LONDON CELTIC PUNKS PRESENTS THE BEST OF 2020!

Well here we go again. It seems an awful long time since we were compiling all the votes into 2019’s Best Of. Last year saw The Walker Roaders triumph but with this year being a lot quieter on the Celtic-Punk front thanks to the lockdowns around the world bands have found themselves unable to tour and promote new releases so have held onto them till things got better. Still that’s not to say it was a complete wash out and as you can see from below their have been some absolute knock-outs during the year.

Remember this is only our opinion so feel free to comment, slag off or dissect our lists. The Readers Poll is back again this year so you can even vote on your favourite release of 2020 yourself. We don’t pretend to be the final word as that my friends is for you…

(for more information click on the release title in green)

Was very close between the top three this year but Ogras seem to have been not only our favourites but also most of the Celtic-Punk medias too. A lot less albums may have come out during the year but still plenty more that didn’t make the cut. Don’t be down hearted if you are one of them it could just be that one of the judges hadn’t heard that album. Again if we don’t hear your album we can’t review it so the massive majority here are ones that were sent in to us. We only need a download link (NO Spotify!) and we’re happy. Out of the 30 albums 18 countries were represented including 2 from the Celtic nations Scotland #4 and Brittany #13 and our first from Hawaii!

1. OGRAS – No Love In The City

2. UNCLE BARD AND THE DIRTY BASTARDS – The Men Behind The Glass

3. FINNEGANS HELL – Work Is The Curse Of The Drinking Class

4. THECUNDEEZ – Teckle And Hide

5. KRAKIN’ KELLYS – Burn Your Flag

6. THE GO-SET – Of Bright Futures And Broken Pasts

7. BLACK WATER COUNTY – Comedies And Tragedies

8. McSCALLYWAG – Songs For The Wicked

9. BATALLON DE SAN PATRICIO- Hermanos De Guerra

10. THE O’REILLYS AND THE PADDYHATS – Off The Leash

11. THE REAL McKENZIES – Beer And Loathing

12. THE MUCKERS – Irish Goodbye

13. CELT & PIPER – No Mercy

14. THE FEELGOOD MacLOUDS – Life On A Ferris Wheel

15. FEROCIOUS DOG – You

16. THE KONA ROGUES – Batten Down The Hatches

17. PADDY WAGGIN- Race To The Bottom

18. BLACK ANEMONE – Chasing The Sun

19. PADDY MURPHY – Rams Rebels Goats And Girls

20. THE STUBBY SHILLEAGHS – Glass To Mouth

21. CELKILT – The Next One Down

22. THE DEAD MAGGIES – More Than Just Ghosts

23. KELTIKON – The Black Boar

24. THE CELTIC SOCIAL CLUB – From Babylon To Avalon

25. BARBAR O’RHUM – Journal de B’O’R

26. JAMESTOWN BROTHERS – Rebels, Rogues And Regrets

27. SMZB – Once Upon A Time In The East

28. THE NEW RUFFIANS – Shenanigans

29. GRASS MUD HORSE – Beijing Bikini

30. NEVER SAY DIE – Punk Rock Pirates

Several bands have taken the chance during the lockdown to release compilations of sorts. While it would be a little unfair to include them in the main ‘Best Of’ section they still deserve a mention. Among these were two 30 year celebrations from two of Celtic-Punks most successful and popular bands in THE MAHONES – This Is All We Got To Show For It and FIDDLER’S GREEN – 3 Cheers For 30 Years. Both fully deserve a round of applause, a raise of the pint and a tip o’ the hat! Band compilations included ANTO MORRA – Twenty, THE DEAD RABBITS – The Dead Rabbits, LEXINGTON FIELD – Here’s To You Ten Years Of Fiddle Rock and LQR – Barrel-Aged. A couple of live albums THE STANFIELDS – Welcome To The Ball and ShamROCKS – FCP Live were both well received, you may have heard that a little known band THE POGUES put out a new album of previously unreleased material BBC Sessions 1984-86 and Quintessential Quarantunes was a 6-band compilation released in the Summer featuring the Bible Code Sundays and The Reels. MacSlons Irish Pub Radio also released volume 5 of Raise Your Pints the best Celtic-Punk sampler around of 19 of the Celtic-Punk scenes best bands.

You have to go back to the beginning of January for 1916’s release and though many more would challenge it stayed top of the pile all year long. Some great debut releases here from bands that will I am sure go on to bigger things. This time last year I was crowing about Shanghai Treason and how much I was looking forward to seeing them play… well I still am!

1. 1916 – Meant To Be

2. SHANGHAI TREASON – It’s Treason

3. BEAVER SECRET HANDSHAKE – Beaver Secret Handshake

4. KILMAINE SAINTS – Off The Wagon Acoustic Sessions

5. LEXINGTON FIELD – Win The Day

6. 7 STOUT CLAN – 7 Stout Clan

7. THE CLOVES AND THE TOBACCO – Jalan Pulang

8. LUCKY LAD GREEN – Get There Somehow

9. BRAVE THE SEA – The Murders Three

10. THE PLACKS – My Dearest Friend

BATALLON DE SAN PATRICIO- Hermanos De Guerra

This year’s winner of Best Debut Album comes from a continent where Celtic-Punk appears to be booming! The South American scene has been dominated in the past by bands from Brazil and Argentina (last years winners in this category were Aires Bastardos from Argentina) but with Batallón de San Patricio from Guadalajara in Mexico things are changing with several bands popping up over the last couple of years. The last twelve months have seen Batallón de San Patricio garner favourable reviews from various singles and live streams. Hermanos De Guerra/ Brothers Of War is delivered entirely in Spanish and spans the length of Celtic-Punk from trad Irish up to Celtic-PUNK making it fully deserving of the award.

Always the hardest list to compile as it covers so much ground. Some of these bands play Trad Folk with a Punk Rock heart like Clover’s Revenge while others didn’t quite fit as Celtic-Punk releases but the winners are the Rose family from NY state otherwise known as The Wild Irish Roses. An album that took us by surprise and managed to please everyone.

1. THE WILD IRISH ROSES – Full Bloom

2. CLOVERS REVENGE – Truants And Absolution

3. 6’10 – Carried In Retrospect

4. RUNA – The Tide Of Winter

5. MAGGIES FLOCK – Party At The Cemetery

6. PYROLYSIS – Alotsie

7. PATRICKS – Rocky Road To Ireland

8. HUGH MORRISON – The Other Side

9. TC COSTELLO – The Bluebird

10. PEAT & DIESEL – Light My Byre

Now this section is tinged with sadness. There is no question which site has the biggest impact on the Celtic-Punk scene over the last year and while not strictly a web-site the CELTIC PUNK, FOLK AND ROCK FANS group on Facebook fully deserved this years award. Sadness because the group founder Mike Kilroe very sadly passed away at the beginning of the month. Created back in February 2019 it was around the time of last years ill fated St. Patrick’s day and the subsequent Dropkick Murphys live stream show that membership of the group exploded and has now passed over 8000 members. If on Facebook they should be your first port of call, alongside us of course! We had a great interview with the founder of the group Mike back in May that you can find here and of course our thoughts go out to his family and friends.

We are not alone in doing these Best Of 2020 lists in fact all the major players in Celtic-Punk do them so click below to check out what they thought.

THE CELTIC PUNKCAST  *  FOLK’N’ROCK  *  PADDYROCK

So there you go. Remember we have never pretended to be the final word on things in fact have a look at the other Celtic-Punk media’s Best Of’s and I’m sure they are all pretty different. Our Best Of’s, as usual, cajoled and bullied out of the admins from the London Celtic Punks Facebook page and then tallied up over a few pints in Mannions in north London. One important thing to note is that not all of us heard the same albums so like all the various Best Of’s ours is also subjective.

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Nine years we’ve been doing these lists now. It seems incredible looking back at some of the previous winners and also-rans how so many bands are still with us from Year 1. If you would like to check for yourself then just click on the link below the relevant year.

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Alongside the Best Of polls we also run a special Readers Poll where you get to pick your favourite release of the year. This will be The Readers Poll’s third year with Krakin’ Kellys and Mickey Rickshaw previously champions! There is only room to list the Top Ten albums but there is an option to write in your favourite release of 2020. You are allowed to vote for up to two releases but not for the same artist.

The Poll will close at midnight on Sunday 31st January with the result announced soon after.

 Sláinte, The London Celtic Punks Crew- January, 2021

RAISE YOUR PINTS! THE IRISH FOLK AND CELTIC-PUNK WEEKENDER

As we have said before no country this side of the ‘pond’ has taken Celtic-Punk to it’s bosom like Germany has. The thriving Celtic-Punk community there continues to just get bigger and bigger and they now have the music festival they deserve with the inaugural Raise Your Pints Fest in March. Three days of Celtic-Punk and Trad Irish Folk bringing a wee bit of Ireland to the German capital. So if you are looking for somewhere special to go to celebrate St. Pat then read on! 

As the amount of dedicated Celtic-Punk sites on the Web has shrunk the explosion of Celtic-Punk radio and podcasts has been phenomenal! At the forefront of that explosion has been MacSlon’s Irish Pub Radio. Started back in 2009 the idea behind the project was to present fans with ‘a beautiful bouquet of colorful melodies’, somewhere they would be able to discover one or two previously unknown bands. For beginners in the Celtic-Folk-Punk scene it is always a great place to start where the giants of the constantly growing scene rub shoulders with those lesser known bands or ones just starting out.

They have also become popular for their sampler compilation CD’s. Producing the first edition in 2016 and following every year with one that exceeds the previous in quality. They are now taking pre-orders for Volume Five that will hit the streets on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17th in case you didn’t know!) and we’ve seen the line up for it and it’s easily the best one yet!

You can already pre-order the sampler in our online shop: www.macslons-shop.com

So with that all under their belts as well as a burgeoning Merchandise distribution service selling official merch for the likes of The Cloves And The Tobacco, Mickey Rickshaw, 6’10, The Rumjacks and many many more, some only exclusive to MacSlons. They also have a wide range of official MacSlons merch for you to spend your hard earned on too. The full catalogue is on the site and worth a look but make sure you pay your rent first! Now the next step is to take a bunch of the bands found on Raise Your Pints Volume Five and turn it into a music festival.

The festival will happen on St. Patrick’s weekend from Friday 13th through to Sunday 15th March and features an extensive line up of bands each day with artists coming from as far afield as Serbia, Ireland and Scandinavia as well as a superb line up of home grown German artists too. The festival takes place just outside Berlin so is easily accessible from anywhere in Europe and even further afield. The venue is E-Werk Zossen (in English the Zossen Power Station!) situated at Am Nottehafen 4, 15806 Zossen, Germany and the nearest airport is Berlin-Tegel. Zossen is in a beautiful region of Germany just south of Berlin and their is plenty of accommodation available in the town. When looking be sure to look for ‘Zossen’. For example the Weißer Swan hotel is only a very short walk from the venue and still has rooms left (here).

Their is a Facebook event where extra information is available here.

Friday 13th March 2020

KILKENNY BASTARDS

(www.facebook.com/KilkennyBastards)

PADDYS PUNK

(www.facebook.com/Paddyspunk)

THE PORTERS

(www.facebook.com/ThePortersfolkpunk)

FINNEGANS HELL

(www.facebook.com/finneganshell)

JAMES GALLAGHER

(www.facebook.com/TheAtlanticPirates)

Saturday 14th, March 2020

COBBLESTONES

(www.facebook.com/cobblestonesfolk)

MUIRSHEEN DURKIN AND FRIENDS

(www.facebook.com/MuirsheenDurkinAndFriends)

IRISH STEW OF SINDIDUN

(www.facebook.com/irishstewofsindidun)

SIR REG

(www.facebook.com/sirregband)

GARY O’CONNOR AND FRIENDS

(www.facebook.com/Gary-O-Connor-MUSIC-403134693099052)

For the final day of the festival what you will need in you is a good hearty Irish breakfast to line the stomach (simply book when you arrive at the fest) as the idea is to bring down the curtain with a proper auld fashioned knees up with a closing trad Irish music session made up of the musicians playing on Saturday. Having seen the likes of Sir Reg play a trad set before I can tell you are in for a real treat. A great way to end things on a high and a brilliant way to connect fans and musicians. Often seen in Irish pubs musicians sit down and make music together with the audience also invited to participate.

#OneBigCelticPunkFamily

There will be many interesting things happening at the festival with plenty of surprises expected! Their will be also be a tattooists on site from Black Pearl Island studios (www.facebook.com/BlackPearlIslandDelitzsch) with all proceeds going to local charities.

Tickets are available by clicking on the following link:

MacSlons Raise Your Pints Festival Tickets 2020

Tickets for the festival are superb value at under 40 Euros and also included will be a free copy of the new Raise Your Pints CD. You can also get a deal including a special limited edition festival t-shirt.

MacSlons Irish Pub Radio  WebSite  Shop  Facebook  YouTube  Twitter

RadioStream

ALBUM REVIEW: RAISE YOUR PINTS Vol.3- VARIOUS ARTISTS

Raise Your Pints Volume 3 is a compilation of Celtic-Folk-Punk from MacSlon’s Irish Pub Radio; a Celtic-Folk-Punk internet radio station out of Magdeburg, Germany. It started life as part of wider mainstream internet radio station, but when that organisation closed back in 2009 these guys decided, thankfully, to go it alone with a full station dedicated to the glory of folk punk; they have never looked back!

So what do you get for your €9 (plus P&P)? Well, a hell of a lot as it turns out; some of the finest party oriented folk punk I have ever seen assembled in one place. It is a testament to the global love and reach of Celtic-influenced folk punk that of the twenty tracks on the disc, ten countries are represented. Six of the tracks come from German bands, which is understandable given the source, but we’ve got 14 additional jaw-dropping tracks from Spain, France, Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland, Great Britain, Italy, USA and, of course, Ireland. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this eclectic mix of nationalities might water down the authenticity of the music- this is all top quality straight up loud, sweaty, folk punk perfectly designed with only one purpose in mind- an  accompaniment to a night of dancing and drinking to the small hours. To put it another way, it is slap bang in the middle of my sweet spot and I loved every single minute of this epic collection.

I was already familiar with a handful of the beauties on this album; Ferocious Dog and Black Water County from the UK, Orthodox Celts from Serbia and Airs & Graces from Germany. Without exception the other bands on the album were completely new to me and in that respect it serves as what used to be called a “Sampler” album back in the days of yore. A collection of tunes allowing the listener to cheaply explore the best that a bunch of bands have to offer, without risking a load of cash on albums you might not like. Yes, I am aware the switched on media-savvy youth of today today just use YouTube for this, and so do I, but the point here is that this collection has been curated with love and a deft touch. Let this album take you on a journey across someone else’s music taste; it is a joyous trip!

Reviewing a compilation album is difficult. Running through each track and trying to describe it would soon become boring reading so I’m going to explore some of the tracks that were the standout songs to my ear- the tracks you have to go back to after the first complete run through because you can’t wait to hear them again.

First up is actually the first track on the album; ‘The Fury’ by Brick Top Blaggers. Opening with a slow and mournful waltz led by the fiddle, with acoustic guitar backing and a keening vocal, it lulled me into a false sense that the album would probably be featuring an appearance of ‘Danny Boy’ somewhere along the line and perhaps another version of ‘Fields of Athenry’. All classic songs of course, but not the Celtic party anthems I felt I was promised by the cover of the album, which features a caricatured drunken bawdy mess taking place inside a stereotypical Irish pub! The song soon put that to rights. After a verse of soulful fiddling the band clearly got fed up with it, cranked up the amps, plugged in the electric guitar and set the overdrive to eleven before kicking in with the drums for a fast melodic romp. The kind of track that makes you prick up your ears while having a quiet drink with your mates and paves the way to getting home at 2am when you only went out for a swift one. The biggest surprise of the track came when I checked out the nationalities of the bands to begin writing this review; these guys are from the USA, California in fact. The Beach Boys they ain’t!

I can’t review highlights without special mentions for Black Water County who lent their track ‘Way Down Low’ to the party, and Ferocious Dog who showcase ‘Crime and Punishment’ from their second album, From Without (not the Red album as documented in the CD inlay), Normally these would have been instant standout tracks for me, but I am very familiar with these bands and their music so it was more like welcoming old friends into the pub than finding new stunners. This is particularly relevant as, at time of writing this, McSlon’s Irish Pub Radio listeners have just voted Ferocious Dog’s Red album the #1 ‘Best Celtic Rock, Celtic Punk & Trad. Irish Folk Album’ of 2018. Congratulations to Ken and the lads!

Next in Marv’s Top Picks is ‘Yvonne John’ by The Logues. It reminded me a little of The Waterboys ‘A Bang on the Ear’ in places due to its production simplicity, though it is faster and drives along at a blistering pace led by some manic mando or banjo picking, occasional tin whistle and solid drumming. But its real beauty is in its soaring chorus, professing undying love to the itinerant Yvonne John three weeks after a catastrophic split. The song is so heartfelt I should think it might be a love-letter to real person. If so, Yvonne, wherever you are, you really need to listen to this! This was actually my favourite on the album, though all the tracks are so good it was a close call. I was interested when I found The Logues are the only representatives from Ireland on the album and wondered whether that subconsciously affected my instant affection for the song. But in the end I concluded this was not the case, it’s just the best bloody song in my opinion.

‘Folkpunk-Song’ by Paddy’s Funeral, from Germany, actually started out as my least favourite track on the album. It is a perfect “meta” song, deconstructing the notional formula used to construct folk punk songs, within the medium of a folk-punk song, doing all the things the lyric is instructing as they are sung. Very clever.

“At first we hear a mandolin,

It’s playing fast 16ths.

There it is the singer’s voice,

Dirty dark and mean.

The bass is playing one and five.

The bass drum quarter notes.

The key, surprise! G Major!.

This is how it goes…”

They even roll in a few bars from ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma’ half way through just to underline their credentials. I jumped to the conclusion they were smugly poking fun at my very favourite form of music in the guise of a comedy track (how dare they!). I don’t think it is actually the case now, after checking out some of their other material on YouTube, but even if it is they nail it so well it’s actually impossible not to love the song. It is so joyful I forgot they might be taking the piss! They might be doing it in an arch and knowing way, but they get it spot on, so I’ll forgive them this once.

When I asked MacSlon’s how the ‘Raise Your Pints’ series of compilations came about they told me that in 2015, after a few years of going it alone with their folk punk radio station, they produced an album called ‘Let the Kelts unite Europe’ to support the “Keltic Festival” in Germany and decided to do it again the following year. ‘So Raise Your Pints Vol. 1’ was released in 2016 and they hit upon the brilliant idea to do a new volume every year to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Volume 3 was released in 2018, though it is still available from the shop on their website. I simply cannot urge you strongly enough to check out this compilation series. What I have heard is fantastic and I cannot wait to see what we get in Vol. 4 on 17th March 2019. They are even going to be putting on a ‘Raise Your Pints’ festival in Germany in 2020 and I, for one, plan to be there.

Buy Raise Your Pints-  Here

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