Why I Love Irish Punk Music

I'm listening to my new MP3 player, onto which I've just loaded about 50 songs, and I suddenly realize that without planning it, every single song I've selected is an Irish or Celtic punk song.

Why do I love Celtic, and particularly Irish, punk music so much? Whether it's the Boston-based Dropkick Murphys or New York's Black 47, Flogging Molly, or my latest favorite, Shane McGowan, they all share the drama, the poetry, the barely controlled passions, that animated Dylan Thomas, James Joyce, and every great Irish poet or writer of the past.

You'd think at my age I might have mellowed. But I don't think Celts do that. We keep that wild, dramatic streak til we burn out or die.

Take Shane McGowan, formerly of the Pogues. I love him with the Pogues, and I love him alone. McGowan is unashamedly what he is: a drunken, nearly toothless, Irish genius. I listen to those slurred, brilliant lyrics and I think of Dylan Thomas drinking himself to death, James Joyce starting fights in Paris bars and then ducking out to let Earnest Hemingway finish 'em up, and all those other bright fires burning themselves out from the inside. And all my nearly totally Irish blood seems to rush my heart and my head with love and pride to hear him. Many of his own songs could easily be mistaken for traditional Irish folk tunes, thus illutrating how small a step in can be from any Irish music to punk.

Or listen to Larry Kirwan and Black 47 drawing their pictures of characters and situations with words and music, thoroughly political and unabashedly emotional. They are to contemporary Irish music what opera is to Italy. From the conflicts in Ireland to contemporary New York, their personal take on what's going on in the world mesmerizes me and totally engages me every time.

As for Flogging Molly, I recently had the pleasure of seeing them live for the first time, with a sold-out crowd of mostly twenty and thirty-somethings. It was the best concert I've ever seen. Lead singer Dave King has a real way of connecting with an audience, and the band makes the unlikely combination of punk music with strong traditional elements work. And they us instruments including accordian, fiddle, concertina, tin whistle, bodhran, spoons, and Uillean pipes to do it! Dave's lyrics are very personal, drawn from his own life experience, and with songs like "Factory Girls" he can transport you right to the heart of his native Dublin. "What's Left of the Flag" wraps itself around the heart, as do many other of Flogging Molly's songs. But then, they can take a totally American song like "What Made Milwaukee Famous," and turn it into a drunken Irish rave-up with the best of them.

Dropkick Murphys, out of Boston, are brash, loud, and demand to be sung along to. I love their original music, from the early Boys on the Docks to the recent Shipping Up to Boston, well-known from the soundtrack of the Scorcese movie, The Departed. But I love them most when they do their takes on traditional Irish drinking songs. There's hardly a jump at all from these songs to punk; they were punk in attitude from the beginning. Dropkick Murphys' version of "Wild Rover" is quite possibly my favorite song ever, and they do an equally insanely great job with "Black Velvet Band" and "Whiskey in the Jar."

In summary, why do I love these bands and this music? It's the honesty and the passion; the ability to go right to the edge of control; the willingness to give every single iota of one's self to every single song. It's the embracing of joy and of pain, the ever-constant closeness of history, and the refusal to let anything past, present, or future interfere with one's ability to throw caution to the wind and have a completely unfettered good time. Thomas and Joyce would be proud.k

Like me, whether these musicians were born in Ireland like Dave King or Larry Kirwin, or whether they are Irish-American like Dropkick Murphys, Ireland is in their blood and in their brains.

So, I say, long live punk, and Ireland Forever!