The latest in a series of guest posts from Carl Lee.
“Maybe Romance Is A Place”: That Wet Island out West
You could probably have a month of blogs eulogising the breath and depth of Ireland’s musical heritage. Where would you begin beyond the obvious contenders such as the Boomtown Rats and U2? Should the focus be on traditional Irish music and how far should you trawl, into the 19th century or even further back in time, into the years of British colonial push and shove, bloodshed and dispossession.
I was well versed in such matters from a young age with one Dublin born, Scottish descended, grandparent. His death certificate states ‘labourer’.
For me the first Irish artist I ever saw live was that fellow Irish labourer but of the Fender Stratocaster, Rory Gallagher. This was back in the late 1970s at Friars, the rock venue located in Aylesbury Civic Hall. He’d learnt his chops in The Fontana Showband, a band who from 1961 to 1965 played the hits of the day in ballrooms, civic halls and pubs across Ireland, sometimes everyday bar Sunday. They were grafters. However, music moved on and so did Rory, eventually he formed the band Taste, and then he set off solo with a touring schedule that is probably unheard of these days. It is estimated that he probably played over 2000 gigs, so if you hadn’t seen him in the 1970s you probably didn’t go out much.
It was the third version of his touring band that I saw, with drummer Ted McKenna and bassist Gerry McAvoy, and they had honed a harder edged rock sound by then (I guess they could afford a bigger soundsystem) with his trade mark battered Fender Stratocaster leading the charge in a high octane stage performance. His relentless touring led to a complete burn out and he died after a liver transplant in June 1995 aged 47. A very talented Irish musician. He really put the hard graft in and in that he reminds me of my Irish grand father
I sincerely hope that my current favourite band, who also just also happen to be Irish, learn the lesson from Rory and don’t burn themselves out. This is the Dublin band Fontaines DC, who are four albums into a run of carving out contemporary classics from all sorts of musical directions.
I first stumbled across Fontaines DC during the first Covid lock down in June 2020 on Later with Jools Holland with their isolation filmed ‘A Hero’s Death’. It jumped out lyrically and musically. A breath of optimistic cheer in a dark time.
“And don’t give up too quick
You only get one line, you better make it stick
If we give ourselves to every breath
Then we’re all in the running for a hero’s death”.
Now generally speaking I’m quite fluid in what I listen to but for 12 months I absolutely battered the discography of Fontaines DC, from their first single, the retro punk of ‘Liberty Belle’, to the stadium rock blast of the most recent “It’s Amazing To Be Young”. I may have over-done it. I even bought one of their Bohemians FC third strip sponsored football shirts. Yet, I’ve never caught them live even though they played Sheffield at least three times since a 2018 gig at the Leadmill.
And now I probably won’t, as they are a festival and stadium band now, two types of venues I’ve never particularly warmed to and now I am hesitant at the cost of such endeavours.
But never say never.
Fontaines DC are of course unquestionably Irish, singing on occasion in Gaelic, calling an album ‘Skinty Fia’ and waxing lyrical about the ‘Dublin City Sky’. There is also an attitude that shouts out ‘Irish’; an insouciance, and ease meshed into existential whimsy, and sharp social observation. They’ve got attitude.
Irish musicians have never been short of attitude from Sinead O’Connor, Shane McGowan, Bono and of course the great Thin Lizzy front man Phil Lynott who was in a constant state of rock n’ roll cool; shades, leather trousers, upper-lip snarling, and all the ‘fuck you attitude’ that only a black-man raised in working class Dublin could muster after being asked to cover “Whiskey in the Jar’ to initially break the charts in 1972.
By 1978 Lynott had his revenge with one of the best live albums of the 1970’s, ‘Live and Dangerous’.
<My friend Simon says that Thin Lizzy were probably the loudest band he ever heard in his concert-going life... Alan>
Listening back to 'Live and Dangerous' brings to mind something the literate, crafted Irish nu-country artist CMAT sings. “I feel so rock n’ roll but I look like a secondary geography teacher.”
I can’t help but imagine who it was who taught her geography at secondary school in County Meath just north-west of Dublin and deserved this scathing put down from Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson as it would have said on the school register?
Still, at least another of CMAT’s acid tonged victims, the chef Jamie Oliver, managed to get a foothold in the humour when he stars in the official video of CMAT’s 2026 hit ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ playing the drums almost in a manner as frenzied as CMAT’s dancing.
No country is so tightly inter-twined with Britain’s musical heritage whilst still retaining its own identity and diversity as Ireland and this has been sustained over generations stretching back to Victorian times, when Irish labourers dug and built much of Britain’s infrastructure.
So many British families have Irish lurking around their DNA, myself included, a healthy dose that could capture me an Irish passport if I was so inclined; I’m not.
And I will admit it, I have never been!
China yes, Australia even. But not yet a short hop over the Irish Sea to the wet island way out west. A lifetime's oversight that really needs sorting.
But no matter. Plenty of Ireland: its history, culture, and importantly its music, has made it into my life already.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
