by Mike Farragher
Best Of 2000
2000 was a
banner year for Irish music. Artists as
diverse as
Everlast, U2 and the Corrs dominated the
Billboard
charts. Bands like the Prodigals and Black
47 ventured
outside of the five boroughs to spread the
American Celtic
sound to all corners of the world;
meanwhile,
the likes of Neck, the Popes, and the
Sawdoctors
imported their vibrant sounds across the
sea to American
clubs.
There were so many great CDs produced by Irish and
Irish American
artists this year that it almost made
up for having
to endure the sonic scourge known as
Westlife.
Submitted for your approval is a list of
personal favorites
that arrived in the mailbag. Any of
these great
releases would make great stocking
stuffers for
you last minute shoppers. Happy
Christmas!
10. Phil Coulter's "Highland
Cathedral": yeah,
yeah, I know. Given the other artists
on this list,
Phil Coulter's New Age sound blends
in like Richard
Simmons at an NRA cookout. That
said, there's no
denying the fact that Coulter has
easily made the best
record of his career. The ability
to siphon the
talents of up and coming artists
for his own purposes
is this man's forte, and he uses
Highland Cathedral to
showcase the spine-tingling talents
of Donegal native
Aoiffe. Her breathy, ethereal vocal
adds a haunting
quality to Phil's pristine piano
arrangements.
Bodrhans and bagpipes add marvelous
textures to these
"lighter than air" melodies.
9. Seanachai and the
Unity Squad's "A Sunday at the
Turn of the Century": the Irish
community scratched
their collective head when Black
47 founding member
Chris Byrne left the band last Spring.
Thankfully,
this parting of the ways has left
us with two great
bands to enjoy. Byrne took his band
into the kitchen
of Rocky Sullivan's, where he plays
every Firday, and
cooked up a street savvy Celtic
stew. Turntable
scratches are right at home beside
the pipes and tin
whistles on "A Sunday." Byrne blends
his trademark
hard-hitting political raps with
gentle history
lessons passed between father and
son ("Let Me Tell
You Where You're From"). The sweet
sounds of singer
Rachel Fitzgerald ("Fields of "Athenrye")
would melt
the heart of the most hardened New
Yorker.
8. Black 47's "Trouble
in the Land": fans of the
groundbreaking band Black 47 were
treated to a CD that
ranks among the best in the band's
formidable history.
Songs like the raucous "Bodrhans
on the Brain" and the
smoky ganja island beats that propel
"Desperate" won
the band some new fans around the
world. These
additions to their set list were
instantly embraced by
the legions of old fans as well.
"It was a year of
great change," reflects lead singer
Larry Kirwan.
"Chris Byrne left at the end of
April. There was a
sadness, but change is inevitable.
Joseph Mulvanerty
joined and has added a new dimension
to the musicality
of the group." Kirwan gave the Irish
Voice a peek at
the band's schedule for 2001. "My
solo cd, Kilroy Was
Here, comes out on Feb. 27. I'm
currently writing the
material for Black 47's next cd,
which will be out in
January, 2002. We hope to make a
trip to the UK for
gigs next summer, with a return
tour of Argentina with
gigs in Chile also in the Fall of
2001."
7. Rubyhorse's "Rubyhorse":
This year saw the band
travel from their hometown of Cork
to complete their
self-titled album in Nashville.
A long road trip in
support of Culture Club followed,
and the band caught
fire in amphitheaters across America.
Their plan for
world domination is simple: tour,
tour, and then tour
some more. The strategy is paying
off. Their hard
driving sound thrilled audiences
and they won fans
wherever they played. One of their
famous fans, George
Harrison, added some beautiful slide
guitar playing on
the hit single "Punchdrunk." As
this paper went to
press, the Rubyhorse songs "Punchdrunk"
and "Teenage
Distraction" were BOTH #1 in their
respective charts
on mp3.com, ahead of both The Offspring
and The
Deftones. The band has just released
Rubyhorse on
Horsetrade Records, and you can
buy it by logging onto
www.rubyhorse.com or by visiting
your local Best Buy
store. If you're looking for Cork's
answer to U2, be
sure to catch Rubyhorse when they
tour the Northeast
in January. This is "the next big
thing," folks.
6. The Offspring of
Shane McGown: the Popes,
Shane's crackerjack backing band,
stepped away from
their joyously reckless leader to
release the amazing
Holloway Boulevard this year. Swirling
Mexican
mariachi into their whiskey-soaked
barroom sound, the
Popes expanded on the foundations
that Shane laid with
the Pogues. Another Shane alumni,
guitarist Leeson
O'Keefe, released the fine EP CD
Psycho Ceildh with
his band Neck!. The brakes have
been removed from this
rocking machine, and the Celtic
punk sound hits the
eardrum like a runaway train. Neck
has done numerous
gigs along the Eastern corridor,
occasionally sharing
the stage with the likes of Black
47. Don't miss them
during their next swing into your
town.
5. The Lancaster County
Prison Band's "Death Waltz
2000": if Johnny Cash and the Ramones
snorted
shamrocks before hitting a Dublin
stage, they might
sound like The Lancaster County
Prison band. A wildly
original blend of punk, dung-kicking
country, and
bagpipes, the band were white-hot
in backup slot on
this year's Shane McGowan tour.
4. Kila's "Lemonade
and Biscuits": tribal
percussion, tropical rain stick
sounds, and esoteric
instrumentation blend with Kila's
traditional Irish
sensibilities to produce a tasty
sonic brunch. Would
you like some kiwi and guava juice
with those rashers
and black pudding?
3.U2's "All That You
Can't Leave Behind": the boys
from Dublin peeled away the techno-barnacles
from the
hull of their ship to uncover a
sound brimming with a
sweet soul and a renewed purpose.
The Edge's arena
rock bravado is front and center
in songs like "Kite"
and "Walk On."
2. Sinead O'Connor's
"Faith and Courage": since she
ripped up the pope's picture,
the Catholic church has
made buying Sinead O'Connor's
records a cardinal sin.
Fortunately, the greatest female
Irish singer of all
time has created a killer soundtrack
to keep you
company during those hot days
in Hell. The woman that
our race loves to hate roared
back at her detractors
with a disc that is naked and
raw in it's confessional
tone. Her public comments often
have her contradicting
herself, and this dissent is
evident in the disc's
grooves. She swears off men in
the pop treat "No Man's
Woman" right before she paints
her face and dons
"thigh high boots" to snag a
man on the furious "Daddy
I'm Fine." She apologizes for
her past sins against
humanity while lounging in her
own "Healing Room."
Sinead employs hard driving rock,
reggae, and folk to
tell the stories that make up
this latest chapter of
her fascinating career. No self-respecting
music fan
should be without this disc.
ARTIST OF THE YEAR
1. The Donegal X-Press' "Quinn's
Diaries": "our music
is really, in all honesty, old music.
It's the music
of Ireland and America. It's wide-open
spaces and
stone crosses. It's East Coast harbors
in the early
1900s, but it's also Kentucky Bourbon,
a 70s baby blue
convertible Cadillac, cowboys and
Indians, Coca-Cola
and twizzlers. We are still trying
find how all of
that fits together."
That's how guitarist Brad
Dunnels describes the sound of his
band, the Donegal
X-Press. Does he really believe
this trite diatribe,
or is he just pulling our collective
leg here? You
never know, and this tongue-in-cheek
tone of the
lyrics within the notes of Quinn's
Diaries always
keeps you guessing. After slogging
through the bags of
CDs that arrived at the Irish Voice
offices this year,
I can confidently say that no one
is producing music
that's more exciting or original
than this
Baltimore-based band.
This outfit changes musical
styles like socks on Quinn's Diaries.
I haven't heard
a band mix punk, rock, and jazz
this well since the
Replacements called it quits. Biting
beatnik poetry
wafts over a furious bodrhan beat
on "12 Round
Knockout." The traditional nugget
"Tell Me Ma" is
reworked in the hands of the group;
the old melody is
sped up to warp speed and it helps
tell the story
about chasing underage girls on
Bainbridge Avenue.
"Irish is as Irish does/I like my
peaches without
fuzz." Indeed. The X-Press run the
gamut of great
drunken singsongs ("Pissed Off Paddy
Barman," "Raise
Your Glasses") and political commentary
("Omagh") in
their repertoire. They call the
Baltimore bar Mick
O'Shea's their home, and they use
the watering hole to
test the boundaries of Irish music
on their rabid fan
base. They sometimes splinter off
to form side
projects that add a creative fuel
to the goup's
engine. Dunnells
and vocalist Jason Tinney combine
spoken word poetry, Irish ballads
and original
compositions in the genre of the
"sheanachai," or
story teller. On any given night,
the Wayfarers will
treat the audience to a grab bag
of Irish, rock, folk,
blues or Jazz in a laid-back atmosphere.
Lyle Hein
(bass player) has formed his own
band, ominously known
as the Sheepshaggers. With a name
like that I GOTTA
hear what this sounds like. What
does that say about
me? The Donegal
Xpress has an exciting 2001
planned. Brad and Lyle recently
went into the studio
with local hip-hop producer Hugh
Harrell to lay down
some possible tracks for the next
Donegal X-Press
album. Once some ideas are sifted
through, the entire
band will begin recording in January.