epic journey it’s been for those seeking asylum from the Glazer regime, grafting relentlessly to raise the small matter of the £6.3 million needed to build the ground at a time when the economy is on its arse, dodging the slings and arrows of the planning process and coping with other obstacles like having to find another site for the ground after Ten Acres Lane fell through, the judicial review, contractors going out of business and Japanese knotweed. Finally though we’re playing football in Manchester and have our own ground, somewhere to call home. And we moved in one day short of ten years since the public meeting at the Apollo theatre when the idea of FC United was discussed. Odysseus? Pfffftttt. For FC United it all began at a venue named after a Greek god no less.

There must have been around two thousand of us at the Apollo on Ardwick Green on that warm, sunny bank holiday Monday. I’d been to Chester for the weekend and the street stalls flogging t-shirts celebrating the “miracle of Istanbul” had done nothing to improve my mood. May 2005 had been a thoroughly dismal month to be a Manchester United supporter following the hostile takeover by the Glazer family. The rather forlorn looking red wristband on my left wrist said, incorrectly, “not for sale”. Yet somehow I’d convinced myself that all was not lost and that with a concerted “fight from within” we could still send the Glazers packing. The protests, flash mobbing and boycotting of sponsors would have to continue and surely we’d have to boycott games too. It wouldn’t be easy but if any set of fans could do it it had to be us. Love United Hate Glazer. The FC United breakaway club thing sounded like a good idea but it probably wasn’t for me.

I’d gone along to the meeting at the Apollo primarily to find out what the plans were for the next stage of the fight to get rid of the Glazers but something changed for me that afternoon and I’m not sure exactly what it was. Maybe it was those ace t-shirts with the fist and the “our club, our rules” motif. I’m always a sucker for a political slogan or two. Maybe it was hearing Kris Stewart from AFC Wimbledon describe forming your own football club as “the best thing you will ever do”. Or maybe it was re-reading the photocopies of that stirring “think about the future” article about FC United that appeared in Red Issue back in February 2005 as the Glazer takeover loomed large.

The meeting got me thinking, like perhaps never before, about what a football club actually is. Is it the team and its players and manager? The football ground itself? The directors and shareholders? Or is it something less tangible than that? What is apparent is that without supporters football is nothing. Take away that passion and noise and colour and all you’re left with is twenty two people kicking a bag of wind around a patch of grass. So, if that’s the case, surely the best way to secure the long-term future of any football club is to entrust the ownership and running of it to the very people without whom it would be nothing; the supporters. Maybe, just maybe, something beautiful could emerge from this wreckage. More than one thousand signatures of support for FC United were received from that meeting. Mine was one of them.

So it was that on a muggy August day I found myself on a bus to Leek heading to FC United of Manchester’s first ever league game against Leek County School Old Boys in the North West Counties League, six divisions below the football league and ten divisions below the Premier League. Me and a mate arrived early to watch United in the lunchtime kick-off versus Everton at Goodison Park in a back street pub. The place was rammed and as more fans drifted in during the first half one of them glanced over at the screen on his way to the bar and said something, not too complimentary, about “the other lot”.

It caught me by surprise and it took me a few seconds to realise that “the other lot” were in fact our red shirted heroes on the telly. As an out-of-towner I’d been spared much of the pain and acrimony of the split in United’s support that summer as groups of mates who’d been going to the match together for years went their separate ways. Emotions ran high and that split in our support in the summer of 2005 was perhaps the single worst aspect of the Glazer takeover, one barely mentioned by the media. For me it was a huge wrench to stop going to United after twenty eight years. The decision mangled my head for weeks but I was relatively lucky, at least I hadn’t suffered the jibes of being a “splitter” or “Judas scum”. The worst that got chucked my way when mentioning FC United, aside from “who are they?” was the old missing-the-point chestnut of “why don’t you go and support another non-league team instead of forming your own?”

Sat in that pub in Leek town centre I still felt like a United supporter and when “we” eventually ran out 2-0 winners that felt like the main event of the day. If FC won as well that would be great, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. It still felt like a protest. As hundreds of us walked through the rain from the pub to the ground, singing anti-Glazer songs, it wasn’t unlike that pre-match march before the AC Milan match six months before.

And for much of those first two seasons in the North West Counties League it continued to feel like a protest. We carried on singing the songs about Glazer, Gill, Fergie and Rio and what happened on the pitch was, at times, almost incidental, the noise of the crowd often not matching the ebb and flow of the game. At some point though this changed. The third round FA Vase tie against Quorn in December of the second season was undoubtedly a turning point for many as an FC side down to nine men with half an hour of the game to go battled valiantly and unbelievably took the lead with only a few minutes left. The Manchester Road End went bananas. This, all of a sudden, was a football club, our football club not just a protest movement. “We” eventually lost 3-2, cruelly in the last minute of extra time but it was a seminal moment nonetheless.

There have been some great memories on the pitch that have been wonderfully documented by better writers than me elsewhere but some of my proudest moments of the last decade have occurred off the pitch. Pay what you can afford season tickets. The vote to ban Sky and any other pay per view broadcasters from a future ground. The refusal to speak to strike breaking BBC journalists the day after the FA Cup win at Rochdale. The continued principled stance taken against shirt sponsorship. Being recognised as community club of the year in 2011-12. Raising more than two million pounds in community shares. The annual Big Coat Day. The recent vote to choose not to work with any organisations who operate the government’s shameful policy of Workfare. Boycotting the Curzon Ashton game in December 2007 after the kick-off time was moved for television purposes. Becoming the first football club in the country to adopt the Living Wage. The assistance and advice provided to other supporter owned clubs (as AFC Wimbledon did for us). And, of course, the wonderfully irreverent pre-match Course You Can Malcolm nourishing us with music, poetry, comedy, theatre and fairly priced food and ale.

On that Friday evening against Benfica, there was a tear in my eye as I stood on that magnificent terrace behind the goal. After years of pound for the ground draws, standing orders for the development fund, sticking loose change in barrels, community shares, crowd funding and the rest we finally have a place to call home. It’s wonderful that something so beautiful and so positive has emerged from the years of protesting and being told to “sit down and shut up” and that “it’ll all be over by Christmas”. Broadhurst Park is a monument to Mancunian defiance and a reward for the assorted oddballs, subversives and “real ale hooligan socialists” who had the courage to stand up and prove that there is a better way for football. It felt apt too that Benfica, with the largest number of supporter members of any football club in the world, were our guests for this special occasion. Like Broadhurst Park, their original Estadio da Luz home was built primarily with funds donated by their fans.

As I tucked into a bottle of Two Hoots in that lovely, make-do-and-mend space beneath the St Mary’s Road End before kick-off I, strangely, found myself thinking back to the summer of 1991 when Manchester United were floated on the Stock Exchange. Arguably the very beginning of a timeline that has brought many of us to Broadhurst Park. It was a few weeks after Rotterdam and having recently shelled out for a season ticket for next season I had to borrow some money from a mate to scrape together the minimum share investment of £190.

Despite the cost, it felt great to buy those fifty shares and have a stake, no matter how small, in the football club I loved. Somewhat naively I thought that this could be the start of something beautiful; a Manchester United owned by its supporters. I didn’t realise at the time that the primary motive for floating the club on the Stock Exchange was to raise money for the redevelopment of the Stretford End, to transform it into an all seater stand following the Taylor Report. It was reckoned that the rebuilding would cost around twelve million pounds with roughly £6.7 million to come from the share issue.

That figure is uncannily similar to the cost, twenty four years later, of the entirety of Broadhurst Park. When the Glazers took over in 2005 I got a cheque for my United shares. Unbelievably those shares purchased in 1991 were worth a staggering three thousand pounds by 2005. Usually I’d be delighted to be sent a cheque for that much. But this felt like a kick in the teeth. A recognition that my stake in Manchester United was no longer needed, no longer welcome. A symbolic moment. In that summer of 2005 I gave some of that money to FC United, one of thousands to do so, to allow the club to get through its first season. Since then we’ve all invested our time, our skills and our hard earned cash to get us this far safe in the knowledge that this time no one with a big wallet and a smart-arse business plan can pinch it off us. This is ours. This football club. This ground. It’s ours. It’s been a remarkable ten year footballing odyssey.

re-printed from the excellent blog ‘NOWT MUCH TO SAY’. head over there now by pressing here to find more from a London based politically and footballingly red and founder member and co-owner of FC United of Manchester.

TRIBUTE TO EASTERHOUSE. MANCHESTER IRISH INDIE ROCK GREATS!

Easily the best political rock band of the 80s with jangly guitars and leftist politics!

Through my teenage years my choice of music was pretty much an exclusive diet of fast and noisy hardcore punk rock… but there were a handful of exceptions. I loved a bit of folk music. My Grandads Wolfe Tones albums I still cherish along with my Mammy’s Johnny Cash ones but I also fell in love with bands like The Kinks, The Band Of Holy Joy and New F.A.D.S who i just liked the music. One band though that has been a constant for me throughout my life has been Easterhouse. Virtually unknown to the outside world their brand of cool indie guitar rock and absolute unashamed working class communist polemic as well as support for the Irish republican movement reached to the very core of me and I’ve been listening to them ever since and I hope you will too after you have read this.

Easterhouse

Now the first thing to say about Easterhouse is that they actually come from Manchester, Stretford in fact, and took the name of the massive Glasgow housing estate for poetic license. The vast Scots estate was built for the people bombed out of the old Gorbals and houses around 30,000 people. The band are another in the long list of Manchester bands with Irish backgrounds and with The Smiths popularity in the 80’s booming, and Morrissey himself helping, Easterhouse were signed to London Records in 1986. Under the misguided impression they had signed a standard ‘Madchester’ jingle jangle baggy jumper band what they had in fact got was a forceful political rock band led by the brothers Perry. Andy on vocals and Ivor on guitar.

Their first single. ‘In Our Own Hands’, also led to being their last on London Records and afterwards they signed to the famous indie label (and home of The Smiths) Rough Trade Records where they released their second single ‘Whistling In The Dark’. To the untrained ear it could sound like just like any other well played “jingle jangle baggy jumper affair” but the song is actually about getting working class people to turn away from the Labour Party that had betrayed them all their lives and stand on their own feet.

After this is where my relationship with the band starts. On a regular weekend trip to the local record shop with a couple of mates we were flipping through the new single releases and suddenly “BLOODY HELL THATS BOBBY SANDS” I shouted at the top of my voice. Yes sitting there was a single with a picture of Westminsters greatest ever MP on the cover as bold as brass. Well we were straight off to the counter to buy the only two copies of the single as well as the only 12″ in the shop and then rush home to play it not knowing exactly what we had got our hands on. The EP was called ‘Inspiration’ and is indeed a tribute to Bobby Sands the famous and legendary Republican prisoner who died on hunger strike fighting not to be labelled a criminal in 1981. He became a MP while on hunger strike and was also famous as both a poet and a writer. Other songs on the EP paid tribute to the 1916 Easter Rising and ‘Nineteen Sixty Nine’ was, and still is, the most virulently anti-Labour Party song I have ever heard. Callling out the party of the working class for defending the Union and sending in the troops to the north of Ireland.

“The savage beat of soldiers feet. Streets of broken glass.

That crushed the lie of justice that England brings to foreign lands.

The truth came out without a doubt in 1969.

How many must have thought that things would work out differently.

Labour men in government, the workers own party.

Who brought out their true colours and nailed them to the mast.

Served the Union Jack as they always have in 1969.

You have to draw the line sometime.

And I draw mine”

The EP’s remaining track ‘Johnny I Hardly Knew You’ is not the anti-war version made famous by the Dropkick Murphys but a song telling of meeting a Irish born British soldier “along the road to Wexford town” and extolling the virtues of fighting for Ireland and not for Britain.

“you’re worse than famine in the land”

It may seem strange in these days where X-Factor rules and processed pop starlets on a conveyer belt have their five minutes of fame before disappearing into oblivion (with nothing to show except the money in the pocket of the ‘svengali’ who invented them) but for a while in the mid to late 80’s the UK charts were awash with revoulutionary socialism and left-wing politics. The Redskins and The Housemartins regularly dented the Top Twenty and other bands aligned to the pro-Labour Party group Red Wedge like Bragg and Weller also troubled the top ten and outside the charts bands up and down the country played left wing music whether soul, punk, reggae, folk, indie, metal like it has never been before or, sadly, since. Of course some of these have gone onto obscurity while those who sold out their politics continue to gain applause from those they once declared their enemy but as the amazing Redskins said themselves

“Take no heroes only inspiration”

So it was then that our wee gang awaited their upcoming debut album with baited breath and boy when it came out we were not disappointed! Just a few years after and with the scars of the Miners Strike still vivid here came an album that seemed to talk to our merry band of 2nd gen Irish kids. The album kicks off with the explosive ‘Out On Your Own’ and their hatred of Labour continues

“A Labour party man comes knocking at my door

around election time, once more he’s counting on my loyal support

there’s changes needed he agrees, and there I have his sympathy

but we must think of unity get the party on it’s feet

What did his party ever do for me?”

Years before Blair finished off anything that was good and decent in the Labour Party Easterhouse could see them for exactly what they were but nowhere on the left do they see anyone worth while

“Where is the man who is speaking up for me?
Community leaders want more black shop keepers.
The unions a say in the jobs thrown away.
And I’m told that my home’s in a nuclear free zone.
But that ain’t much help when there’s bills to be paid.
‘Police accountability’ ‘No-nuclear defence strategy’
This foolish ideology has made our fight a mockery!”

The rest of the album is quite simply outstanding. Bold and brash and unapologetic. Music with balls for those who hadn’t fallen for the pomp of what had become U2. The band manage to have a clear and distinct lyrical content that could, but doesn’t, veer into sloganering and feels 100% natural… probably because it was. The bands involvement with the, now defunct, Revolutionary Communist Party is not often mentioned but their working class and Irish backgrounds made it inevitable that they, like many of that time, would involve themselves in some sort of left organisation. The amount of 2nd and 3rd generation Irish in the left at the time was incredible and many a organisation, especially the RCP, courted those disaffected and of Irish descent to join. Following is ‘Whistling In The Dark’ and ‘Nineteen Sixty Nine’ the polemic keeps up before the beautiful ‘Cargo Of Souls’ slows the whole thing down with the tale of the Irish escaping the so-called ‘famine’ of the mid-1800’s and flowing into the great cities across the world to work themseleves into early graves. Led by

“hunger that drives like a whip”

Its the knowledge that while millions starved to death, and many more left on coffin ships to try and escape that death, tons and tons of food was being exported under armed guard out of Ireland to feed the English ruling classes. That knowledge has always been there. Although referred to as a famine it was infact an attempt to wipe out the Irish Catholic and has led to a rebellious streak in the Irish ever since. As unlikely a story as you would find on an indie album comes next in ‘Lenin In Zurich’ and tells of the Russians exile in Switzerland. An incredible story of commitment. So ended Side One (this is vinyl I’m talking about kids!) and Side Two begains with ‘Get Back To Russia’ and shows their ability to change from bile to beauty in the same line. The boot goes into the Labour Party and the boys take the famous slogan shouted at all left wing paper sellers and turned it into

“England made me

And here I’ll stay

England made me

Let England deal with me”

This was during the cold war where any sympathy toward the communist state was simply unheard.

“At least the Russian working man knows exactly where he stands”

“you can’t get Levi jeans or pictures of James Dean

but these things i have seen and they don’t mean that much to me”

‘To Live Like This’ is probably my favourite track of this album as hard as it would be to choose one. Working as i was in a job for £50 a week while every single one of my mates languished on the dole the song hit more than a chord with me.

“We’re running to stand still”

The music is proud

“If I was to think I was wasting my time

I think it would drive me out of my mind

If I should live to see the day

when all of this is wiped away

Dead and gone and seen no more

Then its worth it”

and the lyrics prouder. ‘The Boy Can Sing’ is another album highlight and in an album where every track is superb then you know it must be good. ‘Estates’ ends the album and both jangly guitars and hard edged rock combine with the haunting lyrics to bring down the curtain.

“were we not born to free?”

Despite its hardline politics ‘Contenders’ was well received by press and public alike and reached No 3 in the UK Indie charts in July ’86. Back then I think the music press were a bit better at spotting fakes and phonies and could see Easterhouse for their sincerity.  ‘Contenders’ is a fine album and still sounds great today and its politics are as relevant as ever especially in these times where the working classes are vilified everytime they try to assert themselves.

Nothing more was heard after until the time of their ‘difficult’ second album in 1989. Easterhouse had virtually imploded and Andy Perry was all that remained of the original band. the brothers famously tempestrious relationship had seen Ivor leave the band and the other members (Peter Vanden, Gary Rostock and Michael Murray) follow him soon after. ‘Waiting For The Redbird’ was not quite what we were expecting and to be honest it took me a few years to really fully warm to it. The music was much more radio friendly and the politics, though there, were much more subtle and the whole thing seemed to be aimed at breaking through into the American scene. I nearly spat my cornflakes out one saturday morning when the video from revolutionary communist band Easterhouse appeared on kids telly with ‘Come out Fighting’ which did eventually chart in the lower reaches of the American Billboard Hot 100!

“Oh well there never was anything in my life
That I got just for asking
And I never heard of anything
That was won without a fight
Now I’m in another corner
Only the times have changed
A new page is turning over
But the book is just the same”

Sadly the band came to an end shortly after the album’s release but again with the album opening title track, the single ‘Come Out Fighting’, the sad yet poignant, ‘Stay With Me (Death On The Dole)’ the music had changed but the LP’s final track ‘Sweatshop’ shows the spirit of that debut album and is the closest to their oriinal incarnation. A record deal with Columbia Records should have opened up a bigger audience for Easterhouse but the anthemic ‘America’

“Who will protect us from our protectors?”

wouldn’t have done much to impress their new label bosses as well as those who controlled the country’s airwaves! The sleek production, catchy tunes, synthesizers, the danceable bass lines, the subtle politics should all have seen them break through. These were the most commercial songs to be recorded by the band and there is no doubt that it was Andy Perry that carried the songs it was not meant to be and Easterhouse split soon after. ‘Waiting For The Redbird‘ sounded hopeful and inspiring, as it should be being a call to arms to a lethargic populace that needs to stand up and be counted while there is still a chance. Many bands have climbed on board the ‘safe’ leftie bandwagon. Where politics are meant to only appeal to middle class students who will have no real interest in social change rather than to effect a different persona to their tory voting parents. Very few have ever had the bottle to put real authentic left wing politics forward even when, like with Easterhouse, it has cost them dearly.

No more has been heard from them, apart from a small reunion in 2005 with Andy Rourke from The Smiths joining them live, so I suppose their legacy is one great album and a bunch of unmissable EP’s and another album that is quite simply out of this world.

Easterhouse should have been huge but the odds were always stacked against them. They put their ideals first a rare enough thing in life let alone music but their music is still as fresh and as relevant as it was twenty years ago.

Buy The Album

the re-release of Contenders is available direct from Cherry Red Records here with additional tracks.

Download

a download of ‘Waiting For The Redbird’ can be had here. It hasn’t been re-released and is impossible to get hold of so get it free here.

* would appear the link to buy Contenders has gone so anyone know a safe download link please share in comments

* I just came across a Facebook group dedicated to Easterhouse called ‘Easterhouse The Manchester Band. It’s a brilliant site with actual input from members of the band themselves!!!!! Anyway go here and get on board with the rest of us.

BOOK REVIEW: IRISH BLOOD, ENGLISH HEART: SECOND GENERATION IRISH MUSICIANS IN ENGLAND

Irish blood, English heart: second generation Irish musicians in EnglandSeán Campbell(Cork University Press, €39)ISBN 9781859184615

By Donal Fallon

In the recent excellent ‘Why Pamper Life’s Complexities? Essays on the Smiths’, co-edited by Seán Campbell and sociologist Colin Coulter, a recurring theme was the Irish heritage at the heart of the upbringing of members of the band. Those familiar with the politics and ideology of the band’s much-worshipped front man, Morrissey, were undoubtedly not surprised by a letter from the singer which appeared in Hot Press magazine just prior to the recent royal visit to Ireland. ‘The queen also has the power to give back the six counties to the Irish people, allowing Ireland to be a nation once again’, he wrote, in a letter that lambasted the institution of monarchy. He is one of many English-born musicians of Irish lineage to do so. Who could forget the reaction to Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s respective singles on ‘the Irish question’? It is fitting that Seán Campbell’s most recent work, Irish blood, English heart, should take its title from a song of Morrissey’s. When he opened that song with the words ‘Irish blood, English heart, this I’m made of’, he perfectly captured the dual identity of many in Britain. As Campbell notes in his prologue to the work, the book’s title serves to

‘invoke the dilemma faced by second-generation Irish people, many of whom locate themselves as ‘half-and-half’.”

One finds a generation who felt neither British nor Irish, unsurprising in the political and social context of the period under examination, which is 1980s Britain. Johnny Marr of the Smith is quoted as saying, ‘I feel absolutely nothing when I see the Union Jack, except repulsion . . . and I don’t feel Irish either. I’m Mancunian-Irish.’ The work focuses on three musical acts, analysing three very distinct styles, personas and backgrounds: the Smiths of Manchester; Kevin Rowland’s Dexy’s Midnight Runners from the Midlands; and the infamous London-Irish punks, the Pogues. Other high-profile figures of Irish lineage are mentioned, such as John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten. As an examination of British society in the period, the work provides excellent sociological insight into how the children of Irish migrants saw themselves fitting into, or not fitting into, British life. Shane MacGowan of the Pogues was of the belief that the second-generation Irish of late 1970s London had been ‘split down the middle, really heavily’, with one set of youngsters unashamedly Irish in outlook and culture, while others merely wanted to fit in to the native youth culture. Questions are raised around issues of assimilation or lack thereof, and it is clear that an overwhelming sense of ‘in-betweenness’ existed. As Campbell notes, terms and labels like ‘plastic Paddy’ became derisive allusions to the ‘perceived inauthenticity’ of the second-generation Irish. The second generation knew that they were very different from their parents and the native Irish. One of the strong points of Campbell’s work is his multidisciplinary approach and sources, and in a 1987 social geography essay on the Irish in London he finds a quote which perhaps best sums up the mentality of this second generation, alien to both the English and Irish: ‘Of course we know and enjoy Ireland, but London is our home, our city. We can’t recreate a lost Ireland in the middle of 1980s London.’ The book brings political events of the period into context wonderfully, showing the emergence of strong anti-Irish feeling among sections of British society in response to the rise of paramilitary activity in Britain and Northern Ireland. As Philip Chevron of the Pogues would note, ‘the only politics that counted in the London-Irish scene were the politics of being Irish in a place that was innately racist towards the Irish’. Following campaigns from red-top tabloids, and the implementation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the wake of the Birmingham bombing, for a period it appeared that the Irish community as a whole was seen as suspect. As one critic noted of Kevin Rowland’s attempts to ‘reconcile himself with his Irish roots’ on the band’s classic ‘Don’t Stand Me Down’ record, such out-and-out assertions of Irish pride or patriotism were ‘perceived in England as tantamount to wearing a balaclava and carrying a machine gun’.

Campbell has made great use of the archives of many influential music magazines, like Uncut, NME, Hot Press, Q, Melody Maker and other publications to the fore of youth and musical subculture in the UK and Ireland. It is within the pages of a much less mainstream publication, Sinn Féin’s An Phoblacht, that Campbell unearths a gem in the form of that publication’s praise for the Smiths: ‘With names like that who could doubt their antecedents?’ For a band often considered quintessentially British by many musical critics, Johnny Marr’s claim that ‘The IRA wanted to get up and make some speeches before we went on’ during a tour of the North is a surreal insight into how their anti-establishment ethos was viewed by some republicans at home. Migrant experience and feelings of alienation come to the fore in this work, a highly valuable study of the Irish diaspora and the often forgotten ‘second generation’ in England. The book makes a strong and welcome contribution to cultural history and popular musical history, of course, but it triumphs within the field of Irish studies. It is perhaps a quote from Q magazine’s ‘100 Greatest British Albums’ special in 2000 that best captured the unusual nature of the Irish community. Including the Pogues among those featured, Q noted that ‘being white of skin and Western European of culture, Britain’s Irish are the invisible immigrants’. When confronted by Melody Maker in 1985 on his Irish ethnicity, in response to the interviewer’s noting that ‘you were born in England’, Kevin Rowland retorted that ‘just because you were born in a stable doesn’t make you a horse’. Irish blood, English heart is a study of just some of the talented young musicians who emerged out of Britain’s largest migrant community yet lacked a clear sense of identity themselves. This sense of alienation and ‘in-betweenness’ was to prove central to the work, and appeal, of these great musicians.

Donal Fallon is one of the editors of the great blog ‘Come Here To Me’, a blog of Dublin life and culture. Literally tons to read so don’t delay and get your ass over to the site now. I cannot stress that enough, alright… http://comeheretome.com/.