quote:

---

Originally posted by Pilchard
i agree with the good Rev. I just think its very funny that the UK are now cottoning onto the accursed S-S thing. good riddance to it. there were (and are) some good uns but as u point out, the sheer ceaseless nature of these sensitive eejits was too much. be gone. dont come back. especially u paddy casey

---

wicker - i didn't have to register to read it... "A brilliant crop of young singer-songwriters is emerging from Ireland, says Mark Edwards..." an interesting article. it's worth noting that an outside and, presumably, unbiased perspective sees the current singer/songwriter scene in ireland as an abundance of talent in a particular genre, and not, as it is often labelled by some on this forum, a musical plague of biblical proportions. the writer also makes an effort to understand why this abundance of talent has flourished, tracing a line back to david gray and his diy approach to white ladder, pointing out that the geography of ireland is conducive to profitable touring, and suggesting that ireland is a more musical culture, where "everyone has a song in their hearts." why these conditions favour singer/songwriters over bands is unclear. whatever about the reasons why they have enjoyed so much success, i don't think, as pilchard seems to be suggesting, that paddy casey & friends will anytime soon be transplanting themselves to the uk en messe, never to return, so i think 'good riddance' is a little premature. as for 'rev' jules' colourful description of todays common or garden irish singer/songwriter (with the possible exceptions of damien dempsey and gemma hayes), i wonder if, like the homophobe who doth protest too much, he may be found of an occasional evening hiding in the closet, wearing a false straggly beard and a scruffy wooly jumper, sipping a cup of fair-trade organic decaffeinated tea and wistfully strumming the opening chords to the blower's daughter... probably not.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eoin
all we need now for the Frames to go the way of Buddy Holly & The Big Bopper and we'll be laughing. Also it would be cool if they turned Whelans into a McDonalds. That would piss the feckers off no end !

---

Dunno, with Whelans gone, they'd probably still be there .... flipping burgers

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mully

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eoin
all we need now for the Frames to go the way of Buddy Holly & The Big Bopper and we'll be laughing. Also it would be cool if they turned Whelans into a McDonalds. That would piss the feckers off no end !

---

Dunno, with Whelans gone, they'd probably still be there .... flipping burgers

---

true ! at least they'd have found something the'd be good at !

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gar
And Rev Jules, hasn't Chris Rea played on these shores almost every year since he broke big here? (just to throw it into the mix, his latest 'The Blue Jukebox' is superb).

---

Yo Gar, not sure what you mean about Rea playing every year. My point is that Ireland essentially gave Chris Rea a career he came to regret, one which sent him off course from his first love - The Blues. Please click on the following article from the Guardian to see what I mean. http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,790672,00.html For those of you who couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing, here is an edited extract. "A very serious operation saved Chris Rea from MOR purgatory. Chiefly remembered for songs like The Road to Hell, which is about the frustrations of driving on the M25 during the rush hour, he could have continued to record the kind of music that finds its spiritual home in the CD deck of a Ford Mondeo. Then he discovered that life was too short to devote yourself to making money for other people, and went back to plough the grittier soil from which his musical roots first grew Last year I nearly died," says Rea, who hasn't done too badly from the MOR years himself - his Berkshire home, a converted mill built over a tributary of the river Thames, has its own recording studio. "I had my pancreas, duodenum and half my stomach removed. The operation has a one-in-three survival rate, and it leaves you with diabetes and a lot of problems in dealing with fat. When I had the operation, they thought it was cancer everywhere and I didn't have a chance." Before the 14-hour operation began, Rea said goodbye to the wife he has been with since he was 16, and realised that throughout an extremely successful musical career, he had never released a record that reflected the kind of music he actually liked, which is the blues. At the point when he was about to go through something he had a good chance of not coming out of, Rea returned to the memory of the first record he bought: an album by the delta blues great Charley Patton. "That album made me learn the slide guitar," says Rea. "So just before I went into that operation, I thought: if I get through this, I've got to make the record that I would have done if nobody ever got in the way." Now Rea plans to make up for lost time. "My weakness has always been cooperation, being afraid of executives and thinking that they know something when they don't. Now that I don't care what they think, I'm having my second chance."

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gar
So you think that Rea has insulted Irish people because he basically spat on his previous success which Irish audiences lapped up?

---

No, I don't. I think that he realised two things: a) The fact that the Irish like you does not mean that you are any good. b) If, as an artist, you keep pursuing a particular path simply because people tell you that they like it and you make money from it - if you lose sight of who you truly are - then you may one day regret it. Big time. Its a life lesson Gar, its a life lesson.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gar I thought Mark Edwards' article was pretty pointless in a Sunday supplement which usually has good music writing. He didn't touch on any new terrority or even provide solid quotes, I thought it was a weak subject to tackle because he only really mentioned Damien Rice, David Kitt and Paddy Casey aswell as John Hughes' new pet project.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by jmc105
he certainly managed more intelligent comment on the subject than is often seen on here, as typified by eoin and mully in this thread.

---

Cmon Jmc, you cant keep a smartarse down ...