‘I don’t have an ego problem – I know I’m great.’ 🙂 And he’s right. One of the great personalities in Irish music – Brush Shiels. Brush had a double hip replacement a year or so back – great to see him back in action in this clip from two months back, playing fiendishly complicated scat singing over guitar lines in 5/4.
Most people probably know Brush as a madcap Irish cabaret artist of sorts, but he began in the late 60s/early 70s as a unique combination of progressive rock / jazz fusion / country & western in power trio Skid Row – visceral, uncompromising, unsuccessful!
I caught him towards the end of his subsequent cabaret era (when he cracked the ‘making a living’ conundrum by realising that if he hardly played at all and just goofed around, people cried out for more) – at a pub somewhere in Monaghan, I think, when I wrote a chapter on him for ‘Irish Folk, Trad & Blues’ in 2004. He was a brilliant musician hiding in plain sight on that scene – playing corny material but slipping in impressions of Banjo Barney McKenna playing reels at 100 mph on a fuzzed guitar. In that world, if he could keep it funny, he could get away with really ‘playing’…
Since then, he’s done occasional gigs for the cognoscenti (generally, half-full rooms) reviving his Skid Row repertoire and playing whatever he likes. A total one-off. I hope someone tells me before he does another show!
The mighty Skid Row were the first band I ever saw as written about in my Rediscovering a 50-year old vinyl collection piece about the late Noel Bridgeman’s massive double-bass drum kit a few months back
I saw Skid Row back in the late ’60s at Watford Technical College. This was at the height of my (fairly) indiscriminate drug-taking days, so all I remember is that they were good.
The text didn’t post. Here it is:
‘I don’t have an ego problem – I know I’m great.’ 🙂 And he’s right. One of the great personalities in Irish music – Brush Shiels. Brush had a double hip replacement a year or so back – great to see him back in action in this clip from two months back, playing fiendishly complicated scat singing over guitar lines in 5/4.
Most people probably know Brush as a madcap Irish cabaret artist of sorts, but he began in the late 60s/early 70s as a unique combination of progressive rock / jazz fusion / country & western in power trio Skid Row – visceral, uncompromising, unsuccessful!
I caught him towards the end of his subsequent cabaret era (when he cracked the ‘making a living’ conundrum by realising that if he hardly played at all and just goofed around, people cried out for more) – at a pub somewhere in Monaghan, I think, when I wrote a chapter on him for ‘Irish Folk, Trad & Blues’ in 2004. He was a brilliant musician hiding in plain sight on that scene – playing corny material but slipping in impressions of Banjo Barney McKenna playing reels at 100 mph on a fuzzed guitar. In that world, if he could keep it funny, he could get away with really ‘playing’…
Since then, he’s done occasional gigs for the cognoscenti (generally, half-full rooms) reviving his Skid Row repertoire and playing whatever he likes. A total one-off. I hope someone tells me before he does another show!
One from the Skid Row era – visceral, uncompromising, still uncommercial!
The mighty Skid Row were the first band I ever saw as written about in my Rediscovering a 50-year old vinyl collection piece about the late Noel Bridgeman’s massive double-bass drum kit a few months back
I saw Skid Row back in the late ’60s at Watford Technical College. This was at the height of my (fairly) indiscriminate drug-taking days, so all I remember is that they were good.
I keep reading that as Brooke Shields…