'An infrequent conversation between fans of music, some of it long-lost’
I first met David Donohue, the Carlow-born all-rounder who records and writes infrequently as The Floors, in the early 1990s and, ever since, he’s fitfully turned up in my life and stolen all of the scenes we’ve played together. I last bumped into him maybe ten years ago, days before Christmas, on the footpath outside... Continue Reading →
The American singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, who turns 80 years old today, is no stranger to Ireland and to Irish popular culture. So we’ll begin with an obvious reference to the Clancy Brothers, from Tipperary, and Armagh’s Tommy Makem who, in Greenwich Village’s clubs and coffee houses, played re-imagined Irish folk songs that so influenced him... Continue Reading →
The writer and biographer, Johnny Rogan, died on January 21st, 2021. His death was announced on February 12th. Seán Aylward remembers his good friend. The noted music biographer, Johnny Rogan, who died recently in London, was born in 1953 and grew up in England. He was the son of 1940s emigrants from Waterford. He was... Continue Reading →
In 1988 Public Enemy played Trinity College, Dublin. Kieran Cunningham, Chief Sports Writer with the Irish Daily Star, and someone who once had musical notions of his own, wrote an excellent guest post for us back in 2018 about the gig. Since then, some old photographs [courtesy of Trevor Butterworth] have emerged and Kieran's memory... Continue Reading →
Forty years ago, next month, a fire that broke out during a Valentine’s weekend disco at The Stardust nightclub in Artane, on the northside of Dublin, resulted in the deaths of 48 young women and men. As Kathy Sheridan reminded Irish Times readers in a 2006 feature piece, ‘of the 48 who died, half were aged 18... Continue Reading →
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