One Year's Advance Warning

This week, I got an e-mail from my great and good friend J-Co regarding the band Black 47, a band that has entertained the New York community, the Irish Diaspora community, and lovers of raucous music for many years. I have had the pleasure of meeting frontman Larry Kirwan on a couple of occasions. The wonderful Mary Courtney, the Star of the County Bronx, sang on the song Livin' in America. Anyway, J-Co's e-mail contained the following urgent message from the band:


In early November 2014, exactly 25 years after our first gig, Black 47 will disband. There are no internal disagreements, "differences over musical policy," or general skulduggery, 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. The last gig we played at the South Buffalo Irish Festival was as good as any we've ever performed. Our goal now is to play another full year plus and dedicate all of those gigs to you who've supported us through thick and thin. Rather than just running out the clock we will be recording "Last Call," an album of new songs in November. We would like to say goodbye to you all personally and will make every effort to come play in your city, town, college, pub, club, performing arts center, and should you wish to alert your local promoter you can download booking particulars here.

Black 47 has always been more than a band, we've spoken out for the nationalist population in the North of Ireland, against the war but for the troops in Iraq, for our gay brothers & sisters, immigrants - legal and undocumented - as well as for the voiceless of 1845-47; but in the end it all comes down to the music, the songs, and the desire to give audiences the time of their lives and send them home smiling and, perhaps, with a question on their lips. We look forward to seeing you all at the upcoming gigs. Thanks for the support and the memories - let's make many more over the next year. Take care of yourselves. Beir bua!


Wow, reading this e-mail set me on the five stages of grief. Black 47, besides being local heroes, has unfailingly promoted progressive values. As the e-mail puts it, "we've spoken out for the nationalist population in the North of Ireland, against the war but for the troops in Iraq, for our gay brothers & sisters, immigrants - legal and undocumented - as well as for the voiceless of 1845-47". The best way to convey the message of the band is to embed some links to illustrate these categories.

First, we have Fantic Heart, an explicitly anti-torture song detailing the plight of a man radicalized by The Troubles, an individual haunted by the death of his lover, and his subsequent torture at the hands of the authorities:





Downtown Baghdad Blues, drawn from an entire album about the Iraq War was their best-known anti-war but pro-soldier song:





The band's take on Danny Boy was a pro-gay rights anthem:





Livin' in America is about immigrants trying to cope with dead-end jobs with no safety net= "no sick days or benefits, and for Christ's sake don't get hurt. The quacks over here won't patch you up 'til they see the bucks up front!" Mary Courtney runs away with the song with her blistering delivery of the brilliant line, "Is this what I was educated for, to wipe the arse of every baby in America?"





Finally, the band gives voice to the victims of the Great Hunger by virtue of their name. Larry has asserted that the band's attitude towards the Famine is identical to the Jewish attitude toward the Holocaust "Never Again!" While I haven't been able to find a video for the haunting song Black 47 (it's kind of hard to narrow down a web search when band and song share a name), the incongruously jaunty San Patricio pays tribute to Irish immigrants who fled the Great Famine and were pressed into service in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, only to desert and join the Mexican Army when they realized that they had more in common with the Mexican peasants than with the largely WASP invasion force:





So, you have a full year to see the band play before they disband. If you get the chance to attend one of their concerts, jump on it! While the band has always been passionate about politics, they're a hell of a party band as well. Beir bua, indeed!

A Question for Racist Tucker

Tucker Carlson, the Fox pundit most beloved by white supremacists, went on a classic racist rant about immigrants making our country dirtier: "We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided."

If immigrants are making our country dirtier, why are they the people doing all of the cleaning jobs? In the 19th century, the Irish immigrant domestic worker was common in the Northeast, when young women island due to famine, poverty, the difficulty of obtaining the dowries necessary for marriages. Now, Latin American and Eastern European domestic workers are common, and many commercial cleaning contractors are staffed in the main by immigrants from El Mundo Latino. Work late, and Roberto and Maria, Cesar and Lourdes will be coming into the office to empty the garbage receptacles and vacuum the carpets. Throughout the history of the country, African-American domestic workers have worked in the homes of the well to do, and the trope of the Southern patriarch who hates the majority of black people while loving the black nanny (one of the 'good ones') is a hoary one.

On a somewhat related note, Paul Ryan wants to provide more work visas for Irish people. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of Irish immigrants, many of them working in the construction or hospitality industry. I have to note that these Irish immigrants tend to be a lot more liberal than the average American- Ireland voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion and same-sex marriage. The modern Irish immigrant isn't trapped in a 'toora loora loora' timewarp, he or she probably aligns more with former bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than with Paul Ryan.

I figure I should post a video here, and can think of no better song than Black 47's Living in America, in which my great and good friend Mary Courtney memorably poses the question "Is this what I was educated for, to wipe the arse of every baby in America?"





It's nativist assholes like Tucker Carlson who dirty this country by polluting people's minds.

Staggering Towards St. Patrick's Day

I am of the opinion that holidays should be structured like Hanukkah- multi-day celebrations, rather than one-offs. I inaugurated the St. Patrick's Day season last night by meeting up with an old friend and his co-workers at The Brazen Fox in White Plains, NY. I had just spent a few hours at work explaining the new computerized timesheet system to a co-worker who had never used a computer before (en español) when I got the call to arms glasses. It was a splendid night, spent quaffing dirty big pints of Smithwick's while surrounded by beautiful women. The highlight of the evening was playing "wingmen" to a couple of visiting Brazilian guys, and helping them meet a couple of really pretty Brazilian girls, with whom they hit it off swimmingly. Yeah, it's nice to perform an occasional mitzvah.

Anyway, as it's my wont to post occasional music videos, I'll honor the season, and my paternal grandmother's Roscommon heritage by stressing songs by Irish bands for the next couple of weeks.

Perhaps the first rock band to incorporate Irish traditional music (and mythological themes) into their music was Horslips, so thank them for such diverse groups as The Pogues, Black 47, In Tua Nua, and a host of other worthies (hell, U2's first album had the track An Cat Dubh on it, not a trad song, but one in Gaelic).

The song Dearg Doom (a mash-up of Gaelic and English best rendered as "Red Destroyer") comes from the band's 1973 The Táin album, a musical interpretation of the epic Táin Bo Cuailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley"). The annotated Horslips lyrics page, besides giving a basic gist of the song's meaning, has a funny item about the genesis of the song (which is an unholy hybrid of traditional epic and Marvel Comics, conflating Cúchulainn with Dr. Doom), and a couple of nice quotes from Phil Chevron, a founding member of the Radiators from Space, who joined the Pogues for "Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash" and subsequent albums.


The blazing guitar riff that anchors the song is the traditional O'Neill's Cavalry (check out this sweet acapella version). The video reminds me of Spinal Tap's Stonehenge, because of the band's outfits, and the song's theme. I'd love to know if Stonhenge was inspired by this performance. Please note the chainmail "glove" and silver body paint on the lead singer's hand, a tribute to the divine king Nuada of the Silver Hand (known to HPL fans as "Hoary Nodens"):




Please note, this song became a number one dance hit in Germany. Who'd a thunk it? Additionally, in 2004, the Decembrists released an album titled The Táin.

A Touch of the Macabre

Today was a beautiful sunny day- absolutely flawless, not too hot, not too cool. I decided that I would take a nice long walk, and headed south, in order to circumambulate Woodlawn Cemetery. The walk along the eastern edge of the cemetery is along a particularly deserted stretch of Webster Avenue, sandwiched between the cemetery and the Metro North Harlem Line tracks. Traffic is light, and I saw one other person along this stretch of road, a guy who was preparing to do some work on his car.

My route took me south to Gun Hill Road, away from the cemetery. I walked up Decatur Avenue (mentioned in the now-disbanded-and-mourned Black 47's Our Lady of the Bronx), where I witnessed a heated argument between two latino guys- one who seemed to have loaned his motorbike to his buddy, who proceeded to ride it at an excessive speed, messing up the works. The borrower was trying to convince the lender that it wasn't so, but the lender had the mechanical evidence. Oh, well, I hope they worked out some sort of amicable settlement of the kerfuffle.

Turning west on 211th St, I walked along the southern edge of the cemetery, and found a macabre little detail... if you're on the squeamish side, you may want to skip the photos here. I first noticed the carcass of a turtle on it's back, inside the cemetery fence:

Judging from the coloration of the plastron and limbs, I'd have to guess that this hapless turtle was a red-eared slider. Poor critter!

To the right of the turtle carcass, I found the carcass of a chicken, partially obscured by a garbage bag:

Here's a panoramic view of this grisly tableaux, encompassing the two animal carcasses:

A little further down the street, I found the a chicken head which I'd venture to guess belonged to the bagged bird:

I don't practice Santeria, but I suspect that this was a case of animal sacrifice related to the religion, or one of the other syncretic religions that employ animal sacrifice- apparently, the incidence of such sacrifices is increasing.

Every once in a while, I'll encounter some weird hint of sorcery on my rambles, but this one was the most off-putting by far, so far,

Balladeer Historian Humanitarian Friend

Tonight, I figured that I'd post a couple of videos of my friend Mary Courtney, the frontwoman of the Bronx-based band Morning Star. Besides having a heartrendingly lovely voice, Mary has a keen sense of history and culture... she often precedes songs with a quick description, placing them into their culture context.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Uprising Mary playing The Foggy Dew, which exhorts the young men of Ireland to fight against English occupation, rather than to enlist in the English army to fight in World War One:





One of Mary's most celebrated performances was her duet with Larry Kirwan in Black 47's immigration ballad Living in America, which uses the tune to The Foggy Dew:





Here's Mary's take on Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?, which perfectly showcases Mary's clear, sweet voice:





I like to call Mary the star of the county Bronx. Besides her musical gifts and her knack for educating people about history through song, she is constantly playing benefit gigs for various worthy causes (the post-Sandy period saw a huge outpouring of support by local artists). It's been my pleasure and my privilege to know her all these years. Please give her other songs a listen, she's really wonderful.

The Eve of the Solemn Feast of St. Patrick

In keeping with the trend of posting music videos by Irish bands in the run-up to St. Patrick's Day, I feel obligated to post a video by another criminally unsung band. Fronted by the mind-bogglingly lovely Leslie Dowdall (although a young Sinead O'Connor was briefly with the band), In Tua Nua (best rendered in English as "A New Tribe") combined rock music with traditional folk music to form a melodic backdrop to the rich alto vocals of Ms. Dowdall. The band's first album, to my knowledge, was never released in the states, but their second album, The Long Acre, produced by Don Dixon, received some airplay in the New York metro area. This is another album which is all killer/no filler, from the blistering opening track Woman on Fire to the tender Sweet Lost Soul. The subject matter ranges from critiques of male chauvinism (the aforementioned Woman on Fire and religious oppression (the truly remarkable The Innocent and the Honest Ones, an agnostic hymn that, fortunately, can be heard on the band's MySpace page), to the economic hardships of the time (the title track of the album). The band broke up soon after the release of The Long Acre, a few years before The Cranberries and Riverdance ushered in an early 90s Irish renaissance in the U.S. (of course, zrm would rip my face off if I didn't mention Black 47 as an Irish-American band which rose to prominence in this era as well). If The Long Acre had been released four years later, it probably would have been a smash... Watch, and fall in love:

My personal favorite:


Their highest charting single:


Do check out the other videos, the "Self Aid" video for Seven Into the Sea is a real treat.

Another Night of Music

My favorite bar in the Bronx is An Beal Bocht, named for the novel by Myles na gCopaleen/Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien (holy pseudonyms, Batman!), on West 238th Street in the Riverdale section. For those who ask, my next two favorites would be The Rambling House on Katonah Ave in Woodlawn, and Jimmy Ryan's on Middletown Road in Pelham Bay. On Fridays, friend of the bastard Mary Courtney plays traditional Irish music at An Beal Bocht. Mary has long been the singer of the band Morning Star, which gained some national coverage by performing at the JFK Jr. memorial, but she's perhaps best known for singing the female vocal on the album version of Black 47's Livin' in America, which is set to the music of The Foggy Dew. Mary sang Larry Kirwin's brilliant, but scathing, line:

Is this what I was educated for? To wipe the arse of every baby in America?

Mary is a folk historian as well as an entertainer, she has an encyclopedic knowledge of Irish history and literature. She'd be the person to tell you the name of the Newry Highwayman, or the historical context of the hanging of Roddy McCorley. So, without further ado, here's the brilliant Mary Courtney, the Star of the County Bronx:

Drink With a Poet, Get Attacked by an Orb

So, I am hanging out with a new drinking buddy- let's call him "Larry", and my cousin takes a picture. Well, don't you know, I get attacked by an orb emanating from a paranormal Pabst sign.





Luckily, with my experience in parascientific knowledge and psionic hardware, I was able to avert a disaster. Oh, and regarding the picture, please note that I am not the guy with the "red hair and glasses".

Larry Kirwan, in a word, is awesome- he's a friendly guy, with a genuinely warm personality. He played a few songs, mostly from Black 47's debut album (Dear Old Donegal, the eponymous song, James Connolly- preceded with an introduction which unabashedly characterized the man as a community organizer and a Marxist-eat that, teabaggers!), and read from his new novel Rockin' the Bronx. I asked him the extent to which the novel is a thinly autobiographical work, and he told me, "It's veiled enough so I won't get my arse kicked." He read the from the opening chapter, which was hilarious, though with a hint of bad things to come, and sang an a cappella rendition of a personal favorite- The Cliffs of Dooneen, which ***SPOILER ALERT*** features in the narrative.

Larry also related a tale of strolling around Times Square as a wet-behind-the-ears immigrant, during a time in which it hadn't been gentrified to chain-store blandness, and read another chapter in the book, which detailed his protagonist's run through a gauntlet of dealers, and panderers.

All told, the night was top-notch... it was four hours of music, prose, booze, and good fellowship, in an intimate, friendly setting. Larry is a great guy with whom to knock back a Smithwick's, and I made sure to tell him not to forget his fans in the Midwest as he's touring in support of the book.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful...

***Looks at picture*** Uh, yeah... Well, last Sunday's post employed a "literary technique" known as "foreshadowing"- you see, I posted a video by Black 47, and indicated that the post was inspired by a night at An Beal Bocht, a tavern I frequent. Well, the inspiration for the post was this:





Yeah, it's an opportunity to see the multi-talented Larry Kirwin in a small, snug setting. Don't hate me because I'm beautiful, hate me because I live within walking distance of The Bronx.

Note: I took the picture of the flyer in the loo... yes, this is the typical loo-lighting. Hmmm... Loo Lighters might be a good name for a band...

Since You're Gone...

Last night's Total Bummer News was the passing of Ric Ocasek, who loomed large over the soundscape of my youth. Reading the obituaries written for him, I am struck by how he was much older than I expected (he wasn't a kid when he formed the Cars) and that he had been in a couple of folksy bands in the 60s.

My introduction to the Cars (most people's introduction) was the second single from their debut album, My Best Friend's Girl. a pretty straightforward rocker, though one punctuated with synth-pop flourishes and a rockabilly riff. It's the lyrics which make this otherwise cliche story about lost love into something off-kilter, with slightly subversive references to 'suede-blue eyes' and 'nuclear boots'. Here's a wonderful live version of this immensely appealing singalong:





The band's first, eponymous album has often been described as a 'debut greatest hits compilation', as the saying goes, it's 'all killer, no filler', and it encompasses a range of styles, with I'm in Touch with Your World being particularly surreal. This video comically conveys keyboardist Greg Hawkes' talent with all sorts of musical geegaws:





The album ended on the glorious Moving in Stereo/All Mixed Up combo, which combined the vocals of second frontman Benjamin Orr (who we lost to cancer in 2000) with heavy guitar riffs, swooping synthpop flourishes, and melodic backing vocals. It's the sort of musical epic which must have driven headphone sales back in the late 70s:





To me, the Cars' second album, 1979's Candy-O had a slightly harder sound. The debut single, Let's Go, another Orr-fronted song, had a more upfront synthesizer sound than most of the songs from the prior album:





Perhaps the quirkiest number of the album is the The Dangerous Type, a closer which opens with the double query: "Can I touch you? Are you out of touch?"





The Cars' third album, 1980's Panorama didn't sell as many units as the previous two albums, but it might be my favorite. The sing;e Touch and Go is a lush soundscape with two different time signatures, punctuated by a blistering guitar solo by Elliot Easton:





I also think the album features Ric Ocasek at his funniest:





The Cars released their fourth album in four years, Shake it Up, in 1981. It was a return to the winning formula of the band's two albums, less experimental than Panorama. Here's the late, great Valerie Harper introducing a television segment with the band playing the album's title track:





I think my favorite track on the album is Since You're Gone (from which I derived the post title), in which a breakup song, one of the most tried-and-true tropes of popular music, gets that off-kilter Ric Ocasek treatment:





If I recall correctly, Ric's line 'I took the Big Vacation' was the first veiled drug reference that I understood in a song.

The band took a hiatus from recording, with their fifth album, Heartbeat City, coming out in 1984. It spawned the top ten hit You Might Think:





The plaintive Drive hit number three on the US charts, and was promoted with a video starring the future Mrs Ocasek, Paulina Porizkova. It's definitely the band at its most earnest:





1985 saw the release of a greatest hits album (one that isn't the band's debut. that is) and the previously unreleased Tonight She Comes (no embed code), which was originally intended for a Ric Ocasek solo project.

The band's final album before they broke up was 1987's Door to Door:





Ric Ocasek also released a bunch of solo albums, starting with 1982's Beatitude, which spawned the single Something to Grab For:





That's quite a stellar career as a performer, but I believe that Ric Ocasek will be remembered as much for his production credits as for his own career as a performer. He produced albums for a bewildering diversity of bands, including Bad Brains, Romeo Void, Suicide, Nada Surf, Weezer, No Doubt, Bad Religion, Black 47, and a whole lot of other artists.

He was also a quintessential New Yorker in his later days, and there are plenty of funny stories about people walking into obstructions because they couldn't stop staring at him and his supermodel wife. The general gist of the stories is that he was a nice guy, the sort of guy who wouldn't look askance at starstruck fans. The outpouring of love from musicians who worked with him is also a testimony to his decency. For instance, Larry Kirwan wrote a lovely tribute to the man.

The best way to memorialize the man is to listen to his music, and composing this post was sad, but also a pleasure... it's tough to write about the death of a favorite musician, but the memories brought back by compiling a partial discography are sweet. It's time to finish listening to his catalog now.

ADDENDUM: Of course, I WOULD have to find this after publishing this post. I also figured I'd link the Cars' 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction