Lacking in Halloween costume ideas and want to impress your Irish friends? Well look no further than IrishCentral’s Irish Halloween costume guide!

Lady GaGa helped out new pal Bono Sunday night with an extra special gift for Gavin Friday's 50th birthday bash. Dressed in just a sheer leotard with two blacked-out crosses over her breasts, Lady GaGa teetered over to Friday on towering stilettos to present the birthday boy with his birthday cake.

Gavin Friday’s celebrity-filled birthday bash at Carnegie Hall ranks with U2’s current tour as the concert of the 2009. Featuring the rock gods of the last 40 years, it boasted artists as diverse as Lou Reed and Lady GaGa. Friday talks about the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.

U2 star Bono celebrated his 33rd birthday during the 1993 Zooropa tour with one bizarre gift! Pal Gavin Friday sent him a packet containing nails, a hammer and wood with a note marked “DIY.” “He didn’t get up on the cross, though!” said Friday.

Irish singing star Gavin Friday, former singer with the infamous Virgin Prunes and a close friend of U2’s Bono, has assembled some of his most famous friends for a very special one night only concert at Carnegie Hall on Sunday night.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Easy! Just ask Gavin Friday who plays there Sunday with U2, Rufus and Martha Wainwright and Scarlett Johansson. It's all part of a charity gig to raise money to fight AIDS.

It’s summer, the weather is hot and the beer is cold. There’s nothing like a few good old Irish tunes to get the party started. Here are a few IrishCentral picks for Irish drinking songs to liven up any hooley.

Johnny Depp,about to hit the big screen playing bank robber John Dillinger in “Public Enemies,” may yet bring Sebastian Dangerfield, the lead character of JP Donleavy’s classic novel “The Ginger Man” to life on the big screen.

Teenage girls LOVE “Twilight’s” Edward Cullen – which means they love real-live Robert Pattinson, who plays the much-desired vampire in the “Twilight” movies, even more. So what is it about Pattinson that 14-year-olds worldwide are swooning over? According to him, it's the fact that he looks like an elderly Irish drunkard.

It’s been 10 years now since HBO took a chance on a little drama called “The Sopranos” and changed the face of television. Few could gave guessed its success. But nobody would have predicted: that the Irish would come to dominate critically acclaimed drama all over the cable landscape.

The Mighty Stef, a singer and songwriter from Dublin who has been celebrated in the U.K. press for the storytelling in his songs and for his passionate live shows, has release a new album, "100 Midnights."

As the youngest of those Clancys who lowered the boom on folk music scene, Liam Clancy remains a vital link to those halcyon days when Irish America was feeling its roots.

A drunken middle-aged man stumbles on stage and slurs song lyrics as 1,000 or so more drunken middle-aged men watch on, raise their plastic cups of overpriced beer and half-coherently sing along. Sound like a fun Friday night during St. Patrick’s Day weekend? Hardly. But I still had a good time at The Pogues concert on March 13 at Roseland Ballroom in N.Y.C.

If there is one thing that Irish people do really well, it's music. And what can be better than seeing a great Irish band live? So, check out this list – and go and see these bands right now. Before you die. (Or in the case of The Pogues, before Shane MacGowan dies.)

There has been so much written about Shane MacGowan’s partying lifestyle that Pogues bandmate James Fearnley’s description of his relationship with the legendary singer is disarming in its sweetness. “We’re like an old couple,” he tells IrishCentral. “There is this resilience now that will never go away in our relationship.”

For a colorful take on the Irish music scene, check out "A Drink with Shane MacGowan," by the Pogues founder and his wife Victoria Mary Clarke. All of MacGowan's messy, comical and tragic brilliance is on display here.

For Terence Mulligan, founder of the Craic Fest, the annual New York Irish film and music bash, his work has been a 10-year labor of love, and this year's lineup is the most ambitious yet. CAHIR O' DOHERTY asks Mulligan what festival-goers can expect this time around.

TEN years ago Terence Mulligan, the founding producer of the annual Craic Festival, was checking out the latest Irish films in Dublin when he wondered what would happen if he showcased the ones that had impressed him most in a big headline event in New York City?

That simple question, he recalls, heralded the birth of the annual event now commonly known as the Craic Fest.

SUMMER is here, and the warm temperatures grow a gaggle of artists that settle in stadiums and amphitheaters. Ireland is no exception. If you are planning a trip to the Auld Sod, you may want to pack a few extra euros in the bag for some great shows scheduled throughout the Emerald Isle.

POPULAR Pogues hell-raiser Shane MacGowan is mad as hell at how Ireland has transformed itself, and he's not gonna take it anymore!

Shane, not known for advocating a clean and healthy lifestyle, is furious at the successful public smoking ban that the Irish government implemented several years back.

"I can't see people sticking to that forever," he told the Irish Star. 'It's f***ing ridiculous.

DO you remember a time when Shane MacGowan had a working set of choppers? How about the time you heard bands like the Saw Doctors and Black 47 for the first time?

Here's something that makes you feel old - those bands are about to mark their 20th anniversaries!

While seeing those bands today is still a nice kick, when was the last time you got knocked over the head with fresh new music in the Irish rock genre?

Your wait is now over, though. The music of Biblecode Sundays takes you back to that time, offering a wildly original voice to the Irish rock genre with their CD Ghosts of Our Past.

Led by Elvis Costello's kid half-brother, Ronan MacManus, Biblecode Sundays bring that famous sibling's defiant energy while neatly avoiding any comparisons.

WITH the demolishing of the old Shea Stadium, Queens is losing not only a famous ballpark but a venerable concert venue as well.

Billy Joel recently gave the place a grand sendoff with some farewell concerts, and of course, Shea was the epicenter of Beatlemania when the Liverpool Moptops played there in the sixties.

But for Generation X-ers like me who were in high school on October 13, 1982, Shea played host to a changing of the guard in musical history.

Rock hard, die young. This was the story for some of Ireland's noteworthy musicians. Here's a look at how hard living caught up with these talents.

I MET Ronnie Drew once in the meeting room of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. In person he looked a lot worse than the photographs.

Clearly he had been drinking and was falling asleep in the corner when a friend brought me over.

Pete Doherty, the often-drug addled English rocker who was at one point dating Kate Moss, was the star attraction at Trinity College in Dublin earlier this month, when fans lined up for hours to hear him give a guest lecture. He wasn't opining on the global financial crisis, but rather he spoke about anything and everything else, and didn't disappoint with his witty stories about life as both a musician and U.K.

Loyalist for Irish Senate?

WILL Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern appoint a leading Loyalist to the Irish Senate next week?

The buzz in Dublin is that Ahern will use one of his 11 nominations to the Senate to appoint Glen Barr, the former leading figure in the Ulster Defense Association and now a long time peace activist, to the upper house of the Irish Parliament.

It is not without precedent that an Irish leader would appoint someone from Northern Ireland to the Senate, but the choices in the past have all been moderate Nationalists such as Seamus Mallon, or outstanding figures such as Gordon Wilson, who displayed enormous grace after he lost a daughter during the tragic IRA Enniskillen bombings.

Barr, however, might not be all that controversial a choice if he is chosen.

The Irish Arts Center hosted its annual Spirit of Ireland gala at the New York Athletic Club on October 3, and special guest Bono showed up to collect an award on behalf of the late, great Irish singer Ronnie Drew.

The former Dubliners frontman succumbed to cancer earlier this year, and a star-studded list of actors, politicians and artists turned up to pay homage to one of the finest vocalists to ever come out of Ireland.

Among those present were actors Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne, boxer John Duddy and the AIF's Loretta Brennan Glucksman.

One of the occupational hazards of being a music critic for an Irish newspaper is the ear splitting banality one has to suffer through when a major Celtic rock outfit decides to get in touch with "their roots" with a trad song.

For one thing, the song selection could not be more unimaginative. Do you have any idea how many versions of "Fields of Athenry" and "Rocky Road to Dublin" I've amassed on my iPod in the 10 years I've written for the Irish Voice?

If that doesn't kill the project, the paint-by-numbers arrangements will.

When I last spoke with Damien Dempsey earlier this year, he recalled a recent chance encounter with Shane MacGowan at a Heathrow Airport bar. "He said he was worried about me and my acoustic guitar with all the James Blunts of the world running around," he said. "He encouraged me to buy a leather jacket and an electric guitar, which I did.

Bruce Springsteen made a name for himself by writing rock and roll poetry about the working class of the Jersey Shore, and while there may not be much in common between The Boss and Boston's Dropkick Murphys on the surface, the themes of their songs are remarkably similar. This snarling punk rock outfit has just released its sixth full length CD, The Meanest of Times, and there are vivid photographs of the downtrodden lurking beneath the tide of angry punk energy.

They couldn't have picked a better title for the CD.

I've always been viciously envious of writers that are able to write while under the influence. Who among us wouldn't harvest a kidney to be able to write beautiful, boozy poetry like Shane MacGowan? Sadly, nothing has emerged from this pen in that condition. Don't try this at home kids, but in the interest of bringing you the best column possible over this past decade I have ingested a stray substance or two upon occasion while on the road.

That majestic voice is front and center as bells and choirs garnish the familiar melodies that warm the soul. The only question out there is why Ronan Tynan hasn't come out with a solo Christmas CD sooner. Now he has, thankfully, and it's called I'll Be Home for Christmas.

According to Hot Press magazine in Ireland, U2, Simon Carmody and Kila have led a collaboration on a special tribute to The Dubliners' legend Ronnie Drew, which was recently recorded in Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin.

Sinead O'Connor, Christy Moore, Andrea Corr, Shane McGowan, Bob Geldof, Damien Dempsey, Gavin Friday, Jerry Fish, Paul Brady, Paddy Casey, Mundy, Chris de Burgh, Ronan Keating, Mary Black and the Chieftains were among the acts that streamed through the studio, according to spies at the magazine, which added that Frames singer Glen Hansard recorded his vocals on a telephone from the Czech Republic.

The song, entitled "The Ballad of Ronnie Drew," is a collaboration, written by the Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, with Bono, the Edge and the former Golden Horde singer and songwriter Simon Carmody.

Being an Irish music reviewer, your desk can become a sea of green ink. Emerald-tinged CD jewel cases and Kelly green graphics in Celtic fonts blend into one another in all of the clutter, especially leading up to St. Patrick's Day.

Ever since the Pogues reunited back in 2001 after a hiatus of almost 17 years, their annual tours have been the hottest tickets of the St. Patrick's Day season.

Thankfully band member Philip Chevron has just successfully beat throat cancer, and he will be packing his guitar to join original members James Fearnley on accordion, Jem Finer on guitar, banjo and saxophone, Darryl Hunt on bass, Shane MacGowan on vocals, Andrew Ranken on drums, Spider Stacy on tin whistle and Terry Woods on mandolin and cittern.

Let's all hoist a pint to the Craic Fest, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with yet another killer bill that is bigger than anything they have staged in the past. Mercury Lounge will host the Craic Fest from March 6-8, with Damien Dempsey, Mr. North, David Kitt and soul chanteuse Laura Izibor among the luminaries performing that night.

April showers not only bring May flowers, they also bring Damien Dempsey back to our shores.

Damo will be hitting the road this month, playing dates through the East Coast and Midwest. He's back for the second U.

Imagine yourself in an Irish bar, and you pass a sarcastic remark to the man at the bar stool next to you. You're rewarded with a full mug of beer to your temple, and as you stumble out of bar picking glass out of your hair, you laugh it off and find the next hooley.

That's what a Tossers album sounds like.