Off The Record
by Mike FarragherRSS 
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The cruise features breathtaking views of the city from the water, full open bar, hot and cold dinner buffet, the finest in Irish music, and more, all for $110 per person.
This year, the musical lineup includes Celtic Cross, the Cunningham Brothers, Shay Mac Band, and Maire McVicker.
That doesn’t mean they’ve been idle. Ronan released a solo album, Strawberry Hill, and guitarist Andy Nolan has released a critically acclaimed film called Clan London.
“This movie is about an Irish family growing up from 1970s London against the backdrop of anti Irish prejudice,” Nolan says in the bio. “The three brothers become heavily involved in organized crime and go on to become top of the U.K. underworld. The movie deals with the whole London Irish experience as well as the brutality of this particular crime family.”
The VIP balcony was like a CBGB punk pioneer reunion, with rock and roll hall of famers like Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz of Talking Heads catching up with old friends like Richard Hell of the Voidoids, the Stranglers, and Bebe Buell (model and mom to Liv Tyler, one of Steven’s kids).
In the middle of it all was Larry Kirwan and the lads from Black 47, who played a blistering set of old and new songs to honor their old friend.
“WHAT will the neighbors think?”
Anyone with Irish blood in their veins has heard those five words strung in an accusatory question from their parents at one time or another.
You come home with long hair and a piercing from college. You get off the tarmac at the Aer Lingus terminal packing a chin that wasn’t there the last time you were in Ireland.
He has had a front row seat to cheer on the greatest rock stars of the last twenty years, but now, inspired by the triumph of his eight-year old niece over cancer, he is cheering on kids with blood cancers.
“I am running for ‘Man of the Year’ for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (known as LLS),” O’Malley says. “Basically, it's a number of individuals trying to raise the most money possible for LLS over a 10-week fundraising period, which started March 10 and ends May 19. Whoever raises the most money is Man of the Year.
The Script has been booked to play the Rumsey Playfield in Central Park on June 4.
Expect the lads to be tan, as they will have just gotten off the VH1’s Best Cruise Ever, which is cruising the tropics as this paper goes to press.
The band has proven to be more than a one hit wonder, as their single “For the First Time” seems to be an anthem for the hard times we are now in.
"If Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo came together with great bands like the Rolling Stones and the Sex Pistols it would be fantastic," gold medal-winning rower Steve Redgrave told The People newspaper. He is hoping to see McCartney and Starr team up with Mick Jagger and John Lydon to put on a powerful display of British music talent to open the festivities.
"The London Games gives us a chance to celebrate our own history," he adds. "We have to show the world what we are good at. Those bands are a huge part of our history. It would kick off the party and put us centre of the world's attention."
Forgive me, then, if I haven’t reported that Greg Grene and the Prodigals have not given up on the rocking that they routinely do in bars, clubs and Irish festivals around the nation.
I hadn’t seen the band since 2009, when they were running around in support of their Whiskey Asylum release and hadn’t caught the current lineup changes that include Dave Fahy on guitar and Bulgarian Trifon Dimitrov on bass.
