Off The Record
by Mike FarragherRSS 
Recent Posts
- Friends and fans hold an Irish wake for Mickey Finns’ front man Ray Kelly
- An open letter to the Catholic League on rant against David Bowie video “The Next Day” - VIDEO
- All-star benefit for great Irish musician Mickey Finns’ Ray Kelly who died tragically
- Amen to Rend Collective Experiment - VIDEO
- Finally some new U2 music from Bono and the boys?
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I kinda thought last week’s column that took festival organizers and Irish merchandisers to task for peddling the same old green drivel each year and then wondering why attendance is plummeting would cause a stir.
I was right. A spy tells me that the article was the talk of a book signing at the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, and there have been a number of emails praising me and damning me in equal measure.
“Yeh can really be a vicious, mad dog when yeh set your mind to it,” my dad (and sharpest critic) said on the day the Irish Voice landed in his mailbox. We were walking around last week’s Jersey Shore Irish Festival when he warned, “I’d lay real low around here if I were you.”
Hey Guys:
This summer sure flew by for me. Where the heck did August go, for chrissakes?
For you, I bet the summer can’t move on quick enough. I can’t remember a worse year for the Irish festival.
Moya Brennan, lead singer of Clannad and the first lady of Celtic Music, returns to public television this month (check local listings) with Music of Ireland -- Welcome to America.
The first part of this expansive documentary of Irish music aired back in March to rave reviews that ended with a heart-tugging interview with Liam Clancy that was filmed weeks before his death. This installment jumps the pond for a trans-Atlantic journey from Ireland’s West Coast to the heartland of America.
Music of Ireland – Welcome to America (part II) picks up the story with the emergence of U2 and the global phenomenon they caused. The show makes a clever right turn, taking the spotlight off U2 and putting it squarely on the busker’s scene in Dublin that eventually launched the likes of Academy Award winner Glen Hansard of the Swell Season and the Frames, Damien Rice and Damien Dempsey.
In this 24/7 news cycle we live in, stories come and go. The entire country showered the folks of Haiti with support after the earthquake January, with artists and musicians raising money for telethons and the like.
