St Patrick's day in Poland

In my opinion. Thin Lizzy was the best Irish rock and roll band, not U2

Never so keen on Gary Moore. He was very talented of course but Rory was unique.


Oh agreed, absolutely no comparison.

This may interest you. Totally obscure. This was another local band from the suburbs of north Dublin around the time of U2. Again, I was too young to go and see them live but I remember one evening as I walked past the guitaritst's house, hearing him practising the guitar solo from Emerald :) At some point they played support for Thin Lizzy. They had great potential. Average age in the band was about twenty, when they recorded this, it's just a demo and played live in one take, so not great quality, but way ahead of U2; compare the guitar solo at 1:40 to Edge of the same vintage ;)

@Atch

Honestly, I think your Stryder post was a bit rough.And I will say the same about much of Rory Gallagher's music, when he got it right, he was spot on, but he was very often "Rough and Ready", no, the greatest Irish Rock heroes for me were Phil Lynott and Gary Moore.Forget U2.......

How can you resist Irish Rock as good as this.....



Or as good as this....

Enough of this raucous and discordant "rock" music.... Time for some culture.

Mary O'Hara is a key figure in the revival/preservation of Irish folk music (Jean Ritchie played a similar role with American folk at roughly the same time) and influenced countless who came after her. Her pure crystaline soprano and restrained harp playing helped reinforce the idea that Irish has a place in the modern world.

Here is a nice song in Irish "Is Ar Eirinn Ni N-Eosphainn Ce Hi" (for Ireland I won't tell her name).



Here's a song in English about the pain of emigration. Romanticized in the New World as immigration for the one leaving it was a painful wrenching from everything they knew and loved.... the poem is by Thomas Moore, my favorite verse is about imagining himself visiting his friends...

My soul, happy friends, shall be with you that night -
Shall join in your revels, your sports and your wiles,
And return to me beaming all o'er with your smiles;
Too blest if it tells me, that 'mid the gay cheer,
Some kind voice had murmur'd "I wish he were here"!



No need to thank me, I'm just trying to raise the tone a bit.

Oh, I agree, but they were just a bunch of local kids really and they were certainly no worse than U2.

As for Rory - no, you're wrong. Rory was exceptionally gifted.


I grew up listening to her literally every day and can thus sing her repertoire verbatim - my sister's harp teacher Máirín Ní Shéaghdha had been Mary O' Hara's teacher and Mary's repertoire of early Irish songs was acquired from that wonderful lady. Mary O' Hara learned her phrasing and arrangements for both harp and singing from her though she never acknowledges that and claims the arrangements as her own.

O'Hara's voice was beautiful, though her style was unfortunately tainted with 'the drawing room' due to the intervention of Sister Angela, an ancient nun who taught singing at Sion Hill Dominican Convent where Mary (and indeed my own sister) was a pupil. Máirín Ní Shéaghdha, (Mrs Ferriter,after her marriage) absolutely deplored Sr Angela's influence on the singing but anyway ............ when I met Sr Angela she would have been about ninety and she was still teaching in the school. Usually nuns loved me, but she was one of the few who didn't! Fortunately I never had to learn singing from her.

My mother and Mrs Ferriter had many a long conversation - with me sitting in the corner - about Mary O'Hara's singing and the agreement was that her phrasing was superlative. It was her breath control that set her apart but her tone was considered a bit shrill. Farewell but Whenever is a good choice to show the breath control. Beautiful phrasing.

Incidentally my mother who was a singer won the Thomas Moore Cup at the Feis Ceoil. It was awarded for the best interpretation of Thomas Moore songs. I don't know which ones she sang but there's a photo of her with the cup and a rose :) The winner was always given a rose to represent The Last Rose of Summer. I remember her singing that and Silent O'Moyle, which Mary O'Hara also recorded.

My sister sang all of Mary's songs and followed in her footsteps winning every competition for harp and voice under 18s by the time she was fifteen. She gave it up when she was sixteen but returned to senior competition for a year or two later on. Won everything again and stopped again! She still plays though.

Incidentally "Is Ar Eirinn Ni N-Eosphainn Ce Hi" is what Mrs Ferriter would call one of 'the big songs'. This is a song that she would only allow pupils to attempt when they reached a certain level of accomplishment in both voice and harp, which most of them never did. Another one is 'Jimmy Mo Mhíle Stór'.

You might like this.

Very interesting to hear about your connection with traditional Irish music!

The first song in Irish that I heard was Seothin Seo (on an album by some kind of folk group but I forget the name and it's not on youtube....) none of the versions on youtube seem to be quite the same melody either....

Now I'm wondering if Mary O'Hara and Jean Ritchie ever met.... in the early 1950s Ritchie spent time in Ireland collecting songs... O'Hara would have been 17 at the time but later I might expect that they would meet on the folk music circuit... or maybe not....

"Ritchie and her husband, George Pickow, spent 18 months tape recording, interviewing and photographing singers, including Elizabeth Cronin, Tommy and Sarah Makem, Leo Rowsome, and Seamus Ennis in Ireland"

Ritchie's is my favorite version of Barbara Allen (Barbry Ellen in her tellen) I also like it because it fleshes out the story more, why Barbry was cruel to the dying William (a perceived slight at a dance), touches on her growing remorse 'she heard those death bells a' knelling, and every stroke the dead bell give: "hard hearted Barbry Ellen" before her death and the image of the rose and greenbriar growing out of their graves..



Here she is playing the dulcimer (with a feather) singing a traditional Apalachian song (Shady Grove) that doesn't seem to have any old world antecedent.

The harp circle was kind of separate and a bit rarefied in those days. Many of those involved were academics or also classical musicians. To give you an example, a couple of the key figures in it were Grainne Yeats, who was married to W.B.Yeat's son Michael. She was a graduate of Trinity College, had studied concert harp first and then discovered the Irish harp. She was a regular adjudicator in harp and singing competitions. Then there was Sheila Larchet, whose father had been musical director of the Abbey Theatre during its formative years. Mrs Ferriter was wonderful because she was completely 'unstuffy' if you know what I mean.

Here is a really rare thing that you wouldn't find if you didn't know you should be looking for it :) It's another one of Mrs Ferriter's young pupils. She's about twelve years old when this was filmed. The song is a Catholic mother's plea to her son to return to the Church, he having deserted it to become a Protestant minister.



And here's something else for your scrapbook, a pic of, left to right, Mrs Ferriter, her sister Roisin and in the forefront a young Mary O'Hara. I believe this was taken in America but I can check with my sister.

Sorry Maf, forgot to say Jean Ritchie is new to me - how lovely! She has a natural vibrato in her voice. You can hear the Irishness in the melodies :)

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I can hear classical training with O'Hara (I think that's a good thing though it might not be an authentic folk style).

How can I be wrong when it is just my opinion?
He was exceptionally gifted, but he did release some crap in the early days.
Anyway, I searched YouTube and, not surprisingly, none of his crap numbers came up.But I found some good ones.



This was very good too.....



My last post I stole from Joker, who posted this on another forum we both post on.
This is Rory Gallagher at his best!

Agreed 100%.


Why? Just because it's not to your taste?And I think your "Musical" posts were terrible.....

Atch's posts were slightly better than yours, but still pretty yawn inducing.....

No, Irish Rock, Blues and traditional dance music is where it works.

I am appalled by your love of that raucous and unmelodic 'rock' mu... I can't even call it music, I'm so apalled!

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Likewise.

I was with some people for work last year, all of them boomers, 62 to 67 and they used to talk constantly about rock 'music', describing pop groups like Def Leopard as 'iconic ' and various loud and unmusical 'songs' as 'seminal'. They just sounded like maladjusted 15 year olds in the suburbs.

Give me the Great American Song Book, anything written by Bacharach, some Matt Monro or a nice bit of Gracie Fields (massively underrated and almost forgotten these days) any time over dissonant 'thrash metal' or 'prog rock' (though Nights in White Satin was a sweet song).

I do like some stuff in the... "rock" sphere but I tend more toward (American) punk (Dead Kennedys, X, Husker Du, Social Distortion) or really gimmicky (T. Rex..) or kind of smart (The The, The Smiths, Jesus and Mary Chain? would they be considered.... "rock"?)

But I've always been allergic to arena acts like Deep Purple or Def Leopard or Lynyrd Skinner...

Ditto on GASB and of course the Gershwins and Cole Porter, I'm relatively obsessed with the song Anything Goes, as good and smart as any song of the 20th century and the more you look it the smarter it is....

Probably "Indie". I liked their 'big' album, the one with How Soon is Now on. The Stone Rises were fun too in their day. Also from Manc, albeit middle class kids unlike The Smiths or Oasis.


Well written. I remember it best as the opening music from a particular film.

The song at the top of my Spotify list for last year was The Look of Love. This year (or this and last month anyway) it would probably be Stranger in Paradise. That or Sally (pride of our alley).

I also quite like Sufjan Stevens (or some of
his stuff anyway). If you've a moment to spare today and don't know him already, I strongly recommend Vladimir Korneev; I think you'll like his singing.

When I get back from the canteen I'll play Anything Goes.

Dusty? All time fave....

I've been listening to Joni Mitchell a fair amount

Hers certainly isn't the worst by a long way. It's quite a hard song to get right; many singers are more staccato than flowing on the first line. Dusty's is better than Petula Clark's who does try to get it right but always enunciates very clearly. That normally works well however that song is tricky.


Not a singer I know much about. Another one to listen to today.

I've just listened to it several times. The Ella Fitzgerald version as well as Cole Porter.. There's a lot more to that song than I knew. Highly intelligent musically and the lyrics are superb.

Here's a fun one. She fell out of fashion due to spending WW2 in Italy however she deserves a revival today. Funny and talented.

I'm sure there's an audience for a Gracie Fields tribute act/show of some kind. They were great songs. Do you like Vera Lynn? Beautiful songs that are still uplifting and have an important message today.

My grandad used to sing that to annoy my sister when she first started learning the harp :) he was a right old tease. He sang a lot of the old musical hall songs too, I remember him singingOh, Oh, Antonio(Florrie Forde) andA Bicycle Made for Two and of course My Old Man said Follow the Van, and Any Old Iron.

A while ago I discovered an album of the records which Ernest Shackleton took with his ill-fated Antarctic expedition. Of course it included some of the popular comical songs of the time. I really like this one!

HaHaHaHa!!

I feel nothing but pity for you because you can't appreciate good Rock Music.As for Punk Rock, you are obviously a tasteless pleb!

@jon357

I don't know why, maybe because of your "Earthy" Northern Roots, I expected you to have a wider taste in music.

Mongrel, why are you so unstable?? You disparaged excellent Polish punk music before. Go back to your London sewers and discuss music with your friends rats, not decent forum members like maf.

Don't. Maf is right. Not every random cacophony is music.

Music by my definition is what I can catch and repeat. What I would like to hear again when the first presentation is over. What cannot tolerate random distortions. What requires talent.

What does not require jumping, smoke, and idiotic costumes... Like this piece:



The very definition of perfection. Also Enya.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

You be you and I'll be me and

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You can't put the words excellent and Punk Music in the same sentence!

You are another musically deaf plebian!

I quite liked Rich's post but was surprised that an atheist would make such a Catholic post......as for Enya, I couldn't agree more....

I like perfection. Even my wife often calls me a perfect azhole.

Hey Rich, your humour is improving, I like it, keep at it!

We don't all have whippets and flat caps. And I do have a wide taste in music. I always go to the Early Music Festival at the Akademia Muzyczna in Warsaw, yet like modern composers like Steve Reich too, go to watch opera & ballet from Monteverdi and Rameau at one extreme to Alban Berg at the other. I listen to folk music too, provided it's not too "worthy".

As for popular music, I listened to an album by Rex Orange County today, as modern as it gets.

Rock music? Most of it is just noise by (sometimes aged) teenagers. Even the stuff with a melody never has an original melody.


Most of that is just noise too.

HaHaHa!!! I wasn't thinking that at all Jon, but you do seem to have quite sophisticated tastes in music, I was just surprised that your tastes were not more "mainstream".

Yes, we have always known it. No need to brag so much. :):):)

Moron!