UK Holidays - In Search of the Craic: One Man's Pub Crawl Through Irish Music

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Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 781
EAN: 9780233000954
ISBN: 023300095X
Label: Andre Deutsch
Manufacturer: Andre Deutsch
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2005-03-01
Publisher: Andre Deutsch
Studio: Andre Deutsch

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Editorial Reviews:

There's nothing quite like hearing Irish music in Ireland. Not on big concert halls or grand arenas, but in the small pubs in remote areas where the locals habitually gravitate for those informal sessions that invariably develop into a serious social occasion universally known as the craic. For those who play it, it's not a style of music, but a way of life, producing its own culture and characters. After 25 years visiting Ireland both as a music writer and a tourist, Colin Irwin goes in search of the craic. He talks to some of the leading Irish musicians like Christy Moore, Donal Lunny, Paddy Moloney, Martin Hayes, Andy Irvine, Cara Dillon, Paul Brady and Frankie Gavin about their experiences and they direct him to places where the craic is mightiest. This is the story of his journey into Ireland's musical soul and the extraordinary characters he meets along the way.

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Beats the Duval crawl hands down(!)
Comment: My only regret about this book is that I didn't find it before I went to Ireland in 2005 in search of "the music". While my daughter and I did find lots of great traditional music in Cork, Galway, Dublin and other places, Mr. Irwin's book provides as close as you can get to a guide to something as fluid and out of the spotlight as Irish session music and musicians. In the guise of a funny (and it truly is funny) series of musings, Mr. Irwin manages to put together a non-academic, but relatively exhaustive overview of the development and then current state of Irish traditional music. His biases are laid out clearly, many times to be auto-debunked as his travels open his eyes to the precursors of his heroes of the '70's and '80's, like Planxty, Bothy Band, etc. Mr. Irwin's research would be of great benefit to anyone traveling to Ireland for the music, or just interested in Irish traditional music.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Vicarious pleasure
Comment: Like most pub "sessions" in Ireland, this book doesn't offer a flawless performance, but it is still good craic. And, like a good session, it leaves you wanting more.

People unfamiliar with the Irish traditional music scene, however, might find the book's references too obscure to be of interest, since reading about music you haven't heard must be like listening to someone describe what a slow pour pint of Guinness tastes like, when you've never had the pleasure of drinking one yourself.

But anyone who has traveled Ireland and checked out a pub or two in search of traditional Irish music will enjoy the vicarious pleasure of following along with Colin Irwin on his quest. His interviews along the way with some of the leading figures in Irish music are one of the best parts of the book. Hearing Liam Clancy talk about his conversation with Shane MacGowan, bad boy of The Pogues, was priceless. Also funny was Irwin's own discomfort at being face to face with Clancy -- after a jouralistic career in which he had often mocked the trailblazing Clancy Brothers for their Aran-sweater-Oirish act that today seems over-the-top. Just as rewarding was seeing how unbothered Clancy was by the criticism.

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