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

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.

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.

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.

“Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.” Brendan Behan wrote those lines years ago, and that sentence has ruled my life ever since I took up this writing gig 14 years ago because while I have written about every form of music played by Irish artists, I never played a note. Until now.

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."

Memorial Day is less than two weeks away, which also means the kickoff of the busiest season for Irish festivals. In this era of bailouts, buying a ticket to a festival this summer provides a stimulus package to our culture that will reap immediate benefits to your family.

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.

The most requested song of the day by the couple and the guests alike, was the Pogues’ hit “Fairytale of New York.”

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.”

When you look at the CDs in the mailbag in any given week, you can easily place most Irish artists in two camps - those who chase the fumes from the boozy Pogues caboose, and those who try to recreate the otherworldly atmospherics of Clannad and Enya. Lordy, is the landscape cluttered with these New Agey waifs who scatter through the Irish countryside with their magic dust and voices that float above the stratosphere! Celtic Woman, Sirocco and Loreena McKennitt are just a few of these gals occupying that space. You might be forgiven for thinking that Ashley Davis is in that ilk.

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.

I got a few emails during our break from distraught readers who got iTunes gift cards from Santa with no idea how to spend them. We should all have such problems! Santa put some of those gift cards in my stocking this year as well, and I always see them as an opportunity to either round out my music collection with back catalogues of my favorite artists, or guilty pleasures that are not worthy of my cash in normal circumstances. A word to the wise - never mix Scotch, a computer and iTunes at 4 a.

IT'S a few days later and my voice is three octaves lower, it hurts to even blink my eyes, and every fiber in my being is begging for a comfy pillow. So, I will cut to the point. WOW! What a night we had at the CelticLounge launch party! This little virtual pub we all created called CelticLounge took over the legendary Connolly's on Times Square last Thursday, and I'm still picking confetti and broken glass out of my hairline.

Fresh from the Irish set of the upcoming second season of the Showtime smash The Tudors, Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers is trading in his lusty Henry VIII role to show a much more romantic side in August Rush, an unabashedly weepy new love story that dares you not to cry. CAHIR O'DOHERTY talks to Rhys Meyers, his co-star Keri Russell, and to the film's Irish director Kirsten Sheridan.

Once inside the legendary hotel they're quickly whisked away from crowds of gawkers and paparazzi that stalk their every move, and then the rounds of interviews take place.

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.

IN biblical terms, the snake is a metaphor for the slithery temptations of Lucifer himself, but fans of Irish music along the Jersey Shore equate the snakes for barn burning Irish rock! If you ever wondered how one would/should/could build a bridge between the Pogues' "Dirty Old Town" and Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rosie," you will need to see the Snakes to believe that it can be done. Their set list is a dizzying ride through folk, rock, and traditional Irish classics, all delivered with all the sudsy glory you'd expect from a great bar band.

As a nod to the sand and ocean a few blocks away in Asbury Park, they treated the crowd in St.

TO Damien Dempsey The Rocky Road, out this week on UFO Records, is more than a covers album or another notch in his list of stellar accomplishment. This new album comes with a mission. "I have a younger brother 10 years my junior and his crowd sort of missed the end of the ballad boom of the eighties," he explains.

THE Donegal X-Press has emerged as one of the premier Irish American roots rock groups in the country, with a reputation built on high-energy that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are soaking up.

Brad Dunnells (guitar and vocals) and Jason Tinney (harmonica and vocals) began collaborating and writing songs in the late 1990s with the hope of rejuvenating Irish American music. Each band member has a musical side project in the works that take the musicians into areas of hip hop, folk and rock, and Dunnells and Tinney are no exception.

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.

Christmas always brings about nostalgia and fond memories of times long ago, times back in Ireland when folks lived frugally but loved abundantly.

The Irish Voice asked some of its readers to share some of their warmhearted memories from the land they left many years ago.

Patricia McGouron, a Co.

President Mary McAleese and Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen led a stream of tributes to the memory of legendary folk singer Ronnie Drew, who died on Saturday at the age of 73 after a lengthy illness.

McAleese said of the man who founded the world-famous Dubliners singing group before launching a solo career in his sixties, "Ronnie re-energized and refreshed our unique musical heritage. He brought great pleasure to the people of Ireland and yet more around the world.

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.

AS the February 15 ceremony draws nearer, details on this year's Meteor Awards show are leaking out. This is the equivalent of the Grammys on the Emerald Isle. The Blizzards, Cathy Davey and Future Kings of Spain are among the nominees for this year's Meteor Ireland Music Awards, which will take place in the RDS on Friday, February 15.

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.

Listening to Icewagon Flu is like dipping your hands into your trick or treat candy - you never know what flavor you'll encounter, but you'll be guaranteed a sweet treat every time. To prove a point, listen to this pop hodge-podge as described by singer Kevin Adkins.

"We've been recently been doing that eighties tune 'Safety Dance' in our set, along with a bizarre medley of Fine Young Cannibals' 'She Drives Me Crazy,' Pat Benatar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' and rounding it off with Boston's 'More Than a Feeling.

Pete Depressed is anything but. The lead singer of the Gobshites is a jolly looking, frantic soul in search of a good time, and the good times always seem to follow this Boston band. Fans of their acoustic punk mix are rabid.

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.

There comes a time in every rocker's life when you have to chill a little bit, and I am no exception. After listening to KISS, Sabbath, the Pogues and Dropkick Murphys at ear-splitting volumes, one must retreat into the musical equivalent of chamomile tea from time to time.

No one, and I mean no one, soothes the eardrums quite like Phil Coulter.

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.

'Tis the season to be jolly! Okay, that's Christmas, but this is our holiday and there is plenty to be jolly about as Ireland's biggest legends play all over the city these next few days!

What better way to kick off the weekend then a Saw Doctors hooley at the Nokia Theater in Times Square on Friday and Saturday nights. They have just released a fun compilation of odds 'n' sods called That Takes the Biscuit (more on that next week).

I recommend the same thing every year because it is clearly the best party of them all - Rogues March maestro Joe Hurley puts on a raucous show called the All-Star Irish Rock Revue.

Roseland Ballroom hosted the biggest and baddest Irish party this past weekend as the Pogues settled in for a string of sold-out shows in midtown.

After 15 years in limbo, the lads have been doing annual pilgrimages to the States since 2002. While none of us thought they would ever reform, it is now incomprehensible to celebrate St.

There is something about seeing the Pogues live and in the flesh last month that makes the prospect of listening to any other Celtic punk outfit seem like reading a newspaper under water - a soggy, unappealing mess if ever there was one.

If anyone can get me over my slump, surely it's Flogging Molly! Thanks to Float, Flogging Molly has floated to the top echelons of the charts. They landed the number four spot on Billboard recently, marking the highest chart position ever achieved within the Irish American genre.

The Saw Doctors recently released "That Takes the Biscuit," a collection of rarities, live tracks and oddities from the band's long recording history. Typically, these albums of studio scraps are half-baked ideas that should have stayed in the oven.

But by and large, this "biscuit" is hot and satisfying throughout.

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.

Pierce Turner will be offering what he calls a “classy St. Paddy’s Day” at Joe’s Pub in New York by promising to learn a few classy Irish