The Flight of the Girls

The Irish are a diaspora people... for centuries, they have fled war, famine, poverty, and oppression, both foreign and domestic. They have faced exile and penal transportation. My dad's mom's parents were members of the diaspora- fleeing poverty in the early twentieth century (my great-grandfather had planned to emigrate to Australia, but while he was in San Francisco waiting to embark, the earthquake hit and he, a stonemason, was pressed into service rebuilding the city, actually living in a labor camp but receiving a decent wage, and decided to go back to New York, where he met my great-grandmother). I live in a neighborhood with a large Irish immigrant community, and every summer, we get an influx of young people from Ireland looking to work in construction or the restaurant/bar industry. My upstairs neighbor is an Irish gal raising two wonderful Yankee kids, and my next-door neighbors are Irish. Going to the bank, I overhear guys in paint-spattered pants asking how the craic is. I go to the local butcher to get house-made black pudding. The diaspora continues, though now there is more of a back-and-forth.

One of the watershed moments of the Irish diaspora was the Flight of the Earls, which saw the earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell leaving Ulster to seek help from the Spanish government in an attempt to throw off British sovereignty. The Flight of the Earls looms large in Irish folk history.

This weekend, though, saw a return of the diaspora population as many Irish abroad returned to Eire in order to vote on the repeal of the Eighth Amendment. Looking at the pictures of returning émigrées, I have to say that the Flight of the Girls is an even more important event in Irish history as the Flight of the Earls (Smut Clyde informed me that this picture was actually taken at a pro "return to vote" performance art piece):

As an aside, I totally want to buy the girl in the glasses and the Ramones T-shirt a shot of Tullamore Dew. Gabba Gabba na Gael!

The Irish people voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Eight Amendment which criminalized abortion. Once again, the population of Ireland has voted overwhelmingly to pursue liberal reforms- the first being the legalization of same-sex marriage. I have a prediction that this liberal vote, in the overwhelmingly Catholic Republic of Ireland, will cause a lot of angst among the right-wingers here in the United States. The Catholic Church in Ireland has been guilty of running a gulag system for young women, complete with forced labor and mass graves- they had lost the moral authority to weigh in on the abortion issue. A lot of Americans view Ireland as some sort of Candyland, toora loora lorra and all that shit. They want Ireland to be trapped in amber, a faraway land inhabited by leprechauns or smurfs. The voters of Ireland, and the emigrant Irish community proved to the world that they are modern, progressive people, people devoted to women's and minority rights.

This being a post about matters Irish, I would be remiss if I didn't post a song... the most appropriate one for this occasion is the haunting The Innocent and the Honest Ones by In Tua Nua:





That song was released thirty years ago- the Tuath na Gael have come a long way in the intervening years.

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.

The Blueprint for GOP 'Charity'

In a comment on yesterday's post, friend of the bastard OBS linked to a Washington Post article concerning Tuam, which I referenced in my post. The article is a tough read, it concerns the life of a young, unmarried pregnant woman who gave birth at “The Home for Mothers and Babies” run by the Sisters of Bon Secours. Her infant son was separated from her and she was confined to “The Magdalene Asylum”, until she escaped and fled to England to avoid further punishment.

Her son was confined to the Home for Mothers and Babies, where the healthiest children were often sold to adoptive parents, mainly from the U.S. His mother attempted to contact him numerous times, but he had been convinced that she was a 'woman of ill-repute'. He was finally able to reconcile with her after becoming an adult, learning that his mother hadn't been the evil individual throughout this whole ordeal.

I firmly believe in a government-run social safety net. Conservatives often talk about how private charities, usually churches, should be the organizations which provide succor to the poor, the sick, the unfortunate. FUCK THAT SHIT... I don't believe that these organizations act in, if you'll pardon the expression, good faith- they confine their aid to 'worthy' individuals (as defined according to their dogma), they attach strings to their aid (typically aggressive proselytizing), and they perpetuate a patriarchal dominance structure which is hostile to women and indifferent at best towards children. The GOP wants to bring a theocratic government to the United States, exactly the sort of government which created such misery in Ireland and which creates misery in places like Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. We need less religion in the public sphere, and we cannot trust religious organizations to care for vulnerable individuals, especially not women and children.

Rather than fuming about this story and bursting a blood vessel, here's The Innocent and the Honest Ones, an appropriate song by bastard fave In Tua Nua, fronted by the incomparable Leslie Dowdall:





I've posted the song before, but it's an important one, one of the most poignant agnostic hymns ever written. If your religion involves mass graves, then you really need to reconsider your faith. I reconsidered mine, and I sure as hell don't want theocracy to be implemented in these here United States.

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.

The Solemn Feast of St Patrick 2019

This past week has been a tough one, with large scale atrocity and personal tragedy combining to punch me in the gut. Today, I had a respite, lunch with good friends- a home-cured corned beef brisket, braised cabbage, and homemade soda bread. An Irish coffee served to wash everything down, then I scarpered off to work to feed the cat.

This being St Paddy's Day, I figured I'd post a song appropriate for bereavement (nobody does bereavement quite like the Irish). The Pogues song Body of an American is part dirge, part tall-tale, part cryptolect rebel-song (the line about 'Spanish wine from far away' hints at gunrunning), whole-cloth rave-up. The song was featured prominently on the TV show The Wire, as an accompaniment to the police wakes depicted. I am partial to the live version from the 1986 Self Aid concert, featuring Spider Stacy playing a lick from The Guns of Navarone on the tin whistle:





I've posted clips from Self Aid before, it's a great snapshot of the Irish music scene in the 1980s. My favorite performance in the concert is the set by woefully obscure band In Tua Nua (if they had debuted five years later than they did, they would have been huge)... lead singer Leslie Dowdall still gives me heart palpitations to this day, and I'm not an adolescent anymore by any stretch of the imagination.

Happy St Patrick's Day, Folks

In a couple of earlier posts, I made reference to the 1986 Self Aid benefit to alleviate Irish unemployment. I've only seen bits and pieces of the fourteen hour concert here and there, but there are a couple of 'best of' videos released in 1996 by RTE:





Oof, there are some harsh comments on that video. Here's the second part of the 'best of' compilation:





My favorite performance of the concert has got to be In Tua Nua's set, about a half-hour into the first 'best of' video. The band should have been much bigger, but they apparently released their single 'Seven Into the Sea' right around the time of the Challenger disaster, so no American radio station would have played it.

Speaking of self-aid, I think I'll help myself to a double of Tullamore Dew... Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit, folks.

Still Fantastic Decades Later

I've put up a couple of posts which mentioned the Irish band In Tua Nua, whose 1988 album The Long Acre is a Bastard favorite. Recently, I found that the band had reformed and had performed at last year's Electric Picnic festival. Here's a version of my personal favorite song by the band, Don't Fear Me Now:





I've always thought that lead singer Leslie Dowdall has one of the finest voices I've ever heard, and she still looks absolutely gorgeous. The band looks like they're having a blast.

Here's the video for a live performance of Seven Into the Sea:





A quick trip in the time machine to watch the band's performance of the Seven Into the Sea for the 1986 Self Aid benefit concert reveals that the band has lost none of their intensity in the intervening decades:





For the record, the band wrote one of the most powerful musical critiques of the religious based war on women (a song which, tragically, still resonates today), the closest thing to an agnostic's hymn... here's the sublime The Innocent and the Honest Ones:





It's good to see the band has reformed, and is performing as spectacularly as ever... here's hoping they decide to tour and hit the NY metro area. I've got to tell my great and good friend J-Co that the band is back together... he'll be even more ecstatic than I am.