This is fascinating. Stick around for the presenter at the end – it’s hard to imagine a ‘more 70s’ image. It’s also hard to imagine it was ever a good image.
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0823/1070450-clutch-kerry-blues/?fbclid=IwAR1Q6gsI7uvC5Wae9Bkx4JkkshlpmUerKAbf5Eo1sLp2N22Xw49UG5lsoxA
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0823/1070450-clutch-kerry-blues/?fbclid=IwAR1Q6gsI7uvC5Wae9Bkx4JkkshlpmUerKAbf5Eo1sLp2N22Xw49UG5lsoxA
What an amazing archive. From Clutch I clicked on the “music makers” tag and a whole world of 70s stuff opened up. Even though I’m a Coventry boy, this is more like the 70s I remember. This band was from 1971 was just like one, I was in, bossy lead guitarist and all
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0405/779712-wicklows-garage-rock-band-profile/
Gryphon – blimey
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2019/0123/1025020-gryphon-medieval-music-makers/
and Go go dancers – You see Gary Moore in Skid Row for 1 second, but still, this piece was about go go dancers
https://www.rte.ie/archives/2020/0304/1120176-dublin-nightclubs/
COR!
I have the latest Gryphon album…it’s rather good!
If they’d had a folk version of ‘Jazz Club’ on The Fast Show and the Gryphon performed, you’d swear it was a skit.
Holy Mother those are the spawn of Slumberland.
Fascinating stuff elsewhere on this link about the fate of the Irish language within Ireland. I’ve been visiting the country more or less every year for the last decade and a half, and we’ve stayed almost exclusively within the Gaeltacht for all that time. I had no clear idea really how fundamentally uninterested the Irish public as a whole were in the fate of their own native tongue.
I read recently that Republican prisoners at Long Kesh made a point of studying the Gaeltacht language (if that’s the right term) because it helped them communicate with each other without guards etc knowing what’s going on.
It’s compulsory on the state national curriculum and also for certain employment eg. the garda, so it’s still alive and well, if not spoken much in public, and one of the reasons for that is that it became so heavily politicised during the troubles and that undercurrent is still there with many who still actively promote it. Most people quite rightly want to move and let the past be, apart from a few old farmers etc, and besides, English is basically the global language of business and popular culture regardless.
Nice of you to glibly classify everyone living in the Gaeltacht as “a few old farmers etc.”.
As for “not spoken much in public” that’s pants mate. There are plenty of people out there who never speak a word of English from one week to the next. They simply don’t need it for day to day life.
Don’t lecture me about Ireland pal. I’ve lived there, visited/visit, all my life. I’m also a citizen/ house owner. You know full well what I meant in regard to the wider Republic and you can shove your condescending politically romantic trendy wiser than thou holiday knowledge up your arse.
F8ck me, thanks for telling me what I know full well, you pompous twerp.
No problem. I’m just allowing you full vent. Cathartic wise.
It’s not healthy to keep it in.
If I’m so pompous you would not be agreeing with something that I’d previously said that you took umbrage with and now apparently agree with and already knew all along. It takes more than a few annual holidays, you idiot.
You’re pompous because you casually dismiss the behaviours and cultural choices of around 50,000 people as “a few old farmers”.
I said that there are plenty of people who never speak a word of English from one week to the next. This is true; do you deny that with your apparently superior knowledge?
Please don’t call me an idiot and please don’t be so condescending yourself.
There, I asked nicely.
Ach y fi.
Why not come right out with it? At least have the balls.
I don’t take instructions from The Afterword’s Poundshop Lawrence Fox.
It’s plain enough.
Only if you google translate, big man.
By the way, how’s the affordable bathroom vinyl flooring range going?
You’ll have to try harder than that Lawrence.
Err… ? That’s it?
Thought so.
You’re not that stupid but it works as a quick retort, as did mine.
Sideburn envy.
Jesus wept. I swear those lapels haven’t finished yet, 36 years later.
Marvellous stuff. Whatever happened to Clutch? Interesting looking venue too – any idea where it is?
Here’s Mr Clutch http://www.francieconway.com/biography.html
The name-dropping in that bio is extraordinary! Here’s a curious version of an Argent classic by the Con-man:
It’s brilliant, isn’t it? Francie had a chance encounter with an A and R guy who was involved in discovering Dire Straits! Francie once recorded in a studio that on another completely unrelated occasion Queen also recorded in!
Somebody really should have had a word with him about that slab of text! At least half of it must go. Otherwise, it’s like being smashed in the face by a breeze block of 24-carat hubris.
Even so, the Irish Gaelic is on a penultimate pair of legs to its Scottish cousin. Delightfully, it seems it is music, particularly the slew of young Scottish bands strewn across the highlands and highlands who are keeping interest alive. Some islands have more bands per head of population than even Iceland.
Can I request more go go girl clips? I’m supposed to lose weight.
I cycled in Ireland about 30 years ago and spent one night in a very old school bus on the edge of Tralee Racecourse. The facilities were not ideal, and the old guy who showed me to my “room,” before I headed off to a pub, had to push away prams and chickens and things to get to my quarters, but it was ridiculously cheap (£3 instead of the normal £7 or £8), and dry, and in the morning you could walk around the lovely racecourse. Bit of a result.
Tom Waits mentions Tralee in the lyrics of “Rain Dogs”.
I had a rainy night in Tralee in about 1982. It was the only place in ‘the south’ I felt nervous about my English numberplates. But there was a great Gaelic radio station playing in the bar where we had our ham and cabbage tea, loads of Planxty and similar playing.