Bloggerhythms

Due to all of the bad news of the last few years the sad events of September 11, 2001 may have receded deep into the minds of many people. But, on this twenty-fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters - and the heroics of the passengers on United 93 - I believe it's time to discuss one of the saddest songs you'll ever hear. Seamus Kelleher was known around the Philadelphia area as an excellent rock guitarist when he was a member of the now disbanded, locally popular, Celtic-rock quintet, Blackthorn. He left the band in 2011 to pursue his own muse and released two solo albums. Both of them were favorably reviewed here . Kelleher is quite eclectic. He's versatile on both acoustic and electric guitars. Not only can he play the hard driving blues-rock of Rory Gallagher, he also covers slide guitarist Elmore James. On his second album, Another Side of Town , he gets mellow and topical with " Streets of London ," a folk song written and ...

I'm not the least bit Irish, but I've been a fan of Celtic-rock for quite a long time now. So, to celebrate St. Patrick's Day today I'm rerunning one of my very early posts. It was originally published here on September 10, 2005. Keith Roberts and Young Dubliners offer a slick, polished, and commercial Irish-rock sound that befits their home base of Los Angeles. Their style is a complete contrast to bands such as Black 47 who flaunt their grittier New York City street image. While Larry Kirwan's band, along with The Saw Doctors, U2, and The Pogues, wear their shamrocks on their sleeves the Dubliners devotion to their roots is a little more subdued. The fact that The Dubliners are more mainstream than any of the bands mentioned above is given away by the arena rock sound of the title track as well as "Touch The Sky," and "Say It's So." There are no politics on this album, no songs ab...

Larry Kirwan in concert The exact date of Bloggerhythms' birth is unknown because some of its very early posts have been revised and republished using more recent dates. Regardless, to commemorate its twentieth anniversary this month here's the story of how this little outpost on the web began. With the cooperation of alternative music radio station  WXPN-FM in Philadelphia this article was first posted here on August 1, 2007 for an on-air event they were sponsoring that summer. It too has been updated. Most people do not get to meet the musicians they love the most. However, on the night of March 1, 2001 I got lucky. I met, shook hands, and interviewed Larry Kirwan, the former leader and co-founder of the since disbanded, Irish-American rock band,  Black 47 , before a concert at Finnegan's Wake in Philadelphia. This all came about in a rather odd way. After discoverin...

For St. Patrick's Day here is a rerun of a post from 2012 about one of the great Celtic-rock albums of all time. ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ ☘️ Until "Death to My Hometown" - the very Irish flavored track from Bruce Springsteen's Wrecking Ball - you could say that he sounded nothing like The Pogues . I'm sure The Boss didn't have that great Celtic-rock band in mind when he wrote and recorded the song but its resemblance in spirit, if not in sound, to Shane McGowan’s famous group is uncanny. The folk-punkers do what Springsteen has always done so well over the years and that's what makes The Pogues third CD, If I Should Fall From Grace With God , (1987) one of the outstanding Celtic-rock sets of all time. This Emerald Isle classic is traditional in a lot of ways. It's full of tin whistles, acoustic guitars, banjos, and accordions. Also, McGowan's long history with drugs and alcohol that resulted in his firing from the band just a couple of years after...

I've never seen the 1991 Irish film, The Commitments , but curiosity got the best of me when I discovered the soundtrack on CD for $2 at a local church fair. After only one listen it became clear that I've missed out on some great music that stands on its own even without seeing the movie. There is nothing remotely Celtic about the enthusiastically performed fourteen songs on this disc that make a strong case that this small, music loving, island nation has a powerful affection for American R&B. The movie is about that love affair and how a bunch of young, working class Dubliners try to hit the big time simply by playing the music they love best. The group's most talented lead singer is clearly Andrew Strong whose career took off after the flick became a hit. He has toured with Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Prince, and Lenny Kravitz and released several best-selling albums. Strong possesses a powerful voice, and here he turns in two Wil...

It's St. Patrick's Day and time for this American of Italian heritage to celebrate his love of Celtic-rock. I don't mean U-2. I'm talking about bands that actually sound like they came from the Emerald Isle. While Bono and his friends embraced their roots lyrically and politically, there are many other bands playing today who sound way more Irish than they do. Among them are The Pogues, The Saw Doctors, The Corrs, and the late great Black 47. Irish musicians love to embrace their roots. In 2007,  The Young Dubliners  - a Los Angeles based rock quintet - recorded an entire album of fired up arrangements of thirteen traditional Irish folk songs and cover versions of more modern fare. Among The Young Dubliners excellent choices for  With All Due Respect, The Irish Sessions  are a hard rocking take on The Pogues' "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" plus a second Shane McGowan composed song, "Pair of Brown Eyes." The folk songs include ...

Petula Clark - now ninety-one years old - was already an established star in the UK when the British Invasion hit America like a tsunami in 1964. "Downtown" - her debut single on this side of the Atlantic Ocean - hit #1 on the Hot 100 in January 1965 making Clark the first female, British singer to reach that lofty position after rock and roll became the dominant pop-music force in the USA. She was only the second British woman to ever accomplish that feat in history. (Singer Vera Lynn was the first one to do it in 1952). Clark's original recording was an exuberant mixture of pop-rock, big band jazz and Broadway that included a muted trumpet solo during the fadeout, something seldom heard in pop music then or now. In 2011, the celebrated Celtic rockers, The Saw Doctors from County Galway, Republic of Ireland, recorded "Downtown" after witnessing the huge reaction it received during one of their concert's encores...

Until researching this post I never realized how many songs exist that never mention their titles anywhere in the lyrics. Both Led Zeppelin ("The Lemon Song," "Black Dog," "Four Sticks," and "Immigrant Song") and Bob Dylan ("Subterranean Homesick Blues," It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry," "From A Buick Six," and "Rainy Day Women #12 and 35") each have more than a handful of songs that fall into this category. Because it's too easy to pick a tune from one of these two legacy artists I ignored them while compiling my picks of five song titles not mentioned in the lyrics. Cream - SWLABR (1967) This track is from the power trio's Disraeli Gears LP and it later became the flipside of Cream's first, big  American hit single, "Sunshine of Your Love." The lead vocal is by bassist Jack Bruce who wrote the music. The obscure lyrics are by poet Peter Brown . The title is an acronym fo...

This review was originally published on Bloggerhythms in 2006. After all of these years it's still one of my favorite Celtic albums of all time so I'm giving it another chance to be loved by all. It's been updated ever so slightly from the original. Commercially, The Corrs became a blockbuster success but to me they were never totally satisfying because they always lacked a clear identity. Did they want to be a mainstream pop band who frequently recorded some wimpy material or did they want to explore their Irish folk roots? The quartet tried to have it both ways, and unfortunately the two genres didn't always mesh well together. That uncertainty often lead to some schizophrenic and uneven albums. With Home , their aptly named CD from 2006 - and their last before a lengthy, decade long hiatus - The Corrs finally appeared to have found a home. The band still sounds very much like they always did but the three sisters and their brother ha...

A couple of posts ago readers were treated to a discussion about Larry Kirwan's recent novel, Rockaway Blue . Now it's time to talk about what he is best known for - making great rock 'n roll.  As he has done twice  for Bloggerhythms  in the past , Kirwan, the former leader of Black 47, participated in a question and answer session by email. This time he discussed his most recent music, and as always, I thank him for his cooperation. We're going to talk about three separate releases.  Teddyboy  (2019) is a five song EP, Heroes/Belfast  (2018) is a four song set, and in 2020 the Irish native son released two versions of a one-off single, "Stronger and Better." Then the interview closes with one final question. TEDDYBOY I knew Teddyboy was a stage musical but I wasn't able to find anything else about it, so Kirwan was kind enough to fill us in with all of the details. This comes directly from the show's press release. " Teddyboy is a musical writt...

When I first listened to Black 47 I was astonished by their unique sound. I loved everything about them even before I discovered they were considered one of the elite Celtic-rock bands in America. Unfortunately, mainstream success always eluded the New York outfit despite working with highly regarded rockers such as The Cars' Ric Ocasek who produced their major label debut CD and live appearances on many of the biggest late night talk shows. They were guests of David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon. After listening to Black 47's fourth major label studio release, Trouble In the Land -   the CD that was on record shelves when I first discovered the sextet in 2000 - I wrote these words to describe their music: "The band played a loud mixture of Celtic folk music, punk rock, and reggae punctuated by Irish revolutionary politics. If you can visualize Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Chieftains, and The Clash all playing on stage together in the same band...

"The Rebel Jesus" is a Christmas song composed by Jackson Browne and performed with The Chieftains, the eclectic, veteran Irish folk band on  The Bells of Dublin,  their 1991 holiday album. Browne wrote the song specifically for his guest appearance on this record. The singer-songwriter, who is deservedly in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, can be a bit preachy when he wants to be, and he is again here, but no one can dispute what the man is saying.  The last two verses are the key to the song. Browne points out that people often feel more generous at Christmas so they'll give to those who were less fortunate than themselves during the holidays. But, if anyone tries to dig deeper and root out the poverty that envelops the downtrodden they are often scorned like Jesus was. This message is coming from a man who is admittedly a "heathen and a pagan," but on this occasion he is "on the side of the rebel Jesus." At the same time Browne doesn't want to sp...

This is an updated review that originally appeared here in May 2005. Black 47, named after the blackest year of the Irish potato famine of 1847, began recording in 1992, but I never had the opportunity to hear them until 2000, and then only because I sampled Trouble In The Land at a listening booth at Borders Books & Music. After that I immediately became a huge fan and even had the opportunity to interview bandleader Larry Kirwan . Black 47 was a cult favorite with a sizeable national audience but you'll almost never hear them on the radio. After searching the web I discovered they had quite a following, especially in their native New York City. The only time I've ever heard them on the radio is when Kirwan plays them on Celtic Crush , his own SiriusXM radio show. The program appears on their eclectic rock station, The Loft . Times change. Borders is gone, Black 47 is too. They broke up after twenty-five years in 2014, and The Loft is on no longer on the satellites...

In 2005 Black 47 released their first studio album after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Irish rockers from New York City gave us  New York Town , this one dedicated to bandleader Larry Kirwan's adopted hometown. The twelve songs Kirwan composed form a loosely connected concept album: every one  is set in the Big Apple. Kirwan has called New York Town his "love letter" to America's largest city. Whether the song concerns romantic relationships, the immigrant experience, people on the dark side of urban life, or the awful events of September 11th that appear to have inspired him, Kirwan composed some wonderfully literate music. As always, he wrote with both humor and sadness and each song makes you feel the emotion he wanted to convey. In a lot of a ways this album is typical Black 47, but the concept and an unusual abundance of star-studded musical guests help set this one apart. Rosanne Cash is great here as she shares lead vocals with Kirwan on "Fiona...

Drummer Thomas Hamlin & Larry Kirwan One of America’s truly influential Celtic-rock bands, Black 47, has called it quits after a long and distinguished career. In September 2013 the band released this statement. "In early November 2014, exactly 25 years after our first gig, Black 47 will disband. There are no fights, differences over musical policy, or general skullduggery, we remain as good friends as when we first played together. We just have a simple wish to finish up at the top our game after 25 years of relentless touring and, as always, on our own terms." As a result they played their last Philadelphia gig at World Café Live last Thursday evening. As the New Yorkers neared the finish line last week they remained a loyal and stable group. The sextet could boast that they still had four original members and a fifth one who had been with them for almost a decade and a half. As always, leader and group spokesman, Larry Kirwan, regaled us with stories that...

This review was originally written for a small, short-lived website I began in 2001. Later the review was offered to and published online by a popular cultural arts webzine, Rambles.net . Then it was posted here in 2005 shortly after this blog began. Only thirty-two people have ever read it so it's time for an encore presentation, this time hopefully to a larger audience. ______________________________________________________________ I’ve never been a fan of singer–songwriters. You know the genre, music created by folkie minstrels who play guitar while singing their own confessional songs. Most recordings and live performances by these artists feature sparse instrumentation with lyrics that are often far more important than the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms that accompany them. I have often wondered why these musicians just don't become poets. Now, I'm not saying that lyrics are unimportant. Great lyrics enhance any musical experience. When the music and the lyrics ...

Larry Kirwan in 1998 The two part Liverpool Fantasy series ends today, the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show . This second installment is an e-mail question and answer session conducted with Larry Kirwan on June 15, 2003. Due to the passage of time a small part of the interview is dated but please don't let that stop you from taking in the many interesting things the author has to say about his novel. If you haven't already done so please read part one here so the interview will be more meaningful to you. -------------------------------------------- CR: What year was the play written? LK: I can't remember the exact date I began the play, but it was first produced down on the Lower East Side of NYC in Summer 1986. CR: What was the inspiration behind the original play? LK: Reading that "John Lennon would have been a success in whatever field he entered." At first, I thought that this was true but began to doubt...

The following book review of Liverpool Fantasy  - a novel based on the very early career of The Beatles and an email interview with its author, Larry Kirwan - were originally published on Bloggerhythms on May 5, 2005 in the first two weeks of this blog's existence. As a result only twenty-six people read the article in nine years. So, in tribute to the upcoming 50th anniversary of The Beatles' American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show it's time to re-post both parts of the original piece because a lot more eyeballs are perusing this little website today then when it first appeared online all those years ago. However, this time the interview will be split off into a separate entry on the actual anniversary (next Sunday), so stay tuned and don't touch that dial. --------------------------------------------- In addition to leading Black 47, New York City's infamous Irish-rock band for the last fifteen years, author Larry Kirwan is also a playwright, and now he ha...