ABSTRACT
It is 4.40 am Thursday 2 July 2015. I’m in my car driving from the Wirral peninsula to Liverpool Airport, taking the Ryanair Red-Eye to Dublin for an interview with Cerys Mathews. The former lead singer with Catatonia is now a much-admired radio presenter, and I’ve been invited to contribute to a BBC Radio 4 programme that she’s hosting on the subject of the Irish song tradition. It’s already light and starting to warm up. Tuesday and Wednesday were two of the hottest days on record, but today is forecast to be a bit cooler. There’s music on my iPod that I need to listen to, but I’ll leave it until later.
I put on BBC Radio 2 and the show is Pick of the Pops with veteran DJ Tony Blackburn playing selections from the British charts of July 1988. Bros are No. 1 with ‘I Owe You Nothing’. It’s followed at 5.00 am by Nicki Chapman sitting in for Vanessa Feltz; she plays ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’ by the Pretenders, and wants listeners to text or email her with stories about unusual meals. With only a rucksack I’m straight through security. I get a coffee and it’s on
with the headphones: Panasonic RP-HC700, with optional noise cancelling. The first album is England Take My Bones (2012) by folk-punk troubadour Frank Turner. I’m listening to this because it’s the choice of one of the members of the bi-monthly ‘Album Club’ that I run in Wirral; we’re meeting on Saturday week and I like to be up to speed so that I have something meaningful to say before the evening descends into alcohol-fuelled ranting. There’s one song, or rather one line from one song, with which I’m particularly obsessed: ‘… the sleeping soul of the country …’ from the track ‘I Am Disappeared’. A garish fanfare signals that we’ve arrived on time. Reading on buses
makes me feel ill, so it’s back on with the headphones during the thirtyminute ride into town. Something mellow for the morning: Break it Yourself
(2012) by Andrew Bird. After three tracks, however, I recall the purpose of my visit and decide that I ought to get in some research: I dial up the giant compilation of Tom Dunne’s various ‘Best Irish Hits’ albums from the early noughties and start to listen. The area around Trinity is being dug up for a new LUAS connection. As
I’m walking up towards Bewley’s for breakfast I notice that I’m listening to Luke Kelly singing ‘Raglan Road’ – ‘On Grafton street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge …’. Bewley’s is closed; there’s a guy sleeping in the doorway. There’s a decent café across the road where up on the first floor I settle in with an Irish Times for a full Irish. There’s a review of a novel called Green Glowing Skull (2015) by someone
called Gavin Corbett, whom I’ve never heard of. I note that the reviewer says the book includes material about Irish music, and decide that I should acquire a copy. But how will I remember the author and title? I imagine Gavin Hastings and Ronnie Corbett playing rugby for Ireland (Green) against a team of sun-burned (Glowing) skeletons (Skull). An hour later I’m back out on Grafton Street with the sun shining and the
headphones on: a song I haven’t heard for maybe five years – ‘After All’ (1992) by the Frank and Walters. It’s too early for buskers; slightly too early for my meeting with Cerys, so it’s into the St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, where I pick up a copy of Green Glowing Skull from Eason’s. Continuing my stroll around the ground floor I come across a hat shop where the friendly sales woman is still having her breakfast. The woman asks if she can help and I take off my ’phones to reply, at which point I notice that the piped music in the mall is ‘After All’ by the Frank and Walters. It’s getting near 10.00 am so I walk up to Wexford Street and wait outside
Whelan’s for the producer Mark Williams with whom I’ve been liaising. No-one there; I’ll get a coffee from the deli next door. ‘No Doubt About It’ (1980) by Hot Chocolate is playing on the radio as the woman hands me the change. Mark is waiting when I get back. Whelan’s is a legendary venue which
tends to favour the up and coming or the slightly outdated. I haven’t been for years, and Martin has to guide me through a labyrinth of dark rooms and higgledy-piggledy floors like the library from The Name of the Rose. Upstairs there’s a table set up with microphones. I’m introduced to Cerys,
who’s every bit as charming and charismatic as she sounds. The two other guests are Fiachna Ó Braonáin and Jerry O’Reilly. Fiachna is a founder member of the Hothouse Flowers, once named ‘the best unsigned band in Europe’ by Rolling Stone, and probably still best known outside Ireland for their breakthrough single ‘Don’t Go’ (1988). He’s also a radio DJ on Today FM for which he hosts a weekly programme that’s a variation on Album Club. Jerry is a singer, dancer and amateur folklorist from Dublin. He’s one of the principal organisers of An Góilín – itself one of the oldest and most influential singing clubs in the country. The idea is for each contributor to suggest songs that might be found
within the Great Irish Songbook, should such a document ever exist. This
affords an opportunity to discuss a range of issues such as genre, tradition, style and, of course, that great bane of the cultural historian’s life: authenticity. Jerry’s métier is the traditional ballad and the stories behind them. Fiachna and I operate more in the realm of modern rock music. We all agree that ‘Whisky in the Jar’ by Thin Lizzy would probably have to be included in this chimerical tome. Pressed by Cerys, I nominate ‘Caravan’ by Van Morrison (from the Moondance album of 1970) as also worthy of a place. We chat for two hours, with Jerry and Fiachna adding a few songs as well.
We finish off with a rousing chorus of ‘An Puc ar Buile’, a song known to every Irish person over a certain age. Deliberately mispronouncing the final line of the chorus of that song seemed very funny in Tallaght Community School in 1974. I head over towards Harcourt Street LUAS to catch a tram for Windy
Arbour where I’m meeting my cousin for lunch. ‘Happy’ by Pharrell spills from a car waiting at the corner of Wexford Street and Charlotte Way. I realise that I haven’t had any messages all morning – on checking I see that there’s no signal on my mobile. A woman with a new-born baby listens to my story and allows me to use hers. Thirty minutes later I’m sitting with my cousin in the Airfield café in Dundrum. During lunch he hands over a present – the two most recent editions of Uncut: one from April 2015 featuring Joni Mitchell on the cover; and one from May 2015 with Van the Man. Long and luxuriously we chew the fat (metaphorically – the food was
superb), after which it’s back to town. I’m listening to the second album for our forthcoming meeting: Time (1981) by the Electric Light Orchestra – a choice guaranteed to bring many prejudices to the surface. Leafing through the magazine on the tram I read a quote from drummer Gary Mallaber on how a mellow Van let the band sing backing vocals on ‘Caravan’. Back down Grafton Street where the buskers are now out in numbers. Near
MacDonald’s a group of young guys are playing trad, including one tune I recognize as an unnamed snippet from Room to Roam (1990) by the Waterboys. That’s worth a Euro. Outside Trinity I meet Tom Walker, an academic from the university’s
English department, with whom I’m collaborating on a research project. He takes me to a Viennese style bar hidden away past stairways bedecked with portraits of illustrious Fellows, including one of the composer Brian Boydell. We chat for an hour or so, and discover that his father and my father-in-law must have known each other when they worked for Unilever on Wirral. Tom’s off to see a film and I’m heading for the airport. The day has turned
warm, and I stroll down to O’Connell Street listening to Boydell’s Megalithic Ritual Dances for Large Orchestra (1956) followed, on the airport bus, by miscellaneous Hothouse Flowers – I used to own People (1988) on cassette but never acquired it on CD. After security at the airport I settle down with a tea and my new novel. It’s
set in some near reality featuring distorted versions of Ireland and Irish music: an imaginary songbook of 1808 includes titles such as ‘O Truncated
Tower’, ‘The Snow-flake on Art’s Greying Lip’ and ‘The Order of the Emerald’ which, we’re told, ‘in school they used deliberately to mishear … as “The Ordure of the Emerald”’. Just before boarding I find a computer to check my emails for the first time
today. After, browsing the BBC I see that Val Doonican – ‘the Irish Bing Crosby’ – has died. It’s a twenty-five-minute hop across to Liverpool. During the dead time
before disembarkation I notice a man with a T-shirt from a metal festival called Sonisphere, held at Knebworth in July 2014. One of the advertised acts is Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls. £55 for eighteen hours parking – how’s that work? I’m too tired to set up
the iPod, and so settle for two of Radio 2’s late-night niche favourites: The Organist Entertains and Big Band Special. Is there such a thing as bad music? Or is there just music we don’t like? The head is on the pillow just before midnight. I hear the warning siren for
a late train at the level crossing up the road; and just on the edge of audibility, the sea …
